Cultural page. It was a surprise to see Bryullov’s work, and not just any work, but the famous portrait of Countess Samoilova (with a black boy and a ward), which it seems everyone knows right from school benches, along with the equally famous “Horsewoman”, also depicting her. Bryullov, generally, isn’t that well-known outside of Russia, and there aren’t many of his works in museums. This Samoilova, by the way, even appears in Bryullov’s “The Last Day of Pompeii” three or four times.
Across from Samoilova, the boyars are drinking. This painting, for some reason, is entirely unsigned. It’s a large, wall-sized canvas by Makovsky, “The Boyar Wedding Feast”. It invites prolonged viewing — every detail is captivating.
In the same hall, a third surprise awaited me — a portrait of a young black man. This was Lloyd Patterson. As it turned out, this gentleman ventured to the USSR in 1932 in search of racial equality, work, and simply a better life. In the Soviet Union, Patterson was invited to work as an artist on the film “Black and White”, the idea of which was to expose racism in America. The project was eventually canceled, but Lloyd stayed in the Soviet Union, mastered Russian, and married a Soviet artist and designer, Vera Aralova. It could be said that the issue of racism helped him settle his life.
Here in the USSR, his son, James Lloydovich, was born, and this young man is the same one who played in the famous film by Grigori Alexandrov “Circus” as the son of Marion Dixon – the American artist portrayed by Lyubov Orlova.
He grew up, became a poet, a prose writer, published in the USSR. Right after the USSR came to an end, James emigrated to the USA, and has been living here, in Washington, for over 30 years now. He is already 91 years old. He recently released a book titled “Chronicle of the Left Hand: An American Black Family’s Story from Slavery to Russia’s Hollywood”.
After the museum, we went to Mozart’s Requiem at the National Cathedral. The warm-up for Mozart was the Berlin Mass by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Too slow for me. But the Mozart Requiem I’ve heard about a hundred times, and this was my second time hearing it live (the first time was in a church in Moscow). Still, I can’t say I was very satisfied, coming to a live performance in one of the largest cathedrals in the world: I skimped when choosing seats and ended up in the back. I should have bought tickets closer to the front. By the place we were sitting, the sound was turning into a muddled “mush.”
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 