Category: art

Nadezhda’s Firsts: Oil Painting and Piano | March 12 2026, 18:55

Last week, Nadezhda Shulga painted an oil painting for the first time in her life and played the piano with one hand for the first time in her life! Nadya, well done!!! She asked me so many times to paint nature, that she eventually went ahead and painted it herself.

The Lost Version of Repin’s “Unexpected”: A Revolutionary Woman’s Tale | March 01 2026, 23:59

It turns out that in the first version of the painting “Unexpected” the main character was a woman, a Narodovoltsy revolutionary! This was a smaller version, later Repin painted a larger one with a man – the one everyone knows.

And the first version is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery but it is not displayed.

Well, as everyone knows. In general, Russian and Ukrainian artists are hardly known outside their countries. There seems to be one painting by Repin in the Metropolitan Museum of NY and a few in the Orsay, but that’s almost nothing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are all in storage.

Here people know Rublev, the Russian avant-garde (Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall), but nobody (except professionals) knows Shishkin, Levitan, Vasnetsov, Surikov, Savrasov. Despite the fact that many of them studied in Europe and worked from there. Remember Ivanov and his “The Appearance of Christ Before the People”.

Now I’m googling why. They write that the French considered Russian art of that era something akin to journalism in oil. Like, using the canvas as a platform to preach morals, tell stories, expose social injustices. Social drama, suffering peasants, harsh winter landscapes, and execution scenes – all this seemed frightening to Americans. Kind of like Dostoevsky in oil. How can you hang that above a fireplace?

Exploring the Tango Vibes: Astor Piazzolla and Beyond | February 23 2026, 06:31

A few days ago, I decided to Google whether Astor Piazzolla’s music would be performed anywhere nearby, and saw that this very weekend, close by in Strathmore, there is a Tango After Dark show featuring Piazzolla’s music, accompanied by an Argentine orchestra and Argentine tango dancers. Really cool, but I didn’t bring any recordings here.

While Googling what this exotic instrument the local soloist was playing – the bandoneon – I stumbled upon a very very very cool concert of Mario Pietrodarchi accompanied by the Minsk Orchestra. This concert occupies the top five spots in the most popular recordings of the Belarusian State Chamber Orchestra – just go to popular and listen to everything, all of it’s great. You’ve probably already heard Libertango and Oblivion without me, they are ubiquitous, so I’m attaching Angel’s Dance (Milonga del angel) in the comments.

Surreal Daydreams: Cooking Up a Fantastical Adventure | February 08 2026, 15:36

Just a normal day

So I decided to fry some eggs. I grab the frying pan, and it asks me, “Which floor?”. Unfazed, I pull a piano out of my pocket and press the brake pedal. Suddenly, a flight attendant pops out of the oven and politely asks: “Tea, coffee, or hold a brick?”. I chose the brick, because it was checkered blue and smelled of spring.

I step out onto the balcony and see — instead of a courtyard, there’s an ocean of kefir. I get into a submarine, start the chainsaw, and then a traffic cop on a dolphin stops me. He whistles into a cucumber and says:

— Why are you without a panama hat in a public place?

I show him my passport, but instead of a photo, there’s a dressed herring. He bursts into tears of joy, gifts me a cactus, and flies away on an umbrella towards Syzran.

I go back inside, wanting to put the cactus in a vase, but the vase has married a vacuum cleaner and left on a honeymoon to the mezzanine. Well, I spit, wiped the sweat away with a towel, but it turned out to be the neighbor’s cat. The cat meowed, turned into 18 rubles in a single coin, and rolled under the sofa.

I approach it, get in the elevator, sit down on a bicycle, start a motorcycle, then bang, a conductor comes up to me and says, “Sir, give up your seat”. And I say I don’t smoke. Then this kid starts crying! But I didn’t lose my cool, and hit him on the face, and he grabs his knee and screams: “My back! My back!”

I exit this electric train,

and see, there’s a minibus standing there. Well, I approach and say: “Winston Blue and 0.5 vodka”. But it gives me Bond and beer. I take this prima and moonshine, and run away from those cops! Then these firefighters caught up with me in an ambulance! Caught up and say: “You forgot your change!”. So, I take a kilogram of apples and head to the market to trade.

I bring them, haven’t even set out these bananas, right then an old lady runs up and buys all the peaches, and tells me to put them in a small bag! And I think, she’s totally insane, how am I supposed to put 20 watermelons into her bag?! I took the money and went home! Never went to the forest again… didn’t touch mushrooms… even quit smoking.