Dedicated to the works and ideas of the Nicholas Roerich and his family, the International Centre of the Roerichs stands out from its famous neighbors (it’s next to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts) in both style and philosophy. Roerich was a widely-travelled painter and free thinker in the artistically and politically turbulent first half […]
Nietzsche once described Dostoevsky as “the only person who has ever taught me anything about psychology” (Gide 168). Upon looking deeper into the connection between the two men, it is apparent that both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky had complex philosophies, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to compare their philosophical systems completely. Therefore, focusing […]
Nikolai Gogol’s “The Portrait” is a short story about art. First written in 1835 and then significantly revised in 1842, the work explores a central concern in Romantic aesthetics: the role of the artist and his creation. Through a series of ekphrases, i.e. literary representations of visual art, the narrative of “The Portrait” examines the […]
I don’t think in any language. I think in images. I don’t believe that people think in languages. They don’t move their lips when they think. It is only a certain type of illiterate person who moves his lips as he re ads or ruminates. No, I think in images, and now and then a […]
“It is always the dominant people who define what is beautiful.” -Melvin Konner, The Jewish Body One of Isaac Babel’s semiautobiographical childhood stories, “Story of My Dovecote” [«История моей голубятни»], explores the process of a Jewish boy growing up in early twentieth-century southern Ukraine among revolutionary reforms, anti-Jewish discrimination, and anti-Jewish pogroms. In “Story of My […]
Dr. Anne Fisher holds a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from The University of Michigan. She has taught Russian in several institutes of higher learning and is now a professional translator and interpertor living in California. Her first major translation, Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers, was shortlisted for the […]
Five minutes away from Red Square, between a few small churches, stands the old palace of the famous Romanov boyars. Built by the brother-in-law of Ivan the Terrible and grandfather of Tsar Mikhail Romanov in the sixteenth century, it housed the family until 1613 when Mikhail Romanov became Tsar. After the Romanovs moved to the […]
Faith Seim, after studying at for an academic year (1999-2000) at Moscow State University with SRAS, applied to and was accepted to study film direction at the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). She eventually went on to work in the studios of RAMKO/Russian-American Movie Company, a Moscow-based film company specializing in producing films “for the international market” and […]
In Moscow, a close community of performers and dancers exists that examines and explore body movement. Some choreographers define their work as “modern dance,” while others call their art “nonverbal dramatic theater.” Some choreographers and dancers attempt to avoid definition all together, explaining their art more loosely with terms like “total body movement,” “improvisation,” “free […]
