what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

visual pleasures


I’m sorry I missed the walking tour which Valentin Mandache arranged on Sunday around Targoviste -one of Romania’s ancient capitals. I always enjoy driving through the town – and his invitation gives a sense of the town's treasures/

It’s good to be back in Sofia – with its vegetables (leeks and tomatoes); galleries; pleasant cycling and oace of life. The Sofia City Gallery continues to celebrate its greats – with a special exhibition of one of Bulgaria’s most revered painters – Nikola Petrov (1881-1916). I can understand why his influence (despite his youth) was so great – his landscapes are delicate; his portrait sketches deft; and his nudes were clearly the inspiration for Nikola Boiadjiev. A very nice little book accompanies the exhibition – at only 5 euros. I hadn’t realised that Petrov was from one of the Danube towns – in the north-east, Vidin – which I haven’t been able to get to so far but will certainly visit once the Romanian engineers eventually finish their half of the new bridge (another year off I suspect). The town does have an art gallery. For me, Nikola Tanev is the greatest and is also from a Danube village – Svishtov – the signs for whose car ferry I saw as I left the Russe District

I mentioned recently an interview with Ralf Dahrendorf on an excellent history series available on the internet. I don’t use such facilities as much as I should – here’s another challenging snippet

No comments:

Post a Comment