aesthetic pleasures

This blog is a celebration of good writing and living – and the town of Sofia (nestling in the Balkans) and the village of Sirnea (nestling in the Carpathians) take central place in that celebration. Each has its own incredible beauty – for the most part ignored and undervalued by those who live there but so much appreciated by nomads like me. In the last days of 2011, we had the pleasure of discovering yet more Old Masters’ paintings in The recently re-opened Bulgary gallery – associated with the Bulgary restaurant www.restaurant.bulgary.bg  - which has lovingly recreating the ambiance of old Bulgaria. Two of the paintings I had admired in the last Viktoria Gallery auction – Dmitrov Nikola’s 'River' (1955) and Olga Shishokova’s 'Coffee in Karlovo' (1940) were there (as well as most of the Trtitchovs) and were suitably negotiated into my collection.  The Shishkova heads todays’ post and Dmitrov’s below.   

Today’s wanderings unearthed a small, new gallery on Sulunska St with old masters such as Boris Mitov and Stanio Stomatev.

And also a glorious book celebrating, in poetic black and white pictures, the beauty which can be found adorning the older Sofia buildings – if only you look behind the peeling walls and high enough ! It’s called 'Sofia Enigma-Stigma' by Milchev and is available (in Bulgarian and English text) from http://www.enthusiast.bg/ for only 7 euros.

The loneliness of the long-distance runner

I have been, almost literally, struck dumb these last few weeks of 2011 as I have contemplated the intellectual and ethical poverty of our ruling clasess. One financial blog’s reflections on the year and what the future holds caught my mood perfectly

1. Wall Street dropped some of its pretence to fairness and softer forms of fraud and resorted to overt theft as MF Global stole significant sums of money, bonds, and bullion assets directly from customer accounts, under the eyes of the regulators, and transferred the money to its global bankers who refused to give it back.
Trend: Theft by the financiers will continue and intensify. The victims will be vilified to blunt public reaction.

2. The Eurozone came under unremitting assault by the ratings agencies and their associated banks and hedge funds. The Euro is an inherently 'difficult' currency to manage and has always been more susceptible to broad swings in value. This is because it is an economic union without a comprehensive political and financial union. It more closely resembles the original thirteen states of the US under the Articles of Confederation than it does a comprehensive Republic.
Trend: The Eurozone will continue to struggle to find a balance between political and financial factors, and will evolve into a stronger union of fewer members. Germany and France will continue to emerge as the great Western European power. The UK will be preoccupied by its own set of severe internal problems and regional unrest as austerity bites deeply. The UK will begin to act as more of an Anglo-American agent in the Eurozone. It may take on more of the character of an Orwellian state.

Some people might (and do very persuasively) argue that it is time for a new hegemony. It would be nice, certainly, for more respect to be shown to Scandinavian values. Even the heavy-handed Catholic church has managed to sustain its critical attitude to greed and, over the decades, seems to have pursued a much more positive attitude to community enterprise. The success of the Mondragon model of cooperative industrial activity is one which deserves much wider celebration – although it does worry me that I cannot find a proper treatment in the English language of the story of how this small venture by a catholic priest in the 1940s in a remote Spanish village led to such a commercial success (giving now employment to 30,000 and weathering, so far, all economic storms). There are, however, vidoes on its inspiring story here; here; here; and here. Think Ronnie Lessem’s Managing in four worlds. However strong my affections are for such models, my own feeling is that the better approach is that of the sceptic, agnostic or, indeed, anarchist – ie a “plague on all your houses”.

This is a time of year for thinking about one's life and making resolutions. A few years ago, I discovered a list of 40 tips for living a more balanced life. I've reduced it to 30 tips

A friend has noticed some of the references I've made in this blog to the benefits of rural life for us over-connected zombies - and sent me a recent Pico Iyer article on the joys of solitude

We have more and more ways to communicate but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And so rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.

And a blogpost from an ex-banker has made the same point.

I've been trying to read over my blogposts of the past year (all 250 plus of them) - and feel that I have been too much of the gadfly. Skating lightly over profound issues. My feeling is that I should return in the posts to come to the issues they raise - read more closely the large number of links I've given - and offer rather deepr thoughts........

Reverse technology transfer

Brits of my generation are proud of the BBC and its reputation. The political and economic hits, however, it has taken from successive recent governments means that if now lags behind the quality programmes I can access here from French and German stations. TV5 is our default programme - with the MEZZO music programme not far behind. With some anticipation, we have been waiting for Jérusalem, la ville des deux paix to start - "un Voyage magique et hors du temps, des musiques soufies aux lamentations hébraïques". It has now got underway – under the direction of Jordi Savall with Armenian, Israaeli, Palestine and Morrocan players on such instruments as the kamancha, oud, schofar, santur, morisca and qanun. You can see and hear an excerpt here. I find such sharing of music from different religious cultures much more appropriate for this time of the year than the Christian stuff we are exposed to.

One of our leading development experts has posed an interesting question on his blog - what can development thinking and experience contribute to the solution of Europe’s present crises?

Reading about Greece or Italy or Spain or Ireland today reminds me strongly of reading about and working in African countries in the mid-1980s - similarly crippled by debt crises, and similarly subject to external monitoring and interference. Rigorous monetarist discipline not only stopped growth in its tracks, but also undermined human welfare and, in many cases, destroyed the social contract. Progressive economists in the 1980s coalesced around the idea of Adjustment With a Human Face - accepting the need for macro-economic stabilisation and structural reform, but also insisting on the need to protect the welfare of the poorest and the provision of basic social services. Arguably, the re-evaluation of structural adjustment underpinned both UNDP's work on human development, launched in the Human Development Report of 1990, and the World Bank's re-discovery of poverty, in the World Development Report of 1990. In turn, these contributed to poverty-focused debt relief initiatives in the 1990s, and to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals.
I don't work on domestic European policy, but it does seem to me that there are some lessons here, at least some general principles. Structural adjustment is a necessary process but has a high human cost. Poor people need to be supported as consumers, but also as producers. A high level of participation is required, to underpin ownership and legitimacy. The international community has to cohere around high-level human development goals. And financing is key, including if appropriate in the form of debt relief. There is, it goes without saying, a great deal of international analysis of how to manage the fall-out from the 2008 financial crisis, making similar points. I've written about this elsewhere, originally for the Commonwealth Secretariat.
On financing, I can't resist making a point which is not exactly taken from development studies, but which draws on my very limited reading in the area of currency unions and fiscal transfers - namely that they don't often work unless there are substantial transfers between regions or jurisdictions, to manage asymmetric shocks, but also to redistribute between rich and poor regions. The German constitution, for example, guarantees equal standards of service provision between the various Lander - and allocates tax revenue accordingly. The euro-zone has no such ambition, or rule.
The OECD also has an interesting paper on fiscal equalisation, reviewing the experience of countries as varied as Australia, Canada and Germany. On average, these countries assign 2% of GNP to transfers, to manage asymmetric shocks and redistribute from rich to poor.
The GDP of the euro area is currently about 9 trn euros, so 2% would amount to about 180 bn euros. By contrast, current stuctural funds amount to about 30bn euros, some of which goes to the poorest regions in the poorest countries, but some of which goes to poor regions in richer countries. Further, structural funds support production, not consumption. Thus, the gap between what is needed and available is at least 150 bn euros per year.
Does it not follow that attempts to save the euro need to focus not just on the need for fiscal discipline and structural reform (= structural adjustment), but also on the essential role of large-scale transfers? An extra 150bn euros a year is not trivial in the context of an EU budget of some 140 bn euro, but that is only because the EU budget is so small in relation to EU GDP (capped at 1%) and to Government spending. Tax-payers in richer euro countries, please take note.

This is an interesting point - but the new member states have difficulty enough absorbing the Structural Funds they have been allocated - and the existence and scale of these funds (relative to those, for example, of the mainline Bulgarian and Romanian budgets) has arguably made an important contribution to the systemic corruption which is endemic in these countries' political and administrative elites. And the basic question is a useful reminder of the need for more European humility......

Finally, an interesting new website for me - the Bureau for Investigative Journalism which tries to resurrect that tradition from within a teaching institute.

Fossils and patting sticks

I spent two Xmases working in Baku, Azerbaijan – and very much appreciated the absence of the shopping fever and pressures which characterise these days in the West. Even His Holiness the Pope is apparently lamenting in his Christmas homilythat Christmas has become an increasingly commercial celebration.

But Sofia must be one of the best places to be to avoid the crassness of Xmas. True, the walking St (Vitosha) has overhead decorations – but they are modest and hardly noticed.
Otherwise (if you avoid the malls which have opened only in the past few years) things are almost normal.

And some imagination is used to offer special attractions eg a large fossil market was open last week in the Museum of Natural History which offered marvellous shapes, sizes and textures at very cheap prices - eg this very aesthetic sea hedghog fossil which doubles as a paper weight.

Saturday we wanted to buy a "sooroovachka" – a stick decorated with embroidery, dried fruit, coins etc which kids in this part of the world use for patting family, friends and visitors (in Romania its'called "sorkova") whilst saying a wish for health, wealth and happiness to the one patted.

Bulgarians and Romanians give the child money at the end of the patting which they believe is their way of buying success for the coming year. The women’s market – the collection of open air stalls between Bvds Hristo Botev and Elizabeth – was the place to find it. Most of the products are local fruit and vegetables – with the spice stalls being my favourites. Such an incredible variety of spices and medicinal teas!
I realise that I haven’t posted any video links of Bulgaria yet on the site – here’s a good one to start with.

the charm, yet again, of Sofia!

After 4 years of familiarity with Sofia (almost 3 years in residence) it is typical that I stumbled yesterday on a well-established (and prestigious) gallery focussing on Bulgaria’s old masters - hidden away in a charming and old part of Sofia between Prague Bvd and Bvds Makedonia/Totleben. It’s the Tzennotsi Gallery and has the richest collection (in more senses than one) of all the galleries I have visited here.
The picture above is a Russi Genchev which the gallery would not deign to keep. This Boris Denev which adorns its spacious display walls is a more appropriate exemple of its exhibits.

And, like, the current exhibition at the City Gallery, there were so many painters of whom I hadn’t heard. Some of the paintings seem to have been there for several years (eg some Vladimir Dmitrov’s at 20,000 euros in the 2009 Antiques Price Guide) – which makes one wonder about their business model. Clearly they cater for bigger spenders than me! Probably an institutional market ie the banks! Talking of which, one of the nice features of many hotels here in Bulgaria is their display of (in many cases local) paintings.

In the same street as the Gallery (Buzludja) we also found an enticing little Weinstube (Vestibule Wine Ambassador) which turns out also to be a producer and seller of "bourgeois" furniture. Definitely worth a visit – both in winter for its cosy, traditional interior and in the summer for its garden area at the back. Also in the same street a patisserie with a great range of its own products - including a large apple and walnut cake round for 5 euros!

And we also had an interesting encounter in Tsar Samuel with the sinister Masons. One of the many tiny shops in the area between Hristov Botev and Vitosha with the products of imaginatively-crafted dresses, shawls etc enticed us in and to the purchase of an embroidered cardigan. We were so pleased we readily accepted several small calendar cards which marketed its 50-or so year-old artisan – only to discover when I accessed the website that it had very strong masonic connections. I was so horrified I contemplated returning the cardigan – since, in Scotland, the Masons are a highly divisive force – in the 1970s with a strong and corrupt presence in the police forces. And I remember my (highly tolerant) father – a Scottish Presbyterean Minister – railing against their influence amongst his “Elders”. But, in this part of the world where there was so much repression, perhaps they played a different role? They were certainly outlawed by the fascist forces here in the early 1940s and its members persecuted under the communists. Sadly the intrinsic secrecy of the organisation makes that difficult to check out properly . Their apologists are full of good-sounding rhetoric about freedom and democracy but I cannot take seriously anyone who associates with their silly tribal initiation rituals with trousers at half-mast and quasi-religious artefacts.

Fear the Greeks

Many of us wondered how on earth Greece managed to gain entry to the EU - let alone the euro. And many of us missed a blistering report issued by the OECD in August which blasted the Greek bureaucracy.
Going by the rather bland title Greece: Review of the Central Administration, the 127-page report can be quickly summed up: The government apparatus in Athens is virtually unable to implement reform.

"It is not clear how existing and new entities of (the government) will work together in order to secure the leadership needed for reform, including the necessary strategic vision, accountability, strategic planning, policy coherence and collective commitment, and communication" 

reads the damning report to which my attention was drawn only today by the marvellous Der Spiegel when it reported on the initial phase of the work of the European technocrats headed by a German who descended recently on the capital -

"For the first time, we wanted to show -- systematically and with proof -- what isn't working at the administration level and what is preventing Greece from making progress on structural reforms,"

Caroline Varley, OECD senior policy analyst and co-author of the report, told the German daily Die Welt. "So far, Greece's central governmental apparatus has neither the capacity nor the ability to undertake large reforms."

The report was commissioned by the Greek Ministry of Administrative Reform and E-Governance and provides a detailed examination of the state of central administration in the government. It focuses on efficiency and effectiveness as Athens struggles to introduce necessary reforms.

It found that communication among the country's 14 ministries was appallingly paltry. Furthermore, the huge number of departments within ministries -- many of them consisting solely of a department head and others with just one or two subordinates -- results in widespread inefficiency and lack of oversight.

"Administrative work is fragmented and compartmentalized within ministries," the report writes. "Ministries are not able to prioritize ... and are handicapped by coordination problems. In cases where coordination does happen, it is ad hoc, based on personal initiative and knowledge, and not supported by structures."

Were such coordination even to take place, the report indicates that administrators do not have access to the necessary data, nor does such data exist in many cases.

"The administration does not have the habit of keeping records or the ability to extract information from data (where available), nor generally of managing organizational knowledge," 

the report found.

The problems found in Greece's central administration, says the OECD, are the result of decades of clientelism and the sheer volume of the laws and regulations that govern competencies within the ministries. The report found 17,000 such laws, decrees and edicts.
How, then, should Greece solve the problem? The OECD proposes a "big bang approach" -- meaning a massive administrative restructuring. And, co-author Varley says, it needs to happen quickly.

"Greece has only a small window of time to change and reform itself," she told Die Welt. "And it is getting smaller."

A year ago, I was lamenting the lack of social democratic vision.

C'est la Vie - et La Mort

In the summer I predicted that a bid with which I was involved for a Structural Fund project would be judged as failing to meet the admin requirements – since this is the easiest way for evaluation panels to get rid of unwanted competition in the EC’s procurement system. A few weeks ago I had that prediction confirmed – but with a bonus. None of the 8 or so companies which bid for the project satisfied the onerous and bureaucratic administrative requirements! Little wonder that new member countries find it so difficult to spend the money which has been allocated to them!
Also in the summer I was told, at the start of the tendering process (!), who would emerge as the winner of a significant 4 year EC project in a large country with oil (and temperature extremes). And hey presto – that French company has duly emerged the victor. With at least two of its 3 key experts having no real experience in the required field but the Team Leader having spent time there and having all the tight contacts (let alone nationality) to grease the necessary parts of the machinery. I had decided at the start that the project (and capital) were not for me – and turned down several approaches. We were all wasting our time. The process was a foregone conclusion.

As I watch the images (on French television) from Vaclav Havel's funeral in Prague, it is fitting to give yet another quotation - this time from a 2002 address in which he was musing on his time in power -

And I’ve discovered an astonishing thing: although it might be expected that this wealth of experience would have given me more and more self-assurance, confidence, and polish, the exact opposite is true. In that time, I have become a good deal less sure of myself, a good deal more humble. You may not believe this, but every day I suffer more and more from stage fright; every day, I am more afraid that I won’t be up to the job, or that I’ll make a hash of it. It’s harder and harder for me to write my speeches, and when I do write them, I am more fearful than ever that I will hopelessly repeat myself, over and over again. More and more often, I am afraid that I will fall woefully short of expectations, that I will somehow reveal my own lack of qualifications for the job, that despite my good faith I will make ever greater mistakes, that I will cease to be trustworthy and therefore lose the right to do what I do.
And while other presidents, younger than me in terms of their time in office, delight in every opportunity to meet each other, or with other important people, to appear on television or deliver a speech, all of this simply makes me more fearful. At times, the very thing I should be welcoming as a great opportunity I deliberately try to avoid in the almost irrational fear that I will, in one way or another, squander the opportunity and perhaps even harm a good cause. In short, I seem more and more dubious, even to myself. And the more enemies I have, the more I side with them in my own mind, and so I become my own worst enemy

.

Repressed Art

A decade or so ago, I was on a 3 year project in Uzbekistan and saw a temporary exhibition of stunning paintings in one of Tashkent’s few public galleries. I was not then in collection mode but was sufficiently impressed to photograph some of them – sadly without noting the names of the painters. Yesterday I was googling “socialist realism” and stumbled across an amazing story of artistic gems hidden in the (western) Karakalpak region of Uzbekistan. One man, Igor Savitsky, saved a treasure trove of Russian and Uzbek art by “hiding” it in a museum in Nukus near the infamous Aral Sea -

A tireless collector of paintings that the Soviet government wanted destroyed, Savitsky traveled thousands of miles in the post-war period scheming, plotting, pleading, doing whatever it took to get his hands on the art he so passionately wanted to preserve.
A frustrated artist, Savitsky was working as an archaeologist when he became fascinated by the indigenous cultures of Western Uzbekistan. He began to collect jewelry, coins, handmade clothing, and other items in danger of being lost as the Soviets sought to devalue distinctively ethnic artifacts. Savitsky even succeeded in convincing government officials to provide funding for a museum in Nukus, far from Moscow’s prying eyes. But then Savitsky discovered his true calling. Pretending to buy state-approved art, he daringly rescued thousands of works by artists banned during the Stalin era for speaking out against authority, for being gay, or for simply refusing to paint in the style they were told. Risking torture, imprisonment, and death, this small group remained true to their artistic vision. Savitsky even managed to cajole the cash to pay for the art from the same authorities who had banned it.
Savitsky’s greatest discovery was an unknown school of artists who settled in Uzbekistan after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. There they encountered an Islamic culture as exotic to them as Tahiti was for Gauguin, and they developed a startlingly original style that fused European modernism with centuries-old Eastern traditions.

It all came to wider light apparently in 1998 when the New York Times published this article.
And all of this was celebrated in a special film earlier this year. Desert of Forbidden Art uses this story of Savitsky and the artists by juxtaposing images from the collection with rare Soviet archival film and stills. Ben Kingsley, Sally Field, and Ed Asner voice the diaries and letters of Savitsky and the artists and bring to life a dramatic journey of sacrifice for the sake of creative freedom.

But late last year Uzbek officials abruptly gave the Nukus Museum 48 hours to evacuate one of its two exhibition buildings, so staff members ended up stacking hundreds of fragile canvases and paper works on the floor of the other space. The building has since stood empty, its fate unknown, and more than 2,000 works are no longer on view at the museum. The museum’s director, Marinika M. Babanazarova, who has fiercely guarded the collection for 27 years since Savitsky’s death in 1984, was not permitted to travel to the United States for a trip that was to include a screening of the documentary at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
And over the last year Ms. Babanazarova’s staff members have undergone 15 government audits, in which they have repeatedly been asked to explain their travels overseas and the nature of their contacts with foreigners, she said.
The irony is that the art Savitsky saved — beginning with traditional Uzbek folk art and textiles and blossoming to comprise art by ethnic Russian avant-garde artists — was at the time under fire for not being Soviet enough. Now it seems, 20 years after Uzbekistan won its independence — it is being targeted by the new regime for not being Uzbek enough.

Issues; there are several lessons from this story which, hopefully, I will pursue in future posts. First and foremost - what an exceptional, courageous individual can achieve. This is an issue which has cropped up several times in this blog eg an American who did heroic things during the Smyrna massacres of 1923; a Greek and a Turk who had in the preceding decade or so tried to stem the tide of ethnic hatred; Havel; the good German of Nanjing in the early 1940s.
And, second, the way artists have had to adjust to repressive regimes. I realised only recently just how much the Bulgarian art I admire, for eaxmple, must have been affected by that. A few migrated; many opted for design work in the cinema and theatre; a few courageous ones like Boris Denev refused to compromise and were banned from painting.

update; https://lithub.com/visiting-a-secret-museum-in-the-middle-of-the-uzbek-desert/