вторник, 9 ноября 2010 г.

Solovyov house.

There are lots of art nouveau buildings in Moscow. This style was mostly used for construction private houses and commercial apartment building. The domestic architecture of the early XXth century in Moscow was created by famous architects F. Shekhtel, L. Kekushev and W. Walcott.
But my favourite mansion was built by S.U. Solovyov. The building, completed in 1902, was designed by architect Sergey Solovyov as his private home. It was a part of an upper-class new development area on the northern side of Povarskaya Street. The architect, who worked mostly for public charities and colleges, was usually constrained by his clients, and his own home was his only venture into pure decorative art.
This house is full of nice details and symbols.
The decoration uses sculpture and ceramic tiles.  All the sculptures were designed by famous Russian artist Nikolay Andreev. He used animals and birds in decoration of the building. For example, owls were particularly used in northern Europe Art Nouveau (called National Romanticism) because of the large place of owls in northern mythologies and legends.
 
Owls are also connected with night, the time of mystic and miracles. Bats are night animals too.

понедельник, 1 ноября 2010 г.

Dostoevsky's architectural guide to Moscow.

Yesterday I mentioned Dostoevsky. And today while reading a book on architecture I found an interesting quote by him. It seems to be a very short introduction to Russian architecture of the XIX century.
I wasn't going to start my blog only with Dostoevsky. But what can I do? He follows me.
Then meet an architectural guide to Moscow by Fyodr Mikhailovitch. 
"In these buildings you can read as in a book all the currents of all the great and trivial ideas that, appropriately or accidentally, have landed here from Europe and that gradually overcame and captured us.
Here we see the pallid architecture of churches of the last century;
 

here is a pitiful imitation in Roman style from the beginning of our century;

here we see a building that seems to have come from the Renaissance era; and there is an example of the ancient Byzantine style, supposedly discovered by the arcitect Ton during the reign of Nicholas I.

суббота, 30 октября 2010 г.

November's coming.

Standing in the Tikhvin cemetery in St. Petersburg ("if you're immortal, you'll have been buried here") Michael Palin was talking to Dostoevsky: 'How did you cope with it? All the book signings, press launches? What did you write? "Sincerely yours. Sorry about the sad bits”, "Sorry it's a bit gloomy. Yours, Fyodor"?'
Of course Dostoevsky is associated with discouragement and misery. And I like November but consider it to be the dullest month.
That's why this November photo taken last year is quite pessimistic.