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
Showing posts with label Bulgarian art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bulgarian art. Show all posts

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Evoking Zeitgeist

One of the most difficult challenges for any writer is to try to evoke the spirit of a nation - in a balanced but insightful way. Chauvinism comes all too easily - be it of the American, English, French or even Scots variety.

But summoning up the soul of a country with appropriate text is a much greater challenge – and may well be best done by an outsider who knows the country well…Think Madame de Stael and Germany; de Tocqueville and the USA  

This train of thought is sparked off by my reading – almost in one go – a delightful book called “The Story of Scottish Art” – explored in this nice video. The author is himself a painter and uses a lot of examples (carvings as well as paintings) to illustrate the text - as well as his own water-colours. The book is based on a BBC series.

One of the things which endeared the book to me was the way he skilfully wove together aspects of the painters’ lives with developments in the nation. 

Painting is a good “handle” on a country – but it’s rarely used. Peter Robb’s Midnight in Sicily gives a “food and Mafia” take on that country; and Simon Winder’s “Germania” and Neil McGregor’s “Germany; memories of a nation” cultural takes on Germany – but skate over painting.

In 2007, I found myself leading a project in Sofia, Bulgaria and quickly became so taken with the paintings – particularly from the interwar period - I came across in its fascinating small galleries that I started to collect them. Naturally I wanted to know something about the artists – and found myself traipsing into antiquarian bookshops in search of information. The result was initially a small book of 50 pages – and, by 2015 or so, a larger one of 250 pages Bulgarian Realists – getting to know Bulgaria through its Art

This particular book started its life quite literally as a scribbled list on the back of an envelope - of painters whom a gallery friend thought I should know about in 2008 or thereabouts…..

It eventually became a list of 250 or so Bulgarian artists of the “realist” style which I developed to help me (and visitors) learn more about the richness of the work (and lives) of artists who are now, for the most part, long dead and often forgotten. 

But it also got me wondering about who is best placed to try to evoke the spirit of a nation….Social historians? Anthropologists? Artists? 

Some of you may know the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb whose book The Black Swan became a best-seller a few years ago. In it he makes a profound point about the process by which artistic “genius” is recognised (or not – the latter being more often the case). More than four centuries ago, the English essayist Francis Bacon had a very simple intuition….about a man who, upon being shown the pictures of those worshippers who paid their vows then subsequently escaped shipwreck, wondered where were the pictures of those who happened to drown after their vowsThe lack of effectiveness of their prayers did not seem to be taken into account by the supporters of the handy rewards of religious practice. “And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like”, he wrote in his Novum Organum, written in 1620.

This is a potent insight: the drowned worshippers, being dead, do not advertise their experiences. They are invisible and will be missed by the casual observer who will be led to believe in miracles.

Not just in miracles, as Taleb goes onto argue…..it is also the process which decides whether an artist is remembered. For every artist of genius, there have been many more with the same talent but whose profile, somehow, was submerged….

Art, of course, is the subject of high fashion – reputations ebb and flow…..we are vaguely aware of this…but it is money that speaks in the art “market” and it is the din of the cash register to which the ears of most art critics and dealers are attuned…… 

As I read Lachlan Goudie’s little vignettes of painters in “The Story of Scottish Art”, I realised that painters have always occupied an important position in social networks – often poor themselves, they rub shoulders with a wider range of people than most of us. In the early days, of course, they would focus on religious figures and then society people. But from the mid 19th Century, artists such as David Wilkie were able to celebrate ordinary folk in their paintings.

Nowadays, of course, we rarely see faces any more in paintings – just blobs and abstractions. Perhaps our artists are telling us something?

But my question is, I think, a good one – who is best placed to gives us insights into a country’s soul? Poets? Writers? Painters? Anthropologists? Historians? Social historians? Travel writers? Sociologists? Or who? 

Further Reading

Watching the English by anthropologist Kate Fox is one of my favourites – for that country.

Theodor Zeldin is probably the best on the French.

Perry Anderson’s article A New Germany? offers a great intellectual and political history of contemporary Germany. But otherwise, it’s not easy to find a serious book about modern Germany (although many good -histories) Gordon Craig’s magnificent “The Germans” came out in 1982 and John Ardagh’s “Germany and the Germans” in 1987 – since then there has be no real update to their insights into the German soul - Gitty Sereny’s “The German Trauma – experiences and reflections 1938-2001 and Fritz Stern ‘s “Five Germanies I have known” (2007) notwithstanding

On Italy, people are spoiled for choice – not just Barzini’s classic “The Italians” (1964) but Foot, Gilmour, Ginsborg, Hooper, Jones and Parks all giving a sense of the modern Italians….You pays your money….

The background to social history is laid out in this article

7 social historians lay their claims here

A book on The anthropology of Ireland demonstrates its possibilities

And the others?

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Balkan perceptions

I’ve been quiet this past week simply because I’ve been wrapped up in what I hoped would be the final stages of completing the new book on Bulgaria – now running at 222 pages (compared with the 56 of Introducing the Bulgarian Realists)
Trouble is that I keep finding new names for my annotated list – 15 or so in the past week thanks to several finds and a visit to Pazardzhik and to a new graphics exhibition at Sofia’s City Gallery

These, however, are of minority interest and are therefore relegated to the last section of this post - which tries to confront the fact that potential readers may be disinclined to read a book which has “Bulgaria” in the title…
I’ m starting to wonder whether I would be better advised to use Balkan imagery in the title…. 

After all, tales of travels and exploits in these parts have apparently been part of the staple diet for British readers for several centuries…..as we now know thanks to the publications in the past 15 years of literary scholars  such as Maria Todorova, Andrew Hammond and Vesna Goldsworthy who have carefully itemised and summarised the writings of foreign visitors to the area - and identified various phases of the “West’s encounter with the near East”…Hammond’s The Debated Lands – British and American Representation of the Balkans, for example, suggests that - 
balkanist discourse has passed through three distinct paradigms. These are denigration before 1914; romanticisation in the inter-war years; and, after an ambivalent mixture of sympathy and disappointment during the Cold War, a return to denigration in the 1990s.

He then goes on to argue that –
pre-1914 denigration reveals close similarities to colonial discourse, how inter-war romanticism reflects the modernist quest for exoticism and psychological escape and how the reappearance of denigration coincides with the advent of postmodern scepticism.

Todorova has a fascinating chapter exploring how the region came to be called the Balkans (it was previously known as Haemus……  
The earliest mention of the name Balkan known to me comes from a fifteenth century memorandum of the Italian humanist writer and diplomat Philippus Callimachus (1437–1496). Persecuted by Pope Paul II, Callimaco settled in Poland and became a close adviser to the Polish king. He was the author of a history of the deeds of Wladyslav III Warnenczyk, in which he left a short description of the Haemus, which he saw when he visited the Constantinople on diplomatic missions. In his 1490 memorandum to Pope Innocent VIII, Callimaco wrote that the local people used the name Balkan for the mountain: “quem incolae Bolchanum vocant.”

Misha Glenny is one of the foremost commentators on the Balkans with a massive book The Balkans 1804-1912 - Nationalism, War and the Great Powers to his credit. He does not mince words when it comes with dealing with the negative reputation the area has    
To help set the record straight here are a few lesser-known facts about the Balkan peninsula that never make it into the newspapers. For those who would defend the Balkans but don’t know how, they will be useful for dropping into conversations about how hopeless the situation there is.
 1. The only country allied to the Axis that refused to allow any of its Jewish citizens to be deported to Nazi death camps was Bulgaria.
2. The single most violent period in Balkan history in terms of casualties sustained and the territorial extent of the warfare was a direct consequence of Hitler’s decision to occupy Greece, a decision prompted by Mussolini’s failed attempt to invade Greece in 1940. The Nazi resolve in March 1941 to dismember Yugoslavia was accompanied by the installation of a brutal Fascist administration in Croatia that was entirely unrepresentative of the political aspirations of the Croat people. Until Pavelic was installed in Croatia, there had been no history of mass violence between Serbs and Croats.
3. The Stalinist dictatorships that took root in Romania and Bulgaria were imposed by an agreement reached by Stalin and Churchill. In exchange for handing over these territories to Soviet influence, Churchill, and later Truman, were given a free hand by Stalin to smash a Communist insurgency in Greece that was on the verge of taking power with minimal foreign support.
4. Since 1989, the governments and people of Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania and Greece have all resisted attempts by nationalists to destabilise the local or regional polity.
5. The main victims of the sanctions imposed by the UN on Serbia have been the surrounding states, a number of which are attempting to steer their economies through the transition from Communism to capitalism. Bulgaria, for example, has been losing an estimated $2 billion a year. The impact on the economies of Western Europe and America has been negligible. The UN refuses to give Bulgaria any compensation.

Sadly the visibility of gypsies and criminals amongst those who have taken advantage since 2007 of Europe’s open borders has added yet another negative element to European perceptions of the area – so I have rejected the idea of a Balkan element to the book’s title a draft version of which can be accessed at The Bulgarian Realists – updated edition

But places with traces of older ways of behaviour - let alone the feel of antiquity - are increasingly impossible to find in this homogenised world. When found, of course, they need nurture - not hordes of people tramping the grounds and polluting the atmosphere. So, despite the many attractions of the country, this will not be a book which tries to encourage foreigners to visit special sites – it is rather a book which celebrates people long dead who have, however, left a bit of themselves in the attitudes and tastes of those who now inhabit its country.    

Finds I have to report are -
Contemporary Bulgarian Art – Paintings, Graphics and Sculpture ed Svetlin Rusev (Sofia 1982) was a large book I had seen a few years back but was discouraged from buying by the obviously political nature of the selection process. Seeing it again in the little second-hand place on Vasil Levsky corner at Sofia University made me realise that it was a real historical piece which warranted a place in my library – not least for its glorious reproductions. Its introduction is a stunning paean to the communist party - by the Chairman of the Bulgarian Union of Artists (7 pages which say absolutely nothing).
Rusev still bestrides the art scene these days but must regret the opening page’s hymn to September 9th 1944 as well as the obvious omissions eg no mention of the country’s most famous  aquarellist Konstantin Shtarkelov (banned and disgraced for his royalism) or the caricaturist Raiko Aleksiev, murdered in prison. The illustrations are still magnificent 33 years later and the whole book is an incredible bit of history (c 400 pages – not numbered)

A new auction house started in Sofia this year and has apparently held 3 auctions - each offering a superb 70 page catalogue. This is the November one I missed just by a day

Then a visit to Pazardzhik – a small town close to Plovdiv, a gallery I had just become aware of – which is supposed to house more than 2000 paintings donated by one of Pazardzhik’s most famous sons, the painter Stoian Vasilev. I could find no sign of them however! The first of the gallery’s 2 rooms – with still lives – was bitterly disappointing but things were made up with the portrait room which had a wonderful display of the works of one of Bulgaria’s best women artists - Elisabeth Konsulova-Vaseva as well as delightful examples of many others, including two I had not heard of – local painters Georgi  Mashev (1887-1946) and graphic artist Georgi Gerasimov (1905-1977). Although the curator spoke only Bulgarian, she was friendly and pressed several little booklets of these two artists and also about Stoian Vasilev into my hands and wouldn’t take any money for them….

My final find was Catalogue of Graphic Art (Sofia City Art Gallery 2015) a glorious record of the gallery’s graphic collection with a small reproduction of each item - 770 pages bilingual. That’s almost 4000 reproductions!!

Monday, April 20, 2015

Busts I admire

OK I admit it – I admire busts – particularly the sort I see in Museums....
I have grown increasingly to admire Bulgarian sculpture – for example Angel Spassov (1884-1974) and, on the contemporary scene, one of Bulgaria’s foremost sculptors Spartak (Paris) Dermendjiev - who has done a diverse series of clay sculptures whose There are no Happy Bulgarians and mother I admire most…..

So not altogether surprising that, as someone who has become (in the past few years) an art collector, I submitted this weekend to sitting (actually standing) for “Paris” as he “did my head”…..His uncle was a partisan during the war who sported the alias of Spartak – to which Paris owes his name. Some years back he gave me a clay carving of Spartacus when I bought a small bronze he did….

The weekend’s process can be seen here – finishing touches will be done these days; the bust then sliced and emptied (ugh!!); some darkener added; some drying; and then placed in the kiln for almost 12 hours…..with some 15% reduction in mass....

Although we had some good laughs as we chatted (and he sloshed on the clay and carved away), he chose to go for the severe look…..It was a fascinating experience during which I learned more about the man ……watch this space……