Hashtag Museums Hashtag Culture
Today was an important day because instead of laying in bed re-watching an entire season of The O.C. I emerged into the outside world and did a solo cultural outing. This can be ascribed to the fact that A) last weekend I almost didn't move my legs at all, and B) the famed Russian Museum is on my metro line and thus didn't require too much mental or physical effort to get to.
I brought my camera along, obviously, and took some mirror selfies on the shiny door across from my apartment before heading into the metro.
This one says: "I'm artsy, cool and a free spirit.":
This one says: "I hunt humans for sport.":
The Russian Museum is at the Gostiniy Dvor metro stop, just about a block back off of Nevsky on Sadovaya Ulitsa.
Every important building in Russia has a statue of an important famous Russian in front of it making a vague, grandiose gesture. That's how you know you should go in.
Not so fancy when you basically function as a pigeon bench, huh, Sasha?
I talked some trash on modern art last weekend in my blog post about Erarta - yeah, I went to museums two Sundays in a row, so you could say I am a cultural behemoth - so the hyper-classical Russian Museum was a welcome change for me. My taste in art falls somewhere between the Medici family and your rich friend's dad who has like a thousand paintings of old ships in his home office. This museum has a lot of pieces that fall on that spectrum, and although it features only Russian art, the collections that I saw today were surprisingly diverse.
You start at this museum by descending into an underground cave that is both very dark and very hot to check your coat and get your tickets. There were several children's school field trips revving up down there, so you could say that it was a pretty salient iteration of my personal hell. But don't worry, things got better from there.
The first gallery is the Gallery of Ancient Art, read: icons. I am obsessed with Russian icons and this is obviously the best collection that I've seen.
St. George Slaying the Dragon is one of my favorite motifs in pre-modern religious art.
I say that for reals, but also I dare you to try to come up with a more pretentious sentence than that.
Look how beautiful and autumnal the galleries are! It's like a saintly Harvest Festival where instead of butternut squash there is gilding everywhere. Upgrade.
This was my favorite detail that I saw all day:
If anyone has learned Old Church Slavonic and can tell me what that says, I will give you 100 rubles and then sit down and have a talk with you about how you are wasting your life.
After the icon gallery, I tagged along with one of the school groups for a while because their teacher was talking in the ultra-clear, dumbed down kind of Russian that I wish my teachers would talk to me in. It didn't even really bother me to be in such unpleasantly close proximity to multiple loud schoolchildren.
Also, that girl in the plaid skirt was rocking a dope braid that went all the way around her head.
One room seemed to be just portraits of sassy, homely ladies.
I was constantly being distracted by the blindingly glorious FF in the Summer Gardens out back, but that deserves a full post that will be coming to you live later this week.
Soon, you come to some of the more famous Russian pieces. There's this one by Ilya Repin that I remember discussing in a class, but I honestly cannot remember if it was my high school AP Euro, or the Gateway English class I took freshman spring where we over-analyzed "sublime" paintings to the point where I no longer know what that word means. Either way, it is famous and I know Rilez will appreciate the Les Mis connection.
Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1873:
There is another far better Repin called Sadko that I had never heard of before. It is, simply put, an extravagant collage of scary looking mermaids. It is breathtaking.
Just merz for dayz, and a goldfish:
The real money shots in this Museum, though, in my opinion, are the Aivazovskys. The Ninth Wave is one of my all-time favorite paintings, and it is truly very impressive in person.
It's hard to get the full effect of the scale from a photo - it's huge - but my camera did a pretty good job of capturing the color. I have a bonafide obsession with sunsets and, yeah -
This gallery was essentially populated by me and a bunch of middle-aged-to-old men grumbling and going "now this is art". My people.
A pleasant surprise for me was seeing a few pastorals by Arkhip Kuindzhi, who I've heard of but never had a lot of interest in until I saw these two paintings and was seized with joy (hyperbole but yes, I liked them) - The Crimea and Moonlit Night on the Dnieper (I couldn't get a glare-free pic, but apparently no one on Google Images has been able to either...go see it in person).
There are also some other paintings in this museum, such as Me Walking to School When it Rains:
Gimli Seeing The Names of the Dwarves on a Gravestone Outside of Moria and Being Sad:
Horrifying Puppet Interaction:
(Seriously what is going on here)
I didn't nearly see the entirety of the Russian Museum's collection, but I will be back to do so for sure.
You guys are cool, don't ever change. HAGS (Have A Good Sunday).
