Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and other Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, South Asia, occasional forays into southern Italy, Spain or eastern Europe, minorities, the nation-state and nationalism — and whatever other quirks or obsessions lurk inside my head.
“We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” A.S.
I recently discovered the painting of 20th-century Russian realist Zinaida Serebryakova (Зинаида Серебрякова). She was born into a part-French family of artists and lower gentry in eastern Ukraine, and lived a totally charmed life there and and in St. Petersburg, till the Revolution upended it all as it did for hundreds of millions others. Read about it.
I’ve totally fallen in love with her work, and that will probably convince many of what a hopeless, sentimental philistine I am, plus a shameless idealizer of pre-Revolutionary Russia, plus a sexist. No problem. I’ll be posting one painting weekly on the Jadde home page till I’m through with my favorites.
Aside for his weakness for this one tall tale about Salonica and Olympus, Nikos Mihailidis (Νίκος Μιχαηλίδης) is engaged in :
Cultural Anthropology /Observing Humans/Social theory is not dogma/Interested in the meaning of things/Politics/Arts/Technology/Producing-Materializing Ideas: Cosmopolitan villager Hellenic PRINCETON.edu/news/alumnus-p…
and is a stupendous resource for anything Hellenic through the ages/Byzantine/Ottoman/Modern-Day state relations and affairs…check out his Twitter account: @NikosMichailid4
He’s also a stupendous kemence player (Pontic lyra) and has lots of YouTube content, especially great numbers like this:
• Still detained by #Russia Police • Unclear where • Prison asked to activate his sentence • Biden team calls for “Immediate release”; No word from Trump admin • EU, EU council condemn • Latvia, Lithuania,Estonia call for sanctions https://t.co/lAzP0yhilP
I recently discovered the painting of 20th-century Russian realist Zinaida Serebryakova (Зинаида Серебрякова). She was born into a part-French family of artists and lower gentry in eastern Ukraine, and lived a totally charmed life there and and in St. Petersburg, till the Revolution upended it all as it did for hundreds of millions others. Read about it.
I’ve totally fallen in love with her work, and that will probably convince many of what a hopeless sentimental philistine I am, plus a shameless idealizer of pre-Revolutionary Russia, plus a sexist. No problem. I’ll be posting one painting weekly on the Jadde home page till I’m through with my favorites.
First is her beautiful portrait of what must have been her very handsome husband Boris Serebryakov, who died of typhus in 1919, leaving her, at the worst of all political economic times, destitute and with four children.
Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and rest of ME, Iran, South Asia
Me, I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but when I say that in English some five people in the world today understand what I'm talking about, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.
Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 