Public interest in the lives of celebrities has always been high, and in the era of the open world, the internet, and social media it has surged even higher. No wonder the popularity of memoirs, interviews, and documentaries about famous people has grown so much — in short, any nonfiction. The personality of an individual has become more interesting than the context in which that person lived.

#chopwest #Hollywood #art #movie #Jacksondirection #poeticgenre #essay

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The opening of Europe’s main contemporary art exhibition this year was accompanied by noisy protest actions. But the Biennale will run through the end of November, and there is certainly plenty to see here besides the closed doors of the notoriously scandalous Russian pavilion.

#VeniceBiennale #Venice #WarinUkraine #europe #conflicts #protests #sentimentaltravel #art

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Užupis is one of the strangest places in Europe. This city district has its own Constitution, president, ministry of foreign affairs, currency, anthem, and more than five hundred ambassadors around the world. All of this is not entirely serious—it's a game, an art performance, a collective joke that has become part of the city’s identity. But it’s not just a joke, either.

#theartists #Vilnius #lifeinEurope #art #JonasMekas #Lithuania #reportage #republic #freedom #sentimentaltravel #Užupis #philosophy #artists

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«I have three criminal cases, and the court appointed me as the head of an extremist organization, even though I’m an anarchist and against hierarchies,» Maria Alyokhina says with a smile, describing how she is currently being persecuted by Russian authorities. In 2023, the Icelandic parliament granted her citizenship, allowing her to travel freely around the world with her show. Riot Days (idea and creative producer — Alexander Cheparukhin) has been performed about 500 times on all continents and has won numerous awards, including all the main prizes of the Edinburgh Festival. Before the new European tour, which starts today in Paris, we spoke with one of the most famous members of Pussy Riot about Russian protest art after their punk prayer.

#PussyRiot #VladimirPutin #WarinUkraine #interview #Iceland #MariaAlyokhina #music #Punk #protest #repressions #Russia #art #Emigration

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On December 5th in California, Frank Gehry passed away—a fearless experimenter and visionary who changed perceptions of his profession and invented new tools for it. He broke the rules, followed his own desires and imagination, and transformed the world around him. And now, with sorrow, we speak of him in the past tense.

#architecture #Germany #Twoleggedbelt #deconstructivism #Jews #historicalmemory #freedom #art #USA #ridingweight #painter #Emigration

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In Paris, they said farewell to Erik Bulatov (1933-2025) — a brilliant artist whose works became the most recognizable symbol of Moscow conceptualism of the 1960s-1970s. He himself remained one of the leading figures of contemporary Russian art until his last days, even gaining the status of a classic and living abroad for more than 30 of his 92 years.

#VictorKabakov #war #state #childhood #dictatorship #bookillustrations #conceptualism #Moscow #thaw #Paris #aftertheUSSR #RobertFalk #freedom #art #artists #Emigration #EricBulatov

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A week after the daring robbery of the Louvre, the Paris police arrested two suspects: as the newspaper Le Figaro found out, one was preparing to board a flight to Algeria, the other planned to flee to Mali. The Paris prosecutor stated that premature disclosure of information about the arrests could harm the interests of the investigation. After all, many thefts of exhibits from the Paris museum remained unsolved for a long time.

#art #History #crime #thelouvremuseum #MonaLisa #museumdetective #picasso #France

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«Most» columnist Dmitry Khmelnitsky has been trying for 50 years to reconstruct the life story of the outstanding artist Viktor Lobachev. All that is known about him so far is his name and the period of his work: the late 1930s.

#1930s #graphics #Zeitgeist #art #History #personalexperience #investigation #repressions #theUSSR #artists

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