School is school. Nothing is very exciting about it. As I'm sure I already said, I'm in the stupid class. Which was fine with me until today. Because today, in the practical speech class, one of my classmates attempted to explain the inner workings of voting, the Senate and the House, and the Presidential veto. This wouldn't have been so bad if he had actually been a somewhat competent speaker, but he's not. I had to feed him the word for "important" six times and the word for "power" three times before one of the other girls yelled at him to write them down. And this went on for twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile the professor was sitting there with a vaguely quisical look on her face, which only encouraged him. It was really awful and made me want to die.
After school, I met up with Lena and we were going to go to the Filonov exhibition at the Russian Museum, but it was closed. So instead, we toured the Church on Spilled Blood, which is the one that looks like St. Basil's in Moscow, but is all blues and greens and golds on the outside instead of lots of red. It was super beautiful inside and had just recently been restored.
I'm not sure how many of you have ever seen the inside of a Russian Orthodox church, but typically, the inside is covered with frescoes from floor to ceiling, including the columns, which are usually square. On the back wall near the entrance, is a painting of the last judgment. On the ceiling, the main dome is always Christ the Pantocrator, with his hand raised in benediction (you can tell how old the church is by whether Christ is giving the blessing with two fingers or three). If the church has smaller domes, those also have pictures, and are usually Christ as a young man, Christ as Emmanuel, John, and the Virgin Mary. If it's a working church, the alter (where the transubstantiation happens) is hidden from view by an iconostasis: a big folding wall with icons set in it. In a working church, the doors of the iconostasis are closed, but if it's a museum, they're usually open.
The Church on Spilled Blood is built on the site of where Tsar Aleksandr II was blown up by a terrorist group in 1881. Inside, they have a little mausoleum type thing that houses the part of the street where he died. Since it's a more modern church, all the frescoes are done in a very western style. The frescoes are also distinctive because they're actually mosaics, rather than paintings. The colors are absolutely amazing, and are actually overwhelming, just because there's so much going on everywhere you look. I can't even begin to describe it. I may go back with my film camera and pay the extra money to take some pictures. I'm not a big fan of the westernization of Russian icon painting--I really like the very stylized and not-true-to-life look. I'll look on the internet and see if I can find some examples. Anyway, it was still really cool.
After the church, we met up with her friend Philip, who looks like a slightly more gangly blond Darren Platt. There was a sort of familiar grubbiness about him that was very comforting. I know that's gross, but it reminded me of home, and Reed in a good way. We walked around and a guard let us into the Hermitage garden even though it was closing time when Lena and Philip pulled out the "but she's American" card. It was pretty cool. Part of the building is arranged in a square, making a mostly enclosed courtyard. In the middle is a circle of grass with a big fountain and some benches and you can look up and see all these bronze statues on the roof of the Hermitage. Then we crossed six lanes of rush hour traffic in the Russian way (not in the crosswalk, going whenever the fuck you feel like it) and sat in the park across the street.
Then I went home for dinner, read in English for awhile, and went to bed.
After school, I met up with Lena and we were going to go to the Filonov exhibition at the Russian Museum, but it was closed. So instead, we toured the Church on Spilled Blood, which is the one that looks like St. Basil's in Moscow, but is all blues and greens and golds on the outside instead of lots of red. It was super beautiful inside and had just recently been restored.
I'm not sure how many of you have ever seen the inside of a Russian Orthodox church, but typically, the inside is covered with frescoes from floor to ceiling, including the columns, which are usually square. On the back wall near the entrance, is a painting of the last judgment. On the ceiling, the main dome is always Christ the Pantocrator, with his hand raised in benediction (you can tell how old the church is by whether Christ is giving the blessing with two fingers or three). If the church has smaller domes, those also have pictures, and are usually Christ as a young man, Christ as Emmanuel, John, and the Virgin Mary. If it's a working church, the alter (where the transubstantiation happens) is hidden from view by an iconostasis: a big folding wall with icons set in it. In a working church, the doors of the iconostasis are closed, but if it's a museum, they're usually open.
The Church on Spilled Blood is built on the site of where Tsar Aleksandr II was blown up by a terrorist group in 1881. Inside, they have a little mausoleum type thing that houses the part of the street where he died. Since it's a more modern church, all the frescoes are done in a very western style. The frescoes are also distinctive because they're actually mosaics, rather than paintings. The colors are absolutely amazing, and are actually overwhelming, just because there's so much going on everywhere you look. I can't even begin to describe it. I may go back with my film camera and pay the extra money to take some pictures. I'm not a big fan of the westernization of Russian icon painting--I really like the very stylized and not-true-to-life look. I'll look on the internet and see if I can find some examples. Anyway, it was still really cool.
After the church, we met up with her friend Philip, who looks like a slightly more gangly blond Darren Platt. There was a sort of familiar grubbiness about him that was very comforting. I know that's gross, but it reminded me of home, and Reed in a good way. We walked around and a guard let us into the Hermitage garden even though it was closing time when Lena and Philip pulled out the "but she's American" card. It was pretty cool. Part of the building is arranged in a square, making a mostly enclosed courtyard. In the middle is a circle of grass with a big fountain and some benches and you can look up and see all these bronze statues on the roof of the Hermitage. Then we crossed six lanes of rush hour traffic in the Russian way (not in the crosswalk, going whenever the fuck you feel like it) and sat in the park across the street.
Then I went home for dinner, read in English for awhile, and went to bed.
posted by hillary at 7:53 AM
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