RECORD

P.S. With Victor Brauner (This Is How I Would Like To Write)

With immense delicacy and great scrupulousness he [Gellu Naum] would each time talk about Victor Brauner – the friend from his youth years he had met on the occasion of an exhibition opened at Mozart Hall in Bucharest. It was 1935. The twenty-year old youth, Gellu Naum,

Dream, Poetry, Lacework And The Great Congenial

I can almost hear Gellu Naum saying: I fell on the pavement on account of the old tree roots which have heaved it. There was a smell of putrid leaves. And of putrid earth. I could not lift myself up. From somewhere, came a cur of a dog. 'You want grass,' I asked.

Chance Tripper

Travelers may be (actually, have been) classified along various criteria. For instance, there are those who, like Emil Racovita or Dumitru Hincu, to cite only a scientist and a philologist, before going on a trip, document themselves extensively, and their joy of digging

Romantic Travel Narratives

excerptFor various reasons, travel became a fashionable experience at the beginning of the 19th century all over the Europe. Even Spain, originally a destination country for foreign travelers, mainly from Britain, is invaded by the mania de viajar; the Spanish playwright

The Grand Canyons

excerptAnybody who spends some time in the United States and tries to go beyond the immediate impressions concerning tourism, notices ever clearer as time goes by, how powerful are the contrasts in the relief of this country. The Rocky Mountains, with their slopes made of

From Bucovina To New Zealand, Or Destined To Three Countries

When I set out to New Zealand, I had a tape recorder and a tape with the bells from Putna monastery. And during the long flight, from Bucharest to Wellington – approximately 30 hours on the plane, plus two stopovers – I would listen to the bells from Putna and to the

Journey Around The Earth

You do not need a passport to travel to Egypt or to any other English colony. A visit card will do. In Alexandria, I made friends with the tropical flora: date trees that bear almost 100 kg of fruit each year, bananas or the cursed fruits because they grow without any effort

Taking The Road

Whether the purpose is study, pilgrimage, or entertainment, traveling assumes a great thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge. Ioan Slavici believed that rambling builds one's character. No mean feat, I'd say: were it for this alone, it would still justify an

A Fragile Collection - The Memory Of Glass Plates

The Romanian Peasant's Museum Motto: A photo is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.  At the beginning of the 20th century, Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş1 was wandering around the villages of Oltenia and Bucovina, looking for folk art objects.

The Collector Onic Zambaccian

If his consuming passion for art gained Krikor Zambaccian a familiar fame amongst the collectors in Bucharest, particularly by dint of his acquisitions in the field or foreign art, few know that his younger brother, Onic (1891-1975), yet another aficionado of beauty, was

Once Upon A Time, At Mişu Weinberg's

It was in May 1972, when I paid my first visit to the Weinbergs. I still have a warm dedication from the host as testimony. I was coming from the Museums Review to record a few thoughts about the Weinberg collection, the foundations of which had been laid in the tumultuous

The Slătineanu Comparative Art Collection - An Extinct Art Museum

1947. The year of the most despotic deeds of the communist regime come to power in the shadow of the Soviet tanks. The ordeal of the Romanian intellectual elites (and not only) begins. The Slătineanu family find themselves treated like common criminals. The whole family