moscow

as i mentioned, i was in moscow for a couple days. i didn't really like it. traffic is amazing and amazingly unpredictable, there are huge ten-lane thoroughfares all over the city (oh stalin!) making it unpleasant to walk around, and most of the landmark buildings have that communist feel -- trying to be great but ending up somehow hollow, like they were either trying too hard or their artists weren't as talented as they would/should have been. the only thing i went a bit crazy over was taking pictures of st. basil's cathedral. i definitely thought that building was special!

plaster casts

i'm usually not that interested in sculpture at museums, mostly because i don't know how to appreciate it and partly because i feel like it's not that special to see *the originals* since exact copies can easily be made. (e.g. 'bird poop david', who is much more accessible than the real guy) i'm in moscow, and at the state museum of fine arts, they have plaster casts of lots of famous statues. (see photo quickly taken while the guard's back was turned) i was like, hi david! oh hi venus! hi belevedere torso and caryatids and panting horse head from the acropolis! (i felt very cultured at recognizing them until i read a website on this topic and realized there were tons of others that i had no idea were famous...) i'm used to seeing rodin copies everywhere, but this struck me as really weird. at first i was like, this is kind of sad. they didn't have any great statues so they just copied a bunch. but then i thought, hey, the russians get to see all these great sculptures from museums around the world, all in one place. so as long as they admit that they're all copies, what's wrong with that? i still think it's a little iffy, but am leaning towards thinking it's a good thing.