Professor Andy Kaufman

For some, he was the chronicler of the wars that Russia fought against the Tsars in the mid-nineteenth century, for others, a pioneer who extended the borders of realism, but all agree that Vasili Vereschaguin portrayed, as nobody in his time, the horror and death on the battlefield.

The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, one of the most important Russian art galleries in the country, has collected 180 paintings and 120 drawings by the painter in the largest exhibition of his work in almost 130 years, inaugurated this week.

“Vereschaguin shouts through his work that war is evil, transmits as nobody else this message in” The apotheosis of war “, his most famous painting, anyone who only sees that canvas once or its reproduction, cannot forget it never, “said Zelfira Tregúlova, director of the Muscovite museum, to Efe.

The pyramid of skulls overflown by crows, the arid Asian steppe, and the trees destroyed by the fire, and in the background, a destroyed city: despite its harshness, is for many the greatest pacifist manifesto in the history of universal painting.

“Dedicated to all the great conquerors: past, present, and future,” wrote Vereschaguin in the framework of “The Apotheosis”, a basic piece in the cycle he painted after spending two years in the Russian Turkestan, in full conquest of the Muslim kingdoms that extended over current Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

Although he was trained from a very young age as an officer of the Navy and served a few years in the imperial army, it was in the brutal campaign of Turkestan that he saw with his own eyes death, victory and defeat in its tragic dimension.

Since then he was always pushed to return to war to express his nonsense, reaching the peak of his talent by portraying the bloody conflict that faced the Russian and Ottoman empires in the Balkans between 1877 and 1878.

He painted his other masterpiece, “Los Vencidos, Requiem”, after witnessing hundreds of bodies of Russian soldiers scattered in the field, naked and disfigured by the victors.

As he said later, he chose to use “much softer tones” than he remembered seeing, but despite everything, he was always the object of harsh criticism by his contemporaries, who accused him of a sincerity that many saw as obscene.

“Despite his strong personality, he was also, like many geniuses, very vulnerable.When the Turkestan cycle canvases were thrashed by critics after his first exhibition in Russia, in 1874, he destroyed much of that exhibition in one night” said Tregoulova.

Before Vereschaguin, the war in Russian painting was always the expression of victory, the faces of heroes, the epic of battles, but from his work, which breaks with established and goes far beyond realism, it shows it as desolation, destruction, and tears.

“His work is unlike any other painter of his time because he was very different from them all, he had the classic qualities of a romantic, but his independence, his willpower and his desire to do only what he wanted they made him an advance, “explains the director of the Tretyakov.

Generally, it is framed within realism, but over the years its style changes evolve into the saga of the creator and adopt symbolist, even post-impressionist traits.

“Actually, it is all this at the same time, sometimes it is carried away by the beauty of what it sees before and transmits it as it sees it, and at other times it rises to the philosophical level, as in the ‘Apotheosis of war’ or in ‘Requiem’ “, says Tregúlova.

Often criticized by the imperial government of the tsars, he had as much success in life as so few of his colleagues.

No less than 200,000 people visited one of their exhibitions in St. Petersburg in 1880, an extraordinary figure for the time.

Chronicler of battles, literary and historian, traveler and ethnographer, “like no other Russian painter, Vereschaguin saw himself entitled to portray war and peace in the countries in which he spent most of his life”, concludes Svetlana Kapírina, responsible of the exhibition.

The Ibero-American Cinema Platinum Award is set to reveal the names of the nominating films in its fifth edition, whose awards ceremony will be held on April 29 in the Riviera Maya, in southern Mexico.

On Tuesday, 20 candidates will be announced in Mexico City, selected by the Executive Committee of the Platinum Award with the support of advisors, among them, the members of the jury of the last edition.

During the announcement, will also be revealed the presenter of the ceremony, which will take place at the Teatro Grande Tlachco, in the archaeological-ecological park of Xcaret.

The complex in the Riviera Maya was the chosen venue to receive the ceremony, which in its previous editions went through Panama City (2014), Marbella (2015), Punta del Este (2016) and Madrid (2017).

Among the pre-selected films are “Uma Mulher Fantástica”, by Chilean Sebastián Lelio, “Zama”, by Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, and “Last Days in Havana” by Cuban Fernando Perez.

Lelio’s feature film, which is also nominated for an Oscar for best non-English language film, and Martel’s feature as favorites, have been pre-screened in eight categories including best film, directing and screenplay.

Within the category of best actress, may appear as selected Chilean Daniela Vega (“A Woman Fantastic”), Mexican Ana Valeria Becerril (“Las Hijas de Abril”) and the Spanish Emma Suárez (“Las Hijas de Abril”) and Penelope Cruz (“Amando Pablo”), among others.

Javier Bardem (“Amando Pablo”), Argentina’s Leonardo Sbaraglia (“El Otro Hermano”) and the Mexicans Daniel Giménez Cacho (“Zama”) are among the favorites in the category of best actor. Luis Gerardo Méndez (“Road to Mars”).

In addition, this year the Platinum Prize introduces as a novelty the incorporation of two new categories: better male and female interpretation in miniseries or television series.

The number of productions participating in this edition reaches 848, a record in the history of the awards and that reflects its growth, since in 2014, in the first edition, 701 works were entered.

The next step on the way to the Platinum Prize trophy will be on March 14, when the five final nominees in each category will be announced.

The Platinum Prize for Ibero-American Cinema is promoted by EGEDA (Entity for the Management of Audiovisual Producers’ Rights) and FIPCA (Ibero-American Federation of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Producers).

The French government confirmed on Friday that a painting found on a bus in the Paris metropolitan area is from Edgar Degas and was stolen in 2009 at an exhibition in Marseille.

The Ministries of Culture and Finance reported that “the first elements” of the expertise carried out by technicians of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, to whom the work belongs, called “Les Choristes” (The Coristas), confirm this information.

The picture was found last 16 by customs agents during a blitz in the region of Ferrières, Brie, on the A4 road, but none of the bus passengers claimed ownership of the painting.

“Les Choristes” is a monotype, halfway between the painting and the engraving, which Degas performed shortly before being presented at the Impressionist exhibition of 1877.

The work was part of the collection of Gustave Caillebotte and in 1894 became part of the French national collections.

According to the creator himself, it represented a scene from the opera “Don Giovanni” at the end of the first act, when the compromise between Massetto and Zerlina was celebrated.

With an estimated value of 800 thousand euros (more than R $ 3.2 million), the work was stolen from the Cantini Museum in Marseilles, where it had been loaned, at the end of December 2009.

French Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen celebrated the “happy reunion of a precious work whose disappearance was a great loss to the French Impressionist patrimony” and highlighted the work of the customs agents.

For Jennifer Lawrence, there is currently some confusion about what feminism is, and in her view, the movement has nothing to do with “puritanism.”

“With luck, I think what this character (from the movie ‘Operation Red Sparrow’) is going to be iconic, in particular, because there is now a confusion about what feminism is, and feminism is not Puritanism,” said the actress in a video side of director Francis Lawrence and provided to the Efe Agency with exclusivity by “Fox”.

The protagonist of “Operation Red Sparrow,” which debuted yesterday on the big screen, argued that feminism means “simply equality”, but does not represent that men and women are equal in their characteristics.

“I think it’s important to show an iconic female character, who is sensual, the owner of his body and who imposes himself using intelligence,” he argued.

The Oscar winner for Best Actress in “The Good Side of Life” (2012) is one of Hollywood’s most influential stars nowadays and has also stood out for the fight for equality of women and men in the film industry, especially to eliminate the difference gender pay.

Thanks to “Operation Red Sparrow,” he reunites with Francis Lawrence, the director of three films in the “Hunger Games” saga, which took his name to the hall of fame.

The production, which also features Joel Edgerton and Charlotte Rampling, tells the story of a young woman recruited against her will by a Russian spy program and trained to become a secret agent.

For the director, Dominika (the character Jennifer) is the heart and soul of the film. According to him, she is capable of unexpected actions on modern heroes, and between actress and character, there are similarities.

In times of increasingly open debates on women’s empowerment, promoted among others by the #MeToo movement, singer Annita has argued that she sings what gives her pleasure.

“I just sing what I feel and I like to do.I feel romantic, express, if I feel sexy, too.My goal with music is to make them respect us as we want to be.Moving or not, kissing or kissing six, “the artist said in an interview with Agencia Efe.

For her, who in the song “Downtown,” with J. Balvin, insinuates pleasure in female oral sex, the way women artists are responding to machismo in lyrics is by demonstrating that they too can and cannot be victimized.

Her partner in the hit, which has almost 170 million views on Youtube, argued that the female audience is responsible for the change in the lyrics.

“We can not leave it to men to empower women, it’s up to them to demonstrate that they are made,” said the Colombian.

The debate over hyper-machismo lyrics in music is not new. In the United States, this type of content has prompted Congress to legislate on the need to add labels with warnings about the content of songs to CDs for parents and parents to watch out for.

Reggaeton artists have reduced the extremely sexual and aggressive themes of music to become more appealing to all audiences, and the strategy worked. Today, it is one of the most successful genres and fans around the world.

But not everyone thinks so. The Venezuelan singer Miguel Ignacio Mendoza, better known as Nacho, argued that it is not necessarily only the men who listen to the most explicit songs.

“If you’re going to watch videos on Instagram and Snapchat, the ones that most sing and cover and choreograph these more explicit lyrics are women, particularly the younger ones. the mothers of these girls should have conversations with them and reinforce lessons about values, “he said.

The opinion is the same as that of Bad Bunny, one of the main exponents of the genre. Recently, in an interview with a radio show in Miami, in the United States, he repeated what singers like Nicky Jam and Daddy Yankee have said in the past about the subject.

“I am not here to educate the children. This is the responsibility of the parents,” he said.