A trip to an Art Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria

I have been walking around Sofia, Bulgaria for three days and have one more long walking tour I plan to make tomorrow. The city is beautiful, though my first impression was less positive. The train station is under reconstruction and a lot of businesses are closed. Had trouble finding my way around at first and, of course, walked several miles tugging my suitcase behind me over rough and broken sidewalks.

Then I found food and beer.

That helped things along a lot and I had a nice introduction to my host here in Sofia, Teodora, about nine at night. We talked for a couple of hours and she even explained the Cyrillic alphabet to me. At least I have Greek as a bridge to Cyrillic. I'm still working on identifying the letters and pronouncing them.

She even took me to her place of work the next morning and gave me coffee and a place to do some writing and editing for the morning. Then we went out to lunch and she treated me as her guest. I believe I am in her debt and have gotten flowers for her for her birthday coming up on Sunday, right after I leave.

Of course, none of that is what this blog post is about. It is about my walking tour today. The short story is "amazing." I walked to the National Gallery and began my day by touring the art exhibits. I admit that I skipped the Asian and African exhibits and stuck to the European and Bulgarian. It is a very large museum and some very nice art pieces are on display.

I noticed, however, that the artwork, like much of the fifteenth to nineteenth art of the world, is very dark. There's a lot of war themes, poverty, peasant life. I begin to understand what that phrase means. Even the colorful pieces of the late 20th century and the pseudo-Picassoan portraiture seems in many ways to be bleak, whether it is a man being mauled by a tiger, or an odd collection of bits of wood arranged in a circle.

But then I walked into a room of late-19th century Bulgarian artists and immediately saw a scene of men in a tavern dancing. It actually brought a smile to my face immediately. The painting is by a famous Bulgarian artist named Ivan Mrkvicka in 1894 titled, "Rachenitsa Dance."

This image courtesy of Wikipedia and is deemed to be in the public domain in both Bulgaria and the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Mrkvi%C4%8Dka#/media/File:Ivan_Mrkvi%C4%8Dka_-_Rachenitsa.jpg

By Ivan Mrkvička (1856-1938) (http://www.nationalartgallerybg.org/upl/img/72.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I couldn't just walk by this image. It drew me and I actually went to get my journal from the cloak room so I could sit and write my impressions as I looked at it. There is a lot of action, both direction and misdirection in the positions of the dancers and the audience. It is the national dance of Bulgaria and you can find examples on YouTube, though I only found women dancing. It's named after the handkerchief that you can see the dancer on the right holding over his head. It's lively and it's fun.

Then I looked closer. There are two men dancing and fifteen others in the taverna. One of the fifteen is headed out to use the toilet. Among the fifteen faces that are visible, there is not a single smile. That got me thinking once again of all the brutality and hardship that people suffered. Was it so much that even when they danced or listened and watched, they could not enjoy it?

I probably sat in front of this piece for fifteen minutes. You'll see that most of the men sitting around have a drink in a clear bottle. Some are smoking, though the room seems quite clear. The musicians are on the left, one with a recorder and one with a whistle as far as I can tell. There seems to be an intense argument going on directly behind the dancers. Two men on the right joined in a casual conversation. The guy back by the door looks like he's about to fall asleep.

But eventually, my eyes came to rest on the guy between the musicians and the fellow going to sleep. Just to the left of the dancer. Of all the men in the room, he is neither looking at another person in the room, nor at the dancers. He holds a cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other and he looks directly into the eyes of the artist. I can almost hear him saying, "Why did you leave me here?"

None of this particularly means anything, but it has left me thinking all day long.