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ROERICH

                                           January 11, 2007
                                           May     25, 2008
   Nicholas Roerich

     Painter
     Philosopher
     Peace activist


   Whatever else I may say about S.T. Joshi,
   his annotated editions of Lovecraft are          JUST_JOSHI
   okay by me.

   And in "At the Mountain of Madness" he
   added a footnote suggesting that the
   paintings of Nicholas Roerich influenced
   Lovecraft's vision of Antarctica.

   Joshi actually gave the address of the
   Roerich museum on the upper-west side
   of Manhatten.  This was enough for me
   to drag my brother up that way on one
   of my visits back to New York.                     TOADKEEPER

      By luck -- since I don't think I'd
      seen any Roerich at that point --
      the style of art was relatively            [ref]
      similar to my brother's stuff:
      representational illustrations
      resembling some sort of cosmic
      comic books.

      The Toadkeeper was impressed,
      and willing to admit that he was
      impressed, which made it something
      of a score on my part.

      The atmosphere of the place was
      interesting: an old building with
      multiple floors dedicated to
      Roerich paintings.  Some people in
      some sort of monk garb were lounging
      at a dark wood table in a study
      upstairs (it could be, of course,
      that they were hired).

      They had some material describing
      Roerich's efforts at being a peace
      activist -- he invented a three balls       An article in Liberty
      in a circle symbol for this work,           sneers at him as a man
      whose symbolism escapes me at the           with a genius for
      moment.                                     convincing other people
                                                  he was a genius.
      A coffee table book gave something
      of his history -- apparently he
      got his start doing theatrical                 The log book in the
      designs for Stravinsky productions             lobby showed a recent
      and so on in Russia.                           message:

                                                     "God bless this
                                                      sacred space!"

                                                      This, from a visitor
                                                      from Santa Barbara, CA.



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