#vladimir kagan

[analogdialog]

[fashionlandscapeblog]

Vladimir Kagan

Pair of Swivel Corkscrew Armchairs, 1990s

[asteticas]

VLADIMIR KAGAN — OMNIBUS SOFA, (1953).

[puttain]

Joseph Dirand’s Montaigne. Very possibly the finest piece of architecture of the 21st century. The detailing is insane. A second Carlo Scarpa.

The console is a Joseph Dirand Edition, atop it sit Lucio Fontana Spheres, and above it on the wall is a Sol LeWitt painting. The Armchair is a Joseph Dirand Edition and the sofa is a Vladimir Kagan. The wall sconces are Philippe Anthonioz.

In the kitchen: Joseph Dirand bespoke Obumex kitchen with fire-blasted silver mirrored cabinets, Eric Schmitt pendant lights, Philippe Anthonioz wall sconces, B&O TV.

[groundonesix]

Borge Mogensen Style Tan Saddle Leather Armchair

A unique 1960s lounge armchair in sling Spanish style tan saddle leather and pine wood frame. Beautifully made frame and wood grain with slight curves that accommodates the clever insertions for the saddle leather giving it a sling effect.

The sides lock the saddle leather in a loop with pine wood dowels giving a nice and pleasing touch.

This mid-century saddle leather surface has a nice patina for its 70 years of use and it's overall in very good condition with the exception of some wear. The wood frame also has some wear with light scratches or varnish faint but again is something you would expect for it's age.

This chair is really comfortable and able to stand in many interiors.

This is an extremely rare chair as we haven't managed to find the same again. This is not from Karin Mobring or Børge Mogensen lounge armchair.

CREATOR: Unknown

PLACE OF ORIGIN: Denmark

DATE OF MANUFACTURE: c. 1960's

PERIOD: 1960-1969

MATERIALS & TECHNIQUES: Pine Wood, Leather

CONDITION: Very good original condition

WEAR: Wear consistent with age and use. Minor wear and scratches on leather & wood

HEIGHT: 73cm | 28.7in

WIDTH: 70cm | 27.5in

DEPTH: 63cm | 24.8in

[lovedeluxe4540]

[saoirseronanswife]

coveting them

[plastolux]

prb.collection A view into our new showroom featuring rare works by Vladimir Kagan, George Nakashima, and others.

[3vz]

Serpentine sofa by Vladimir Kagan

[eloquentedition]

Vladimir Kagan, Velvet Sofa

Via Claude Home

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 30, 2024

On Wednesday the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute for the Study of War published a long essay explaining that Russia’s only strategy for success in Ukraine is to win the disinformation war in which it is engaged. While the piece by Nataliya Bugayova and Frederick W. Kagan, with Katryna Stepanenko, focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine, the point it makes about Russia’s information operation against Western countries applies more widely.

The authors note that the countries allied behind Ukraine dwarf Russia, with relative gross domestic products of $63 trillion and $1.9 trillion, respectively, while those countries allied with Russia are not mobilizing to help Russian president Vladimir Putin. Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West, they write, if the West mobilizes its resources.

This means that the strategy that matters most for the Kremlin is not the military strategy, but rather the spread of disinformation that causes the West to back away and allow Russia to win. That disinformation operation echoes the Russian practice of getting a population to believe in a false reality so that voters will cast their ballots for the party of oligarchs. In this case, in addition to seeding the idea that Ukraine cannot win and that the Russian invasion was justified, the Kremlin is exploiting divisions already roiling U.S. politics. 

It is, for example, playing on the American opposition to sending our troops to fight “forever” wars, a dislike ingrained in the population since the Vietnam War. But the U.S. is not fighting in Ukraine. Ukrainians are asking only for money and matériel, and their war is not a proxy war—they are fighting for their own reasons—although their victory could well prevent U.S. engagement elsewhere in the future. The Kremlin is also playing on the idea that aid to Ukraine is too expensive as the U.S. faces large budget deficits, but the U.S. contribution to Ukraine’s war effort in 2023 was less than 0.5% of the defense budget. 

Russian propaganda is also changing key Western concepts of war, suggesting, for example, that Ukrainian surrender will bring peace when, in fact, the end of fighting will simply take away Ukrainians’ ability to protect themselves against Russian violence. The authors note that Russia is using Americans’ regard for peace, life, American interests, freedom of debate, and responsible foreign relations against the U.S.

The authors’ argument parallels that of political observers in the U.S. and elsewhere: Russian actors have amplified the power of a relatively small, aggressive country by leveraging disinformation. 

The European Union will hold parliamentary elections in June, and on Wednesday the Czech government sanctioned a news site called Voice of Europe, saying it was part of a pro-Russian propaganda operation. It also sanctioned the man running the site, Artyom Marchevsky, as well as Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch, saying Medvedchuk was running a “Russian influence operation” through Voice of Europe.

The far right has been rising in Europe, and Nicholas Vinocur, Pieter Haeck, and Eddy Wax of Politico noted that “Voice of Europe’s YouTube page throws up a parade of EU lawmakers, many of them belonging to far-right, Euroskeptic parties, who line up to bash the Green Deal, predict the Union’s imminent collapse, or attack Ukraine.”

Belgian security services were in on the investigation, and on Thursday, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo added that Russian operatives had paid European Union lawmakers to parrot Russian propaganda. Intelligence sources told Czech media that Voice of Europe paid politicians from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Poland to influence the upcoming E.U. elections. Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper said the money was paid in cash or cryptocurrency. 

Czech prime minister Petr Fiala wrote on social media: “We have uncovered a pro-Russian network that was developing an operation to spread Russian influence and undermine security across Europe.” "This shows how great the risk of foreign influence is," Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte told journalists. "It's a threat to our democracy, to our free elections, to our freedom of speech, to everything."

There are reasons to think the same disinformation process is underway in the United States. Not only do MAGA Republicans, including House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), parrot Russian talking points about Ukraine, but Russian disinformation has also been a key part of the House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden. 

Republicans spent months touting Alexander Smirnov’s allegation that Biden had accepted foreign bribes, with Representative James Comer (R-KY) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) calling his evidence “verifiable” and “valuable.” In February the Department of Justice indicted Smirnov for creating a false record, days before revealing that he was in close contact with “Russian intelligence agencies” and was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections.”  

On March 19, former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas testified about the investigation into Biden’s alleged corruption before the House Oversight Committee at the request of the Democrats. Parnas was part of the attempt to create dirt on Biden before the 2020 election, and he explained how the process worked.  

“The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents,” Parnas said, and was part of “a much larger plan for Russia to crush Ukraine by infiltrating the United States.” Politicians and right-wing media figures, including then-representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), The Hill reporter John Solomon, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity, and other FNC hosts, knew the narrative was false, Parnas said, even as they echoed it. He suggested that they were permitting “Russia to use our government for malicious purposes, and to reward selfish people with ill-gotten gains.” 

The attempt to create a false reality—whether by foreign operatives or homegrown ones—seems increasingly obvious in perceptions of the 2024 election. There has been much chatter, for example, about polls showing Trump ahead of Biden. But the 2022 polls were badly skewed rightward by partisan actors, and Democrat Marilyn Lands’s overwhelming victory over her Republican opponent in an Alabama House election this week suggests those errors have not yet been fully addressed.

Real measures of political enthusiasm appear to favor Biden and the Democrats. On Wednesday, Molly Cook Escobar, Albert Sun, and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times reported that since leaving office, Trump has spent more than $100 million on legal fees alone. He is badly in need of money, and his reordering of the funding priorities of the Republican National Committee to put himself first means that the party is badly in need of money, too.

Donors’ awareness that their cash will go to Trump before funding other Republican candidates might well slow fundraising. Certainly, small-donor contributions to Trump have dropped off significantly: Brian Schwartz of CNBC reported last week that “[i]n 2023, Trump’s reelection campaign raised 62.5% less money from small-dollar donors than it did in 2019, the year before the last presidential election.”  

Billionaires Liz and Dick Uihlein have recently said they will back Trump, and Alexandra Ulmer of Reuters reported on Tuesday that other billionaires had pooled the money to back Trump’s then–$454 million appeal bond before an appeals court reduced it. But Ulmer also noted that there might be a limit to such gifts, as they “could draw scrutiny from election regulators or federal prosecutors if the benefactors were to give Trump amounts exceeding campaign contribution limits. While the payment would not be a direct donation to Trump's campaign, federal laws broadly define political contributions as ‘anything of value’ provided to a campaign.”

Meanwhile, the fundraising of Biden and the Democrats is breaking records. Last night, in New York City, former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama joined Biden onstage with television personality Stephen Colbert, along with event host Mindy Kaling and musical guests Queen Latifah, Lizzo, and Ben Platt. The 5,000-person event raised an eye-popping amount—more than $25 million—and the campaign noted that, unlike donations to Trump, every dollar raised would go to the campaign.

In his remarks, Biden said that the grassroots nature of the Democrats’ support showed in the number of people who have contributed so far to his campaign: 1.5 million in all, including 550,000 “brand-new contributors in the last couple of weeks.” Ninety-seven percent of the donations have been less than $200. 

Tonight, Adrienne Watson, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, the president’s primary forum for national security and foreign policy, pointed to Russia’s devastating recent attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid and called again for Speaker Johnson to bring up the bipartisan national security supplemental bill providing aid to Ukraine that the Senate passed in February. She warned: “Ukraine’s need is urgent, and we cannot afford any further delays.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[fashionlandscapeblog]

Vladimir Kagan

Zoe Sofa, 2000s

[crashandswirl]

MUSE INFO

Source: The 2005 film BloodRayne. When interacting with her, there might be violence, injury, blood, gore, and death. Except for violence, all of these things will be tagged as cw: [subject] when applicable.

Name: Katarin

Also known as: Rin

Eyes: Dark blue

Hair: Dark brown

Face claim: Michelle Rodríguez

Pronouns: She/her

Age: Twenty-six

Height: 5'4"/163 cm

Sexual/Romantic orientation: Bisexual/biromantic (out but doesn't know the labels)

Occupation: Vampire slayer

Personality: Katarin is tenacious, steadfast, and occasionally arrogant. Her stubbornness and rigid opinions/beliefs are impressively difficult to break, often to the point of being infuriating. She'll make sure to plainly lay out what she thinks as well. Her trust isn't easily earned.

She's not afraid to do whatever it takes, no matter how extreme. She's worked hard to harden all her soft parts, which she perceives as weaknesses that could potentially build up to a greater failure. As a result, she can come across as ruthless, cutting down those in her way with minimal hesitation.

In the end, she's convinced that the choices she makes are the right ones, and that regardless of any death or hurting that occurs in the process, she will help achieve a better tomorrow in the end.

Katarin primarily grows up within the walls of the Brimstone Society's fortress. Brimstone is made up of vampire hunters. Not only do they travel out and kill bloodsuckers, but they also work to oppose a terrible vampire king called Kagan.

From a very young age, Katarin is trained to do battle by her father. She's taught to never trust someone after they had turned, regardless of who they used to be. Her father isn't a very parental man and that, combined with Katarin's headstrong nature, often causes them to butt heads. She frequently ends up turning to Brimstone's leader, a man named Vladimir, for emotional support growing up.

When she's sixteen, her father is bitten. It is expected in Brimstone to kill a comrade quickly after this happens as a common courtesy, but Katarin does not have it in her to end him. As a result, he's exiled from the society. He retains much more of his humanity than most vampires, but a greater strain is placed on their already rocky relationship regardless.

By the time she's twenty-three, she has become one of Vladimir's closest confidants and a member he often has accompany him out.

Verses:

This is what it means to serve Brimstone. (BloodRayne) – Takes place in a fictitious version of 18th-century Romania, which can be swapped with or inserted into many other fantasy settings. Vampires plague the land and a vampire king named Kagan rules.

I have never met a beast I cannot slay. (Resident Evil: Village) – Since the village is in Romania and the Dimitrescus are kinda vampires, I figure it could be fun if Katarin's travels led her there. It would also be fun to put her against the monsters in the village.

What form of sorcery is this? (Crossovers) – A generic verse for crossovers.

Thread tag: Muse: Katarin

Visage tag: I will kneel before no one.

HC/Info tag: I was trained in battle by a great warrior.

Relationship tags:

I'll never trust your kind. – w/Rayne, a fellow Brimstone member, enemy, and love interest.

I used to turn to you for guidance. – w/Vladimir, Brimstone's leader and a bit of a father figure.

You are a thorn in my side. – w/Sebastian, a fellow Brimstone member and friend.

Miscellaneous:

While trained to handle a multitude of weapons, Katarin is most skilled with swords, followed closely by a bow and arrow.

She has not seen her father since his exile. However, the two of them do occasionally exchange letters. Being unable to kill him is what Katarin considers her greatest moment of weakness.

She has a flea-bitten grey horse named Bela.

[vintagepinkmirror]

vladimir kagan (1927-2016)

[drownmeinbeauty]

MODERN TIMES

How did mid-century modernism, particularly its iconic furniture designs, come to signal Very Good Taste? Amateur design enthusiasts are terrifically pleased owning an Eames recliner, an Eileen Grey side table, a Panton chair, or a Nelson daybed, believing themselves more sophisticated than those of us living with pieces from Ikea, the Salvation Army, and the sidewalk.

So it was satisfying to see Le Corbusier's Chandigarh chairs photographed in Kourtney Kardashian's office, an intersection of lowbrow and highbrow styles. And now, in the Brooklyn mansion where the movie Anora unfolds, it's satisfying to see modern design liberated from any sense of cultural sophistication.

The house, where our heroine Anora lives with her new Russian husband, is built in a bombastic modernism -- huge, perfectly symmetrical, clad in a flat limestone, with big black mirrored windows. It looks less like a family estate than a crematorium from outer space. On the inside too it employs tropes of modern design without any real finesse: an open floor plan, floating stairs, marble floors, mirrored closets, and raised gilded ceilings, all rendered in a consistent palette of creams and cognacs. It's entirely unpretentious; it's delivered without any suggestions of rationalism, minimalism or utopianism.

In a 28-minute fight scene, the movie's comedic apex, Anora takes down three henchmen who break into the house, and some iconic modern furniture and artwork becomes collateral damage. She starts the battle hurling a brass menorah into a framed Tamara de Lempicka-type painting and then, while wrangling one man on Vladimir Kagan couch, sends a Castiglioni Arco lamp crashing through a glass table. He exacts revenge by tying her legs with the cord of a flat TeleQuest phone, which has her hopping about with the receiver dangling behind her like a tail.

The furnishings in this movie house might or might not be real, but their provenance no longer matters. With convincing copies of iconic mid-century furniture flooding the market, licensed works have lost much of their power. Having this or that piece in your home no longer telegraphs anything in particular. Mid-Century Modern has become one more choice on the design menu, like Shabby Chic and French Country, entirely unmoored from its historical and intellectual origins.

Photograph courtesy Bergen Basin Realty.

[delilahprofitt]

Before I share my "highly anticipated" thoughts on Bloodrayne thoughts I will say that the thought of sharing that fucking poem with Chris Sanchez is hysterical to me. She'd give such a dirty look lmao

From what I've looked into, the Bloodrayne games take place in the 1930s not the 18th century, you kill nazis, Rayne is more of a seductress type character, and only her and Kagan exist? Disappointed that there's no game version of Katarin

I like how the blood and gore is sorta cheesy. My favorite part is where a couple of guys are beating the shit out of a dude on the ground that's already been cut in half. His intestines are hanging out like I think you can stop. It's not an exploitation film like Machete but it feels like it should have been

The blue contacts they gave Mrod are so strange. I didn't even notice she was wearing them until over halfway through the movie. So subtle. Slightly unsettling too ❤️

Astounding how almost every performance is so bad. Papa Katarin was decent. Mrod gave one of the best and it's still one of the weakest she's ever given. Kagan was the worst imo that man did not give a shit to the point it was funny. The Hamburger(?) guy positively chewed the scenery. I read that the guy who played Vladimir was drunk the whole time. I kinda liked him though. I also liked Kristanna despite how wooden she was at points. Makes me think of her role in Terminator 3 (she was a y2cunty robot)

The Brimstone necklaces look like something you'd buy at Spirit Halloween. Katarin's silly little cape outfit also seems particularly like a halloween costume. I could send a whole ask about her wardrobe alone I love it. Her and Rayne stick out like sore thumbs but my favorite thing is the bright iliac coat and blatantly store bought capris

I don't know if I'm not understanding correctly or if Rayne's backstory made no sense. If a dhampir is born from a human and a vampire having a kid and Rayne was alive to watch and remember Kagan raping her mother, how did she end up a dhampir??

(The haircut they gave Kagan's lapdog was so stupid btw. I don't like the look in his eyes either. Why does he look at everything so intently!!)

They could have done something legitimately interesting with Katarin and her fahthah if they delved into how him being turned complicated her relationship with him and vampires, and how he had to leave Brimstone for being a danger or whatever but then Rayne is let in with open arms. I could also see Vladimir becoming a second father figure to her

Although it was obvious Katarin wasn't happy her betrayal heel turn moment felt abrupt. I wish we saw Rayne try to reason with Katarin before killing her and sucking the blood from her neck homoerotically. She doesn't try during their slow duel either! She says they'll continue later and leaves abruptly and never comes back to it. I wanted to see Rayne try to earn Katarin's trust. I don't get why Rayne lied about what Katarin did after she died. Or Katarin's "they fear what they don't understand" line since she never pretended to be in support of Rayne's presence outside of that

We were robbed of an enemies to lover storyline

the swordfight is SO SLOW hahaha. go for the fucking bare stomach or neck maybe!! i can't imagine uwe invested in extensive fight training but they look like kids with plastic weapons duking it out in the back yard

apparently rayne doesn't fight any nazis until the third movie despite that being her whole thing in the source material. i know this is one of those uwe boll video game adaptations that were never supposed to turn a profit to take advantage of german tax rebates or something so i wonder if he thought the nazi-fighting vampire thing wouldn't go over well. they didn't film in germany and i don't think it had government backing or anything but maybe he needed to maintain good will to keep the scheme working. i cannot believe he managed to get two sequels made. this movie kind of tanked kristanna loken's career which looked like it was maybe going to take off post-terminator so i guess i'm glad he kept employing her. apparently actors enjoy working with him bc he's chill and shoots everything really quickly and everyone understands the end product isn't going to be that great. although mrod does seem to be taking her role very seriously

i'm genuinely not sure why her performance is so terrible. the accent doesn't help and many of her lines are very stupid but i feel like she's managed to stay compelling while delivering pretty dumb lines in other movies. i wonder if either she concluded independently or somebody told her that because she's supposed to be a leader she needed to speak with! gravitas! which could be the source of that weird flat overenunciating thing

at first i thought the contacts were foreshadowing some kind of supernatural reveal but i guess she was just supposed to seem european lol. the betrayal was really abrupt but it's not like anything in this movie happens with a whole lot of buildup. i saw zero indication rayne was into that dude until he yanked her shirt off and started fucking her up against the bars

i did enjoy the underwater wrestling and the part where she's sucking katarin's neck. mm. despite the time period i'm adding katarin to my very short list of mrod characters who seem like maybe they could admit to themselves they wanted to bang chicks only because like i said before i feel like the vampire thing would overshadow it. after paul walker died when she went off the rails for a while i wish she'd said fuck it and done like...probably some kind of lesbian indie film would still be too much to ask for but maybe like a really trashy male gaze-y pulp film where she was like a bisexual serial killer. if i were cara i would've floated that between excursions to controversial exotic animal petting zoos and recreational iv spas. but instead she swung the other way and made that movie where she's like a third grade teacher lol