A Look At Romania And Romanians

What are these pieces of art worth?

In normal times it’s easy to mistake cost for value. You might also say it’s the difference between cash and culture, the price of something and what’s ultimately priceless.

As Romanians, it seems, we have been prone to confuse the two since even before the revolution that overthrew the country’s Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, and executed him and his wife, Elena, nearly 20 years ago.

That’s one explanation, at least, for why, when the courts here recently ruled that some art formerly in the possession of the Ceausescu family should be returned to Nicolae’s only surviving child, Valentin, Romanians hardly blinked.

The art is mostly Romanian paintings, but also some Goya prints. That ruling was not quite an equivalent to German courts handing art formerly at Berchtesgaden over to Hitler’s relatives. But it was close.

A soft-spoken 60-year-old physicist who never helped run his father’s regime, Valentin Ceausescu has said the works he wanted to get back belonged to his own former wife, Iordana, an art historian and the daughter of a onetime Communist leader. Valentin’s father, who didn’t approve of the marriage, expelled her years ago to Canada.



Other works being returned, however, belonged to Valentin’s brother, Nicu, a much-loathed figure when he was the dictator’s heir apparent. He died of cirrhosis in 1996, at 45. (Ceausescu’s third child, a daughter, Zoe, who also had some works of art, died from lung cancer in 2006, at 57.)

Ultimately, of course, everything that belonged to the family of Ceausescu, a onetime apprentice shoemaker from a peasant village, derived from the privileges of power.

The case went through many convolutions over seven years. Valentin argued in court that what had been confiscated from him after his father was overthrown was not state property — never mind if, as the state argued, none of the Ceausescus ever bothered to document properly what was in their possession, as the Ceausescu regime required every Romanian to do.

An eyebrow or two might have been raised when the court then agreed with Valentin, at least among Romanians who could recall how the dictator enriched his homes, his family members and others close to him by seizing art and property from innumerable countrymen.

But the ho-hum response here speaks volumes about this struggling country’s cash-versus-culture climate. With most barely scraping by, Romanians admire private enterprise more than they value some vague notion of shared artistic heritage.

“Since the revolution the country is only about private enterprise,” said Cristian Stanescu, a journalist who covered the trial for the local newspaper, The Guardian. He echoed what others here say: “Romanians sympathize with Valentin because he worked the system to his advantage. Our idea of culture now is making money. We still have too many basic needs to worry about elevated ones like art and the state.”

Alin Ciupala, a thoughtful young historian of Romanian history at Bucharest University, put his countrymen’s indifference to their artistic heritage another way: “In Romania under Ceausescu there didn’t exist, as there did in the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia, any underground cultural movement. There was no samizdat culture. And so there never was a tradition here of cultural liberalism, of cultural resistance. Intellectuals were opportunistic. The instinct to survive has always been highly developed in this country.

“If Valentin had obtained from the courts big castles, or land, it might have provoked a reaction and reduced public sympathy for him. But paintings and prints, works of art? They don’t mean that much for most Romanians.”

The art the court agreed should be handed over to Mr. Ceausescu is still in storage in the National Art Museum, where it has been since being seized years ago. One estimate put the price tag for the lot of pictures, some 40, at somewhat less than $1 million, but that was only a wild guess.

Goya aside, the best-known artists among the work being returned, Victor Brauner and Theodor Pallady, aren’t exactly big names outside the country. Like Valentin Ceausescu and his wife, but for very different reasons, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu also amassed works by Romanian artists, in their case pre-modern and Socialist Realist, although for a while, while the Communist leader was courting Richard M. Nixon and Charles de Gaulle during the 1960s, the state officially tolerated modern art for the sake of Western consumption. Briefly Romanian artists had a window onto what was happening in America and Western Europe.

But then, culture having only been a political tool, the window eventually shut. After Ceausescu visited Pyongyang in North Korea, he decided to rebuild his own capital city. The result was to wipe out much of historic Bucharest to make way for grotesque and gigantic building projects that still spoil the city center, and sycophants kept a virtual army of state-approved artists busy painting portraits of Ceausescu and his wife, thousands of them. These ended up in public buildings and in the various homes of the dictator, who loved to receive as birthday gifts pictures of himself showing how much the Romanian people loved him. Ceausescu constructed a whole building to store these portraits.

As it happened, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest had some of them on view the other day. Mihai Oroveanu, the museum’s director, hung them in one gallery — diagonally, to make clear that the show was not actually a tribute.

Big, brightly colored scenes of Communist kitsch, they showed the dictator and his wife smiling before reverent mobs of workers, receiving flowers from ruddy-cheeked female soldiers, and wearing white 1970s leisure suits that, like the peaked winter hat Ceausescu made de rigeur for all loyal apparatchiks, became the height of Romanian fashion once upon a time.

Radu Filipescu, a former dissident imprisoned and beaten under Ceausescu for distributing anti-government leaflets, recalled Romanian life back then. “The most interesting books I read were in prison,” he said one recent evening, with a laugh. “There was not a lot else to do.” But he was also half-serious.

“Today Romanians are totally consumed by competition and money,” he explained. “It’s easier for them to keep warm memories of the past, when life certainly was not better, but in some ways it was not as difficult. They don’t want to concern themselves with Ceausescu at the moment.”

All of Europe wrestles with the last century, at different speeds. A generation of Spaniards is just getting around to unearthing the graves of Republicans killed under the rule of Francisco Franco, more than three decades after his death; France and Poland still haven’t quite confronted their conflicted roles during World War II. Germany struggles with addressing the legacy of its division, 20 years after the Wall fall.

Here, Ceausescu and his wife aside, few Romanians were prosecuted for what happened during the Ceausescu era. Nobody served more than a few years in jail.

“It is incredible to give back paintings to the son of a dictator,” said Stejarel Olaru. He oversees the government-sponsored Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania. “But people don’t care.”

And so it’s left to Valentin Ceausescu, of all people, to deal with the past. He agreed to meet one afternoon in a nearly empty restaurant outside Bucharest. Nervous and defensive, he stressed that the art his parents had in their homes was borrowed from state-owned museums. The works he fought to recover, the only ones he really cares about, he said, were collected by him and his former wife, a private affair.

“I was defending my name,” he said. “These works were part of my past, my life. Some were gifts from a painter who was a friend.”

If the museum abides by the court order and turns the pictures over, which he said he still doubts, Mr. Ceausescu plans to give most of the works to Iordana, keep two or three for himself, but sell none.

The issue was never profit, said the son of the dead dictator. It was justice.

“I’m not pressed for money,” he wanted to make clear. “The whole point was that there should be a fair trial.”

BUCHAREST, Romania - A mass grave containing the bodies of three members of Romanian's anti-communist resistance group, White Guard, turned up on Monday (April 27th) near the village of Nepos in northern Romania, media reported.

The grave contained bones and a boot that will undergo forensic analysis, said experts from the Romanian Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes.

Authorities tentatively identified the dead as Ioan Leonida Bodiu, Ioan Burdet and Toader Dumitru. The communist-era secret police Securitate executed and buried them in 1949.

When will we finally be rid of this communist shadow, when will we be allowed to forget those days and live a normal free life that isn't overcast by the memories of these 'animals' that ruled our country for so long. When...........not in my lifetime !!

When God came to handing out gifts, Alina Puscau got more than her fair share. Already famous as one of the world’s most beautiful women, the Victoria’s Secret model and GQ cover girl is now set for pop stardom with a debut single destined to be one of the defining songs of this summer.

Two months before its release, Alina’s When You Leave (Numa Numa) had already notched up more than four million views on YouTube, made the Billboard dance chart Top 10 and been lauded by P Diddy and Kanye West. Effervescent Eurodisco at its most infectious, the song is proof that some models can do much more than look pretty.

Remixed by Swedish wunderkind Basshunter and based on an English language adaptation of Romanian band O-Zone’s hit Dragostea Din Tei, When You Leave (Numa Numa) exploded online at the start of this year thanks to a steamy video shot by A-list Hollywood director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, X Men and happens also to be Alina’s boyfriend) and choreographed by Fatima Robinson, who has previously worked with Aaliyah, Rihanna and Mary J. Blige.

“The video captures the energy of the song,” says Alina. “It’s fun, fresh and colourful, a little bit naughty, but always playful. So many videos these days look the same. This one really stands out.

“Every scene was filmed in Brett’s house in L.A., which has a disco downstairs. He built the hospital set in one garage and, in another, tried to recreate the red light district of Amsterdam. “We shot from 7am to 4am the next day, which was totally exhausting, but also good fun. I’ve been on lots of long modeling shoots, but nothing like that. I don’t think I’ve ever done a tougher day’s work.”

Born in Bucharest, Alina spent the first 15 years of her life dreaming of fame. The youngest of three children, she sang Madonna and Mariah Carey songs in to a hairbrush in front of the mirror, though never imagined she would one day meet both her idols. Music didn’t run in the family – her father is an electrician, her mother a carpet weaver – and money was so scarce, she couldn’t afford to go to concerts.

At 16, Alina’s life changed overnight when she won Elite Model Look, a global modelling competition. Signed to the world’s most prestigious model agency, she immediately began flying to jobs all over the world. She appeared in Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Cosmopolitan and Vogue and was shot by leading fashion photographers, including Bruce Weber, Patrick Demarchelier and Marc Baptiste.

For the first two years, she returned to Romania as often as possible to continue her studies, but at 19, moved permanently to New York. Within months, she was a star of Victoria’s Secret – she appeared in their taboo-breaking TV commercials and infamous catalogues – and bagged a role in the film Shallow Hal, alongside Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow.

“I loved making the movie, but at the time, my English was terrible,” recalls Alina. “I decided that if I wanted to act again, I’d have to study first. I signed up at NYU to study speech and at Lee Strasberg to improve my acting.”

Then a Romanian producer called Rad heard her sing and insisted she make a record with him. At first, she turned him down. After six months, Alina relented and returned to Romania, where she recorded a tongue-in-cheek track called Everybody Wants Me. She thought she was singing for fun, but when the song was passed to Brett Ratner, then directing Rush Hour 3, he was so impressed, he put it on the soundtrack.

“It was an amazing break for me,” says Alina, “Every artist wants their song in a big movie. It’s in a great scene too, where Chris Tucker is directing traffic, listening to his iPod."

Last year, Alina was invited to Mariah Carey’s house and was shocked to discover her idol knew the song.

“She was singing it back at me,” laughs Alina. “It was one of those moments that will forever be fixed in my mind. Mariah is a goddess to me. We met and got on like a house on fire. When he said ‘You’ve got a great voice, girl’, I was so flattered, I almost fainted.”

When You Leave (Numa Numa) is the real launch of Alina’s pop career and she can’t wait to promote it.

“I’ve only performed it live a few times so far,” she admits. “The first time was for a radio station in Seattle. The second was on New Year’s Eve at a party in Miami. The DJ put on my song and everyone went crazy for it. When he found out I was there, I was asked on stage to sing it live. I went on right after Jamie Foxx had performed, which was scary enough, then I looked down and Joaquim Phoenix was right in front of me. The next day, I was in a hotel and P Diddy came to tell me how much he loved the song. I hadn’t even known he was there.”

It was Alina’s mum who discovered Kanye West was also a fan, after the rapper made the model his Girl Of The Week on his website. Alina’s celebrity fans and startling start to her pop career mean she is more in demand than ever – she was recently announced as the face of Playboy.com.

After performing alongside The Prodigy at dance festival Ultrafest in March, and with scores of shows being set up throughout the summer, for the time being Alina wants most to concentrate on music.

“I only started singing for fun, but now that’s it’s going so well, I couldn’t be more excited,” says Alina. “As long as I’m enjoying it, I’m going to keep at it and see how the future unfolds.”

Aero GP is a cutting-edge motor sports series involving high-performance aerobatics aeroplanes racing around a tight circuit at near ground level, dropping bombs on targets and competing in real air to air combat heats. The competing pilots are highly trained military and civilian pilots from around the globe. Aero GP is unique in that it is the only international, televised event where aeroplanes race simultaneously.

Competitive elements

Three primary disciplines in series decide the annual World Champion Flying Ace:

Air Racing: All racing at the same time, between six and eight aircraft reach speeds of 500 km/h at just 10 metres above the racecourse.

Air Combat: A real air-to-air “dogfight”. Highly trained pilots take to the skies in an attempt to out-manoeuvre, hunt down and shoot each other out of the sky, in the style of military air combat.

Barnstorming: A third element which can consist of any of the following - depending on the venue: aerobatics, stunt flying or precision target dropping - pilots drop bombs from their aircraft at low altitude, aiming at various targets.

History

The first Aero GP was held in 2005 although the concept dates to 2000. The inaugural event, held in Slovenia, was televised in over 100 countries. Since then Aero GP's have been held in Malta, Romania (twice), The United Kingdom, and Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

The Pilots

Aero GP pilots are among the best in the world. Highly trained in a range of military and aerobatic aircraft, these pilots represent the most elite level an aviator can achieve. They come from a variety of countries and backgrounds. Fighter pilots, aerobatics champions, and civil aviation pilots are all known to compete.

Aero GP pilots have taken years of dedicated work and training to get to the Elite level of the sport. Their bodies are put through tremendous amounts of G- Force when performing in their aircraft. The sort of forces which a normal human cannot begin to comprehend - blood drains from the brain and goes to the legs. Then the brain begins to shut down – first to go is colour vision, then the peripheral vision and soon afterwards you lose consciousness.

Being an Aero GP pilot is having the skills and endurance to go way beyond the normal human experience and the ability push your physical and mental capacity to the very limit under the most extreme and trying type of conditions.

2008 series

The series consisted of two Aero GP's. June saw the Aero GP team return to Constanta in Romania and this was followed by a second round in Blackpool, UK.