class="">Life and Theatre on the World’s Stage

With Vermeer’s Geographer on the cover – a geographer looking for God knows what on an outdated earth globe, nowadays made redudant by the much more efficient internet – George Banu (b. June 22, 1943, Bacău) offers us a sum of melancholic episodes, united under the sign of tender & erudite & subtle digressions. Time, theater and life / culture itselves become the characters of a staging of the memories of a man, cultured and extremely preocupied by details and nuances. In fact, this is how the essays – such as those written by Paul Zarifopol or Alexandru Paleologu were created and, later, brought together in this book, that gives the reader lots of pleasure. George Banu, the author, is a well-known name on the ever-changing market of international glories.

Cristina Manole – Observator cultural, nr. 1061

(Re) reading the essays gathered in Life and Theater on the World’s Stage, I realized that the fine analyst has been intensely cultivating himself over the years, visiting and revisiting exhibitions, studying albums and exhibition catalogs, delighing his eyes with the images of art albums. A layered arrangement of various types of information, combined with personal impressions, with subjective visions and unique associations of details, a way of thinking out of the box, of giving new meanings to the creative act itself. The details about each of the artists are impressive: ages of creation, influences, the context that contributed to the emergence of a new painting (Picasso’s Guernica will remain in your emotional memory forever after reading the essay dedicated to it).

Nona Rapotan – Suplimentul de cultură, nr. 731

In Life and Theater on the World’s Stage, we find the so called menus détails. This attention and precision lead George Banu to the most pertinent remarks and especially, to the most surprising associations that. Discovering them in this book, the reader is easily convinces, as if they were absolutely self- evident.

Mircea Morariu – contributors.ro