Representation of Latvian Mithology in works of Hilda Vika

2013 ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Austra Celmiņa-Ķeirāne ◽  
Signe Grūbe
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Additional Material ◽  
Initiation Rites ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Original Interpretation

The paper includes the study on activities of the Latvian painter and writer Hilda Vika - Eglīte (1897-1963) in the field of visual art (mostly painting) connected with Latvian mythology. Latvian myth characters and themes came into H. Vika’s creative work after 1930 when she married writer and reviewer Viktors Eglitis and resorted to “Dievturība” (Latvian Neopagan religious movement based on folklore, old folk songs and mythology). Actively and productively working H. Vika participated in numerous group art exhibitions. Her individual vision, decorative solutions of composition and stylized details brought in Latvian painting unusual and essentially different intonations being contemporary at the same time. The research is pointing out H. Vika’s artworks published in various sources with identifiable mythological scenes and motifs and analysing the principles of creating visual images of characters and potential impact. Memories and reviews of contemporaries, art historians and critics are used as additional material. Latvian “Dievs” (the God in the pre-Christian religion of Balts) in painter's works is indefinable age man with light-colored (possibly gray) hair and long pale coat, the image is often surrounded by a bright halo or supplement ethnographic characters. Laima’s and Mara’s ambivalence, which lies in the folk songs where these Latvian deities operate in both - positive (cradle hanging, fertility promotion) as well as harmful or fatal aspects, in H. Vika’s paintings is completely disappeared. Laima only appears as a bright image bearing blessing alongside with Dievs and Mara. H. Vika’s Mara is depicted as the goddess of good fortune and patroness of all feminine duties and as a deity related to the person's birth and initiation rites. Sun and Sun's daughters are painted with light colour tones, dynamic compositional solutions and original interpretation of national folk costumes, supplemented with Latvian characters. H. Vika often minded the question of life and death, the end of human earthly life, and Latvian Velu mate (Mother of the souls / spirits) vividly symbolizes this theme in her works. In most cases, Velu mate is portrayed as a woman with a headscarf or woolen shawl, partly or completely covering her face, as a symbol of unknown and mysterious, the human encounters after the death. The artist focused on mythological themes with great interest and excitement, creating visual images corresponding to a Latvian folklore and ethnographic heritage and representing the external manner reminding Fra Angelico and Botticelli's painting or impact of Russian school and German neo-romanticism.

scholarly journals LEGACY OF PATRIARCHAL GOD AND THE POLITICS OF MYTH-MAKING: LOCATING THE GENDERED POSITION IN RELIGIOUS VISUAL ART

2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Abhijit Maity
Keyword(s):  
Gender Role ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Secondary Level ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Male Counterpart ◽  
The Family ◽  
Women In India

This essay discusses how the imagination of women in India is framed up by the gender-biased mythical representations. By looking at the mythical representations that are circulated through centuries in many popular mages, paintings and calendar-portraits, a discursive pattern can be found that has positioned women in a secondary level, belonging to men. The family itself becomes a political site in the process of normalizing women’s submissiveness to men by comparing their actions with the Goddesses. By interrogating the gendered position of Goddess like Lakshmi and her male counterpart Lord Vishnu, this essay attempts to problematize with the mode of representation in religious visual images. I conclude by arguing that these religious representations in visual images have negative impact on the Hindu women, especially, in rural areas and thus keep the unhealthy gender role intact in Indian society.

scholarly journals THE SPACE BETWEEN US

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson Yeung Chun Wai ◽  
Estefanía Salas Llopis
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Collective Innovation ◽  
Collective Creation ◽  
Different Cultures

This article explores how to integrate the collective creation of contemporary art exhibitions, and how to transform exhibition works into contemporary language and novel visual art materials, thereby generating cultural exchange between Australia and Spain. The Space Between Us (2017- ), co-curated by Australian artist-curator Wilson Yeung and Spanish artist Estefanía Salas Llopis, resolve these questions by examining the contemporary art exhibition. This paper also asks how to transform art exhibitions into laboratories, how artists and curators work together in a collective innovation environment, how collective creation generates new knowledge, and how to develop collective creation among creative participants from different cultures and backgrounds. 

scholarly journals Let the Atrocious Images Haunt Us—Encounters with Conflict and Connection in Visual Art-Making

2020 ◽  
pp. 194084472094807
Author(s):  
Alison Rouse
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Journal Writing ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Tv News ◽  
Cultural Layers

In the relative comfort of my UK living room, a passive spectator of TV news, I watch fleeting images of appalling suffering and devastation emanating from the war in Syria. The coverage of the bombing of Aleppo (2015) is heart-rending. I turn to art in response, to slow the disappearance of visual images and to counter my sense of remove. This begins as self-activism, drawing/painting-as-inquiry, in combination with journal writing. As the work progresses, portraits burst out of the sketchbook and claim space to speak for themselves, demanding a place in the wider world, their own artivism. What they communicate to each viewer will vary—a commentary on war, on a country’s response to migration, or a call to action for what might be different? The inquiry moves through personal and cultural layers of a creative process to question what art does, and what it fails to do, in the context of this project and activism. Art’s potential, through the acts of looking and making, to affect is central to the sequence of encounters (connections and disconnections), which are examined here.

scholarly journals Syncretic Santa Muerte: Holy Death and Religious Bricolage

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Kate Kingsbury ◽  
R. Andrew Chesnut
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Socioeconomic Groups ◽  
Santa Muerte ◽  
Palo Mayombe ◽  
Formed Part

In this article, we trace the syncretic origins and development of the new religious movement centered on the Mexican folk saint of death, Santa Muerte. We explore how she was born of the syncretic association of the Spanish Catholic Grim Reapress and Pre-Columbian Indigenous thanatologies in the colonial era. Through further religious bricolage in the post-colony, we describe how as the new religious movement rapidly expanded it integrated elements of other religious traditions, namely Afro-Cuban Santeria and Palo Mayombe, New Age beliefs and practices, and even Wicca. In contrast to much of the Eurocentric scholarship on Santa Muerte, we posit that both the Skeleton Saint’s origins and contemporary devotional framework cannot be comprehended without considering the significant influence of Indigenous death deities who formed part of holistic ontologies that starkly contrasted with the dualistic absolutism of European Catholicism in which life and death were viewed as stark polarities. We also demonstrate how across time the liminal power of death as a supernatural female figure has proved especially appealing to marginalized socioeconomic groups.

scholarly journals The First Flute: Whowhoahyahzo Tohkohya by D. Bouchard

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trudy Cardinal ◽  
Lynne Driedger-Enns
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Red Deer ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Indigenous Children ◽  
Education And Development ◽  
The University

Bouchard, David. The First Flute: Whowhoahyahzo Tohkohya. Markham: Red Deer Press, 2015. Print.With poetic words, Métis author, David Bouchard, encourages his readers to find a quiet place to share the telling of his hardcover book The First Flute.  Specifically, in order to honour the teachings of storyteller Standing Elk, Bouchard invites readers to “hear and dream it without interruptions” and this invitation immediately invokes a feeling of ceremony and spirituality; it attends deeply to protocol.David Bouchard, Jan Michael Looking Wolf, and Don Oelze collaborate in the retelling of a traditional story about a young man who had many skills appreciated by his village – hunting, fishing and tracking – but whose real passion, dancing, was not recognized until Grandfather Cedar gifted him with a flute. This, the first flute, helped the young man prove his worth to his village and to the woman he loved.The many different art forms that find voice in this book, such as storytelling, visual art, and music awaken spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental faculties and make space for thinking in new ways. The words, melodies, and gift of visual images that it shares serve to lighten the heart and invite the reader to hear and dream the story of Konhe Waci, Dancing Raven, but also to hear and dream their own stories of who they are in their own families and communities.The First Flute is a resource essential to any K-8 arts education classes to open conversations about identity, and how identity is shaped in relationship with other people and places.Highly recommended:  4 out of 4 starsReviewer:  Lynne Driedger-Enns & Trudy CardinalDr. Lynne Driedger-Enns is the 2015 Horowitz Scholar with the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta. Dr. Trudy Cardinal is a Cree/Métis scholar from the University of Alberta whose research interests center on the experiences of Indigenous children and families on and off school landscapes. They share an interest in stories and storytelling.

scholarly journals Special Features of the Popularization of Bodhidharma

Asian Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-149
Author(s):  
Beatrix MECSI
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Visual Appearance

According to tradition the founder of Chan or meditational Buddhism, Bodhidharma, originated from India, yet his legend and first representations are more typically associated with China and his legendary figure is frequently seen in the visual art and popular culture of the East Asian countries. In my paper I focus on the visual representations of Bodhidharma as they became popular in Korea and Japan, attempting to show the basic differences in the popularization of the visual images of Bodhidharma in these countries, focusing mainly on the visual appearance and iconography. The power of the image is seen in the commercialization of representations of Bodhidharma, particularly in Japan, where this practice occurred much earlier than in Korea and developed different traditions compared to those in China, where the legend came from.

The image of the Russian province nuns based on visual sources of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-177
Author(s):  
Ekaterina A. Eliseeva
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Online Resources ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Additional Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Studying the history of the past, scientists created a certain cult of a written source. In this regard, visual images were perceived only as additional material to the text. Neglect of images led to the loss of a full historical source in the reconstruction of events and phenomena of the past. The visual turn at the end of the 20th century brought about a change in the research program. Visualism has expanded the source field of research, and enriched methods of data analysis. Photography is not only a fixator of cultural events of everyday life, but also a source of features of the studied region. This research attempts to study the images of the monastic cloisters of the Simbirsk diocese in the second half of the 19th early 20th centuries based on photo sources presented in book editions, online resources, archives of nunneries. The photographs show both abbesses and the nuns of the city nunnery of the Simbirsk eparchy. When analyzing photo sources, the context of creating images was taken into account: design of the photo, background, pose, attributes and information about the authors. The photographs made it possible to construct the image of the nuns of the Russian province and to trace the connection of nunnery with sociocultural phenomena in the urban space at the turn of the 19th20th centuries.

The Art of Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Berger
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Limited Function ◽  
European Intellectual History ◽  
Artistic Images

Delving into the intersections between artistic images and philosophical knowledge in Europe from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, this book shows that the making and study of visual art functioned as important methods of philosophical thinking and instruction. From frontispieces of books to monumental prints created by philosophers in collaboration with renowned artists, the book examines visual representations of philosophy and overturns prevailing assumptions about the limited function of the visual in European intellectual history. Rather than merely illustrating already existing philosophical concepts, visual images generated new knowledge for both Aristotelian thinkers and anti-Aristotelians, such as Descartes and Hobbes. Printmaking and drawing played a decisive role in discoveries that led to a move away from the authority of Aristotle in the seventeenth century. This book interprets visual art from printed books, student lecture notebooks, alba amicorum (friendship albums), broadsides, and paintings, and examines the work of such artists as Pietro Testa, Léonard Gaultier, Abraham Bosse, Dürer, and Rembrandt. In particular, it focuses on the rise and decline of the ‘plural image’, a genre that was popular among early modern philosophers. Plural images brought multiple images together on the same page, often in order to visualize systems of logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, or moral philosophy. The book reveals the essential connections between visual commentary and philosophical thought.

scholarly journals Enzyme Cytochemical Techniques for Metabolic Mapping in Living Cells, with Special Reference to Proteolysis

2001 ◽  
Vol 49 (12) ◽  
pp. 1473-1486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emil Boonacker ◽  
Cornelis J.F. Van Noorden
Keyword(s):  
Living Cells ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Fluorogenic Substrates ◽  
Metabolic Mapping ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Quantitative Manner ◽  
Activity Of Enzymes ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Endogenous Metabolites

Specific enzymes play key roles in many pathophysiological processes and therefore are targets for therapeutic strategies. The activity of most enzymes is largely determined by many factors at the post-translational level. Therefore, it is essential to study the activity of target enzymes in living cells and tissues in a quantitative manner in relation to pathophysiological processes to understand its relevance and the potential impact of its targeting by drugs. Proteases, in particular, are crucial in every aspect of life and death of an organism and are therefore important targets. Enzyme activity in living cells can be studied with various tools. These can be endogenous fluorescent metabolites or synthetic chromogenic or fluorogenic substrates. The use of endogenous metabolites is rather limited and nonspecific because they are involved in many biological processes, but novel chromogenic and fluorogenic substrates have been developed to monitor activity of enzymes, and particularly proteases, in living cells and tissues. This review discusses these substrates and the methods in which they are applied, as well as their advantages and disadvantages for metabolic mapping in living cells.

Embroidery and Textiles: A Novel Perspective on Women Artists’ Art Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunanda Rani ◽  
◽  
Dong Jining ◽  
Dhaneshwar Shah ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Art Exhibitions ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Women's Art ◽  
Tools And Techniques

The manuscript focuses on the autobiographical artistic practice of women artists and feminist expression in visual art, particularly those women artists who use embroidery and textiles as mediums, techniques, processes, styles, subjects, and themes. Women artists often use a variety of unique materials and techniques to create artwork which are primarily related to them and show a feminist identity. The research explores the mediums, tools and techniques applied by women artists in their artworks and the reasons behind choosing that particular medium and methods. In addition, women artists when, where, and how these diverse creation strategies have been adopted and developed over time are examined and analysed with the help of earlier literature, articles, research papers, art exhibitions, and artworks created by women artists. This manuscript discusses the chronological development of embroidery and textiles in the context of women’s art practice, the efforts and achievements of the “Feminist Art Movement” and the cause and concept of “Entangled: Threads & Making”, a contemporary woman artist art exhibition at Turner. Embroidery and textiles are associated with women’s art practice; women artists used embroidery, needlework, and textiles as a powerful symbolic medium of expression and resistance against the male-dominated art society. They began to use feminist expressions, forms, and materials to present their new characteristics. Women artists use embroidery, textiles and needlework as feminist traditional materials and techniques, and continue to struggle to blend them with other new contemporary mediums.

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