Creative dimensions of dniprovs's underground artists: Volodymyr Bublyk and Anatoly Sologub

The purpose of the article is to analyze the creative layer of the little-known Dnipro underground representatives in Ukrainian art criticism Volodymyr Bublyk (1950–2007) and Anatolii Solohub (1953–2014). As the methodology of scientific research was used an art history analysis based on the complex systematization, comparison, and generalization. The scientific novelty is in the introduction into scientific circulation of a significant part of the graphic heritage of Volodymyr Bublyk and Anatolii Solohub in the Dnipro region underground context of the 1980 s – 2000 s. Conclusions. An analysis of Volodymyr Bublyk and Anatolii Solohub’s work reveals a number of important aspects for characterizing the Dnipro “art of resistance”. The latter was formed in the conditions of a “closed” city, the impossibility of official exhibiting due to an alienated attitude towards the dominant ideology in the artistic process of that time. For many artists, these factors often became the cause of the existential catastrophe of every creative person. With contemporaries-brothers Volodymyr Loboda (1943), Serhii Aliev-Kovyka (1956), Oleksandr Nemiatyi (1954), the above-mentioned masters were related by the chosen format of radicalism, which was truly underground. However, the methods of creative communication of each person differed depending on the acquired life experience, the available body of knowledge, and personal temperament. The paintings of Volodymyr Bubluk combine the expression of images in a coloristic system that goes back to the aesthetics of the Fauves. A similar stylistic model of the master's painting can be delineated by the category of intuitive expressionism. The works of Anatolii Solohub are closely related to the folk tradition in their subject matter. The inner tension of his compositions, combined with unrestrained dynamics, strives for visual communication with the viewer. Key words: Dnipro underground, plein air, painting, graphics, sculpture, folk painting, art society "Steppe".

Hungarian cultural and linguistic borrowings in the folk tradition of Burgenland Croats in Hungary and Slovakia

The work which forms the bulk of the present study was carried out on the basis of numerous pieces of field material collected by means of an ethnolinguistic questionnaire in villages inhabited by Burgenland Croats in Western Hungary and Southern Slovakia (where part of the Hungarian territory was annexed after World War II). The field data contain a number of latent and obvious borrowings from Hungarian folk culture. By latent borrowings we mean cultural phenomena that were initially feebly expressed in a particular tradition (and tended to be lost), but during long coexistence with a neighboring heterogeneous tradition they were eventually maintained due to the developed state of the similar phenomena in the neighboring population. We also include here cultural phenomena that are typical of both traditions and have deep roots in the universal model of the naive world view. Analyzing the popular culture and dialects of enclave villages of Burgenland Croats in Hungary and Slovakia, we show that traditional folk culture with the corresponding vocabulary nevertheless acts as an important marker of identity for the population living in a foreign language environment.

Wooden Toy of Chennapatna, India: Beauty of Form & Socio-Cultural Reflection on the Characterization of Toy

Toy making is a part of almost every civilisation, and still, it is continuing as a living tradition in so many countries. Toys play an overall growth for a child. It developed a child mentally, physically, socially, and emotionally. Though it has started as a folk tradition or community-based craft, it has commercial and strong aesthetical value. This study focused on the Chennapatna toy from India. Chennapatna toy is a environment-friendly toy made with softwood, natural colour, and lacquer. This study critically analyses the beauty of the form of Chennapatna toys and also explore how this toy is made by natural substance. Like other art forms, toys also represent art, culture, religion, society, and civilisation. This study also critically analyses the socio-cultural issues, which are well reflected through this toy-making tradition.

Ecological Humanities in Polish Studies, or about Green Reading of the Legends about Lake Gopło

The author considers the way in which Polish studies could contribute to meeting the obligations of ecological humanities. The analysis of excerpts from the core curriculum of the Polish language subject and the reference to Kenneth White’s geopoetics suggest that the solution at school could be the use of the green reading method in Polish lessons and the readings available in the core curriculum: legends about Lake Gopło and Popiel referring to the beginnings of Polish statehood. As the analysis of the content of the legends shows, they also have a symbolic potential connected with the water element and referring to the folk tradition. A profiled reading, exposing this content, could contribute to awakening the ecological sensitivity of pupils, which is one of the important components of their ecological awareness.

THE CRUSADES IN THE ARABIC RENAISSANCE POETRY AND PROSE

The article examines the works of the greatest Arab artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the poet Ahmad Shawqi and the novelist Jirji Zeydan, containing references to the era of the Crusades. An analysis of the work of these authors shows that, contrary to the view prevailing in modern historiography, that Arab artists began to actively refer to the Crusades era only in the second half of the 20th century, already in the Arab poetry and prose of the 19th century, numerous references to this era are found. Ahmad Shawki in his poems presents the Crusades as a time of glorious victories of Muslims, which should inspire contemporaries to fight Europeans. In his works both Muslim commanders known to Europeans and the Egyptian naval commander Husam al-Din Lulu, the savior of Mecca and Medina from the crusaders, the hero of the Arab folk tradition, appear as examples of ideal military leaders. Jirji Zeidan's writings are also characterized by a romantic view of the Crusades. The writer portrays this era as the time of noble rulers, such as Salah ad-Din and Richard the Lionheart, who were able to decide the fate of the Middle East on equal terms.

Soft-traditionalism as a strategy for actualizing folk tradition in the postmodern parameters of the chronotope of Ukrainian folk art culture

The purpose of the article is to consider the causes of the crisis of authenticity of Ukrainian folk art culture in postmodernism and to reveal the features of soft-traditionalism as a strategy of actualization of folk tradition in the postmodern parameters of the chronotope. The methodology consists in using analytical (establishing the causes of the crisis of authenticity of Ukrainian folk art culture in postmodernism), culturological (revealing soft-traditionalism as a strategy of actualization of folk tradition in postmodernism), axiological, and systemic (determining the basic principles of axiosphere of Ukrainian folk art culture approaches. The scientific novelty is to reveal the causes of the crisis of authenticity of Ukrainian folk art culture in the postmodern, due to virtualization, deontologization, destruction of the traditional linear chronotope of historical memory in a virtual nomadic environment. Based on modern achievements of culturological thought, the ambivalent nature of cyberspace as a post-ontological and archaic-ontological phenomenon at the same time is demonstrated, given the connection of the rhizome with the symbolic language of myth, subconscious and chthonic archetypes of culture. The classification of three models of soft-traditionalism as a value-semantic strategy of preservation of tradition in the conditions of postmodernism is developed. Conclusions. The study showed that in the postmodern chronotope, the interconnected processes of deontologization and virtualization cause a crisis of authenticity of Ukrainian folk art culture. The rhizome environment of the Internet leads to the destruction of the classical linear narrative of a fairy tale, myth, traditional narrative: the hierarchical triad of the chronotope is replaced by a chaotic nomadic movement. It is shown that traditional identification has always had a consistent systematic character, inherent in the gradual entry of the individual into the cultural tradition. Today, identity practices are spontaneous and cross-cultural. Nomadism is depicted as a characteristic feature of the Internet environment, which renews the archaic practices of primitive nomads, returning us to the pre-mythological structures of chthonic magic. The common sacred, gender and informational features of traditional culture are revealed, which create favorable preconditions for the development of the latest strategies of actualization of folk tradition in postmodernism. Such a strategy was «soft-traditionalism»/«light traditionalism», developed within the Chicago School of Phenomenology of the Sacred M. Eliade. The essence of soft-traditionalism is revealed, which consists in accentuating the axiological approach to folk art culture as an existential phenomenon of experiencing meanings that can be expressed in modern semiotic language. As an adequate relationship between the language of tradition and the language of its representation, a triadic structure of classification of models of soft-traditionalism is proposed: isolation, interaction, and stylization. It is emphasized that children's folklore, as a universal cultural form, is the most vivid embodiment of the three models of soft-traditionalism.

Nie-ludzcy mieszkańcy Tatr. Dwa modele opowieści niezwykłych

Non-human residents of the mountains as well as exciting encounters with them are the subjects of two types of accounts: naive and sophisticated. The former is associated with the perspective of a carrier of folk tradition; it reveals a collective point of view, it is a “local” story rooted in specific cultural tradition supported by the experience and testimony of the local authorities. A sophisticated narrative is characteristic of original texts thematically linked to the mountains and mountaineering. While folkloristic texts are dominated by a tendency to identify the extraordinary event narrated with a traditional cultural pattern and its peculiar precedents (a whole series of similar events attested by reliable witnesses), in literary works (by, for example, Rafał Malczewski, Wawrzyniec Żuławski or Jan Długosz) the narrator focuses on his own experiences, sensations and emotions, on presenting his own vision of the event, often with a characteristic question mark concerning the status of the reported events. Yet both types of accounts — taking into consideration obvious cultural differences and in the case of literary works also those relating to the sphere of writers’ intentions — seem to share the universal human need to experience a particular kind of fear defined by Rudolf Otto as misterium tremendum. It denotes the eternal human fascination with the sphere of the uncanny, related in the case of the Tatra tales under analysis to a peculiar intuition — demonstrated in them – of the presence in the mountains of supranatural beings, demons and ghosts.

Cultural and Cognitive Structure of the Omen: Epistemology, Axiology and Pragmatics

The article presents the cognitive categorization principles in different ritual and non-ritual situations. The semantics, structure and pragmatics of omens as well as that of the related cultural concepts in the archetypal world model is based on ethnosemiotic and cognitive analysis aspects, folklore pragmatics elements and the cultural text verbal magic. The omens realize such significant for folk culture oppositions as good-evil, life-death, top-bottom, male-female, etc., as well as the connection with various traditional culture codes – action, ?bject, zoomorphic, artifactual, sociomorphic, verbal and so on. As a holistic cultural and cognitive macrosign, taken in the unity of functions, conceptospheres and semantic oppositions, the omen is organized according to the principle of situation-event cognitive cluster – action – reaction, forecast – belay, embodied in profiling a cultural prescription or taboo. As a cultural and folklore genre, the omens are based on the collective experience and are fixed in the collective memory as a correlation of two situations (events) that are in causal connection (predictive – predictable) fixed by folk tradition. The main attention is paid to the pragmatic and axiological properties of the omens, epistemological and ontological principles of their organization in the compared Slavic and non-Slavic linguistic (English) cultures.