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In this article th author concerns the deeds of Saints Cyril and Methodius and their contribution in making the christian literary works understandable for the East European Slavs and putting the beginning of Church singing tradition in East Europe.
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The wall paintings of the seventeenth century church of Panagia Peribleptos at Politika on Euboea were possibly produced by a local workshop. Rigorously executed, and with complex conceptual and spiritual content, the paintings permit an examination of the monument in the context of contemporary monumental painting, both on the island and in the wider region. Moreover, we may also explore the largely unknown Post-Byzantine artistic production of Euboea, which maintained the tradition of the great Theban painters of the preceding century.
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The article focuses on the change in dedicatory formulas of foundation inscriptions, which were commissioned by noblemen, members of the clergy, and monks during the second half of the 14th and the 15th century, in which the names of Byzantine, Serbian, or Bulgarian emperors were substituted with the names of local, non-Byzantine rulers. It considers cases from the territories of Macedonia, Epirus, and Thessaly, and tries to discover the reasons behind this shift in dedicatory formulas.
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The study focuses on a rare iconographic type of Pilate’s Escort from the scene of the Road to Calvary in the nave of St George’s Church in Veliko Tarnovo. It highlights some peculiarities of the image by comparing it to a number of examples from the central region of the Balkans dating to the 15th–17th centuries. The study also includes several iconographic types of the scene that were used by icon painters at the end of the 16th and in the beginning of the 17th centuries.
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The paper analyzes the stage director’s position and his/her role in the creation of the theatrical event today – in the beginning of the new millennium, after the “golden century” of the director (the modern theatre between the 1870s and the late 1960s) and after the era of postmodern deconstructions and games with fragments and quotations. The new functions of the director in the working team and in the creative process are examined in the text. They outline the broad spectrum from the traditional conceptual creator of the performance to the team’s facilitator and to an equal participant in the collaborative work. These new functions go beyond the dramatic and postdramatic theatre as well as beyond the modern and postmodern director’s strategies.
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During its first run in Vienna, Emmerich Kálmán’s (1882–1953) Die Herzogin von Chicago (1928) had 301 consecutive performances and then toured internationally, yet it remains relatively unrecognized in operetta scholarship today. With this story of a rich American woman who falls in love with a Hungarian prince, Kálmán treats the AmericanEuropean encounter as a clash of American jazz and Charleston rhythms with Central European classical music such as the Viennese waltz and stylized Hungarian folk idioms. I argue that Kálmán’s Jewish identity functioned as a survival strategy enabling him to explore the porousness between the vernaculars of American jazz and the Viennese waltz because he did not identify with the Austrian majority. By combining jazz and the waltz in Herzogin, Kálmán offers an alternative national identity to the growing hegemonic doctrine of National Socialism in the form of a culturally inclusive (transnational) vision of Central Europe.
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The article explores the first attempts of the Communist authorities to use cinema as a means of propaganda. The establishment of the new power and the change in the political situation after September 9 1944 also required a radical change in the cultural life of the country, including cinema. Regarding it as an art that enjoys widespread popularity, the Communist Party makes legal and other normative changes to establish full control over the distribution and screening of films in Bulgaria, and through them to impose and popularize its ideology.
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The present text is an attempt to outline different aspects of several more general problems concerning the process of creating paintings in this historic age with its technological and above all social dimensions. What do we know about the way the painters in the Balkans worked, how did they get their knowledge, and how they have perfected their skills, how well their work has been valued and what was their status in society? We still have few answers to these questions as historians, but they consistently captivate specialists interested in Orthodox art. In this article some of these questions are revisited, and the scarce data from the material preserved in Bulgaria is supplemented with what is known as a result of the study of Orthodox art from 15-17th c. in the Balkans. The study comments on the term „zograf” in Cyrillic written sources, remark on the importance of the painters and the character of their work in the Byzantine era, summarizing data known from the previous publications on the subject. The main part of the article is devoted to the period 15-17 c. The attention is paid to statistics such as the approximate number of known names of masters in the Balkans based on the preserved icons and frescoes signed. These examples are many times more than those in the previous era, yet, the icon-painters of the Balkans continued to show their humility and piousness, adding to their names words like „sinful”, „unworthy”, or „servant of God”. The text examines what is known about the organization of the work process and the training of icon-painters in the late Middle Ages. It is underlined that, unlike the large number of documents in the state archives in Dubrovnik and Venice, as well as the rich written sources from Russia, we have scarce written information on the subject in the Balkans. We acquire data mainly from donors’ inscriptions preserved in frescoes and icons, invocation or other type of inscriptions, and in rare cases from notes in manuscripts, in beadrolls, or from epistolary or travel literature of the period. Some historical and cultural conditions in the Balkans are commented, which resulted in certain specifics, such as people identifying themselves in confessional rather than in ethnic terms, as well as the great mobility of the icon-painters, the work in teams, sometimes ofmixed origin – Greek and Slavonic, and frequent proficiency in several languages. During this period, many of the icon-painters are representatives of the lower levels of the church hierarchy, which suggests that they are distinguished from the illiterate and uneducated population. In rare cases, besides icon-painters, they are also man of letters, and the best masters have been able to make icons and frescoes, and at the same time to transcribe and decorate books. The text remarks on some other specifics of painters’ work: the dependence on seasons and climate conditions, the preservation of the practice to pass the craftsmanship on to a close family circle. In addition, some technical and technological features in the execution of muralsare discussed, as well asthe use of preliminary drawings, models and painters’ manuals and the formation of the painters’ iconographic repertoire. In conclusion, the text draws attention to the state of the material preserved in Bulgaria and in particular to the problem of the attribution of a large number of wall paintings, icons and woodcarved items to St. Pimen of Zograf in previous studies, which is not sustainable due to the lack of facts and serious scientific arguments on the matter.
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The subject of the publication – the works of the Kastoria artistic circle of 15th-16th centuries – has been analyzed as an important phenomenon in the cultural life of the period by the Balkan art historians from the 1970s on. Despite that the problems posed by these monuments are still not fully clarified. After the field studies carried in a number of Balkan painting works under the project of the Institute of Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences „The Roads of Balkan Painters and Post-Byzantine Artistic Heritage in Bulgaria” and on the basis of the new scientific publications on the monuments under consideration we pose one of the principal questions on the topic: the question of the chronological and territorial limits of the Kastoria artistic production of 15th-16th c. It has been only sketched in the literature to date. This study is an attempt to arrange the dozens of monuments of the Kastoria artistic circle of 15th-16th centuries into groups conditionally separated depending on their chronology and similarities between one another. By this arrangement we get to the conclusion that the work of the Kastoria studios of the period is almost exclusively within the limits of the historical area of Macedonia and the last two decades of the 15th century and the first thirty years of the 16th century. The earliest dated works, i.e. the Old Katholikon of the Great Meteoron and parts of the murals in Saint Nicetas near Čučer [Banjane] date from 1483/4, and the latest work, i.e. the Church of St. Saviour (Sveti Spas) in the Chebren monastery was created in 1532/3. In the 16th century, a number of painting teams were formed by Kastoria masters’ students and heirs. Subsequently, the influence of the patterns imposed by the Kastoria artistic production was strong as late as the end of the 17th century all over the Balkan Peninsula.
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The article examines four monuments of painting dated in the last years of the 16th century from the district of Sofia. They have been mentioned in the literature but have not been specially examined in relation to the work of one icon-painting team. In 1990s the murals of the second layer in the naos of the Dragalevtsi monastery were removed from the walls and carried onto a new base. On the basis of the preserved fragments and the documentation of the restorers one can reconstruct their initial location and their iconographic program. Some images of prophets are preserved into medallions on the vault and underneath them there are full-length bishops, followed by scenes from the Christological cycle follow. A frieze of medallions with the images of martyrs used to run underneath, and some full-length saints were depicted in the lowermost register. The partial restoration of the murals in the naos and the altar of the church of the Kurilo monastery from 1596 over the past couple of years has enabled one to compare them to the fragments from the Dragalevtsi church and to demonstrate that the two monuments belong to the same icon-painting team. They follow the same system of allocation of the murals on the walls, the same iconographic schemes and stylistic peculiarities. The Kurilo murals are characterized by a greater diversity in the scenes and the use of exquisite ornamental motives. They are the work of two icon-painters who worked together but one can easily discern their hands: the one who worked in the arch is more negligent and expressive while the other one is more precise. He has a rather icon-painting manner and maybe he was the leading one. The murals in the Kurilo monastery deserve a separate study which will not become possible until they are fully revealed and restored. In 1595, before he painted the Kurilo church the lead icon-painter painted the hagiographic icon of Saint John the Baptist which is today in the collection of the State Historical Museum in Moscow, and the triptych beadroll for the Kremikovtsi monastery. Both monuments are published but have not been studied in relation to the murals from the Dragalevtsi and Kurilo monasteries. The analysis shows a number of stylistic and iconographic similarities and demonstrates that they are the work of the same team. So far one cannot tell where that team was formed but one can certainly trace out the development of at least the lead artist in later monuments such as the churches in Zervat, Dobarsko, the Slivnitsa Monastery and the Seslavtsi Monastery.
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The article aims to present some observations on the language features of a group of monuments that most probably belong to the same art circle. In this context the analysis of linguistic data serves as an essential supplement to the stylistic analysis of the murals and could be used as a tool for a more complete description of the artistic production of one studio. The analyzed examples are mostly texts from the scrolls held by prophets and saints from the following monuments: Dragalevtsi Monastery of the Holy Mother of God (second layer of painting), Kurilo Monastery of St. John of Rila (1596), Seslavtsi Monastery of St. Nicholas (1616), Slimnitsa Monastery of the Virgin (1607), the Church of St. Theodore of Amasea and St. Theodore Stratelates (1614) in the village of Dobarsko, and the Church of the Assumption (1606) in the village of Zervat. In all monuments listed above the inscriptions are of the mixed type (Cyrillic and Greek); their examination is based upon as many linguistic aspects as possible: orthographic, phonetic, morphological and syntactical. This methodology allows for a greater reliability of the conclusions drawn. From the orthographic aspect, as regards the Cyrillic inscriptions there are noticeable similarities in the writing of the Yat vowel, the letter <÷>; usage of a specific combination of two superscript characters borrowed from the Greek language have also been observed. Parallel Cyrillic inscriptions from the scenes of the Last Supper, the Gethsemane Prayer, the Resurrection of Lazarus and Nativity of Christ are examined; also, Cyrillic inscriptions written on the scrolls of Anna the Prophetess on all monuments with the exception of the church in Zervat where the Greek inscriptions predominate considerably. Other identical inscriptions include those on the scrolls of St. Paul of Thebes in the Seslavtsi Monastery and in the church in Dobarsko, of the prophet Jonah from the Kurilo Monastery, the Seslavtsi Monastery and the church in Dobarsko, of the prophet Balaam from the church in Zervat and the Slimnitsa Monastery. All inscriptions are examined on the morphological, syntactic and textual levels, revealing that two spelling standards have been used in them simultaneously: Serbian and Middle Bulgarian. As regards the Greek inscriptions parallel texts from the scrolls of St. Euthymius the Great from the churches in Zervat and Dobarsko, the Slimnitsa Monastery and the Seslavtsi Monastery as well as two hymnographic texts from the Octoechos inscribed on the images of St. John Damascene and St. Cosmas of Maiuma are examined. The results of the study show that the comprehensive approach that combines a linguistic and a stylistic analysis is the most appropriate for the adequate determination and definition of the characteristics of this art circle of monuments in which similar iconographic and textual patterns are realized.
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In this article that includes a broad bibliography, we present a modern educational approach, in an attempt to help students have a better understanding in the historical and ideological context in which the Romanian literature from the post-war period was written. So that we interpreted the message and the symbols we had found in the video of Depeche Mode - Where’s the Revolution. We mention the fact that we have issued opinions on the history of communism from a Christian perspective and not a political one. However we think that the interdisciplinary approaches of school themes provided in the curriculum for the national examinations may motivate students, raise the critical spirit in judging different aspects concerning the world of ideas and the visible reality, to determine the students to form an independent way of finding the needed information and also to come out of the rigor of mediocrity that media frequently promotes nowadays.
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Dialogue Magazine was published from 2003 with the private income of its editor Daniela Gortcheva without any subsidies, on the basis of income from subscriptions and the voluntary contribution of its authors and support¬ers. It was aimed at Bulgarians in Holland and Dutch people in Bulgaria, but no less to Bulgarians in Bulgaria. Its themes were culture, actual politics, history, education, problems of bilingual families and cultural events of the Bulgarians, living in Holland and Belgium. The magazine aimed to inform and to present history without the manipulations of the present-day totalitarian metastases.
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1666 Armand Jean Bouthillier de Rance (1626-1700) started a thoroughreform of the Cistercian abbey at La Trappe, aimed at restoring in the monastery thestrict rule of the Cistercian orders founding fathers: Sts Robert of Molesme, StephenHarding and Bernard of Clairvaux. A vision of monastic life based on their teachingswas presented by Rance in his De la saintete et des devoirs de la vie monastiąue (1683). Inthis treatise he recalled St Bernards reserved attitude towards art, as expounded in AnApology to William of St Thierry. In his radical reading of this text, Rance declared that,in order to stimulate their piety, monks did not need magnificent churches, splendidliturgical utensils or paintings representing sacred subjects. On the basis of a thoroughsurvey in the orders archival materials and an analysis of works of medieval Cistercianart, he demonstrated that in the centuries immediately following the foundation of theorder, Cistercians had faithfully adhered to the‘artistic doctrine’ of their founding father.Rance appealed to his comrades and other monks to liberate their liturgical practicesfrom the rich artistic setting, in order to be able to return the liturgy its proper spiritualcharacter. He was convinced that, while proclaiming such radical teachings, he remainedfaithful to Catholic orthodoxy which had established the practice of richly decoratedchurches and the cult of religious images for the use of ‘lay people who by their verycondition are imperfect and who are attached to vanities, whence their piety has to bestimulated by external things’. According to the holy tradition of the religious order,however, ‘all these things should be renounced, because not only may they distract themonks, but also instil things in their memory and hearts that should be rejected, inorder that they do not divert the attention of monks away from the hermitage [of themonastery] towards the world’.Yet, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century Rances radical puritanism appealedalso to the lay members of French intellectual elites who earlier had been under the influenceof Jansenist theology, which criticised excessive magnificence of sacred art. One ofthem was Andre Felibien, an outstanding art theorist and secretary of the Parisian AcademieRoyale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The architectural forms of the Fa Trappe abbeychurch, remodelled by Rance, were depicted by Felibien in his Description de YAbbaye dela Trappe (1677) as a consistent realisation of the Cistercian reformers concept of sacredart. Similar views were expressed by Frere Pacome (actually, Guillaume Dardenne) in hislaconic characteristic of the church and monastery at La Trappe, appended to the plansof the buildings offered by him to King Louis XIV in 1708. Rances artistic doctrine wasalso expounded in numerous pamphlets that propagated the Trappist reform among piousfemale members of the aristocracy; it was further disseminated by numerous pilgrims whofreąuently yisited La Trappe in order to learn there pure piety, liberated from ‘mundaneattachments’.Therefore, the radical interpretation of St Bernards thoughts on art included in De lasaintete et des devoirs de la vie monastiąue must have significantly influenced the developmentof a conviction - widespread among enłightened French elites in the eighteenth century - thatengendering piety by means of the works of art was associated with na'ive and superficialreligiosity, and did not go with the enłightened piety of the honnetes
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The manor house of Helena and Józef Badeni at Wadów has so far notreceived monographic treatment. Historical studies and conservation treatment reportsas well as popular works datę the construction of the house to the year 1874 and ascribeits design to the architect Antoni Łuszczkiewicz. Better documented is the twentieth century history of the Wadów estate and its house, but also these data are not free frominaccuracies.In 1873 the village was sold to Józef Badeni who died shortly afterwards (in 1878).The coats of arms of Badeni and his wife, Helena nee Wężyk, depicted on the manorsentrance porch suggest that the building was erected between 1873 and 1878. The analysis of the architectural forms of the edifice has unequivocally indicated that its architect must have been trained on the models of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and was under influence of thecurrent which was originated by Schinkel in the architecture of Berlin in the second halfof the nineteenth century. Graphic models can be identified for particular architectural details used by the architect in the building.The manor house at Wadów exhibits also close similarities with the house of the Wężyk family at Minoga, designed by Filip Pokutyński in 1859. A detailed comparative analysis of both houses has concluded that the design of the Badeni manor is of lesser ąuality andhence its authorship cannot be ascribed to Pokutyński. A comparison of characteristicelements appearing in the Wadów manor with their counterparts in independent realisationsby Antoni Łuszczkiewicz has confirmed the attribution of the Wadów house to thisarchitect. It also revealed that the patrons themselves must have significantly contributed to the shaping of their new home; they apparently instructed the architect to model theWadów house after the manor of the Wężyk family
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Church music in the Catholic Church has been enriched by organ play for centuries. However, the spread of this instrument has been stretched over time. The first organ in Poland appeared in the 13th century, but in small towns and villages organs started to appear more often from the 16th century. This is confirmed by the example of the Pomeranian Archdeaconry. In the second half of the 16th century 12 temples had organs, but one hundred years later already 54, and in the 1880s all parish churches of most filial churches were equipped with an organ.Organs spread faster in urban churches. At the end of the 16th century, they were recorded in half of the towns of the archdeaconry, and only in about 5% of the village temples. A hundred years later, organs were in over 80% of town churches and already in about 36% of village temples. After another hundred years, over 92% of urban churches and almost 86% of rural churches had this type of instrument.The reception of the organ was to a certain extent dependent on the patronage of the temple. It was growing fastest in temples with church patronage and slower in temples with royal, and gentry patronage.Another aspect of research into organs is to determine their size. Visits usually give only the subjective feelings of the inspector or information about the number of organ voices, which may indirectly indicate the size of the instrument. Most often, the organs belonged to a group of small, several-voiced instruments. This type dominated (80-90%) in the 18th century. There are also large instruments with a larger number of voices (in Świecie – 21, in Byszewo – 17). Regarding the state of preservation of organs, most of them were considered in good condition, alt-hough the percentage fluctuated in various visits from 89% in the years 1686-1687 to approx. 55% in the visits in the 1860s and 1880s.
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The article is an attempt to analyze Michelangelo Antonioni’s Eclipse from the perspective of the construction of the affect. It aims at showing that modern cinema is no longer concentrated on the emotions of protagonists expressed through acting, but it rather constructs affects in all dimensions of cinematographic work and thus creates the more general vision of the affective .state of the world. The author tries to demonstrate it through the notions of the void, fossilization, gaze frustration, the eclipse of the affect and last but not least the relation Antonioni is establishing between contemporary petrification of emotions and capitalism.
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Article analyses specific moment of historical interconnection between literature and photography . the years of Great Depression in the United States. The activity of national agency FSA, which was supposed to document and present to the entire society issues concerning the most economically and culturally handicapped classes, was often used as a raw material for much more advanced and complex artistic projects. Thus lots of intriguing collaborations between photographers and writers were born and their achievements are today an important and autonomous testimony not only of a moment in social history but also an episode in the history of media and their mutual relations. The author of the article tries to explain theoretical, political and ethical contexts of these collaborations.
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