Symbolism (Art History)

The Review article discusses four new scholarly volumes focused on various problematic issues related to Russian Modernism. The essay debates major points of methodology and research topicality with respect to Russian Symbolism and the Avant-Garde.
- Martha M.F. Kelly, Unorthodox Beauty. Russian Modernism and Its New
Religious Aesthetic. Evanston, 2016.
- Jonathan Stone, The Institutions of Russian Modernism. Conceptualizing, Publishing, and Reading Symbolism. Evanston, 2017.
- Katherine Lahti, The Russian Revival of the Dithyramb. A Modernist Use of Antiquity. Evanston, 2018.
- Reframing Russian Modernism. Edited by Irina Shevelenko. Madison, 2018.

This paper is the first chapter of a detailed analysis of Ted Hughes’ poetic sequence, Birthday Letters. It explores Hughes’ serious use of Cabbala and Tarot in structuring Birthday Letters and examines each poem in the sequence from this perspective.

A full analysis of the poems in Birthday Letters, Howls & Whispers and Capriccio can be found as Poetry and Magic 1, 2 and 3 on my Ted Hughes webpages at  http://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm

« Arts de l’ornement », dit-on souvent des arts islamiques, sans pour autant définir ce que recouvrent exactement le terme et le concept d’« ornement ». Depuis des décennies, des travaux tentent de comprendre les décors dans les arts des pays musulmans : sont-ils destinés au seul plaisir des yeux, portent-ils un message symbolique, en quoi sont-ils « islamiques » ou religieux ? Plus fondamentalement, pourquoi, pour qui décore-t-on un mur ou un objet ? Dans le sillage des débats sur l’ornementation islamique, cet ouvrage propose une nouvelle synthèse de la question et de nouvelles pistes de réflexion.

Il examine d’abord comment l’histoire et les caractéristiques des arts et des cultures islamiques, tout comme les problèmes méthodologiques ou idéologiques des sciences humaines, compliquent et troublent la perception et l’analyse contemporaines des décors.
Une seconde partie évoque les différentes présences – esthétiques, sociales, politiques ou religieuses – de l’ornement. Sources de plaisir, les décors reflètent un ordre social, un art de vivre, un sens culturel de l’espace et du temps ; par leur prégnance, ils détiennent une capacité d’influence, idéelle ou psychosomatique, voire magique. Embellir, décorer s’inscrit également dans un humanisme et une cosmologie, dans la mesure où la créativité humaine, au point de vue musulman, témoigne de la place de l’homme dans la création, du rapport de l’humanité au cosmos, et même d’un mystère métaphysique. 
Une dernière partie aborde la question de l’interprétation de l’ornement : peut-on lui donner un sens, alors que les sources historiques sont parcellaires ou obscures ? L’auteur propose un regard alternatif, en considérant le potentiel symbolique des décors plus que leurs significations historiques avérées ou hypothétiques. Par son usage de l’épigraphie, par les « universaux » de son esthétique (la lumière, la géométrie, le végétal), le décor islamique est avant tout un horizon de contemplations, un miroir d’herméneutiques, potentiellement toujours parlants et toujours actuels.     

Une large bibliographie, un index général, un index des versets coraniques, un cahier iconographique de plus de 500 illustrations en couleurs complètent l’ouvrage.

SUMMARY: Chapter 10, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers approaches to assessing how humans began to think and adopt language, use symbols, view one's world, measure time, plan ahead, practice religion, care for the deceased, portray oneself, others, and aspects of one's world, and other concepts.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record.  UPDATED March, 2021, some new images, text edits, significant re-formatting, etc.

Resumen: Componente esencial de su lenguaje, signo de reconocimiento corporativo y auténtico fundamento y factor vertebrador de su estructura interna, su método iniciático y su pedagogía simbólica, el amplio y complejo aparato icónico de la Masonería o Francmasonería constituye uno de los aspectos más llamativos y fascinantes de esta fraternidad “discreta”. Este corpus iconográfico, Inserto en una trama ritual y una puesta en escena que configuran su principal seña de identidad, se caracteriza de modo especial por su extraordinaria diversidad. Ello es la consecuencia de una permanente capacidad de asimilación sincrética de materiales procedentes de muy distintos imaginarios y corrientes culturales que los francmasones, animados por el propósito de universalidad que envuelve a sus manifestaciones, han ido adoptando e integrando en sus espacios y sus ritos a lo largo de los últimos tres siglos. En el presente libro se profundiza en las fuentes de inspiración que nutrieron la formación y evolución de este singular patrimonio visual a lo largo de su evolución histórica, y en las principales connotaciones significativas de sus motivos más utilizados, atendiendo de manera preferente a la deuda que sus atributos, alegorías o composiciones mantienen con las tradiciones simbólicas o emblemáticas precedentes.
Este libro constituye, sin lugar a dudas, la investigación más profunda y rigurosa, dentro del panorama de habla hispana, dedicada hasta la fecha al complejo y atractivo mundo del simbolismo masónico. Su aparición coincide con el 300 aniversario del nacimiento de la masonería especulativa que tuvo lugar, en febrero de 1717, con la constitución de la Gran Logia de Londres.

The influence of "Japonisme" on symbolist art is generally studied only from the formal point of view The influence of Japonisme on symbolist art is generally studied only from the formal point of view : format, graphics, iconographic elements analyzed for their plastic aspect. This paper shows how the Japanese world inspires the idealist artists of the end of the 19th century far beyond the formal aspect. The strangeness generated by a distant culture allows them to suggest an imaginary world: the foreign Japanese repertoire here becomes a factor of metaphysical strangeness.

On Wednesday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with rituals and celebrations to signal the rebirth of the sun and its victory over darkness.

At hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of missions stretching from northern California to Peru, the winter solstice sun triggers an extraordinarily rare and fascinating event – something that I discovered by accident and first documented in one California church nearly 20 years ago.  See article at On Wednesday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with rituals and celebrations to signal the rebirth of the sun and its victory over darkness. See link to online magazine at https://theconversation.com/a-sacred-light-in-the-darkness-winter-solstice-illuminations-at-spanish-missions-70250

The Authors, while making references to the literature on Symbolism in visual arts and literature, reinterpret Polish painting of the turn of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, placing it both within the context of the native artistic tradition and European early modernism. By juxtaposing the notions of ‘Symbolism’ and ‘Young Poland’, they bring forth Symbolism as the tendency dominating in the process of modernist transformations embedded in the cultural formation of Young Poland which encompassed several disciplines of thought and art, and a variety of artistic attitudes not bound by a single goal and one exclusive program. The book’s discourse refers to Young Poland as a broad current that spans the Romantic legacy of the passing century with the ambitions of the young generation of artists sensitive to the innovative aura of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. A culmination in the development of national culture, Young Poland summed up the intellectual accomplishments of the nineteenth century, at the same time opening up a perspective of artistic experimentation to be yielded in the decades to come.

The book presents Polish Symbolism as a perfect synthesis of idiosyncratic national components and aesthetic formulae adopted from European modernism. The Authors disclose a specific syncretism of the trend consisting in transposition and amalgamation of iconographic motifs, morphological elements and expressive qualities frequently regarded as antithetic factors. They modify the well-established chronological caesurae marking the beginning and the end of Polish Symbolism, and analyze the process in which this multilayered trend of diversified genealogy, rich subject matter, and heterogeneous morphology was shaped. While enhancing the main tendencies inherent to Symbolism (historicism, mysticism, pantheism, proto-expressionism, intimism, Japonism), they also explore artistic phenomena (folklorist, decorative) that diverged from the Symbolist presumptions, yet coexisted with Symbolism as an integral component of the Young Poland movement.

The narrative pinpoints topics peculiar to Polish Symbolism, while emphasizing the artists’ search for new visual language, and showing both convergent and opposing artistic approaches. Based on purposefully constructed sequences of images, it leads to the cultural centre of Young Poland, i.e. Krakow, it speaks of syncretistic interpretations of ancient myths and folk legends, evokes the decadent poetics of death, eroticism and Satanism, provides a glimpse at Parisian nooks haunted by demons and artificial paradises of bourgeois drawing-rooms, shows nocturnal and sunlit Italian sights, severe Breton, Scandinavian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian landscapes, explores the mythicized enclave of Polish countryside.

The Authors also describe the internal evolution of Polish Symbolism and a gradual fading away of catastrophic comprehension of history manifest in the trend. Initiated by metaphors of the nation’s tragic fate and eschatological visions rendered in monumental formats it concluded with intimate images of home Arcadia. In the 1910s everyday reality was returning to art, though no longer in a mimetic formula, as in the paintings of nineteenth century naturalists, but in a stylized and decorative manner, being engaged in a dialogue with the artistic tradition of Europe and the aesthetic predilections of the Parisian Post-Impressionists and the Nabis.

The abundant illustrative material incorporated in the book encompasses the canon of Polish turn-of-the-nineteenth-century painting, as well as little-known and previously unpublished works coming from public and private collections.

Claude Perrault defined stereotomy as “the art of using the weight of stone against itself so as to hold it up thanks to the very weight that pulls it down”. It is indeed a sophisticated ancient technique
highly integrated with knowledge of both practical and erudite geometry as well as mathematics. With knowledge being a defining factor of stereotomy, a few questions are raised as to its democratic
distribution and accessibility as well as the social groups that have controlled it in a chronological context. Taking to consideration the emergence of Géométrie descriptive by Gaspard Monge  shortly
before 1800, one would wonder about the very existence of complex stereotomic buildings dating before the 18th century, one such example being the Chateau d’Anet, thus questioning the historical factors behind its development, geographical movement and the intentions of the people being in possession of such knowledge.

Венгерова М.Э. преподаватель, главный специалист «Высшая школа средового дизайна», Московский архитектурный институт (государственная академия), г. Москва, Россия СИМВОЛИКА ГЕОМЕТРИЧЕСКИХ ФОРМ И ЗАДАЧ В ДИЗАЙНЕ АРХИТЕКТУРНОЙ СРЕДЫ И В ПРАВОСЛАВНОМ ХРАМОСТРОИТЕЛЬСТВЕ X-XV ВЕКОВ Аннотация. В статье рассматривается параметр времени визуального восприятия объекта и связанной с этим скорости дешифровки образов, вследствие чего, для визуальных коммуникаций предлагается использовать геометрические формы, а для архитектурного дизайна и других предметов искусства, рассчитанного на более длительное восприятие, можно применять и геометрические задачи, для вложение более глубинных смыслов, нежели элементарная рефлексия. Ключевые слова: дизайн, архитектура, геометрия, форма, символика, психология, Древняя Русь, православный, храм, христианство, философия, модернизм, абстракционизм, русский космизм. Актуальность данного исследования заключена в повышенном интересе в последнее время к теме универсально дизайна и созданию безбарьерной среды для людей с ограниченными возможностями. В связи с этим рассмотрение основ психологического восприятия тех или иных цветов, геометрических фигур, а также «игры» с этими фигурами, коими являются геометрические задачи, могущие быть решёнными различными способами, представляют интерес для более подробного рассмотрения в рамках учебных предметов при подготовке специалистов, пользующихся визуальным языком для передачи информации. Относительно символики основных цветов нами ранее было сделано исследование результаты которого опубликованы в статьях [1, 2] и учебном пособии [3]. Поэтому в данной статье нам бы хотелось коснуться лишь вопроса геометрии и её задач. Восприятие зрителем визуальной информации может быть разделено на два типа по времени, которое пользователь тратит на расшифровку нервного импульса, поступающего в мозг от такого органа, как глаза. Так анализ может быть краткосрочным и протяжённым. Первый вариант учитывается при создании визуальной коммуникации для навигации, информации и предупреждений. Второй, может иметься ввиду для создания объектов, более длительного восприятия, таких как логотипы, иллюстрации, произведения искусства, объёмно-планировочные решения интерьеров и экстерьеров зданий и сооружений, а также элементы дизайна архитектурной среды. Поскольку визуальные коммуникации, как и другие произведения визуальных искусств говорят со зрителем своей эпохи на привычных образах, то для выявления графических основ для европейско-российской аудитории мы обратились к исследованиям художников и философов эпохи переосмысления классических традиций наступившей в начале XX века. Это и модернизм, если говорить о изобразительном и архитектурном искусстве и русский космизм [4], если касаться философских работ исследователей, описывавших основы подсознательного восприятия цветов и геометрических форм с точки зрения анализа древнерусского искусства. К первой группе относятся и художники, такие как Василий Кандинский, Любовь Попова и другие; архитекторы: теоретик рационализма Ладовский Н.А., теоретик конструктивизма Гинзбург М.Я., занимавшийся вопросами формообразования Эль Лисицкий и др. Эти зодчие заново открывали значение простых и «чистых» геометрических форм, так как модернизм пришёл на смену эклектике и модерну, где сама архитектурная форма была завуалирована, под слоями отделки с трудом проглядывалась изначальная конструкция стен и перекрытий. Поэтому радость от простых геометрических форм, «честно» рассказывающих о конструкции была у художников и архитекторов вполне искренней. Они искали новый язык для «трудового» народа, расчищая позднейшие культурные наслоения. Поэтому их открытия представляли и для нас интерес, для последующего применения их в визуальных коммуникация. Ко второй группе философов относятся Павел Флоренский и Евгений Трубецкой и др, которых также интересовало раскрытие вложенных смыслов во внешние формы православной культуры. Е.Н.Трубецкой анализировал символику красок древнерусских икон [5]. П. Флоренский связывал

ABSTRACT: This lecture provides a broader background for the New Kingdom regarding Egyptian society --particularly in the New Kingdom. It starts with an overview of the hierarchical, "pyramidal" structure of Ancient Egyptian society (including gender roles), and proceeds with an examination of the elite through lower classes: The king, chief queen, secondary queens, princes, princesses, upper officials, mid-range officials, lower officials, crafts persons, peasant farmers, and others (including POWs and slaves), plus administration, control, organization and payment of labour.  The lecture incorporates a wide range of approaches and aspects, including iconography, symbolism, costumes, titulary, education and training (e.g., tutors), and other components within many of the above categories --especially for kings, queens, princes, and princesses in Ancient Egypt UPDATED: Feb., 6, 2021: Some editing, formatting, new images, and text.

PORTUGUÊS:
O presente texto decorre da nossa participação no Xº Colóquio Internacional da AIEMA, que teve lugar no Museu Monográfico de Conimbriga em 2005, e refere-se aos mosaicos romanos com motivos aquáticos encontrados no actual território português até então, datáveis de finais do século II d.C. até meados do século VI d.C.

ENGLISH:
This text results from our participation in the Xth AIEMA International Colloquium, that took place at Conimbriga's Monographic Museum in 2005, and focuses on the roman mosaics found in the Portuguese territory until then, dating from late 2nd century A.D. to middle 6th century A.D.

It took Prokofiev seven years to compose The Fiery Angel, an opera based on a novel by Brioussov. Between January 1920 and June 1927, the composer’s mind was completely focused on this new work. Despite many failed attempts, Prokofiev only heard extracts from the second act in a concert version given on 14 June 1928 (the opera was staged in Paris in November 1954, one year after Prokofiev’s death). As soon as April 1928, Prokofiev decided to draw a symphonic suite basically conceived as a paraphrase, but which quickly turned into a four-movement symphony; this is how the Third Symphony was born. Another project linked to The Fiery Angel failed. In 1923, without any prospect to stage the first version of the opera, Prokofiev decided to draw a vocal suite and thus to change the morphology of the opera in order to make it more appropriate for the concert.
Absent from the official catalogue of the composer’s works, this unfinished suite has never been the subject of any research until now, and it is at best briefly mentioned in the musicological writings devoted to Prokofiev. Exiled in the United Sates, why did he show any interest in Brioussov’s novel? How did he conceive his suite? What cuts did he have to make in the libretto? What problems did he face? These questions deserve to be answered.

Abstract

The city of Timişoara is located to the Southwest of Romania, in the Banat region. Secession architecture of Timişoara can be followed through the history of its urban development in the late 19th century until the 1930s. Its Secession architecture concerns industrial, commercial or public objectives as well as residential palaces or cultural, educational and religious buildings.
In the architecture of Banat zone two Secession trends have emerged. Under the functionalist influence of Vienna, many buildings have applied a more sober geometric decoration. Other buildings have used a more luxurious and curvilinear elements with symbolic or purely decorative values. Some buildings have mixed elements taken from the Romanian and Hungarian traditional arts, creating an original Secession architecture, also encountered in other cities from Central and Western Romania. The symbols used in the Secession architecture of Timişoara were drawn from the European repertoire: floral, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and mythological motifs, plants, the anchor, the peacock, the nave of a ship, antique feminine characters, caryatids, the cornucopia, the tree of life etc.

Key words:
symbolism, expressionism, Art nouveau, Secession, architecture, semiotics, urban planning

Résumé


La ville de Timişoara est située au sud-ouest de la Roumanie, dans la région du Banat. L’architecture Sécession de Timişoara peut être suivie à travers l’histoire de son développement urbain à la fin du XIXe siècle jusqu’en 1930. Son architecture Sécession comprend des objectifs industriels, commerciaux et d’utilité publique aussi bien que des palais résidentiels et des édifices culturels, éducationnels ou religieux. L’architecture Sécession de la zone de Banat s’est développée dans deux directions. Sous l’influence fonctionnaliste de Vienne, de nombreux immeubles ont abordé une décoration géométrique plus sobre. D’autres édifices ont utilisé des éléments plus luxurieux et curvilignes aux valeurs symboliques ou purement décoratives. Quelques bâtiments ont mélangé dans leur architecture des éléments repris dans l’art traditionnel de Banat et de Hongrie, donnant naissance à un style Sécession original, qui se retrouve dans d’autres villes de la partie centrale et d’ouest de Roumanie. Les symboles utilisés dans l’architecture Sécession de Timişoara ont été puisés dans le répertoire européen du courant : des motifs floraux, zoomorphiques, anthropomorphiques et mythologiques, plantes, ancre, paons, la nef d’un bateau, personnages féminins antiques, caryatides, la corne d’abondance, l’arbre de vie, etc.

Mots clé :
symbolisme, expressionnisme, Art nouveau, Sécession, architecture, sémiotique, urbanisme

Depuis longtemps introuvables, les Esquisses vénitiennes font pendant à la Vie vénitienne, régulièrement réimprimée, du quotidien d'un Français à Venise au début du XX ème siècle. Petits tableau, tantôt réalistes, tantôt fantastiques, sans autre prétention que celle de suspendre des instants ou des circonstances privilégiés par la mémoire, tantôt réalistes, tantôt fantastiques, les esquisses de cet écrivain issu du Symbolisme forment un chapelet d'impressions variées, vives et mélancoliques, reflet d'une époque où les irisations ne jouaient pas dans une flaque d'essence mais sur les flacs d'un vase de Gallé.

Examina a relação entre a pomba e a serpente/dragão como leitmotiv de uma cosmologia cíclica que orienta as narrativas bíblicas entre a criação do mundo e o baptismo de Cristo. Aborda a relação entre textos canónicos cristãos e as suas reelaborações na tradição popular, incluindo arte sacra.

The main purpose of this article is to make a comparative interpretation of petroglyphs and rock paintings and to try to date them considering many criteria. Anatolian geography has always been the focal point with its historical culture and inventory. However, there is not much research on this subject in this geography, which is very rich in petroglyph and rock paintings. There are many similar petroglyphs and rock paintings in neighboring regions of Anatolia (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Nakhchivan). Mostly all dating and evaluations are interpreted according to their typological similarities with other geographies. In this article, we will try to create some analyzes and hypotheses from both the Anatolian and other geographies and using our data.

The Bulletin of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts.  Journal of Eastern Studies  / ed. E. Kotlyar. – Kharkiv: The Center for Eastern Studies of KSADA, 2010. – # 8 (Vol. 3:  Jewish Art and the Ukrainian Context: Horizons of Traditional Artistic Culture). – 360 p.
Вісник Харківської державної академії дизайну і мистецтв. Сходознавчі студії / Упор. Є. Котляр. – Харків: Центр сходознавства ХДАДМ, 2010. – № 8 (Вип. 3: Єврейське мистецтво і український контекст. Обрії традиційної художньої культури). – 360 с.
The Center for Eastern Studies at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts (KSADA) presents the Third Volume of Eastern Studies, a special issue of the Bulletin of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. This is the first time that an entire issue of a Ukrainian academic journal is devoted to Jewish art. The present volume deals with topics of traditional art and culture; the Fourth Volume will present current research findings in Art Judaica and work of Jewish artists beyond the scope of tradition. The two volumes’ special focus, “Jewish Art and the Ukrainian Context,” has attracted numerous submissions by scholars from Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Israel, the U.S., and Canada. The essays included in our collection are evidence of considerable international interest in Jewish art and cultural heritage that are in some way directly or indirectly bound up with Ukraine.
In setting ourselves the goal of bringing together in the Ukrainian academic field both native and overseas researchers of Art Judaica, we hardly expected to see such a thematically diverse spectrum of material submitted for publication. To introduce it to the general academic reader, we want to note that Jewish art on Ukrainian soil has been marked by extraordinary achievements, masterworks, and names which have become a part of not only Jewish, but also world art culture. Traces of antiquity and the Middle Ages, influences of the Rec’ Pospolita and of three world empires – Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman – as well as of other countries and states, made Jewish culture in this region inimitably variegated. This culture took on a shape all its own, manifesting itself in a variety of temporal and cultural milieus. The universe of the Eastern European Jewish shtetl produced a cultural environment that brought to life astounding works of Ashkenazi Jewish art, including wooden and stone “defense”-style synagogue architecture and ritual objects made of stone, clay, metal, wood, and textiles, which served in the Jews’ daily round and ritual. The architectural and object surroundings of the former Jewish shtetls along with the graves of the Chasidic masters (the Zaddiks), sites of mass pilgrimage by Chasidim from all over the world, by their power of mass attraction today constitute a historical landscape in their own right.
The traditional artistic universe of the Pale of Jewish Settlement, discovered by Shimon An-sky, became, in the art historian Abram Efros’ phrase, an “Aladdin’s lamp,” a source of living inspiration for the Jewish avant-garde tearing beyond the limits of the ghetto and leading forth into the world open artists such as Chagall, Lissitzky, Ryback, and dozens of others who set the fashion and the shape of world modernism. In addition, the artistic heritage of the Crimean Jews and Karaites reflected the coalescence of cultural Jewish elements with the Turkic-Tatar world. These phenomena are making a comeback today, after having sustained varying levels of loss due to the wars and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Contemporary Art Judaica in many ways is a turn to addressing this world, simultaneously combining evolved national forms and novel ideas with the universal objectives of art.
World academic forums and periodicals devoted to Judaica and Jewish art have long been working to introduce Eastern European Jewish Studies, as well as Jewish Ukrainian cultural discourse, into the scholarly context of today.
In bringing this discipline into the foreground, we are, in effect, conveying to the reader the collective art historical research of the very phenomenon of Ukraino-Judaica, as it was capaciously labeled by the well known ukrainist Marten Feller. This phenomenon has in many ways determined the cultural diversity of Ukraine, especially Ukraine’s Western regions, lending them a peculiar image of their own; it also conditioned the mutual integration of the Ukrainian context with the European and world cultural and hermeneutic space.
This volume includes articles on Jewish ritual objects and traditional art, historical-artistic heritage and collections of decorative and applied craft works.
We are grateful to colleagues at the Center for Eastern Studies, and to Ukrainian, Russian, and overseas researchers for their participation in preparing this volume. Special thanks to Elen Rochlin (Jerusalem) and Bogdana Pinchevskaya (Kyiv) for their translations of materials included in the present volume, as well as to Oleg Koval and Konstantin Bondar (Kharkіv) and Gregory Kotlyar (New York) for their academic and logistical support for the appearance of the present collection in print.
We hope that the publication of this collection will not only prove of interest for specialists and the public concerned with landmarks of traditional Jewish culture in Ukraine, but that it will also attract the attention of those responsible for the preservation of Ukraine’s multinational heritage. This is a priceless resource for future generations and the development of modern tourist and pilgrimage infrastructures, where the Jewish urban historical heritage, and, especially, the heritage of the shtetls, occupies a niche all its own.

The Grolier Codex (Codice Maya de Mexico, CMM) is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

As usual since the first edition VICENTE, Mário Caeiro’s text establishes the bridge between the authors’ different perspectives, exploring the implicit insight in this year’s theme: ‘On the silence of the Crows, Animal Vicente’. Among the proposed articulations one is to be highlighted: the message of (Saint) Vincent will only make sense if, today, we conscientiously integrate the animal in our lives without subordinating it to the logic of control and utilitarianism. If the animal is constantly present in our discourses and languages, in our daily life symbols, in our emotional behaviours and naturally in our meals, we need to morally ask how we can read the silence of these and other creatures of God. In the text the reader is confronted with animal manifestations in symbols and myths, traditions and fairy tales, literature and contemporary ecosophy.

In 'Vicente '17 – Do Silêncio dos Corvos, Animal Vicente / Vicente '17 – Of the Silence of the Crows, Animal Vicente /

ISBN 978-989-8277-56-5

Como habitualmente desde a primeira edição do VICENTE, o texto de Mário Caeiro estabelece pontes entre as perspectivas enunciadas pelos restantes autores, explorando o insight implícito no tema deste ano: ‘Do silêncio dos Corvos, Animal Vicente’. Entre as articulações propostas, destaque para uma essencial: a mensagem de (São) Vicente só fará sentido se, hoje, integrarmos conscientemente o animal nas nossas vidas, não o subjugando à óptica do utilitarismo e do controlo. Pois que se o animal é uma constante dos nossos discursos e da nossa linguagem, dos nossos símbolos mais quotidianos, dos nossos hábitos afectivos e naturalmente até da nossa alimentação, há que colocar-se a questão ética de como podemos ler o silêncio destas outras criaturas de deus. O texto evoca figurações animais em símbolos e mitos, tradições e contos de fadas, na literatura e na ecosofia contemporânea.

Nell'ambito delle attività didattica del corso di laurea magistrale in Storia dell'arte gli studenti dell'insegnamento di Storia della critica d'arte contemporanea propongono alcune riflessioni sulla critica militante in Francia nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento, con particolare riguardo alle ricerche degli artisti in ambito realista, impressionista e simbolista.

Une histoire globale des avant-gardes picturales se doit d’expliquer pourquoi celles-ci apparurent en certains endroits et pas en d’autres, comment elles circulaient entre les pays et les capitales, ce qui les portait et si elles rompaient réellement avec leur temps, sachant que la plupart finirent par connaître une véritable canonisation.
Les avant-gardes lièrent leur sort au développement des journaux et des revues, c’est-à-dire à celui des techniques d’impression et de reproduction en série. Elles profitèrent également d’un vaste mouvement de circulation des idées, des hommes et des objets avec le développement des réseaux ferrés et des transports maritimes.
Dans le même temps se forgeaient les identités nationales, férues de tradition et de préservation des cultures. L’approche géopolitique met au jour ce processus par lequel les plasticiens novateurs recoururent à la référence étrangère pour s’opposer aux institutions nationales, travaillèrent à internationaliser leurs réputations pour mieux s’imposer contre le refus de l’innovation porté par le nationalisme, ou, au contraire, se laisser récupérer par des partis nationalistes et révolutionnaires.
Mais à côté des stratégies, réseaux et marchés, place est faite à l’analyse du contexte culturel et moral, économique et politique, matériel et social, affectif et spirituel des artistes des avant-gardes à partir de 1848. Jusqu’à la rupture de 1920, quand ces avant-gardes deviennent politiques, plaçant l’avenir de l’art dans celui de la Révolution.

The first section of this essay deals with an iconographical analysis of Lavinia Fontana's (1552-1614) Prudence or Personification of Wisdom of 1590, while the second part provides an iconological interpretation, demonstrating Fontana's application of emblematic significations. This painting is presently on display at the Galerie Maison d'Art in Monte Carlo. At this time there is lack of knowledge about the patronage of this commission, except from the art gallery's records showing that it acquired the painting from a private collection in New York. 1

Ecourile simboliste în sculptura româneascã, desi efemere, au reusit sã zdruncine conceptia academicã încã dominantã la începutul secolului XX si sã promoveze o esteticã a intimitãtii si a sentimentului.
Spre deosebire de tãrile vecine, noua sculpturã – impregnatã deopotrivã de estetica rodinianã si de cea münchenezã, de facturã Secession – nu si-a propus sã revolutioneze mediul artistic al vremii, majoritatea sculptorilor români optînd pentru acest nou limbaj mai degrabã în cãutãrile lor personale.

The labyrinth set into the floor of Chartres cathedral measures almost thirteen meters across. It is the single largest decorative item in the building, larger than the rose windows and larger than the sculptured doors. In many churches the prelates placed them in prominent positions as testaments to their faith, but it took the eighteenth century to recognise their essentially pagan origins. They destroyed many of them: at Reims, Sens, Arras, Auxerre and St. Omer, and in the next century at Amiens and Caen. Yet would the Middle Ages have used a pagan motif without ensuring that it had a Christian message? And would they have given it such prominence in the centre of the nave if its Christian qualities had not superseded its pagan ones? I feel that after the sacred relics and the cathedral building itself, the labyrinth was the most
meaningful cult-object of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its sacred nature is indicated by the names given it throughout Europe of 'Chemin de Jérusalem', 'Iherusalem' and 'City of God'.

« Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect: The Universal Algebra of Culture », Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-28.

The paper questions the meaning and significance of Whitehead's theory of symbolism from the perspective of (i) Whitehead's philosophical development, of (ii) the argument provided in Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect (1927), and of (iii) the history of ideas. The argument follows the general structure of the Symbolism lectures: first, the topic is introduced; second, it is analyzed through an ontological lens; third, the uses of symbolism are consequently sketched. Our discussion departs from Whitehead's in this third part, that introduces a humanistic standpoint through five conceptual knots: the distinction between the early (High) and the late (Low) Renaissance, the underground survival of the High Renaissance's values (with Is. Newton and J. Toland), Pantheism (a.k.a. Nature Enthusiasm), Republicanism (or Civic Humanism) and Freemasonry (qua Discrete Fraternity). In conclusion, Whitehead's underground inclination for modernity is underlined.

The essay demonstrates that in Italy, a famous statue of Juno Ludovisi appeared to Goethe to be a direct embodiment of his theory of symbol. The role of J.J. Bodmer's poetical studies for that theory's development is especially emphasised, along with that of Winckelmann's theory of fine arts. Goethe ascribed to the statue a particular significance for his whole life and yet left no theoretical commentary on his opinion. Nevertheless, at the beginning of his alliance with Schiller, the statue's theoretical evidence served him as a decisive argument during their esthetical debates, and so efficiently that Schiller's starting conception was radically transformed. The close examination of biographic material and of Schiller's Letters 13-15 Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen allows reading the 15 th Letter as Goethe's accomplished " theory of Juno ". The date when the Letter was composed can be now precisely stated.

Durant la période symboliste, l'image de le femme revêt de nombreux aspects chez les peintres et poètes. L'une des facettes de cette iconographie consiste en une diabolisation qui érige la femme charnelle en déesse du matérialisme, figure d'une "animalité" baudelairienne opposée à l'idéalisme des artistes. La femme sphinge et ses déclinaisons incarnent alors cette femme-animal qui menace la créativité idéale. Aux yeux des symbolistes, l'art matérialiste relève, à son tour, d'une animalité, celle des "formes sans esprit" invoquées par Adrien Remacle, des Fauves du Salon d'automne de 1905 ou de la supercherie du manifeste excessiviste du salon des indépendants de 1910 : un tableau peint par la queue de l'âne Boronali.

Ich stehe im Bann verträumter Bäume
Grafiker und Priester, Priester und Grafiker Ernst Hrabal

Ernst Hrabal (1886-1969), gehört zur Generation der Künstler, die einen neuen Geist in die tschechische bildende Kunst brachten. Die Kunst befreite sich vom national-patriotischem Streben und Gefühlen des 19. Jh. und fügte sich in den europäischen Kontext ein. Dieser Internationalismus machte sich schon am ende der neunziger Jahre des 19. Jh. im Symbolismus und der Sezessionsbewegung bemerkbar, welche die Frühfase der modernen Kunst vorzeichneten. Die philosophischen Probleme der Existenz, der Welt und des Lebens, wurden erneut um die unerforschbare Dimension des Geheimen bereichert. Das Bewusstsein der Unerforschbarkeit der Welt, brachte auch die Restauration des Katolizismus, belebte den Mystizismus, die Interesse am Okkultismus. Mit der Veränderung der Zeitempfindung änderte sich auch die Beziehung des Künstlers zur Gesellschaft. Er interessierte sich nicht mehr ums Äußerliche, sondern wurde wahrer Interpret seiner Erlebnisse, die er in ungewohnter Form ausdrückte, oft im Widerspruch mit den üblichen ästhetischen Konventionen. Aus dieser Sicht war der Symbolismus am ende des 19. und Anfang des 20. Jh, der sich in der Kunst (zum Beispiel die Gruppe Sursum, Josef Váchal, Jan Konůpek, František Kobliha und weitere) wie auch schon früher in der Literatur und Musik widerspiegelte, eine Tendenz, welche den Beginn der modernen Kunst andeutete. Hrabal gehört zwar nicht zu den Künstlern, deren Werk ein Produkt moderner Kunst ist, hier steht er etwas abseits, aber in der Berührung mit der Sezession ( in den Anfängen seines Schaffens, in der Zeit seines ersten Studienaufenthaltes in Wien) und vor allem ein starker Symbolismus und Expressionismus, durchdringt sein ganzes, insbesondere grafische und zeichnerische Werk. Auch wenn er sich auch hier, vorwiegend wegen seiner, durch den Beruf geprägten geistigen Orientierung, unterscheidet.

Auf gewisse Art ist Hrabal´s Werk thematisch, wie auch geistig mit der mittelalterlichen Donauschule verwandt (süddeutsche und österreichische Kunst am Anfang des 16. Jh. – zum Beispiel  Albecht Altdorfer, Martin Schongauer), beeinflusst vom deutschen und tschechischen - böhmischen  Symbolismus, wobei es vollends seine Selbstbeständigkeit und Originalität behält. In gewisser Hinsicht bildet es eine Parallele zum grafischen Werk zum Beispiel von Frantisek Bílek, Josef Vachal oder Bohuslav Reynek.