Symbols and elements of the Mezen painting

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Folk crafts are a whole world that combines fiction and reality, poetry and everyday work. So the history of the Mezen painting is closely connected with the life of the northern people who invented it.

The origins of our ancestors' creativity

Along the Mezen River, which flows through the territory of the Komi ASSR and the Arkhangelsk region and flows into the White Sea, peoples have lived since ancient times, accustomed to humble the harsh nature of the majestic and wild nature. The forest shared fur-bearing animals and birds with people, a full-flowing river gave fish. Horses and deer were the best helpers of man in crafts and agriculture. All these images could not but find a place in the Mezen painting.

Encrypted messages

Wooden spinning wheels, baskets, crockery, chests and boxes were painted by Mezen craftsmen. What is interesting about this amazing style? At first glance, samples of Mezen painting appear as a kind of message encoded in dashes, droplets, spirals, curls and dots. Actually the way it is. Not a single line or stroke was depicted in vain, each element has its ownsemantic load. The graphics are restrained, but very expressive. Each drawing is concise and very original, because the artist had the opportunity to combine the details inside it in different ways, there were countless options. This is what captures the viewer Mezen painting.

The elements of the picture fit into four conditional schemes: an ornament in a square, in a rhombus, in an oblique cage and in a triangle. The images inside them represent fruits and grains, cone seeds, fire, sun, guardian symbols, etc.

The main thing among things

The most popular items for painting by local craftsmen were spinning wheels. Graceful and thin, they were entirely carved from wood - birch or spruce with a bent trunk. The surface of the spinning wheel was not primed, red figures were written in brown-golden color, enclosing them in a thin black outline.

Mezen painting: ornaments

The specificity of the pattern on the famous spinning wheels of Mezen artists, art historians call the presence of three meaningful tiers. Each of them represents the worlds - heavenly, earthly and underground. Horses and deer are drawn on the lower tier, birds join them on the average, and the upper tier is filled with images of some birds. Perhaps the presence of horses and deer in the lower tier means that this is a world not only of the living, but also of the dead. Horses among ancient peoples were associated with a funeral cult. The borders of the tiers are horizontal stripes, inside of which there are patterns. The highlight of these patterns is the geometric shapes that distinguish Mezen painting.

Spinning wheelusually signed by artists on both sides. The lines of the tiers on the front and back sides had to match exactly. Thus, the masters achieved three-dimensional perception, which, according to the researchers, likened the image to a kind of tree of life. The plots were different. From the back, they were most often dedicated to everyday scenes from everyday life, while from the front they depicted the majestic and mysterious world of nature. Later, people began to appear in the scenes - figures of horsemen and spinners, strolling gentlemen and ladies.

Echoes of paganism

Scientists suggest that earlier artists did not use a brush, but a chisel. This explains the geometric nature of the ornament. Since ornaments in woodcarving carried the idea of a talisman rather than jewelry, they could express pagan symbolism. Paganism in ancient times formed a culture, determined the rules of man's relationship with nature. The symbols of the Mezen painting had a huge semantic meaning: they were designed to change reality, to magically influence it.

The elements and luminaries were elevated by our ancestors to the rank of deities, it is no wonder that the presence of these signs on ritual objects and household items meant something more than just a drawing pleasing to the eye. How does the Mezen painting represent them?

Elements of painting, which has the value of a talisman

The sun and moon, earth and water, wind and fire in the pagan view are fundamental objects, closely associated with good creative forcesUniverse.

The Significance of the Sun

The sun in the artistic space, the presence of solar signs had the meaning of an amulet. The world-tiers on the spinning wheels of the Mezen painting contained the image of the sun in all three rows. He was depicted as a cross enclosed in a circle. In order to convey the course of the sun across the sky in the figure, a number of circles with a cross inside were connected by smooth diagonal lines, sometimes the impression of a moving sun was achieved using arched spokes inscribed in a circle.

Breadwinner Earth

The earth and seeds were symbols of fertility. Diamonds, triangles and squares, empty inside, denoted plowed land, and the symbol of sown land was dots and ovals placed inside the hollow figures. Sometimes rhombuses and squares were drawn into four or more parts, decorated with various elements in the form of dashes and curlicues. The grains had the form of an almost round small figure or an elongated ellipse, hollow, painted over or divided in the middle by a line. The germinating grain was depicted as a drop, surrounded on both sides by graceful curls. Often in the Mezen painting you can see the image of the earth warmed by the sun and saturated with moisture, with sprouts of seeds - all these graphic signs fit into a skillfully created square or rhombus.

Water element

Water has long been considered the personification of the cleansing and bestowing elements. Not only in ornaments, but also in plot images, there are drops of water scattered around objects. It was customary to depict water as wavyline, curls and feathers. It could also be in the sky filled with moisture, then a wavy line of water curled above a straight horizontal line denoting the firmament, and rain was drawn in the form of vertical or diagonal wavy sticks. If they wanted to convey the intensity of rain flows, they simply drew straight diagonal lines.

Power of wind and fire

The symbolism of the Mezen painting also includes signs of air and fire. These elements mean a lot. Air is akin to the Spirit of God, which laid the foundation for all life, and fire is close in meaning to the Sun. The Mezen craftsmen marked the air with short strokes surrounding the characters. The wind has not always been a friendly element for hunters and farmers. So that it “does not get out of control” and turns from an unbridled destructive force into a subordinate and creative one, the masters depicted it as “caught”: they placed short lines as if put on crossed lines. The image of fire could resemble the drawing of the sun, and sometimes it was indicated by a spiral. The spiral as a symbol is used in many cultures of the world, the double helix expresses the unity of two principles - feminine and masculine.

The Night Lady

The moon is a prototype of a mysterious force that affects the growth of plants (it is no coincidence that there is a lunar calendar in agriculture). Even the night luminary has long been considered the patroness of a woman. In the works of northern carvers and painters, the moon in the form of a sickle is located horizontally, with its horns down. To depict the full moon, under the sicklewrote a cross.

Symbols of flora and fauna

Other significant images of the Mezen painting are trees, birds, moose, horses, deer, snow and cold, which accompanies the life of northern peoples most of the year.

Christmas trees and other trees were traditionally painted by artists: a vertical stick was supplied with strokes-branches, often they were curved in smooth arcs, a tree was always depicted either with roots or growing on the ground. The artist could conditionally depict cold with a vertical line, on which perpendicular short strokes were often strung. And, of course, various snowflakes were in use.

Birds are harbingers of happiness

Birds in folk culture promise we alth and good, are associated with light and good forces. The favorite characters of the Mezen craftsmen are swans and ducks. The swan is associated with the elements of air and water, it was drawn oblong, with a gracefully curved long neck. The duck points to the cult of the sun - she hides the daytime luminary under the ground or in the water at night so that the world order is not disturbed. It was drawn in the form of a slightly elongated circle with a shorter neck loop. The body of the birds was a bright red thick brushstroke with wavy strokes, which generally denoted the tail. In Mezen creations, a duck often coexists with a horse, also associated with the deification of the sun. The horse, according to folklore-pagan ideas, raises the sun in the sky in the morning.

The bird flying over the forest was a sign of the zenith of the day, it spreads its wings luxuriously in smooth zigzags, droplets and curls and resembles a fabulous firebird.

Horses and deer

What are the figures of animals in the Mezen painting? The elements of the pattern are extremely simple: rectangle-torso with powerful convex necks and wave-like curved legs. In the image of horses, manes and tails are sketched with generous strokes. Large branches of antlers distinguish deer. Tiny spirals, dashes, circles, stars are scattered around, thanks to which a feeling of rapid movement is created: animals jump in a whirlwind of snow or dust.

The horse is the main figure in the work of Mezen authors. It has the meaning of a talisman, symbolizes family values, well-being and happiness. The conventionality of the image, as well as the feathers painted on the legs at the bottom, hinted at the unearthly origin of these heroes, who were especially preferred by the Mezen painting. The horse was painted red or hatched with a small lattice, less often the contours were filled with black paint.

Deer or moose represented happiness and the emergence of something new. By touching clouds and clouds with their horns, they can cause rain or a storm. Usually the artist sketched one expressive horn touching the back of the animal.

Synthesis of magic and art

Protective ornaments and patterns were placed on household items to protect their owners from evil spirits that could enter the house along with other people and things. Especially zealously they protected with graphic amulets those utensils that are designed to contain the most valuable goods - grain stores, chests with expensive outfits. Paintings of round and oval objects repeattheir shape. The lid of the tues or the basket is decorated with an ornament in a circle, in the center there may be some kind of plot. The wall is girded with a pattern of segments dividing the image into several levels, on the average - galloping horses, surrounded by solar signs, wind and water designations. Above and below - a multi-element ornament with symbols of fertility.

The dishes were also supplied with protective signs, because it contained what people take into themselves. Spoons and ladle certainly had wavy watermarks. The similarity of the shape of the ladle with the neck of a bird or a horse was emphasized by the craftsmen with the appropriate ornament. In addition, there were symbols of the earth, the moving sun, the image of a duck, a horse.

The eloquent language of color

What else attracts and fascinates the Mezen painting? The colors used by the ancient "designers" amaze with their conciseness and emotional intensity. The main load is, of course, the graphics, which are distinguished by only two colors - red and black. Forming an expressive contrast, they leave no room for other shades of painting as iconic as the art of Mezen painting.

Clay was used to get red ocher. The powder was mixed with resin dissolved in warm water. It was collected from larches. Black paint was prepared from soot, also mixed with resin. Bright red spots bordered by strict black contours are a typical style of the Mezen craftsmen. Drawn with a bird's feather and a dampened tip of a wooden stick.

Today

The ancient craft is still alive today -Souvenirs in the Mezen style are still being made in the Arkhangelsk region. However, the technique of execution is gradually changing: the range of modern tools of the artist is replacing the pen method of drawing. The magical sacred meaning that it was endowed with in the distant times of our ancestors has also left the painting.