#nikolay kalmakov

[arthistoryanimalia]

#NationalDayOfTheSeahorse :

Nikolay Kalmakov (Russian, 1873-1955)

Seahorses, 1943

watercolor over pencil on paper

25×19 cm

https://arthive.com/artists/2171~Nikolay_Kalmakov/works/505621~Sea_Horses_1943

[twintailedsiren]

Tritons, Nikolay Kalmakov, 1914. Russian symbolist painter. Via Mutual Art.

I've been on the lookout for two tailed rusalkas after someone asked. While I have a growing list of Ukrainian and russian artists to research more, I haven't found any rusalki in the traditional, fin-to-ear pose, despite the original snake-legged women being from Crimea. I'm going to keep looking, though.

While this painting is called "Tritons," Tritons are usually male, and this two tailed mermaid has breasts. Her curling hair reminds me a bit of the snake-haired Gorgons.

For another work by Kalmakov, see this post.

[blogdemocratesjr]

Leda with the swan (1927) & Moon Goddess by Nikolay Kalmakov

[twintailedsiren]

Amphitrite by Nikolay Kalmakov. Undated. Via Christie’s.

Amphitrite is the ancient Greek goddess of the sea and wife to Poseidon. In ancient art, she’s sometimes shown on the backs of hippocampi, or fish-tailed horses, and occasionally wild a trident. I like this modern take on her, with fish tails. For another work by Kalmakov, see this post.

[blogdemocratesjr]

L'épée enflammée; and Monstre à Queue & L'APPEL MYSTÉRIEUX by Nikolay Kalmakov

[blogdemocratesjr]

LES AMAZONES by Nikolay Kalmakov

The stories spread throughout Hellenic society and every listener—men and women, boys and girls—could understand the message of equality extended to barbarians and even women. Amazon myths and legends offered a vision impossible in Greek society but rumored to exist in a faraway land called Scythia, the Amazon homeland. (p.33)

Significantly, the Amazons were not averse to marriage per se. They proposed a different sort of union based on partnership and parity. (p.55)

Because their dramatic tattoos would not ordinarily be observed by enemies or strangers, Russian archaeologist Sergey Yatsenko suggests that Scythian tattoos were private “spiritual weapons” and magical protectors. (p.114)

—Adrienne Mayor, The Amazons: lives and legends of warrior women across the ancient world

But if the knowledge which we acquired before but was lost by us at birth, and if afterwards by the use of the senses we recovered what we previously knew, will not the process which we call learning be a recovering of the knowledge which is natural to us, and may not this be rightly termed recollection?

—Plato, Phaedo

Thus if you observe a human being now living and ask yourself: Where was his Ego in his previous incarnation? you have to go through the Devachanic world to reach his former incarnation. You must be able to establish which Ego has always belonged to the preceding incarnations of the person in question. You must hold together, in an intricate way, the continuous Ego and the various stages down on the Earth. Mistakes are very possible here and error can very easily occur when looking for an Ego in its earlier bodies. In the higher worlds, therefore, it is not easy to maintain the connection between everything belonging to a human personality and his former incarnations as inscribed in the Akashic Chronicle.

—Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of Luke: Lecture I

[blogdemocratesjr]

The Triumph of Joan of Arc by Nikolay Kalmakov (1930)

The excitement rose higher and higher, and hope and faith along with it; and so from Vaucouleurs wave after wave of this inspiring enthusiasm flowed out over the land, far and wide, invading all the villages and refreshing and revivifying the perishing children of France; and from these villages came people who wanted to see for themselves, hear for themselves; and they did see and hear, and believe. They filled the town; they more than filled it; inns and lodgings were packed, and yet half of the inflow had to go without shelter. And still they came, winter as it was, for when a man’s soul is starving, what does he care for meat and roof so he can but get that nobler hunger fed? Day after day, and still day after day the great tide rose. Domremy was dazed, amazed, stupefied, and said to itself, “Was this world-wonder in our familiar midst all these years and we too dull to see it?” Jean and Pierre went out from the village, stared at and envied like the great and fortunate of the earth, and their progress to Vaucouleurs was like a triumph, all the country-side flocking to see and salute the brothers of one with whom angels had spoken face to face, and into whose hands by command of God they had delivered the destinies of France.

—Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

[blogdemocratesjr]

Odin by Nikolay Kalmakov (1927)

What is associated with the name of Wotan really lies later in time than this epoch when the Druid culture was in its prime. In the orbit of wisdom that points to the divine name of Wotan or Odin we must recognize something that comes over from the East, proceeding in the first place from Mysteries in the proximity of the Black Sea. The spiritual content of these Mysteries flowed from the East towards the West, in the certain “colonizing” Mysteries, emanating from the Black Sea and proceeding westwards, were founded in the most varying ways. … We must imagine the Druid civilization spread out over a great portion of Northern and Central Europe about 3,000 or 3,500 years ago. Men had nothing at all similar to writing. They had only this cosmic writing. Then into all this there spread from the East, to begin with from a Mystery in the region of the Black Sea, what is now contained as an insoluble riddle for the ordinary consciousness in the Norse Mythology, associated with the name of Wotan.

For what is Wotan? The Mystery from which this Wotan culture proceeded was a Mercury Mystery, a Mystery that added to the impulses of Sun and Moon the impulse of Mercury. One might say that that old civilization was there in a sun-and Moon-radiant innocence and simplicity, untouched by what could be told to mankind through the Jupiter impulses. Only away in the East these Jupiter impulses were already present. From thence they now spread, colonizing, towards the West. Wotan-Mercury carried his influence westward.

Here at the same time we have thrown light upon the fact that Wotan is described as the bringer of the Runes, the Runic art of writing. He was the bringer of what man drew forth from himself in the first primitive way of intellectuality as an art of deciphering the universe. This is the very first entry of intellectualism, the Wotan impulse. Thus one might say that the Mercury, the Wotan-nature, was now added to the Sun-and Moon-natures. 

—Rudolf Steiner, Man in the Past, Present, and Future: Lecture IV