Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (45.2012)

3.I. Kunev: ty ostrova [From the Island], Sofia : T. Peev, 1909. Photo:
The University of Chicago Kegenstein Ubrary.


4. D. Chernoslav: Kotyhbi na grěxa [Offspring of Sin], Sofia : Gr T.
Paspalev, 1910. Photo: The University of Chicago Kegen stein Ubrary.

called “psychedelic” in the 1960s. Thanatos [Fig. 2]
and Eros, this latter envisioned as pure [Fig. 3] or
impure [Fig. 4], also made their presence feit. The
communist exclusions identified by Matthew Jesse
Jackson (this volume) did not gain control in Bulgaria
until after the 9 September 1944 revolution/coup
d’état (depending on your viewpoint), although, as
we shall see below, the movement that claimed to
speak for workers had its visual voices in pre-War
Bulgaria as well. The Offspring of Sin [Fig. 4] also
references Bulgarian (and Slavic) folklore, specifically
the rusalki, malevolent female water spirits believed
to Iure men to their deaths. Chrysanthemums [Fig. 5]
also shows a merger of form and writing, the lines
of the title mimicking the thread-like petals of the
Howers, while in Snowflakes [Fig. 6] the haunting
ephemerality of the stormy image both references
and réfutés the title, which appears to be either ac-
cumulating or melting.

6 1t is worth noting that the Bulgarian title, Vistrel, literally “a
shot”, but here clearly referring to a shot from a firearm, is
an archaism in Bulgarian, echoing the Russian vystřel (which

The power of smoke pointed to by Kreslins also
appears in Bulgaria during this period, albeit the
variation of expérimentation seems to wane as the
decade progresses. Moreover, the provinces show
themselves more adventurous than the capital. Thus,
in the first édition of the famous Bulgarian writer
Elin FCùFsAshesfromMy Cigarettes [Fig. 7], published
in the western border town of Kjustendil, A. Bozhi-
nov’s illustration has the smoke mix with the title,
while five years later, at the end of the decade and
in Sofia, the capital, P. Morozov’s illustration for the
second édition feels autumnally static [Fig. 8].
Graphie production in Bulgaria during the 1920s,
after the tremendous upheavals of the second de-
cade of the twentieth Century, ran the gamut from
the decoesque art nouveau of Ari Kalûchev’s illus-
tration of Fights in the Forest [Fig. 9] to the austere
- and also political - avant-garde of a Gunshot [Fig.
10].6 The first half of the decade saw experiments
is also the title of a famous short story by Pushkin about
a duel) rather than the more common Bulgarian iystrel.

39