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Mills on Art ⁄ Mill of Fortune
The Mill of Fortune, from the “Venetian Coup d’etat” series, 2001.
Created by Nadezhda Zabelina (internet nick Blossoming).
Mixed technique – black ink, collage, helium pen, paintbrush, coloured carton printout.
This series has been created as the graduation work for the Arts and Graphics Faculty.
It is based upon some “Secret Treaty”.
The architecture style and heroes’ clothes come from the 15-16th centuries Venice period. This was the time when the royal power, after a brief period of tolerance and reforms, starts to punish the rebels with the death sentences for any non-catholic religious gatherings. At author’s idea, these oppressions led to the establishment of so-called “Dark Brotherhood”, created by the state and for the state’s higher political interests – and in order to ensure relative religious tolerance.
The Mill of Fortune was thought in the Middle Age to be an example of absolute world order.
Literary sources describe the depiction of the Fortune, the Fortune Garden, Mill of Fortune and especially the Wheel of Fortune (the latter with the wide spectrum of implications, from the solar symbol to the death tool) as very widespread in the medieval and renessaince literature and religious paintings.
This symbol is often used as a universal image of the Cosmic Order (also like ancient Russian representation of ties between “destiny wheel” and “star movement”).
2008.12.10
