Fügedi Márta: Állatábrázolások a magyar népművészetben (Officina Musei 1. Miskolc, 1993)

Representation of animals in the hungarian folk art (summary)

extent, the symbols and the time-, and space-perception implied in them have preserved the Asian primitivity and objectivity. The partial transformation in the elements of content is due to the aquisition of knowledge on the universan truths accepted in the European culture, and the survival of formal characteristics is attributable to the unalterable internal laws living in the Hungarian soul". „Folk art, folk poetry, folk musik live together in the soul of village people, just we, townspeople set them apart." The foreign trends of structuralism and semiotics recruited a significal number of followers, these ideas were gaining many adherents in the past few decades. In the frame of the Hungarian research works of semiotic aspects, several studies were made on the explanation of certain motifs appearing in the Hungarian popular art. Mihály Hoppal, for example, aroused a professional debate by interpreting the fish as a sexual symbol, and with his study focusing on the representation of heart and tulip as sexual symbols on love-gifts. This study has the objective to investigate a specific group of motifs being present in the Hungarian folk art: the representation of animals. The Hungarian folk art, in its world of decorations, primarily applies plant ornaments. The figurai depictions, the human and animal forms are, of course, in minority in comparison to the flower ornament, but their significance cannot be disregarded. Through the analysis and revealing of the representation of animal forms, the characteristics of their depictions with regard to the theme and composition having a very rich cultural historical background and showing general characteristic features concerning the space-, and time-perception, we can get coloser to becoming aquinted with the Hungarian folk art. The age and origin of animal forms used in the Hungarian popular art show great differences, the depictions are primarily consist of the conventional pictures of real animals, fantasy animals occur very rarely. I set as an aim to analyse the most typical animal forms applied in the Hungarian folk art. Two aspects were used to carry out my investigations. I aspired to outline the cultural historical background for the specific animal motifs as they appear in the art, since all these may help me to reveal the features of a motif considering its semantic development and typical ways of representation as well as to show the préfigurations of animal forms applied in the folk art. I was searching for the most typical social, economic and coltural cire urn strances which may have played significant intermediating role in the spread of the motifs. In my study I aimed at - to give a descriptive survey on the occurrence of animal motifs appearing among the different ornaments used in the folk art. In the course of my work I strove to unveil and demonstrate the most typical types of composition and schemes of representation. I payed special heed to the differentiation of art genres in the application of certain animal motifs. I tried to follow the processes how the typical traditional composition schemes have decomposed, the préfigurations have eclipsed, I strove to reveal the characteristic signs of changes the motifs have ungergone and also the develompent of the eventual local variations, interpretations. I analysed only those animal forms depicted in the Hungarian folk art, the occurrence of which is considered to be significant, and generalizable conclusions can be drawn when investigating the ways of representation. Therefore I did not deal with those animal motifs which are present in the ornamentation appearing in the Hungarian folk art, but