The motive of blood in the artistic works

Nebojša, Božinović, Predrag, Đurđević, Anđelković

Glasnik Antropološkog društva Srbije

46

317

323

1820-7936

https://scindeks.ceon.rs/article.aspx?query=ISSID%26and%269345&page=0&so...

2011-2021/11/01/13:42:05

Blood is a specific connective tissue with a liquid intercellular substance where the cells don't have a permanent position. It is consisted of blood plasma and formed cellular elements. The formed elements are the blood cells (erythrocytes and leucocytes) and the cellular fragments platelets (thrombocytes). Blood is a part of a body and it is supposed to have certain magical powers. In almost all traditional cultures blood is considered to be the power of life, its principle as well, and it identified with a genuine life conception (that is why the blood takes an oath, prophesies, cures, protects from evil powers and influence the fertility). Summarizing of the historical, ethnological and anthropological interpretation of blood could be defined with the following formula: blood=power of life=creating=universal cure=life itself. The blood motive was frequently the central part of world art from the prehistory to the pop art. Would Sophocles' tragedies, Shakespeare's plays or Russian classics' epopees be so common in the reading literature of the people of 21st century, if their characters hadn't been signed with their own blood? Blood was the favorite color of the anonymous painter from Altamira, the olden masters Goya and Velasquez but also the contemporary artists De Kirk and Oscar Kokoscha. In the region of former Yugoslavia we were growing up and becoming mature people with Goran Kovacic and Desanka Maksimovic's verses, learning how to love with Branko Miljkovic and Izet Sarajlić; becoming rebels with Živojin Pavlović and Saša Petrović's movies where all of these always had a pungent flavor of warm human blood. Therefore we are obliged not only because of our profession, but also because of the ethical, biomedical and cultural reasons to take care of blood as an existential element. .