Storytelling: Bohomazov in Finland

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Oleksandr Bohomazov (1880-1930) is an acclaimed Ukrainian Avant-Garde artist, educator, and Cubo-Futurist theoretician. The art historian Andrei Nakov has compared him with key futurists Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, and Franz Marc. However, Bohomazov’s talent didn’t go through the melting pots of European art like Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. He was developing exclusively in Kyiv. Bohomazov in fact left Ukraine only three times: to study in Moscow for a year in 1907, for his travels to Finland in 1911 and when he worked in Armenia in 1915.

In this article I will focus on his Finnish trip, since it was de facto the only journey abroad. Though it took place exactly 110 years ago, ironically, this trip was not well-researched until recently. I have recreated the artist's trip in order to identify the locations he painted as well as describe the journey itself. What did he see? What inspired him? What was Finland like at that time? Bohomazov created his ‘Finnish series’ and left an archive of his correspondence from Finland. My research ‘Oleksandr Bohomazov. A Century Later’ is based on these materials as well as on interviews with local museum curators and historians. The project is supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

Read more about Bogomazov in English in the article by Nataliya Teramae for ArtDependence
Bohomazov in Finland: Hints of Color and Distinct Charms of the North

This storytelling project is part of the general presentation of Natalia's research on Bogomazov's Finnish journey with an emphasis on cartography. Designed and implemented specifically for "Local History" in Ukrainian.

"Local History" - Multimedia online platform about the past and present of Ukraine.
localhistory.org.ua

The main concept is to show for the first time the places where Bogomazov visited, to recreate in space and time his stay on the territory of modern Finland. The author identified the paintings to the area where they were painted. It was unknown before.

This project is available at
https://bohomazov.localhistory.org.ua/

in the background is a song that Bogomazov probably admired during the trip. It is from Finnish folklore song. https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kiila/Minor_Musics_Finland/Kiila_-_Runo-song Väinämöinen main character in the national epic Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot. Väinämöinen was described as an old and wise man, and he possessed a potent, magical singing voice. en.wikipedia.org

Process of creation

MAPS:
After determining the total amount of material, 14 positions of the map were singled out, on which stories should be told. The events took place 100 years ago. It was necessary to take into account the administrative-territorial division at that time, the historical names of cities and territories. It was difficult to understand Finnish geography, especially 100 years ago. It took some time.

COLORS:
It was collegiality decided that the color scheme should be based on Bogomazov's works. To do this, I created index colors from his works. With ImageMagick.

Vertical or horisontal images merge
convert index/*.jpg -append index-all.jpg
convert index/*.jpg +append index-all.jpg

Create color index file

convert index-all.jpg -geometry 50x50 -colors 32 -unique-colors -scale 4000% image.shema.jpg

Color shema

IMAGES:
Images for the project were provided by the author, but had to be processed and optimized for publication. Some images had to be created as outline because the photos were not expressive enough.

Some pictures did not reach the final version…

Draft terrain

3D MODEL:
preparation in Blender 2.93:
Ramona Steam boat https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/ramona-steam-boat-040005360e65424eb8095e3ca400ed83
Olavinlinna - Olaf's Castle https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/olavinlinna-olafs-castle-7c5f6a4da3f24ce0b31443b9dd80d743

FRONTEND:
UIkit framework + Custom CSS + Mapbox GL JS
To determine the coordinates, he built a simple tool for himself that shows the center of the map and the zoom. With this tool it is convenient to prepare map positions for different versions (desktop and mobile).

MOBILE VERSION:

DATASETS:
1) Transcultural Empire: Geographic Information System of the 1897 and 1926 General Censuses in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union
Sablin, Ivan; Kuchinskiy, Aleksandr; Korobeinikov, Aleksandr; Mikhaylov, Sergey; Kudinov, Oleg; Kitaeva, Yana; Aleksandrov, Pavel; Zimina, Maria; Zhidkov, Gleb, 2015, "Transcultural Empire: Geographic Information System of the 1897 and 1926 General Censuses in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union", https://doi.org/10.11588/data/10064, heiDATA, V3 https://heidata.uni-heidelberg.de/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.11588/data/10064

2) O'Neill, Kelly, 2016, "Administrative Boundaries of the Russian Empire (1820s): Kingdoms & Grand Duchy", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SKVR2L, Harvard Dataverse, V1

3) Finland shapefile European Environment Information and Observation Network (Eionet) https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/eea-reference-grids-2/gis-files/finland-shapefile

4) Digitale LiDAR-Geländemodelle von Finnland | Digital LiDAR-Terrain Models of Finland https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/dtm-finland?locale=en5) © OpenStreetMap contributors.

TEAM:
Idea and coordination: Alina Broda, Vitaliy Lyaska, Natalia Teramae
Text: Natalia Teramae
Literary editing: Anna-Maria Volosatska
Collage: Galina Andrushkevich-Ardan
Cartography and design: Fedir Gontsa
With the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, 2021.

Thank you for watching!