May Day through the eyes of artists from different eras: from Sabbat to meditation

May Day has a rich history in which many events and beliefs converge. Even in ancient Greece, the goddess Maya was worshiped – the patroness of the earth and fertility. In her honor, the last spring month got its name.

In ancient Greece, in the first days of May, festivities were held in honor of Maya, one of the daughters of Atlas. Ancient Greek myths say that this particular goddess is the mother of Zeus and Hermes. Maya is mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, her images are often found on ancient amphoras. One of these is kept in the Munich Museum of Ancient Art, the drawing was created around 500 BC. e. On it, Maya claps her hands and has fun. The Greeks loved noisy feasts and celebrated May Day on a Dionysian scale. Dionysus, by the way, was not only the god of winemaking, but also of agriculture.

In ancient Rome, the goddess Maya was also revered, her husband was the god of crushing and purifying fire Vulcan. The Flemish artist Bartholomeus Spranger, one of the main representatives of Northern Mannerism, who worked at the Parisian court of Rudolph II, painted mythical heroes on a small, but very frank and somewhat satirical painting “Volcano and Maya” (1575-1580), which is now kept in the Vienna Museum of History art. The Romans were not inferior to the Greeks in separate holidays, but they did not forget to work on May Day.

A goddess named Maya exists in other cultures, for example, in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Celtic mythology. Here it symbolizes magical power and the ability to miraculous transformations, which are also associated with the arrival of spring, when everything blooms and transforms.

It is no coincidence that on the night of April 30 to May 1, Walpurgis Night is celebrated – a witch’s holiday, which dates back to the Scandinavian legend, but is close in meaning to Eastern beliefs.

The mystical holiday was painted by many artists from different countries and eras. Among them are Francisco Goya (he returned to the plot of the witches’ sabbats throughout his life), and Ivan Kramskoy, (the painting “Mermaids” was written based on Nikolai Gogol’s story “May Night, or the Drowned Woman”), and Paul Klee (“Walpurgieva night”, 1935).

And recently, in the summer of 2022, the Komi National Gallery established the authorship of the painting “Walpurgis Night”, which arrived there in 1928 and was previously considered the work of an unknown artist of the 19th century. It turned out that its author is Mikhail Vrubel. In the center of the plot, a young maiden who finds herself at a devilish “party”, the plot echoes the biblical scene about the Last Judgment.

Since the end of the 19th century, May Day has been associated with the struggle of workers for their rights. In 1886, a demonstration began in Chicago’s Haymarket Square: on May 1, workers took to the streets and demanded an eight-hour day and improved working conditions. During the rally, a bomb was thrown at a police detachment, in response, law enforcement officers opened fire on the workers. Several people were killed and more than 50 wounded. After the Haymarket massacre, eight people were arrested, four of them were hanged. In memory of those events, in 1899 the Paris Congress of the Second International declared May 1 the Day of Solidarity of the Workers of the World.

In the Russian Empire, from the end of the 19th century, strikes were also organized on May 1, gathering more and more workers every year. More than 400,000 people took part in the May Day demonstrations of 1912-1914. After the revolution, the holiday became official. And since 1917, May Day began to be celebrated with festive festivities and picnics – May Days, which were also in use in Tsarist Russia, but after the revolution became a mass tradition. All these events were reflected in art, and in Soviet socialist realism, the May festivities became a truly cult plot.

In 1906, Boris Kustodiev painted the painting May Day Demonstration at the Putilov Factory. After 11 years, the artist returned to the plot and painted the famous painting “Bolshevik”, where there are also crowds with red flags, but above them, like the Goyean “Colossus”, the figure of the revolutionary Gulliver will grow.

In Kustodiev’s May Day Demonstration, one can feel the tension and scale, and most importantly, the laconic visual language inherent in the Bolshevik canvas. Later it will be adopted by artists of the “severe style”. However, a few years later, in 1920, Kustodiev again wrote May Day, where the action takes place on the Field of Mars. And here is a completely different charge of emotions – joyful, not angry protest, written in pure realism, without avant-garde “shades”.

In 1928, Alexander Deineka turns to the theme of the First of May – his picture resembles a poster. Black, white and red, combined with clear lines and images of boys preparing the flag for the parade, speak of an avant-garde attraction. A few years later, the dark color will be replaced by light, the performance will become more picturesque and academic. As, for example, in the painting “Stakhanovites” of 1938. The jubilant notes in May Day pictures have been prevalent since the 1930s, when parades are transformed into organized and often theatrical performances. But in them, no, no, and the shadow of repressive time flashes by. Another thing is the thaw.

Flowers, an accordion player, smiling children – Pavel Starostin’s 1960 painting The First of May radiates joy and jubilation. Before us is a classic of post-war socialist realism. The paintings of the same name by Alexander Pushnin, Tatyana Eremina and many other artists were performed in the same major key.

An interesting look at the May Day parade from the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, who in 1955 (after a 20-year break) came to Moscow again and was sincerely amazed by the scope of the holiday. The artist paints a stream of people with bright multi-colored posters, the word river, along which a blue ball “floats” with the inscription “Peace”. This picture contrasts with the works of official domestic artists of the same time on the verge of conventionality.

In modern painting, May Day paintings are not so popular, but they still occur. So, the artist Ilze Rudzite has a completely non-classical approach to the plot, who depicted a woman with a baby in the painting May Day Morning (1984).

The author refers to a plot familiar to the Renaissance: the Madonna on the canvas is beautiful, thoughtful and mysterious. The Soviet holiday becomes a background, turns into a landscape outside the window: only red flags are visible under a clear sky, a crowd of demonstrators remains behind the scenes.

For Edward Vyrzhikovsky, May Day is also part of a quiet rural landscape, where life goes on as usual. And the artist Maria Vedyasova depicts the May Day procession against the backdrop of the temple (work “May Day”, 2016). The focus is on golden domes and nature waking up around. Here the jubilation of the parade is also in the background, at the first exit there is temple silence.

Thus, we observe how the vision of the holiday is changing: from an ancient noisy and cheerful feast or a mystical sabbat to revolutionary intensity, saturated with struggle, flows into mass jubilant demonstrations, then pours out into more meditative plots, where the rumble of the parade becomes the background, and comes to the fore soothing nature.