Articles

The article is devoted to the study of the multifaceted activities of graduates of Imperial Moscow University: playwrights, writers, publishers, actors, singers, directors, who made an outstanding contribution to the development of Russian artistic culture and Russian theater in the middle and second half of the 18th century.

Based on archival data on the history of Moscow University, "Dramatic Dictionary" (1787) and "Dramatic Album" (1850), as well as several editions of the plays written in the second half of the 18th century, the author represents the wide range of roles that graduates of Moscow University played in the history of the Russian stage.

The author uses a complex approach to studying the materials and uses textual, iconographic and art criticism analysis. This allows for an in-depth studying and describing how significant and complex the contribution of university students and graduates was to the development of theatrical business in Russia. Not only playing, singing and staging were their main activities, but also writing and translating for their university theatre. Due to this the development of domestic theatrical art was enhanced; so was writing drama in the Russian language and translating drama into Russian.

The author concludes that outstanding graduates of Moscow University undertook an intense activity in running the university theatre, which contributed greatly to the formation of professional Russian theater, drama and music, and, generally, to Russian education.

This article approaches the relationship between text and performance not as a universal binary opposition, but as a problem of theatrical structure. It distinguishes between character-centered and type-centered models of organizing the scenic whole. In the former, scenic meaning is constructed through the character as a mediating link between text and stage; in the latter, the determining role is played by the role type, the model of action, and the rules of scenic expression. The main material of the study is drawn from Chinese classical theatre, represented above all by the kunqu tradition. It is shown that role typology here functions not as a classification of characters, but as a basic principle of scenic organization that changes the unit of structure, the mode by which text enters the stage, and the conditions under which individual style becomes manifest. A comparison with emploi in twentieth-century Russian and Soviet theatrical thought makes it possible to clarify the difference between structural levels and to consider actor typology as a universal problem of theatrical art.

The article studies the processes through which modernism was penetrating static Chinese architecture from the second half of the 19th century to the mid-20th century. The process is viewed as a phenomenon foreshadowing the unprecedented economic and cultural leap of the PRC observed in the late 20th century. The study examines two stages of the intensification of modernist trends, which acquired new qualities of development during the socialist period. The first stage (from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th century) is characterized by adopting historicism, eclecticism, and Art Nouveau. These styles were used, on the one hand, to address the urgent problems of early urbanization and, on the other, to synchronize China with the pace of world history. It turned out that images of bygone eras, embodied in the forms of foreign architecture, helped to make sense of China's own present and stimulated the modeling of a promising future.

The second step — the Republican stage (1913–1949) — corresponds to the advancement of the Chinese vector of Eastern Art Deco, driven by both local and foreign architects. Chinese society's conviction in the perfection and completeness of its own architectural art ensured the vital necessity of its systematic renewal. In academic circles, as well as among professionals and general public, the awareness grew of the advisability of introducing Western experience into architectural practice, and the possibility of synthesizing this experience with the unique legacy of authentic Chinese architecture.

In the article, the researcher identified and analyzed in detail the main strategies for working with black colour in St. Petersburg porcelain of the 20th–21st centuries. Porcelain artists actively worked with graphic compositions executed in black. In propaganda porcelain, black was used to write slogans and depict emblems, portraits and decorative elements. It occupied a special place in decorative and fairy-tale compositions.

Sergey Chekhonin created an original version of graphics in porcelain. It has become a source of inspiration for his contemporaries and artists of the following generations. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Georgy Narbut also introduced the use of black silhouettes in porcelain. In the 1960s, graphics on porcelain and the traditions of the "World of Art" once again became relevant. In porcelain of the late 20th–21st centuries, graphics also took its place in author's items, mass products and "reproduction" works.

The conceptual use of black was characteristic of the avant-garde porcelain. The ideas of the avant-garde were developed in the porcelain of the "Thaw" and in contemporary designer porcelain. Porcelain artists of the 21st century — Inna Olevskaya, Mikhail Sorokin, Julia Zhukova, Sergey Rusakov — learned "suprematist lessons" and conducted a consistent "dialogue with the avant-garde".

The porcelain of the "Thaw" offered a decorative use of black (the use of covering, sgraffito technique, the creation of free pictorial compositions, imitation of the effects of drip glazes, the inclusion of black in landscape paintings). It was actively used to create minimalist paintings in the "modern style" and innovative interpretations of ornaments. Decorative use of black color would be continued in designer porcelain of the late 20th–21st centuries.

The author concluded that work with black in St. Petersburg porcelain was consistent and varied. The stylistic features of working with black were determined by the general character of the aesthetics of porcelain art in different periods, the creative individuality of the artists and technical capabilities.

This article offers a medium-centered analysis of the practice of contemporary Russian artist Alexey Belyaev-Gintovt. It demonstrates that the graphic production mode serves as a mechanism for reducing form to a condensed emblem that operates "before the plot": it does not convince with arguments, but rather reinforces recognition and normalizes the proposed order. Drawing on Vilém Flusser's concept of the apparatus, the study interprets the graphic medium as a technical and compositional device that translates cultural quotations into stable mythologemes. The "comic grammar" of a number of works is separately described: the autonomy of the sheet as a panel with a completed replica and the assembly of meanings through the juxtaposition of sheets; repetition and variability are considered as a means of standardizing and serializing visual language. The methodology combines visual-iconographic analysis of serial works with a medium-based analysis of technological procedures and contextualization in discussions of metamodernism and post-Soviet conservative visuality. The scientific novelty lies in shifting the focus from the thematic description of images to an analysis of their action and modes of reproducibility; the practical significance lies in refining the tools for describing graphic apparatus, useful for visual research and curatorial practice.

The article examines the structure of pictures considered as surrealist painting. More specifically, it outlines and prioritizes distinctive features of surrealist paintings. Despite there is a large number of literary sources on surrealism, this topic still remains underdeveloped. To analyse surreal images, a system of motor construction levels developed by the famous psychophysiologist N. A. Bernstein is used. The painting is viewed as a collection of the artist's motor actions. This system consists of a series of levels, each of which includes movements of equal complexity. Taken together, these levels form a hierarchy. Within this hierarchy systemic inversions may develop, in which the lower, subordinate level takes on a dominant role. The combination of these levels is characteristic of every artistic movement, including surrealism. The lower motor levels are almost completely absent in surreal images. The level that ensures the similarity between the depicted and the depicted object is very strong. The next level, which provides operations with topological classes of objects and schematization of their images, gets a specific expression, when the image is subjected to deliberate and purposeful distortion. However, the vector of these distortions is determined by the next motor level. This level is the highest in the hierarchy and performs operations with symbols. The symbolic level of activity manifests itself in a specific way in surrealist paintings. The author demonstrates that this level does not reproduce, but rather simulates dreams and other products of the unconscious, and each image takes on a specific symbolic meaning. Some of these symbols, created by the artist, are concluded to be potentially considered as part of the cultural heritage.

The Image of The Savior Not Made by Hands has always been considered one of the most revered. The search for means of representation identical to the idea of the concept of not-made-by-hands image is a crucial problem from the perspective of semiotics and art history. It is central to forming approaches to the very topic of art, in order to distinguish the spiritual paths of fine art, the key to which is the phenomenon of the Image of The Savior Not Made by Hands.

Several artistic developments are evident in the iconography and pictorial-plastic tendencies of The Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands in Rus'. This is due to the complex process of developing canonical rules, historically linked to the development of the dogma surrounding The Image Not Made by Hands. Clarifying this connection is important for understanding the principles of figurativeness and expressiveness in relation to the stylistic distinctiveness of the Russian iconographic tradition as a whole.

An examination of the stylistic and geographical characteristics of several iconographic centers testifies to the artistic specificity and uniqueness of their figurative-plastic content, and opens up possibilities for interpreting the unity and diversity of the figurative-aesthetic features of sensory contemplation. One such center is Rostov, whose iconography is discussed in the present article.

The historical background, dynamics and specific aspects of the Russian and Eurasian language situation of the Soviet period including language construction, updating of socio-political vocabulary and spontaneous counter processes ranging from the transformation of the Russian vernacular to the transformation of the titular languages of the Soviet republics are the topics of fundamental and applied scientific research. Such research is conducted at a new level of knowledge, taking into account the ambiguous experience (post)Perestroika studies, in which a critical understanding of the cultural specifics of the USSR was perceived as one of the steps towards integrating the post-Soviet space into a global world. The proposed article highlights methodological issues related to the development of this issue in the context of the formation of Russia as a state-civilization with cultural resources designed to form a modern communicative and discursive space in different types of the environment. The relevance of the article is caused by the need to rethink the Soviet and post-Soviet heritage, taking into account global changes in cultural sphere. The authors of the article use a comprehensive methodology based on a selection of empirical linguistic facts characterizing the language of the Soviet era, elements of discourse analysis and content analysis, definitional and contextual analysis. The results of the study are that the linguistic means of labeling the cultural aspect of the Soviet era have been identified in various types of modern institutional discourse broadcast in an open public space: in political, media, marketing and advertising.

The article studies the image of Naples within the humanities paradigm of exploring geographical spaces, following after S. Averintsev, N. Arutyunova, A. Gabrichevsky, S. Gardzonio, G. Kaganov, M. Kagan, S. Neklyudov, N. Tolstaya, V. Toporov, A. Flier, P. Florensky, T. Tsivyan. These scholars approached the question from a historical-cultural perspective and concluded toponymic image to be an element of discourse. Advancing the research in the field, the authors ponder on the concept of "toponymic texts". They claim that in Russian culture the "Italian text" — including the "Neapolitan text" — has generated diverse connotative meanings, and is now being viewed through the prism of the set of all these meanings, thus becoming part of an integral entity. Not infrequently, though, the resultant "text" may come into contradiction with the meanings generated within contemporary Italian culture. The authors exploit cultural analysis to approach stylistic and ideological tendencies observed in modern Italian "Neapolitan texts" (E. Ferrante, R. Saviano, etc.) as compared to the images of the city created by J. W. von Goethe and F. Stendhal, on the one hand, and those of Kingdom of Naples as seen by Russian travelers in the 19th century, primarily based on the correspondence of the Bulgakov brothers, on the other. The image of Naples created in the "Russian Neapolitana" is compared with the works of R. Saviano and E. Ferrante; in this contrastive analysis the image of Naples is viewed as a "myth", considered as a narrative including a plot unfolding in under specific spatio-temporal conditions, which determine the way worldview-shaping mythologemes emerge.

Folk art is an integral and unique part of national art as a form of social consciousness, expressing in artistic form the images of cumulative historical norms of the collective, mythological, and tribal thinking of a people. Currently the interest in folk art is enormous, so a unified theory of folk art, encompassing different aspects of its formation and various interpretations outlined in literature, is to be devised in order to approach this complex cultural and historical phenomenon. However, not all theoretical aspects of folk art assessment have been fully developed. To date, theoretical foundations of artistic content remain insufficiently elaborated. Thus, certain issues regarding interspecific connections of folk art have long used a somewhat narrow interpretation of artistic content, approaching it, for example, in terms of material, processing techniques, or the level of technique perfection (wood carving and painting), which leaves little space for iconographic analysis. There is a lack of literature that comprehensively explores the correspondence of image, the time of objects' existence, and the ideological plans of artistic expression. This issue, in turn, poses a question of historical periodization, which has not yet been elaborated exhaustively and profoundly enough. Additionally, the field observes the lack of a clear correlation between ethnographic and archaeological materials — despite their obvious connection. The evaluation of historiographical content provided in the present research is supposed to be followed by the second part to explore key aspects of general folk art studies.

This article continues its examination of the relationship between subject and object of research in art studies. Revisiting ideas about the object within the context of metaknowledge is particularly relevant given the debate about the crisis of art studies, the constant recourse of researchers to a limited number of works, and the creation of an entire “information field” around them, represented by several concentric “zones of distancing” determined by the quantity and quality of intermediate sources of inferential judgments. In “zone A” the primary source is the immediate object (the work), in “zone B” it is replaced by a judgment about the object, in “zone C” an interpretation of the interpretation occurs.

The situation becomes more complicated in comparative studies, when the subject deals with several objects and is forced to use sources located in different qualitative zones of several information fields that overlap each other.

Attention is drawn to the change in research optics as we distance ourselves from the primary source and replace direct study of the object with reliance on information obtained from indirect sources and often distorted.

As a result, the level of verifiability and reproducibility of research is declining to critical levels. Specific examples demonstrate the “loss of fact” and the emergence of pseudoscientific concepts unsupported by scientific knowledge.

The article approach musicology as a type of literature. Distinguishing between three types of basic contacts the word and music might establish, the author focuses on the historical analysis of the third type, which is the description of the semantics and style of musical works in musicological and critical publications. The article shows that the dictionary describing music uses the same concepts and terms as the ‘dictionary’ of visual arts. It is noted that the simultaneous emergence of stylistic movements in both art forms, which are referred to using the same terms, implies that the authors of the works and critics perceived the concepts of avant-garde and modernism, on the one hand, and neoclassicism, on the other, as the embodiment of the spirit of the epoch, which marked the early 20th century.

Acknowledging the difficulties that arise when describing works of musical art in terms of their content and style, the author illustrates the possibilities of developing the content of musical images using the language of science and criticism through the scientific and critical work of the outstanding composer, musicologist, art historian, and teacher Boris Vladimirovich Asafyev (1884–1949).

The methodology implied in the analysis relies on the principles of integrative art history, considering the terminological interdisciplinary parallelism of the vocabulary of different types of art in the early 20th century through the lenses of social psychology, philosophy, and semiotics.

The author draws the conclusion that, firstly, the task of imagining the subject of musical content can be solved, apparently, on the basis of the principle of integrativity, which is ensured by the systematic nature of art criticism analysis. Secondly, the systematic approach may be achieved by combining the intersubjective semantic connections of a single object of study — art. Thirdly, the systematic nature of art criticism analysis allows for the identification of at least two main historical universals of art development.