2024.1/2

The present paper means to highlight the charitable activitiy of an outstanding Russian singer of the early 19th–20th centuries activity of Leonida Sobinov, an outstanding Russian singerin the help of students of Imperial Moscow University. The article is based on archival documents from Foundation No. 864 of The Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Indeed, for many years the outstanding Russian singer give regular concerts to donate the money to low-income students, however this Sobinov's activity remains without due attention. The author is based on the methodology of historical analysis as well as on the methodology of art criticism analysis of the archival documents related to the charitable activity of Sobinov.

The article attempts to reconstruct Pushkin's understanding of the phenomenon of creativity. This phenomenon is analyzed using the method of culturalogical reconstruction. From this perspective, the phenomenon of creativity is seen through the prism of the coordinates of the poet's spiritual world, including: 1) the dichotomy of the profane and sacred principles; 2) the dichotomy of light and dark plans of life and destiny; 3) the ratio of domestic and borrowed narratives; 4) the dichotomy of earthly love and heavenly love. It is shown that A.S. Pushkin is aware that creativity has a certain onto-epistemological and ethical-aesthetic structure that is relevant to the original creative impulses. It is also concluded that the search for the "image of the Whole" crowns the entire creative process, which thematically extends from the relationship between God and man — to creativity itself.

This article presents an overview of the most significant facts and factors in the life and work of Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich – a Russian writer, philosopher, researcher, who managed to impress his contemporaries with the spiritual strength of his personality, moral purity, integrity of worldview and creative energy. He left a rich epistolary legacy, which allows us to see the intellectual history of Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. The article presents the concept of the atmosphere in the Moscow Stankevich circle, which included prominent people of Russian culture of the nineteenth century: Annenkov, Belinsky, Herzen, Granovsky, Dobrolyubov, Ogarev, etc., which became a kind of "clot of cultural and historical air, which formed the essence of the "people of the forties" (G.S. Knabe).

The article focuses on the main categories in considering Stankevich's reflections a connoisseur of art and the metaphysics of music in his work: inner voice, perception of music, sound, melodism, rhythm, intonation, opera, theater, musical enlightenment, etc. The creative atmosphere created by Stankevich in the circle, his worldview, his philosophizing about art, literature and music and today, in the 21st century, in Russia, when the process of comprehending the creative activity of Russian "visionaries" is underway, these are important semantic milestones in the study of Russian culture and art. The inclusion of this dynamic process of perception of art by "high–grade amateurs" in the 19th century is an important milestone in the overall picture, as the origins of the formation and development of Russian spiritual culture and science.

Stankevich's experience, which has become a unique practice of forming a specific person's consciousness, worldview, and perception of art, is a new, little–studied phenomenon that stimulates research interest and opens up the possibilities of comparative methodology. Awareness of such a phenomenon makes it possible to clarify and detail general patterns in the development of scientific understanding of the significance of his work in Russian humanitarian thought in history, philosophy, cultural studies and musicology.

The article focuses on the aesthetic category of the ugly in art and discusses its evolution. In particular, key issues concerning the category are being investigated: distinguishing between the concepts "disformed", "ugly" and "disgusting"; analysing the correlations between the category under discussion and the category of beauty; describing the existing category criteria. The review analyses the state of the category in every epoch successively, from the Ancient times to the current state. Moreover, it singles out the major features used to identify the category. The results of the analysis reveal the growing popularity of the category in modern and contemporary art. In conclusion, the authors propose several research issues for further investigation.

The article deals with new objectivity and the item world as viewed by artists. The reader is shown semiotic properties and role of things in the painting of the Weimar Republic created by the artists, whose belonging to new objectivity does speak for itself about the attitude towards the image of things and the interpretation of the physic world. The article consistently examines portraits and stilllifes by O. Dix, G. Gross, G. Scholz, M. Beckmann, K. Schad, A. Kanold and others. That is, paintings in which an inanimate object of the visible world is used as a means of realistic depiction of reality, an attribute or symbolic element, and also as a quotation that reveals the meaning of the image through an appeal to traditional images of the art of old masters. In the course of examining these painting the author identifies several basic principles of the attitude towards things throughout the history of its existence and their transformation in the works of the interwar era. In conclusion the author notes that after the revolutionary changes in depicting the visible world, perfected by avant-garde art, the new objectivity, returning things to their material essence, and regards this process to be its own new meanings, only emphasizing the metaphysical nature of a human's relationship with reality.

This article focuses on Productivism — a key point in the process of collision and convergence of different artistic styles in 1920s Russia — and examines how artistic styles participated in the formation of socialist artistic styles at different levels. Productivism dissolved the barrier between art and the system focuses on and allowed for avant-garde and Bolshevik visions of the future society as a whole, at the level of reality.

Within the theoretical framework of Total art, production became the highest common denominator, embodying the shared vision and modernizing imagination of a country or even an entire society with regard to the future. This approach allows us to observe the profound interplay of various forces and factors, while maintaining a sufficient distance and vigilance towards a developmental and teleological view of history.

The research conducted in this article shows that from a social perspective, the overall landscape of socialist art formation is not monopolized by politics, and that various heterogeneous elements meet and combine within a broader socialist culture.

The research object within the framework of this article is the works of easel and monumental painting by Minas Avetisyan. The subject of the research is the artistic construction regularities of plots, themes, images of this painting in specific spatial, linear-rhythmic and light-tonal peculiarities. The aim is to determine the formal and substantive essence of Avetisyan's style in the circumstances of its formation and impact on his contemporaries, which continues to this day. In the formation of the style, the influence of the medieval frescoes and manuscripts traditions and Martiros Saryan's personal innovations, in which the fascination with French Fauvism was sublimated, is emphasised. It follows the traditions traditions and the innovations that the artist's evolution is traced, as well as the expression metamorphosis of patriotic, religious and philosophical themes in Armenian painting in the 20th century.

The comparison of the images on differently dated paintings is carried out in the methodology of semantic and formal-compositional analysis. As a comparison result, it is concluded that Minas Avetisyan's style is characterised by the modelling of simplified, expressively stylised forms in sharp light-tonal contrasts, saturated with epic drama <...>. First and foremost, it demonstrates national world-understanding stable priorities; secondly, of the supranational humanistic world-understanding. It is shown that Avetisyan's exceptional aesthetic sensitivity and outstanding scale of personality allowed him to organically combine the former and the latter, to become a kind of guide-educator for a multitude of inquisitive, truth-seeking viewers, to contribute to the fact that the various arts of Armenia are recognised almost immediately all over the world, and are perceived as an integral iconographic and symbolic-associative phenomenon.

The article explores the history of the formation and development of the cultural heritage monument with regional significance known as "Fili-Kuntsevo Estate", as well as the adjacent formal and landscape garden territories and former homesteads. The publication touches upon the history of the owners of "Fili-Kuntsevo Estate", of the period from the late 17th century to up to 1917. The article also explores the history of the park and the main estate house in the Soviet period, as well as their modern-day condition. The material provides a description of the architectural and landscape and garden ensemble of the Naryshkin estate through different years. Today, the estate building, two outbuildings and the adjacent upper and lower parks with partially preserved staircases, alleys and ponds, are all part of the territory of Fili Park. The article also describes the history and current state of the Moscow city districts "Kuntsevo", "Fili-Davydkovo" and "Filyovsky Park".

Starting from 1689–1690, the territories of the former villages of Kuntsevo (Znamenskoye) and Fili (Pokrovskoye), mentioned in the article, came into possesion of the noble family of Naryshkins, relatives of Tsar Peter I. From the first half of the 18th century, the overall appearance of the Kuntsevo estate and the backyard park began to gradually take shape, its development continuing into the beginning of the 20th century. In 1960, the described territories became part of Moscow. Nowadays, a number of architectural monuments of particular historical importance for Moscow have been preserved in the central area of the park. The material presented in the article allows to study in more detail the history of the 18th century estate near Moscow, viewing it as an example of cultural, historical and architectural monuments, including examples of Russian classicism, Empire style, Naryshkin style (Naryshkin baroque) and Neo-Byzantine style.

The article analyzes the functions of fine art. A brief overview of such functions described in the works of various authors is presented. It is postulated that a historical approach is necessary in the study of the functions of art. It is impossible to make a list of art functions relevant for all times. The functions of art together constitute a complex hierarchical system. As in any such system, the action of system-wide patterns is manifested here. One of such regularities is that the development of systemic inversions is possible in this hierarchy. System inversion is a form of relations in a system in which some lower, subordinate element acquires a dominant value in it, while remaining in its former, lower hierarchical position. This is exactly what happens and has happened with the functions of art as historical development progresses. The resolution of system inversions leads to the fact that the previously subordinate function of art is able to really lead the hierarchy. It is also noted that the hierarchy of fine art functions is an open system that must be considered in a general cultural context. As historical development progressed, fine art gave its actual functions to other spheres of human activity, while still retaining these functions for itself. For example, the communicative and informational functions of fine art were transferred to writing, but they were preserved in their original version, however, only as auxiliary. The mimetic function (copying reality) has passed from fine art to photography, but it has also been preserved by fine art. Currently, the leading functions of fine art remain aesthetic and individualizing functions.

The article is devoted to the study of an outstanding example of the Russian artistic avant-garde, a two-sided painting, created by Ivan Kudryashov during his studies in the workshop of Kazimir Malevich in 2nd State Free Art Workshops. The circumstances of its creation are revealed. The entire process of the avant-garde artist's design work on a specific piece is traced, its dating is clarified. In various museum collections in Russia and abroad, blocks of drawings that are directly related to both compositions of a two-sided painting are identified and systematized. The features of Kazimir Malevich's pedagogy aimed at the experimental activity of apprentices are commented on.

Among the gospel stories, the episode with the appearance of the resurrected Christ to Mary Magdalene took a special place, first in the liturgy, and then, in a logical manner, in the complex of accompanying artistic phenomena, which could be groupped under the concept of "the Bible for the illiterate". This exciting scene is found in narrative cycles in the temple scenery, staged in productions of liturgical dramas and urban mysteries, and with the development of easel painting it stands out as a separate plot, which received the Latin name "Noli me tangere" (Don't touch me!).

In Northern Renaissance painting, the iconography of the subject was enriched by a number of features that were consolidated and developed in the art of the 16th–17th centuries. In some works these features were expressed in unexpected forms.

This article presents the characteristic features of the visual interpretation of the plot "Noli me tangere", in particular the interpretation, of the images of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ in Netherlandish painting of the 15th–17th centuries, based on the regional traditions of Germany and the Netherlands.

The article is aimed to reveal the cultural context of a key scene in one of the paintings of Vladimir Mayakovsky's play "The Bug" ("Klop"), written in 1928. As a result of analyze the text of this scene, which is a satirical stylization of one of the stanzas of M.I. Ozhegov's popular romance at that time, and the corresponding musical fragment from the music created by Dmitry Shostakovich for the play, it was revealed that not only the poet used the words of M.I. Ozhegov, but also the composer borrowed the melody of the romance of this peasant songwriter.

The article considers the sea theme as an integral part of the cultural core that defines the features of artistic images by Iraida R. Yusupova, one of the leading representatives of the Moscow school of composition at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. The relationship between the verbally expressed constant foundations of culture and various forms of their realization in the chamber-instrumental works by I. Yusupova (cantatas "And there is no sea anymore, or a new journey of sound" based on the poems of A. Vvedensky, 1998; "Stella Maris" for choir, organ, piano, string group, 2016; "Stella Maris. Prayer of the Sailors" for voice and ensemble, 2017). It is proven that in the cantata "There is no sea anymore, or a new journey of sound", the concept of the sea acquires new semantic shades due to the accentuation of the theme of time in the composition (the introduction of the sound of a working metronome, the voicing of a digital code). Based on the analysis of the cantatas "Stella Maris" and "Stella Maris. Prayer of the Sailors" it is concluded that the axiological significance of the sea theme in the musical texts of the compositions is enhanced by the conceptual convergence of natural and sacred images (the starfish and the Virgin Mary). The author defines compositional techniques that contribute to the creation of spatial sensations (the "echo" technique), the transmission of the dynamics of seascapes (sound-like undulating continuous swings and declines in the piano part, etc.). It is concluded that the range of images associated with marine themes should be attributed to the global concept of "Man-Nature", which is one of the leaders in Yusupova's work. It combines numerous semantic and figurative variants ("Earthly Nature – Heavenly", "Earthly World – Universe"), and also has a variable development in dichotomous images ("Bird in a cage – Bird at liberty", "Calm Sea – Sea storm".).

The article analyzes «Jardin Infinito», a one-at ballet by Nacho Duato, staged in 2010 at the Compania National de danza in honor of Chekhov's 150th anniversary, in the context of the figurative connection with the primary source beyond the plot and expression of Russian culture features. The concept of the ballet is outlined the musical and set design foundations, the features of choreographic structures, and the artistic methods are analyzed under the influence of postmodern aesthetics and in relation to the сhoreographer's personal style. It is noted that Duato identifies Russian culture through the deconstruction of the artistic world of Chekhov, combining semantic, sound and visual allusions, regarding existential issues and the problem of creativity. Direct connection with Chekhov is realized in the musical design through the reference to his notebooks and diaries, using plastic metaphors associated with the sounding text, and more specific allusions to the images of Chekhov's plays, and with number of audio and visual techniques. It is also specified that Duato goes beyond the limits of the Chekhov universe, emphasizing the imagery of the Russian language through the symbolization of the text by staging techniques. In conclusion, the author notes that the problem of the relevance of the Russianness, highlighted by Duato both in the characters and verbal text, and in the ideological understanding of the play, remains controversial, and gives several arguments in support of his opinion.

The problem stated in the scientific article is an issue in the philosophy and psychology of art and is part of the general reasoning about creative thinking in the history of culture. Nevertheless, it reserves the obvious fact of its insufficient elaboration in the field of choreographic art, as well as in the system of dance activity at different stages of cultural and historical time.

The author believes that the task of the anthropological vector of the study of the language of physicality and thinking in dance is not similar to the traditional art criticism analysis. It is solved in completely different ways. The article is based on the methodology of cultural-historical and art criticism analysis of generally accepted scientific definitions and concepts of choreographic art, but builds a new vector in dealing with them.

The author comes to the conclusion that the basis for understanding the subject of choreography is thinking and its connection with the language of physicality in dance. In this regard, anthropological interpretations are another meaning of the quality of choreographic knowledge, which, firstly, allows us to reveal the methodological potential of the Russian school of art criticism from the perspective of modern multifunctional discourse. It is a kind of search for a balance between the physical, mental and sensual components in the language of physicality. Secondly, it allows us to bring to the identification of the specifics of the spatio-temporal organization of dance and to define this connection with thinking as an informative (polysemantic and architectonic) field of ability.

Immersive theatre is a genre that in recent years has been gaining more and more attention from both creative teams and the public. This innovative form of theatre challenges traditional views on performance, offering viewers a unique, vivid experience.

Based on historical and modern examples, in this article we consider various social, cultural and historical aspects and events that have shaped immersive theatre in its modern form. We also study the main provisions put forward by the ideologists of the direction to give an idea of the evolution of immersive theatre and identify the key factors that contributed to its success as a dynamic and innovative form of modern theatre.

The article also examines the trends of immersive theatre, including the integration of new technologies, interdisciplinary cooperation and the creation of performances affecting pressing social and political issues.

The purpose of this article is to analyze immersive theatre in the context of artistic culture, study its history, trace the stages of development and determine prospects.