The phenomenon of mass culture, consi dered in the scale of “big time”, helps understand the place of mass culture in the history of culture, mainly russian, its relations with folk (traditional) and elite cultures, the transformation’s origins and mechanisms in different cultural and historical periods. Mass culture is investigated in the light of the author’s conception of architecto nic of culture and relativistic cultural studies. This provides an opportunity to reconsider the traditional understanding of mass culture as a phenomenon of the 20th — 21st centuries and to show the relativity of all the concepts that explain the processes of massification and individualization of culture, closely interconnected. The relativistic conception of cultural studies, presented in this article, aims to prove that culture, throughout its history, is multidimensional and internally differentiated. It always tends to individualize (personalize) and mass the values, norms and meanings. Its architectonics includes several levels: the elite, popular, mass, folk, and “forgotten” kinds of culture, the boundaries between which are blurred and uncertain. Between the “floors” of each actual culture, there are social and cultural “elevators”, which make the value status of mass and elite, folk and popular cultures variable, historically conditioned. In some cases in the history of culture, a two-layer “amalgam” can be formed, combining the texts of mass and elite cultures into a single phenomenon, which will show its surface and deep structures to different “slices” of its audience and own a “dual code” connecting metanarrative and ironic discourses and having functional versatility in relation to any cultural “register” and the general context of culture.

The article discusses the new concepts of cultural studies: “virtual reality” and “virtualization of culture”. It should be noted that attempts to understand “virtuality” as another existence and to comprehend it were made even in antiquity. In the 1990s, the concepts of “virtual reality”, “cyberspace”, “virtualization of consciousness”, etc. became fashionable trends, so that today it is hard to imagine the socio-cultural sphere without them. The article has three main sections. The first one analy zes theoretical aspects of the study of virtual reality, which is the object of studies of different humanitarian sciences; however, the priority role in the study of cyberspace as a special social and cultural human environment belongs to cultural studies. They actualized the development of media culture as a phenomenon of the information age. In the second section, the object of analysis is the Internet as a “universal space of free communication” (M. Castells). Of all new media, just the Internet can be considered the “key technology” of communicology and communication studies. The communication between the individual and the Internet, its application in all spheres of human activity, caused the emergence of such concept as “Internet culture”. In the third section, the cyberspace is considered as a new social and cultural environment of modern human. Unlike traditional media, the Internet, as an important factor of the culture of the 21st century, is not only a means of storing and transmitting information, but also a universal platform — a space for social and cultural practice and personal creative activity. 

The article is devoted to the problems of continuity in history and in the russian cultural-historical process. There are discussed the concepts and views, in which preference goes to politics and history in general is politicized. It is stated that russia is characterized by lack of unity in historical and civilizational development, rational element in culture, and cultural isolation, which results in special, often dominant, importance given to radical reformations, revolutionary rifts, breaks of the historical process, lack of continuity in traditions. along with this, a large importance is given to the reforms of Peter the great and to the october revolution of 1917. However, with proper attention to the problems of national culture (which has always been evolving in its own way, but in constant dialogue with other cultures, primarily Euro pean), national psychology, peculiarities of interaction between culture and religion, the cultural-historical process appears in a more holistic form, correcting the common unilateral judgments of our past. The article highlights the subjects, in the national cultural-historical process and the political history of the country, related to the principal moments of formation and development of the cultural policy, relations between the church and the state, arts in the imperial (or synodal) period of russian history.

The protection of traditional culture of indigenous ethnic groups through the mechanisms of intellectual property rights is now prevalent in the world practice. Many countries strive to establish national law systems to protect their traditional knowledge and cultu ral expressions from misappropriation or misuse. The integration of those systems at the international level is provided by the World Intellectual Property organization, WIPo. In russia, this problem is considered in the context of cultural heritage preservation. Traditional culture in this case is understood as an object of intellectual property rights, owned by its native holders. In this sense, the task of identification and description of the objects of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions has its own specifics. There is proposed a series of practical activities to determine the potential of deve lopment of the traditional knowledge and cultural expressions protection system in russia.

The article concerns the analysis of cultural practices, which are considered as a source of formation of the symbolic capital of place. The relevance of the article is determined by the increase of scientific interest, specific for the modern world science, to culture as a resource for territory development and transformation. The article, on the basis of the concept of symbolic capital of place, substantiates the importance of cultural practices, which are able to increase the popularity and recognition of the territory and to ensure its sustainable identity, eventually making the area more attractive to live, work and travel in. On the one hand, the author highlights the specificity of the cultural practices that are included in the process of actualization of the place’s values and thus have an impact on the territorial images, on the representation and perception of the place in the eyes of people. On the other hand, the article emphasizes that, in the growth of the symbolic capital of place, a great significance belongs to the cultural practices that reproduce the authenticity of the place by creating a specific genius of the place and strengthening the territorial identity.

In the past few decades, visitors of various museums, both abroad and in our country, have been studied a lot, in order to better understand who comes to museums. Those studies allowed us to recreate the collective social and cultural portrait of the public, but, in fact, did not bring us closer to an understanding of who goes to museums and why. The main problem is also the existence of communication barriers between the museum and the public. Ensuring the competitiveness of art museum as a subject of leisure industry and enhancing its social role as a cultural institution requires today considerable efforts in audience investigation, with the ultimate goal of increased attendance. The article, on the materials of a concrete sociological study of the audience of visitors of the State Tretyakov gallery, shows how the application of new research approaches, based on econometric methods of analyzing sociological data, can bring the researcher closer to an understanding of some current trends in consumer behavior and attendance factors of an art museum. The study demonstrates that the most important determinants of cultural consumption are the essential characteristics of the audience, associated with the measurement of cultural capital, and the motivations and individual preferences.

Today, more than ever, it is important to talk about the problems and further development of young people, as it is they who are predefined to keep historical responsibility for preservation and development of the national cultural traditions and values, and to integrate, in a civilized and cultural way, the country into the world community. a special role in the socialization of young people is played by reading. However, in the situation of information technologies’ rapid development, commercialization of culture, its fragmentation into many subcultural formations, and radical changes in the communicative behavior of young generation, all institutions of the infrastructure of reading face the uneasy task of rethinking, by necessity, their own functions and activities, and finding new ways to influence young people in order to stimulate their reading activity. Moreover, this work needs to be based on the differentiated approach and use the socio-psychological mechanisms of fashion, as the most dynamic and pervasive cultural phenomenon. Therefore, this article identifies the genesis of youth culture development, considers the relationship between fashion and youth subcultures in the context of reader’s studies, differentiates the concepts of “subculture” and “interpretive community”, and characterizes the most important of them in relation to the reading activities of young people. The article also presents the main results of a study conducted on the basis of the Scientific Library of the South Ural State University in april-May 2017. The results are included in the information block related to the informal characteristics of young people, their belonging to certain subcultures and interpretive communities, the attitude within these groups to reading, and their reading preferences.

This article considers the problem of original as “Terra Incognita” in the cultural history of costume. The starting point here is a special case in the studies of costume theory. It is the cultural matrix of the West European lace — an insufficiently explored question in the context of the problem of prototype and its repetitions. The cultural text, provided by research object, is analyzed from the standpoint of authenticity and continuity of deposits. The study is focused on appeal to the history of Belle Époque. at that time, carefully reproduced renaissance forms and their numerous interpretations were put into active circulation. It is noted that the imitative works of that time can be represented on a conventional scale related to their level of independence. They are replications, interpretations with varying degrees of liberty, and fakes. along with the history of lace, there are studied various kinds of repetitions in other subject areas of costumology. The article identifies the conditions in which inauthentic things can have a certain cultural value, defines their role in the formation of “imitative” costume. The study concludes that special cases, considered from the culturological point of view, can not only extend the event-series of the history of costume, but also serve as the basis for constructing cultural text of the era.

The article examines the historiographic and artistic bases of the “Venetian Myth” and traces the long history of its creation and existence in culture (from the 10th to the 20th century). The process of Venice’s “appropriation” of its ancient (antique) past is analyzed: the city’s humble origin, associated with the process and consequences of the Migration Period. In the chronicle tradition of Venice, it was gradually “offset” through conscious myth-building and creation of art objects serving as visual incarnation of the narrative. not only Saint Mark’s inseparable relationship to the republic became an inherent part of the “Venetian Myth” but also the story of its foundation by the Trojans. after 1204, the line of imperial heritage was developed, and Venice appeared as a new rome. The “Venetian Myth” was gradually supplemented and complicated; its formation was generally complete by the 16th century, in the renaissance. The Myth’s main parts are: the idea of Venice’s unique geographic location (island state), its economy (the richest city of the world, the center of international trade), its form of government (the republic with the most wise political constitution, the reign of public consent) and its cultural significance (the city full of beautiful artworks, the pilgrimage center). after the collapse of the republic (1797) the “Venetian Myth” continued to be a significant cultural ideologeme and was used for illustration and substantiation of some different political concepts. The conclusions of this article can be used in further studies of Venetian history and contribute to more profound understanding of some peculiarities of its art and culture in general.

The article considers the features of P.I. Jurgenson’sentrepreneurial and philanthropic activities, creates the view of spiritual and material bases of his music publishing in the context of Russian musical art. The author examines some facts of his biography, analyzes his epistolary heritage, the correspondence between P.I. Tchaikovsky and P.I. Jurgenson. This is a necessary condition for the analysis of individual creative facets. In the spotlight — the classification of characteristics of his philanthropic activities, which allows to create a holistic view of the motives, aims, sources, destinations and timing of investments in the firm of P.I. Jurgenson, a patron-organizer-leader and gatherer-collector, and to see in this process the scale of cultural life of the era, its content and meaning.

This research is devoted to the study of creative work of the leading representative of San Francisco school of abstract expressionism Richard Diebenkorn (1922—1993). Despite the wide popularity of the artist in the United States, the name of Richard Diebenkorn occurs in Russian art studies episodically, which makes the topic of research relevant. Diebenkorn’s creative path could be divided into three periods: mastering the experience of abstract expressionism (1948—1955), turning to figurative practice (1955—1967) and the “mature period”, associated with the cycle of works “Ocean Park” (1967—1988). The formation of his pictorial language was influenced, at different times, by Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Edward Hopper. Diebenkorn’s creative work is quite diverse and represented by painting, graphics, collages, sculptural objects. This research is focused on the artist’s painting. San Francisco abstract expressionism was less influenced by European modernism and was more focused on the connection with the surrounding nature. Richard Diebenkorn became famous, first of all, as a master of “abstract landscape”. This article studies the abstractionist’s theme of landscape, which was getting various refractions and interpretations at each stage of his artistic biography. In Diebenkorn’s creative works, the landscape changes through the evolution of the artist’s pictorial language. Basing on the experience of previous periods, the artist developed his unique abstract pictorial language in the “Ocean Park”, by means of which he managed to render the light and air environment.

The correlation of external and internal plane of narrative is an attractive, but unsolved task for the theory of text. The interaction between the described events of the real world and the elements of the novel architectonics occurs at the level of the text’s artistic creation, and, at the same time, the reader’s perception, created by the writer. The “internal form” — an idea put forward by J.W. Goethe — is a framework of the whole, but also a function, born by the elements of this whole, perceived in their unity. This artistic structure can be disclosed only with analytical methods, which are postulated by the concept of internal form. Tolstoy, without reference to Goethe, comes to the same conclusion, asserting that the work of every veritable artist aims to convey the feeling experienced by him or her to the perceiving person. His another statement is also synonymous to the idea of internal form by Goethe: the definition of the structure giving itself to know in the hidden constructions of the text — in the “labyrinth of coupling” according to Tolstoy — the only place where the artistic idea of the veritable, by his definition, work of art can be outspoken. Moreover, it appears that even obvious, but unnoticed until now authorial errors, are not perceived as errors exactly because they, firstly, show artistic functionality, i.e. continue the creative work in the text, and, secondly, are strictly organized themselves, as the elements included in the general integrity of the work’s structure. Such methods give the opportunity of accurate modeling of the text that conveys additional senses.

The article deals with topical issues related to religious and cultural processes in the modern world. There is a comparative study of the concepts of local civilizations by N.Y. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A.J. Toynbee. Their views on the essence of religion, its place, role and functions in different civilizational communities are examined. The author singles out the general and special in the views of these thinkers on religion; gives an assessment of the relevance of their theoretical and methodological ideas in modern times. The work reveals the origins, ideological and theoretical foundations and specificity of the civilizational approach to cultural and historical processes in the context of the classical and non-classical paradigms of scientific and humanitarian cognition. There is given a systematic description of early versions of the concepts of local civilizations, from the point of view of their theoretical, methodological and general cultural grounds. The work combines the diachronic approach (analysis of specific ideas and concepts in the context of their chronological sequence and theoretical-methodological continuity) with the synchronic approach (correlation and comparison of concept components as equivalent in logical and theoretical planes).

On certain monuments of toreutics of Luristan and Gilan (provinces of Iran), there are presented some original figures that stand out from the general graphic repertoire. They are all different typologically and contextually, but not numerous. They are not identifiable because of the lack of written sources, and it is difficult to attribute them to any steady group of images, in connection with their originality. The article, for the first time, itemizes and examines the rare toreutic works of North-West Iran of the 12th—7th centuries BC, distinguished by the author from the general graphic repertoire. The author analyzes the features and formation process of those images, demonstrates their iconographic prototypes — counterparts that existed in other ancient Oriental cultures.

 This paper focuses on the interference of censorship into the process of exposition making of the Moscow Branch of the Union of Artists of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the 1960s—1970s. The first part is dedicated to such form of control as “thematic plans” and state commission. Giving financial support to arts, the Soviet state demanded from artists to express loyalty. As a result, every grand exhibition was conceived not as an artistic event, but rather as a demonstration of collaboration between artists and the state. The second part of the paper examines the work of such censor institutions as the Exhibition Committee, the Party Bureau of the Union of Artists, and the Department for Culture of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party. Basing on several archive documents and oral testimonies of the artists who worked in the 1960s and 1970s, the author of the paper concludes that there was a total influence of censorship on the staff of exhibition and a lack of independence of the Moscow Branch of the Union of A rtists. A special attention is paid to the reaction of different groups of artists, which was expressed by open protests against censorship, or, more often, by searching new compromises, such as appealing to ideologically neutral themes or using metaphors and “Aesopian language”. The most effective way of liberation from the censorship in that period was holding of small “closed exhibitions” and evenings with artists in the Moscow Branch of the Union of A rtists. The author suggests that proliferation of such exhibitions greatly contributed to splitting the once monolithic Union of Artists into many small communities with their own artistic programs.