The article attempts to ensure the unity of views on the implementation of urban art projects in local contexts. The paper aims to discuss the results of a pilot study obtained through a comprehensive assessment of the significance of urban art objects using qualimetric scales. The authors selected seven art objects that meet the four requirements: a) the art objects exist in the urban environment at the time of their assessment by experts; b) the art objects have a high communicative potential, that is, they are interesting to the viewer; c) there are discussions in the media and social networks about the prospects for preserving the art objects; d) the sample is heterogeneous. The experimental group included ten experts, both art theorists and practitioners. The experts were asked to evaluate the significance of each of the art objects by ranking them according to eight “rational” and two “emotional” criteria. The existence of consistency of the experts’ opinions was checked using the concordance coefficient. The pilot study showed that the most significant among the rational criteria for evaluating an artwork were technography (the degree of qualitative impact of the art object on the environment, the degree of the work’s conditionality with the context) and iconography (the uniqueness/brightness of the author’s message). The significance of the other principles (of technology and iconology) is considerably lower, which means that they can be ignored when constructing the final assessment by linear convolution. There was also a fairly high relative significance of the two emotional criteria that had been proposed for the experts’ consideration (the emotional dimension of the work in the artist’s experience and the emotional dimension of the work in the viewer’s experience). The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that a systematic approach to assessing the rational aspects of the artistic interpretation of an urban art object makes it necessary and sufficient to rely on the two methodological principles for evaluating an artwork — technography and iconography. When evaluating the emotional aspects of artistic interpretation, it is necessary and sufficient to rely on the emotional dimension of the work in the experience of the artist and the viewer. The results obtained suggest finding an objective scientific basis for regulating the visual culture of public spaces.

Based on historical-genetic and comparative research methods, the article reveals the determinants of formation and development of the city commemorative culture. This issue is relevant because of the increasing influence of the memory of the past on modern sociocultural processes. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the study of poorly studied issues of the impact of commemorative culture on the development of culture in general; the opportunities of regulating the nature and distribution of memorial forms; the factors determining the formation of the city commemorative culture in the context of the historical and sociocultural dynamics of applicable societies of the civilizations of the past and present. The article uses an integrated approach, which determines the interdisciplinary nature of scientific research, allowing analyzing the aspects of the origin, interpretation of the features of the history and existence of monuments in different cultures. There are provided examples of commemoration practices in the post-Soviet countries, including the Republic of Belarus. The article concludes that the content of commemorative culture is determined primarily by religious traditions and state priorities. The creation of monuments and places of memory is used as an agitation and manipulative resource making an emotional impact; as an ideological tool shaping the perception of history in accordance with the state ideology. Commemorative practices take on special significance during the formation of nations, influencing the subject’s identification with the nation, and the awareness of national solidity. In this case, the monument represents a universal form of embodying and conveying the national idea.

The article discusses the issues of gender identity and the crisis of masculinity in the Soviet and post-Soviet cinema in comparison with Western films. Social instability becomes the basis for rethinking cultural identity and expanding the typology of masculinity. This imbalance is most clearly visible in the cinema, which is a beneficial environment for actualizing problematic socio-cultural issues and forming some gender stereotypes and normative behaviors that later enter everyday reality. Following the West, the Russian cinema also focuses on the substantive side of the concept of “masculinity”, which is based on the specifics of national identity, traditional goals and social foundations. It is significant that the hegemonic masculinity characteristic of the Western cinema was not basically common in the Soviet era, whose masculinity model was the image of a leader, a worker, and, in the post-war period, a front-line soldier. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of capitalist relations in Russia caused the overthrow of former cultural values and the crisis of Soviet identity. The suppression of the male characters’ “sensitivity” was replaced by a total emancipation and sexuality, which can be witnessed in the abundance of scenes of a sexual nature in the films of the 1990s. However, in the post-Soviet cinema, the focus on the values of Western culture, in which a crisis of masculinity was already evident, stimulated the interest in the Russian image of masculinity, which initially manifested itself in romanticizing the image of a “fair gangster,” and later — in the appeal to traditional Russian and Soviet heroes. Since the 2010s, the glorification of the Russian criminal past has declined, opening the space for the emergence of new types of Russian masculinity. The general context of these transformations is represented by the changes of masculinity from the Soviet traumatic, through the post-Soviet (crisis) to the contemporary one.

In 1970–1971, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, People’s Artist of the USSR Ilya Trofimovich Bogdesko (1923—2010) created a linocut series for the socio-psychological novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoyevsky. The illustrations were made specifically for the Leipzig Book Fair in 1971. The artist’s idea had been limited to the competition task: he created only three illustrations in the linocut technique, and their artistic solution was based on the conditional-decorative principle of composition organization. The main characters are depicted almost two-dimensionally, “purified” of everyday details, environment, entourage. Using a minimum of visual means, I.T. Bogdesko achieved a sensation of stunning drama in the illustrations. For this work, the artist was awarded a gold medal in Leipzig. At the end of 1971, “Kartya Moldovanyaske” published the book “Crime shi pedyapse” (“Crime and Punishment”) in the Moldovan language. In the design of that book, his illustrations were used — “Raskolnikov” (on the dust cover) and “The Old Pawnbroker” (on the title page). A different vision of Sonya’s image appeared on the dust cover. The preserved sketches, a number of which are presented in this article, allow recognizing the artist’s work hidden from prying eyes. In 1995, Bogdesko applied to Dostoevsky again. He created the writer’s portrait against the background of the characteristic St. Petersburg landscape. In those years, the artist was working on “Don Quixote”, inspired by Dostoevsky’s expressing about the novel by Cervantes: “There is nothing in the whole world deeper and stronger than this composition”. Bogdesko upheld this assertion with 36 illustrations (by chisel engraving) for the famous novel: a titanic work that lasted more than two decades. The artist executed the portrait of the Russian writer in the same unique technique of classical engraving as the illustrations for “Don Quixote”. Changes in graphic techniques dramatically alter the plasticity of images of the characters of “Crime and Punishment”: a quarter of a century later, the tragically flat vision of linocuts turned into a sharp, nervous, frequent movement of the chisel. Bogdesko created three illustrations for Dostoevsky’s novel in the technique of chisel engraving.

The article introduces one of the episodes in the life of Nikolai Dmitryevich Milioti (1874—1962), an artist and active participant in art exhibitions of the early 20th century. N.D. Milioti left Soviet Russia in 1921 and remained an emigrant until the end of his life. This circumstance largely explains the fact that his life and work are still poorly studied, including the episode described in this article. The study of Nikolai Milioti’s diary entries and correspondence, stored in different archives, allows us to reconstruct some stages of the artist’s life. Specifically, this publication highlights his participation in the Baltic Exhibition of 1914, after which some of his works “stuck” in the Art Museum of the city of Malmö. Usually, researchers who write on this topic are interested in the fate of that exhibition’s works by Valentin Serov, Alexander Golovin, Vasily Kandinsky, Pavel Kuznetsov, Konstantin Korovin, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Nicholas Roerich, and others. Nevertheless, the name Milioti was then among the artists who would eventually be recognized as the luminaries of Russian art, for his role in the artistic life of that time was considerable as well. The article describes the problem of loss of the artistic values that have not been destroyed or stolen, are not completely disappeared, but are lost, most likely, irretrievably. This problem is still relevant today. As an example, there is offed the history of paintings by Nikolai Milioti, which, along with other Russian artists’ works, were sent to the international Baltic Exhibition in Malmö (Sweden) in 1914, but never returned to Russia. Over the years, attempts have been made to return the works to Russia, but even today, the circumstances indicate that the probability of their return is almost zero.

The second half of the 18th century was a time of active changes in the perception of art, rethinking many concepts and phenomena. One of them was the pictorial sketch, which transformed from a preparatory stadium work into an independent, complete piece of art. Many art theorists and critics, as well as painters themselves had contributed to this rethinking. Many young artists, bored of historical painting and indifferent to all the academic principles, were searching for new media of expressiveness, using the sketch-like pictorial manner to give their works a new dynamism and an impression of “easy production”. The article is dedicated to J.-H. Fragonard (1732—1806), an artist in whose works the “sketchiness” became a conscious artistic method used in small-format pieces, in large-scale canvases, and even in panels. The use of such a technique in grand scale works is considered to be an extreme unconventionality, which, however, was not appreciated by Fragonard’s contemporaries and even by scholars of the next two centuries. Fragonard’s series of ‘Fantasy Portraits’ attracted enough investigators’ attention, but his series ‘Progress of Love’ has only recently begun to be recognized by researchers as an unusual and bold for that time artistic experience. Based on the analysis of the artist’s selected works, the author builds her original research, designed to highlight Fragonard’s special role in the evolution of art on the way from the Modern Period to Contemporary History. The relevance of the present article is caused by too little examination of this topic: minimal in Russia and relatively small in France. Besides consultation with research literature, this required the author to constantly directly refer to the 18th-century sources, such as treatises by art connoisseurs and scholars, art criticism, and catalogues of exhibitions arranged by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture or the Académie de Saint-Luc.

Based on archival data, memoirs and letters, the article describes the joint work of the pianist Alexander Ilyich Siloti (1863—1945) and the great creators of the Silver Age — choreographer Mikhail Fokin and artist Léon Bakst — on the production of the mimodrama “Orpheus” by the French composer Jean Jules Aimable Roger-Ducasse at the Mariinsky Theatre. The author notes the originality of this composition, new stage solutions, an innovative approach to the production that combines opera and ballet. There are described in detail the decorations and costumes made by Bakst for this production, which could be seen at the exhibition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the artist in 2016. The premiere was scheduled for the 1915/1916 season, but did not take place. The article explains what prevented the presentation. There are provided some fragments of the correspondence between Siloti and the participants of the production of “Orpheus”, and fragments of reviews for the concert performance of this composition. The article aims at showing new facets of Siloti’s activities, particularly in popularizing the music of French composers in the programs of the entreprise “Concerts of A. Siloti”, which was of great importance in the culture of Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century. Siloti would often become the first performer of works by foreign authors, which were a “fresh breath” in the cultural and artistic atmosphere of the capital. He tried to enlighten and educate the audience with his concerts, to develop their desire to go to concerts and listen to music. The article gives a general assessment of the activities of A.I. Siloti — a propagandist, educator, pianist, conductor, public figure, a talented organizer of new forms of artistic life and promotion of the best achievements of musical classics and modern creative process.

For many years, the Rare Books Department (Book Museum) of the Russian State Library has been conducting up-to-date work on the description of ex-libris, which contributes to the disclosure of the Department’s collections. The main goal of this research is to identify, record, study, publish, and thereby show the variety and richness of the ownership marks found on books. This article is devoted to the book marks of the German bibliophile Prince George III of Anhalt (1507—1553) from the collection of the Russian State Library. In the Russian-language research literature, Prince George’s book marks have not been considered before. The highly valued private library, later named after the owner — “Georgs-Bibliothek”, used to be part of the Land Library in Dessau (Germany). A small part of this famous book collection came after World War II to the V.I. Lenin State Library of the USSR and is now stored in the Book Museum. On the example of the small fragment of Prince George’s famous library, the article traces the gradual appearance and development of the unique ex-libris of this collection, reveals the literary and bibliophile interests of the owner, and establishes the circle of his communication. In the course of the study, about a hundred owner’s marks were recorded, thanks to which there were identified more than 120 publications from the personal collection of Prince George of Anhalt. The article presents the main types of its ex-libris (handwritten, gift, and super-ex-libris), which are reproduced and described in detail.

The establishment of Soviet artists’ unions in remote parts of the country has not been fully studied, but it is of interest for understanding the processes of formation of national fine art. One of the most important documents for the Soviet cultural space of the 1930s was the resolution of April 23, 1932, of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations”. Its impact is of a prolonged nature: artistic associations, originally created in the form of regulated unions, still exist, already having the status of entities exempt from direct government control. The main object of this research is the organization that united the masters of fine arts of a vast territory — the East Siberian Regional Union of Soviet Artists. The source base of the research is archival documents that make it possible to reconstruct the process of uniting provincial artists into a single regular organization and to assess the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks from the point of view of the development of the cultural space of the East Siberian Territory. Despite the regulatory actions common to the creation of such institutions, the process of organizing the association of Soviet artists in the peripheral parts of the country had a number of features that formed the final assessment of the outcome of the above-mentioned resolution. The article demonstrates that the geographic remoteness from the capital, the separation from the cultural centers, the harsh climatic conditions, the small population on a large territory, and technical communication difficulties had predetermined the specificity of the processes of Siberian social design, and the need for certain decisive actions and support from the authorities to create a viable association of fine art masters.

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