CONTEXT
The analysis of subject-subject relations, the identification and characterization of which this article is devoted to, is of great importance for the further development of theoretical and methodological aspects of book culture, its complete and in-depth study in various historical periods, identification of trends, scale, drivers and conditions for its development, disclosure and strengthening of its communicative nature. The article aims to formulate the main theoretical aspects of the manifestations of subjectivity and subject-subject relations in book culture with an emphasis on the historical and regional context. There is presented book culture as an extensive system of interacting subjects of book publishing, book distribution and reading, which have books as the main object. In the context of book culture, the article, for the first time, gives working definitions of the terms “subject” and “subject-subject relations”. The author names the universal properties of subjects, which are activity, dedication, initiative, responsibility, ability and readiness to transform the world and oneself. There are specified the subjects, the most significant and widespread subject-subject relations that are generated in book culture and form its fundamental ties, including those that were characteristic of the Russian Empire. The article presents the most active subjects of the book culture of Siberia and the Far East in the pre-revolutionary period, both individual and collective. The author indicates the dependence of tasks, pace, directions, scale, results of the development of book culture on its subjects.
CULTURAL REALITY
This work is aimed at identifying socio-anthropological and socio-cultural forms in which the health-saving crisis is manifesting itself today. The article analyzes abnormal forms of attitude to one’s health, which are quite common today. These are narcissistic hyper-concern about bodily health and appearance, and the opposite nihilistic attitude to one’s life and health, manifested in an incredible dominance of bad habits, including among young people. If narcissism is individualism elevated to the absolute degree of indifference to others, then nihilism is the triumph of Thanatos over Eros, that is, destructive life-denying forces over vital life-affirming ones. There are no criteria for “good enough” health in the narcissistic paradigm: it is an endless process of influencing oneself, which is ultimately not only transferred to the digital format, but also begins to have a negative impact on the individual’s real body. Nihilism is based on an indifferent, but more often negative attitude towards the norms and ideals of a healthy lifestyle and on the denial of their practical implementation in daily behavior. This is its difference from narcissism, in which the main thing is unconcern towards others. The article shows that the source of these anomalies lies not in the psychological plane of motivation loss, but in the ethical-existential, that is, in the axiological plane. In this context, there is proposed to consider these phenomena as social, testifying to the value crisis of culture. The article concludes that both in the case of narcissism and in the case of nihilism, there is a loss of the spiritual value and meaning of life as a metaphysical gift. In relation to health, this signals something more than just a loss of psychological motivation to lead a healthy lifestyle. We are talking about the crisis of the individual’s value attitudes, going deep into the unenlightened existence of the individual.
IN SPACE OF ART AND CULTURAL LIFE
Parade concerts occupy a special place in activities of modern military bands. Years of practice show that the most relevant form of the parade concert performance entails two parts: a march parade and a concert section. The bandmaster uses the manual conductor’s technique in the concert section, while a twirling baton is used to manage the band in the march parade, the bandmaster of which is called the drum major or “tamburmajor”.
This article describes the origin and functional particularities of the drum major’s position in the armed forces of Europe and Russia. Throughout the entire period of the position’s existence, the uniform of drum majors has been notable for its splendor, picturesqueness and dress-up severity. Apart from managing the band on the march and training of musicians, other requirements could be imposed on drum majors in the 17th and 18th centuries. Moreover, this article considers the topical issue of a correct term for the tamburstock (twirling baton).
The author puts forward an assumption of a connection between the tamburstock and the battuta: their formal and functional similarity help to determine the most likely time of appearance of the twirling baton — tamburstock. The obvious influence of German music culture on the development of Russian military music since the time of Peter I explains our term “tamburstock” for the twirling baton.
The criteria and methods of using the twirling baton emphasize its importance when conducting a band and express the colorfulness and improvisation features typical for a parade concert. The inclusion of the new “majorettes” genre in the program section of band performances is conditioned by the fact of its active development not only in the United States and Europe, but also in Russia. Due to the operational versatility and widespread demand of the tamburstock in recent decades, there has been an interest in its use by military musical groups of Asian countries.
The article is focused on discovering similar principles and mechanisms of communication in such information transmission systems as myth and cinema. The author considers this text as a prolegomena to the model of analysis of the mythological content in a film. A myth is a way to construct a model of reality; it projects the contents of this model onto the facts and phenomena surrounding a person, giving them new meanings and organizing new connections between them. These facts and phenomena can be perceived from two points of view: profane and sacred. The sacred mode of perception is possible in the case of “synchronous reading” of these facts and phenomena — a certain object expressing a part of the mythological model of the world is perceived as such only in the case of presentation of this model in general and other objects representing its other segments.
The elements of a film text, like those of a myth, also can be perceived in two dimensions: linear, that is consecutive in time, and “spectacular-programmable”, that is as self-contained phenomena, not tied to the film’s linear plot. In the second case, these elements can express the connotations preceding the film, determined not by its plot, but by the conditions and concepts of the social group of authors and spectators of the movie. The meanings that images represent on the screen also depend on the organization of these images within each particular system — that is, the principle of “synchronous” perception also works for them.
The author proposes principles of identification of mythological signifiers in cinema, and describes in general terms the mechanism of their analysis. The main question to ask in such an analysis is: how do the signifiers of mythological ideas and representations, revealed in a film at its “synchronous”, “nonlinear” level, interact with the linear plot of this film?.
HERITAGE
The relevance of the article’s topic is determined by the fact that the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, one of Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky’s favorite artists, have never been specifically examined as artistic sources of his work.
The scientific novelty of this article lies in the fact that it is the first attempt to analyze the influence of G.B. Piranesi’s etchings on the works of M.V. Dobuzhinsky. The author uses a complex method that combined the source analysis of the artist’s memoirs and letters, the traditional formal analysis of his works in comparison with Piranesi’s etchings and architectural monuments of Ancient Rome. The article also examines the industrial city motifs in Charles Dickens’ novels “The Old Curiosity Shop” and “Little Dorrit”. This made it possible to significantly expand and deepen the existing understanding of the historical, artistic and literary sources of architectural motifs and architectural fantasies in M.V. Dobuzhinsky’s works.
The article reveals that G.B. Piranesi’s etchings from the series “Carceri” and “Vedute di Roma” influenced Dobuzhinsky’s fantasy drawings “Everyday life”, “Holiday” and the landscape “London. On the Bridge”. Piranesi’s etchings from these series also influenced Dobuzhinsky’s fantasy drawings of 1909—1921 on the theme of the city. In the early 1920s, some of the drawings were combined into the series “City Dreams”. The author also reveals the participation of industrial city images from Russian symbolist poetry, especially Valery Bryusov, in the formation of similar motifs in Dobuzhinsky’s works.
NAMES. PORTRAITS
The article examines the orders that Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor of the Duke of Burgundy, made in two main painting workshops of the southern Netherlands in the first half of the 15th century: “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin”, created by Jan van Eyck in 1435, and “The Last Judgment”, made by Rogier van der Weyden about ten years later. The article is relevant because of the need to reconstruct different layers of the viewer’s perception of the above-mentioned works, taking into account the fact that their original location was different from the current one. The church of Notre-Dame du Châtel, which kept the “Madonna of Chancellor Rolin”, was demolished during the Great French Revolution. Although the hospital in Beaune, for which “The Last Judgment” was intended, has survived to this day, however, the polyptych by R. van der Weyden is not currently displayed in the space of the Rolin Chapel. Such alteration in the placement of altar compositions increases the numbers of barriers to reading the paintings’ iconographic programs. The novelty of the article lies in examining the history of the Chancellor’s orders, his biography, as well as the political, social and religious context of the era in order to highlight the semantic layers in the works by Jan van Eyck and R. van der Weyden. The method of receptive aesthetics may help to analyze how the altars ordered by N. Rolin were perceived by ordinary church visitors, hospital patients, as well as the Chancellor himself and his wife. The article examines the existing hypotheses concerning the symbolic meaning of specific objects and figures on altars from the point of view of the difference in the perception of donators and other viewers of these works. The devotional projects implemented by Nicolas Rolin in Autun and Beaune are accompanied by the Chancellor’s political and social message to his enemies at the court.
The article for the first time presents a comparative analysis of pictorial Rayonism by the Russian painter M. Larionov and the cinematic technique “tactile vision” by the Spanish film director J. Val del Omar. It also provides a theoretical foundation of using the artistic lighting techniques and features of their practical application. J. Val del Omar’s original lighting system “tactile vision” was analyzed by the example of his film “Fire in Castile” (1960), where he used it for animation of baroque religious sculptures. The concept of “tactile vision”, based on the understanding of vision as a developed sense of touch, made it possible to convey in the film not only the visual appearance of objects, but also their internal emotional dynamics. The article demonstrates that the Rayonist paintings by M. Larionov represent a complex dialectical synthesis of various ideas and practices and are open to more than one interpretation. Despite the artist’s desire to create non-objective painting, in a number of his works there is a connection with the subject of the picture at the visual level or at the level of the general idea of the object. This brings Rayonism closer to the “tactile vision”. The article shows that both artists created their concepts based on the analysis of visual perception. But they understood the possibilities of human vision in different ways, which determined the choice of sensuality mechanisms for creating artworks. It is revealed that the model of the cinematographic system of artistic light pulsation invented by J. Val del Omar coincides with that one of M. Larionov’s Rayonism in a number of structural indicators. Despite the fact that the ontological guidelines of these models differ when studying the possibilities of light, their functionality turns out to be close, and therefore their aesthetic effects allow for productive comparison within the framework of art criticism analysis.
CURRICULUM
The author of the article focuses on the problem of correlation between the paradigms of “linguistic”, “iconic” and “visual” turns associated with contemporary art. The text discusses the history of the terms, analyzes the specifics of each of these turns, reveals their role and significance in art, history and culture, and provides specific examples of works of the 20th and 21th centuries. Attempts to overcome the methodological crisis in art studies have made the impact of these approaches felt throughout the world. The article pays special attention to a number of issues, which include changes in the concept of art and the boundaries of language; the expressive opportunities of the image and narrative; artistic vision; depiction of the “unimaginable”; the statuses of works of art, authorship, perception, symbols, as well as dialectical transitions of works of art from visuality to pictoriality. The article shows how, by studying the history of art as a phenomenon of culture, art studies have learned to find not only artistic characteristics, but also social and cultural features in the specifics of forms, structures and compositions. Carrying out a comparative analysis of the linguistic, iconic and visual “turns”, the author notes the dialectic of “reformatting” the view from the linguistic to the iconic and visual, and also comes to the conclusion that, the subtle modifications of the language of art demonstrate the constant evolution of artistic forms, art criticism, cultural and social meanings. Art contemplates the world directly, embodying it in images (semantic, visual, iconic, etc.). It is thanks to the peculiar integrity (interdisciplinarity) achieved in the artistic rethinking of historical reality that art reveals an amazing depth of meaning.
ORBIS LITTERARUM
The article analyzes previously unknown examples of the design of the Elizabethan Bible with additional engravings. We are talking about three monuments discovered by the author of this article in the collections of the Library of the Moscow Theological Academy of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Central Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Culture and Art.
The Elizabethan Bible (after the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna) is commonly referred to as the Bible, which was edited in preparation for a new edition and first published in St. Petersburg in 1751. The book was intended to be illustrated. The Synodal illustration design of the edition included 49 engravings on the Old Testament subjects (according to the number of the books of the Old Testament) was realized by the masters of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, I.A. Sokolov and G.A. Kachalov based on the drawings by I.E. Grimmel in 1751—1753. The decorated copper boards became exemplary, and as they became worn, they were copied again by the masters of the Moscow Synodal Printing House, where 15 illustrated reprints with complete sets of engravings were published between 1756 and 1817. All cases of typographical design of the Bible editions are described in the reference works, and some scholarly publications of individual proprietary copies are undertaken. These are convolutions of printed text, illustrations made according to the Synodal design, and also individually published additional engravings of Western European origin. It is shown that the folios of the identified specimens correspond to the bibliographic descriptions of their corresponding editions in the reference works, with additional illustrations pasted into the folds. Copper engravings of the four Evangelists and King David may have been imprinted in copies directly at the Moscow Synodal Printing House, using prints made between 1745—1757 by the engravers A.F. Zubov and V.A. Ikonnikov.
JOINT OF TIME
The low level of development of this topic in Russian historiography can be explained by the fact that, most often, this problematics is considered through the prism of general issues of culture of the Soviet period, party and state cultural policy, aspects of intelligentsia studies.
This study aims at identifying the artistic concept of the leftist direction in the visual arts of the early 20th century, considering its variability, showing its origins, relations with the Soviet government and within the artistic environment, analyzing the reasons for its prohibition and exodus for many decades.
The article pays special attention to the genesis of the very concept of “leftist art”, which was applied both in relation to new radical trends and in relation to the work of artists who considered themselves among the proletarian culture. The article attempts to separate the concepts of “avant-garde”, “modernism”, “futurism”. The authors focus on the art of the avant-garde, whose representatives, at the time of the Bolsheviks’ coming to power, took all the key positions and began to actively promote their creativity. The article pays attention to the reform of art education, as a result of which the Academy of Arts and the Higher Art School were abolished, and the Petrograd Art Training Workshops were created instead, where previous teaching methods were cancelled, talented masters were dismissed, and disciplines based on the principles of the avant-garde were introduced into education in the majority. The authors outline the changes in the traditions of museology, when, by the decision of the avant-gardists, museums began to be headed not by art historians, but by artists themselves, who became responsible for opening exhibitions and acquiring new works of art — at public expense and mainly of an avant-garde orientation.
Based on archival materials and periodicals of the 1920s, the article analyzes the tasks of Soviet cultural policy, the art views of Soviet political leaders and art historians who were on the new government’s side. The authors consider the political views of representatives of proletarian culture (Proletkult) and the reasons for their disagreements with party leaders. The article substantiates the conclusion about the discrepancy in the understanding of the role of fine art among the government, avant-garde artists, and Proletkult representatives.
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