2015 Artistic Culture and Cult

The report investigates the role and importance of the word in the national culture. A complex approach is used to solve this problem on a basis of historical, philosophical, philological and theological knowledge. The word is examined at different points of its existence in culture: word as a semantic “grain” of human culture; word as a lexical unit; word as a specific literary genre; word as a part of a unified national outlook and word as Logos. The paper delves into theoretical problems and analy­ses some of the best known works of Russian literature, such as the treatise “On Law and Grace” by Ilarion of Kiev, “The Prophet” by A. Pushkin, “12” by A. Block, the last story by V. Rasputin. The conclusion is that the idea of the integrity of man and the world is carried at all levels of Russian culture. Its spiritual path leading from the word to Logos.

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Today movie trailer is an artistic genre balancing on the edge of cinema, packaging design and advertising business. In this unique art form visual information can be viewed as a text whose meanings are apophatic and “read” on the basis of interpreting enigmatic images with the help of cultural and artistic associations.
At first glance, the age-old history of a trailer — a “herald” of a forthcoming film — has not altered either its functions (advertising and informational) or its objective (financial). But is actually this true?
During its century-long history trailer has evolved from a preview dominated by the text and meant to “sell” the actors starring in the film to the special work of a director with a laconic formulation of a message of the film.
Analysis of stages of a movie trailer development, in course of which its styles, techniques and meaning were changed, demonstrates that it eventually evolved into a product of web-design and cinema and a sort of ontological frontier of cinema narrative, beyond which a viewer loses a psycho-­emotional capacity of logical perception of a visual image.
However, any text, including that of a trailer, in order to be a text should contain meanings, acting necessarily in a system that is defined by a certain type of a worldview. In my opinion, a fundamental form of transmission of meanings for cinema is hypermyth. Though this is a recent phenomenon in culture, it is the result of centuries of transformation of a traditional myth reflected in various art forms. The report traces main stages of transformation of a traditional myth (neomyth, hypermyth), as well as mechanisms of constructing cinematic meanings by means of hypermyth. Being a genre of hyperreality a trailer is apophatic by its very nature as it is based not on narrative logic, but on configuration of a hypermyth.
Thanks to the rapid spread of new technologies and programs to create trailers in the last ten years this form of cinema art has become a form of mass video creativity. Movie trailers, which originally emerged as a “virtual package” and a financial motivator, have become a form of digital folklore, with all the specific features of folk art.

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Art as spiritual purity comes from a paradise garden — a secret desire of a creator to achieve a revelation, i.e. to open boundless worlds of love and to make a human immortal. Immortality is acquired through Salvation, inseparable from repentance, a sacrifice and communion as a reverse side of beauty and joy. An artist brings Gifts of the Holy Spirit to restore the spiritual fullness in human’s mind, to print the expression of divine beauty.
The core of the ontology of art and artistic life of a spiritual truth is sacrificial predetermination, in which cult permeates art, showing relations of the natural and the supernatural. The ontology of art is a sacred experience (of God) gained through the re-creation of the image of the atoning sacrifice and fulfillment of the covenant of the Lord’s Supper “Given me his body as food”. Recreating of the Feat promoted the development of the confessional canon. Things and actions, space inside and outside the temple represent the feat.
People take their liturgical experience beyond the walls of the temple, and an adopted sacrifice holds the Christian world with the grace of God, which can be used as a method of art to reveal human divinity expression in the world.
Artistry in the performance of the universal moral law in Christianity aspires to connect a human to the transpersonal Son of the God. Art contributes to the transformation of a subject into an object, into the inseparability of the total creation. One discovers the latter in the works of St. Basil the Great (4th century): “The essence has no independent existence, but is seen in person”. Interpretation of inseparability of nature and a thing inside an object is in sacrificial manner the ontological content of art, including contemporary one:
• ontology as a sacrificial predestination of the relationship between the God and a human;
• a sacrifice as the rule of art: the subordination of a “text” to the voice of the divine Will;
• the identity of the sacrifice and plastic ways of a composition (lines, colors, spots, spaces), their specifics in the post-Soviet time;
• the image as a divine prototype of notions not only in art, but also in public enlightment, education — the fundamental principle of ethical word-meaning sacrificial predestination;
• examples of religious themes in the post-Soviet art.

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The Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, constructed in St. Petersburg upon the project of an outstanding architect V. A. Kosyakov, is a unique example of Byzantine style in Russian architecture. Ecclesiastical architecture of 6th-century Constantinople as though came alive in early 20th century St. Petersburg. Employing the method of archaeological imitation, the architect used the Church of St. Sergius and Bacchus in Istanbul as a base for his work. The ecclesiastical art of the “golden age” of Justinian the Great manifested the archetypes of Orthodox spirituality more accurately and deeper than anything else created by Byzantine artists of other epochs. It was the time when the main architectural concept of Eastern Christian Church — creating a centrally-planned building topped with a dome — was crystallized and implemented.
Today the Church is consecrated and magnifesently restored. Numerous recently published reference and art history books mention the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) in Istanbul as its architectural model, which is absolutely incorrect. It suffices to say that, unlike Hagia Sophia, both the church in St. Petersburg and Church of St. Sergius and Bacchus are octagonal inside, with a two-tier gallery around and alternating rectangular and semicircular niches, and their architectural concept create a distinctly Byzantine sense of rhythm. In such a space an individual perceives himself as the only solid body, the centre of impenetrable perfection of the world which is incessantly created by the heavenly Wisdom.
Byzantine and Russian styles developed in Russia within the framework of historicism in art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the basis of government order and presented the manifestation of civilizational foundations of Russian culture and embodiment of Orthodox succession between Byzantium and Russia. The most important component of such a succession was the idea of a human being, the purpose and meaning of human life, and human place in the Universe.
The Orthodox medieval art cannot be interpreted in the same way as modern European: it has a different nature — not aesthetic, but ascetic — and is fed not by mundane, but by heavenly Beauty.

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The 20th century changed the system of art expressive means and techniques, which had been formed in the bowels of realistic and ethnic art for centuries. New approaches to shape, color and design were expressed in the concepts of suprematism, constructivism, rationalism. The avant-garde determined the vector of development of visual culture of the next century. The digital revolution has become a new milestone in the project technologies. United communicative space of the 21st century and functionalism of the international style have led to the loss of cultural national identity.
The environmental problem is multifaceted. The concept of project ecology, as defined by its authors, is human ecology in living environment from the perspective of culture and historical affinity to a certain place. The term “cultural ecology” was coined by Dmitry Likhachev and expounded as a scientific and educational concept of the preservation of national culture.
Human environment in urban space is naturally moulded by a number of factors. Design idea implies integration of natural, historical and cultural heritage into a correlation system and creation of new design objects on their basis. According to O. I. Genisaretskij, while forming the space of life, it is necessary to include in it new and new pronounced social and cultural layers, so as to turn the soil from conditions of existence into a symbol for the spiritual life.
The perception of numerous areas in Russia today is an echo of distant associations formed over decades and sometimes even centuries ago. In terms of the national culture it is an outdated legacy hardly or not at all perceived by the young generation. Thoughtless copying and endless quoting of museums’ classical samples without searching for new meanings and forms of design leads to the absence of self-identity and interest, and as a result abscence of love and affection of a person to a particular place in his yard, in his street and in general to the lack of pride in belonging to a certain cultural community. Consequently, it is necessary to move to a new level of understanding and styling, in which fundamental qualities are upgraded to the new degree of generalization within the scope of the modern language and the latest technologies of communication.

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An icon shows metaphorical forms of thinking. A metaphor is an ontologic basis of creation of a meaning, the process which is initiated in depths of human consciousness. Such an approach to an icon changes notions about the tasks of art as seen by a medieval icon painter. It is not a problem of dematerialization of a created icon-painting image (by way of light, flattening, so-called “reverse perspective” and other stylistic devices which are traditionally pointed out by iconology), but creation of an entire microcosm, an image perfectly fitted in the Divine macrocosm that appears to be major one.
The integrity and metaphorical nature of icon-painting, its deep aesthetic basis are closely linked with cosmogonic concepts of the Church Fathers. Aesthetic views of Aurelius Augustinus give a chance to formulate fundamental art principles predestining theological and esthetic integrity of an icon. Among them there are the following ones: rhythmic composition, interaction of the parts and the whole according to the principle of similarity, symmetry and antitheses; stratification of a compositional image; polysemy of an art text and context; the principle of Christocentrism.
Such theological categories of an icon as a duality and an antinomy (i. e. simultaneous existence of an artistic image materially and spiritually), synergy of a creative action of the God and a human in it are at the same time aesthetic categories. An antinomy and duality in an icon are not only a depiction of God-man’s Form in it, but also synergy in its liturgical action. This is also a creative interaction of the God and a human: personal work of an artist at creation of an icon is as important as conciliarity of initial thinking. This antinomy should not be ignored. An icon is an art work and a liturgical subject as well. The recognition of the uniqueness of a person and personal communication with the God is a hallmark of Christianity. Each particular artistic image reveals a personality of an artist who expresses his ideas with art forms and whose theological language are visual metaphors and art rhythms.

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What impresses most in Leonardo Da Vinci’s works is their transcendental qualities, the empyreal light, which the maitre manages to capture and enclose in the painting frame. Da Vinci is unequalled in the Western world in the level of supersubstantial cosmos comprehension. In Russia, only Andrei Rublev, Theophanes the Greek and Dionysius reached similar level. Leonardo continued Rublev’s line in some aspects, managing to instill the empyreal light of icon in the western art and introduce it to international spectators.
It is safe to say that Leonardo Da Vinci is primarily interesting as a spiritually great figure.
Even his early works reveal his ingenuity as an artist, and in his last masterpieces Leonardo reaches a truly astounding level of enlightenment.
Is it possible that such a profundity is achieved by a conventional artist, who was not familiar with spiritual monachal practices? The answer is unambiguously negative. This is out of question just by the nature of things. The spiritual profundity can only be achieved as a result of strenuous exercise in prayer, comprehension of exceptional depth of the Holy Scripture, mastering of tacit prayer and getting acquainted with prayer practices of the Mount Athos and hesychasm.
The paper briefly presents the contents of author’s monograph “On Hidden Fables and Undermeanings in the European Fine Arts”, published in 2011, Dmitri Bulanin publishing house, Saint Petersburg and is dedicated to revealing hesychastic basis of Leonardo’s creation.

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The report investigates and analyses the modern culture in the context of basiс principles and ties with former traditions. The author examines theoretical problems of Christian ontology and anthropology. These include soteriological, ontological, symbolic, liturgical, psychological, moral, anagogic directions. The culture should testify to the ideas of absolute truth, beauty and goodness. Contemporary culture knows that at the heart of the artistic image lies the concept of “paradise, icons, logos, logocentrism and sophia”. But now there is a process of inversion, rearrangement of meaning in the basic concepts. We need the analysis of “artistic losses” that occur in connection with the impact on the basic foundation of intelligence. Modern art suffers a loss in such aspects as harmony, beauty and ability of metaphoric associative thinking. A theoretical problem is a profound comprehension of ties between Old Russian art, classical and avant-garde art. Another actual problem is interpretation of art text. It is necessary to discuss such questions as freedom of creation, responsibility of painter, word sense, spiritual and personal philosophy. A significant theme is integrity and holiness in the context of God-seeking and apostasy. In the history of Russian art culture there were such valuable phenomena as confession and prophecy which are important for perceiving modern art development.

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The problems of the Renaissance in modern English culture have attracted the attention of researchers quite recently. However, Italian Renaissance was interpreted mostly as a counterpart of Elizabethan era, a source of national revival. In this essay, we would like to highlight other aspects including the reasons for emerging interest in the Renaissance in English society.
Unification of Italy in the late 1860s and the early 1870s rekindled the interest of European community regarding the culture of the great past of this part of the world. It was for the first time ever that the Renaissance was now perceived as a European phenomenon, a foundation of modern Western civilization, this approach being greatly enhanced through its cultural and historical interpretation by Jacob Burckhardt. For the first time in art history, the concept of Renaissance was seen as a comprehensive historical period, the source of three key phenomena, i.e. culture, nation and modernity — fervently debated topics in England at the time.
The new concept of the Renaissance enabled modern England to find solutions to critical contemporary problems such as the correlation of the state (authority), culture and religion, as culture again was able to influence politics through creative personalities, whilst art and an artist were endowed with spiritual and social functions. The Renaissance was also associated with physical and spiritual harmony, which appeared to be disturbed by the early 20th century. Recreating this harmony based on the archetype of cultural and statutory structure of the Renaissance became crucial for contemporary England. The most characteristic feature of modern time (since the Renaissance) has been the development of an individual implying a ruler-dictator who united Italian society as a whole. And this element correlated with another topical matter of the time, i.e. the definition of the nature of culture either as the culture of the elite, or the culture of general public. Renaissance-induced secularization of Christian notions and their replacement with human and cultural schemes resonated in Victorian England where culture became a substitute for religion.

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The ideas of the association “Makovetz” (1921–1927, Moscow) which were declared in its program, appear to be akin to the philosophy of Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance.
The analysis of graphic works of the members of the association reveals that an image of a human is a very important theme for them and is tackled in different ways: as a generalized overpersonal image, which expresses the unity of humans and as a portrait, which shows a sitter’s individual inner world. Such kinds of a human image coexist in their art, but by the end of the 1920s “psychical portraits” start to dominate.
In the beginning of the 1920s there were two attitudes to the mission of art. While according to the one, art should unveil ideas, embodied in nature, according to the other — art should express ideas, which can be materialized in no other way than by human creative activity. Whereas artists who shared the first point of view tended to construct the space in the system of the perceptive perspective and preferred portrait image of a human, those who shared the latter — used the systems of cubism and rayonism and worked both in a genre of a generalized and individual portrait. The change of a perspective on this question causes the change in artistic means.
The diversity of attitudes to the expression of human image among the members of “Makovetz” can stem from the aspiration to completeness, to the expression of not only temporal but also eternal dimension of a human being. The necessity of this was manifested by P. Florensky.
The paper demonstrates that the changes in the artistic means and ways of expression of a human image in art of “Makovetz” members were changed not because they adopted the reinforcing positivism ideology, but because they kept strong links with the ideas of the Russian religious-philosophical Renaissance.

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