Ideas and Ideals

Тhe meaning of visual representation includes perception of information through the visual image. This form of information delivery to the general public was known in pagan cultures and asserted itself in Christianity. Since the late 20th century the concept of visualization united in itself not only religious and artistic images, but also the vision of mass culture. The performed research places emphasis on the establishment and the development of visual representation in Russia’s art culture of the ХVIII-XIX centuries. During the reign of Peter the Great, in a succession of state reforms and due to the influence of samples of European art, a transformation of national art culture occured. In this context, maritime art is viewed as one of the visual representation forms. The seascape, as a separate genre of painting, originates in the Dutch landscape. The first marinas were brought by Peter the 1st to decorate palaces and country residences. The victory in the Battle of Chesme (1770) and the joining of Crimea to the Russian Empire prompted Catherine the 2nd to invite J. P. Hackert to perpetuate the glory of Russian weapons. The artist became the first marine painter on Russian soil and performed a series of twelve paintings.

The flourishing of the national seascape in Russia took place in the 19th century. The first who took the post of artist at the Ministry of the Sea was I.K. Aivazovsky. Since then the seascape acquired special significance and perpetuates the sea victories of Russia. A subtle metaphysical meaning is present in some romantic landscapes by I.K. Aivazovsky. Sea battle paintings acquired clear realistic features in the painting of A.P. Bogolyubov. The artists are concerned not only with the image of the sea, but also with the architecture of the ship, which forms a separate painting genre: the ship portrait genre. The image of the ship in the paintings of the XIX-XX centuries combines the lines of scripture and poetry, focusing the attention of the viewer on a deep semantic reading of the landscape.

The article is dedicated to ocean liners, the ambitious projects of the 1930s. The Interwar period was the golden age of transatlantic shipping, primarily due to technical improvements, for example, increased engine power and changes in ship hull shape. However from an artistic point of view, liners also proved to be an important field of application. Many European architects, sculptors, and decorators were involved in the design of the exterior of the liners and their interiors. Most of the masters who participated in the development of a special “liner style” were practitioners of art deco. The spectacular, varied art deco proved to be the most appropriate style, corresponding to the problems which had been set before the artists by the client companies. The subject of the research is to identify the relationship between the “liner style” of the 1930s and art deco, determining the place of the transatlantic liner projects in the culture of the XX century. The object of the research is the design conceptions in general, as well as works of art in the interiors of the liners. The author’s aim is to demonstrate the high importance of these projects for the understanding of the Art Deco era, to characterize the complex approach of masters to the design of liner exteriors and interiors, to consider and compare the most outstanding design solutions. The research methodology includes historical and descriptive, comparative methods, cultural, historical, and culturological approaches. The main attention in the article is given to the French “Normandy”, a recognized example of this style. To expand the context and the possibility of generalization, the focus is also made on two English liners: “Queen Mary” and “Queen Elizabeth”. Among the artists the author points special attention to a French master, Jean Dunant. Dunant’s panels made for the Normandy cigar lounge are considered examples of a decorative style, inspired by the exoticism of archaic or Oriental cultures.

This paper is a critical response to the article by professors P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov “The Onset of Narcissistic Culture: Consequences for Education, Science and Politics”. The idea of treating Western post-war culture as narcissistic has been expressed in the United States since the 1970s of the XX century, but it will also be relevant in relation to the post-Soviet culture of Russia. Considering the ambiguity of the cognitive metaphor of Narcissus in relation to the described socio-cultural transformations caused by the possibility of an almost arbitrary interpretation of something as narcissism, the article presents its own interpretation of the foundations of narcissistic culture. Following the idea of opposing a narcissistic culture to a culture of service, modern narcissism is viewed not so much as an individual’s selfishness, but as a loss of an object and opportunity for service. Secularism, understood in the spirit of Charles Taylor as the loss of any higher, transcendent, hierarchical ontological concepts, deprives a person of a higher authority that legitimizes any service to something. This means a horizontal ontology of equivalent objects that do not have the highest value in relation to the individual. Post-traditionalism means impermanence, “fluidity” of any institutionalized forms of sociality and their perception, the dynamics of the emergence and decline of which does not allow the individual to find an object of service. A person remains in conditions of “minimal humanism”, which means that this person, having neither a higher reality that determines it, nor the constancy of social institutions, remains for himself the only possible value, a kind of “narcissist against his will”. We also believe that narcissism is not an external, but an internal factor of social processes that constitutes the motives and interests of the participants in these processes. While agreeing with the thesis about the connection between narcissistic culture and postmodernity, we believe that it is not a “young culture” opposite to mass society. On the contrary, narcissistic culture is the culture of a mass society that has gone further along the path of secularism, post-traditionalism and humanism, just as postmodernity is called late, far-reaching modernity by such sociologists as E. Giddens, U. Beck, Ju. Habermas.

This article continues the discussion of the phenomenon of modern culture published in the paper by P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov “The Onset of Narcissistic Culture: Implications for Education, Science and Politics”. Arguments are presented for those consequences that lead culture to new states and guide thinking to explain the efforts needed to strengthen it in the role of developing us.

The judgments are based on a sense-genetic conception of culture that eliminates the naïve identity between the concepts of ‘cultural’, ‘civilized’, ‘cultivated’, ‘ethical’, ‘aesthetic’, ‘high’ and other assessments of specific properties of human behavior. The method of deriving consequences from judgments is based on the dialectical regularities of the development of living wholes and the products of their activity.

For the sake of continuing the semantic line of the original article, an attempt is made to rely on the phenomena of narcissism disclosed therein to see in them the signs of the future, the approach of which one could rejoice in without demonstrating its quite understandable experiences as an ugly form of the value landscape of modernity. In this sense, the idea, not developed but sown by the authors, that “narcissistic culture” brings to the world high diversity that can serve as a stimulus for the beginning of a new round of human development is supported here. There is a reason for this thought. They point to the approaching of gracious time when anarchic individualism will develop into another form of long-term sustainable coexistence of people under conditions of heterogeneity of values and interests. These conclusions make it possible to outline the contours of the tasks that need to be solved now in order to multiply this grace.

The response to the article by P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov “The Onset of Narcissistic Culture: Consequences for Education, Science and Politics” is not a fully analytical review. It represents the result of certain empathy and it is also an attempt to articulate some thoughts generated by the reflection of modern social reality. The reviewed article was only the trigger for starting this work. Associations and intuitions, which appeared after reading of this article, indicate that the material presented by P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov was able to bring the consciousness of a modern man out of the “comfort zone”. This fact suggests that the material presented by these authors has high relevance, which immediately raises the relevance of all its reviews. Despite the fact that the article under consideration is more essayistic than scientific, the object of investigation is narcissistic culture in modern conditions, when, according to P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov, postmodernism serves as a unique medium for its dissemination. The subject – some features of its influence on the human community, including its manifestations in our country. As a set of methods of research or consideration of the problem, we use a combination of general logical methods, the method of historical analogies, elements of a systematic approach, as well as elements of an approach to social phenomena from the perspective of reconstructed archaic consciousness, its principles and its values.

The most general conclusions of reviewing the article by P.A. Orekhovsky and V.I. Razumov are that narcissistic culture is a relatively obsolete (do not mix it with ‘archaic’) variant of pathological social development. It gained new strength in the conditions of technological progress, the emergence (or rather, reproduction) of thinking, which in post-industrial society was defined as postmodern. During the recent political confrontation of social systems, it was used as an ideological weapon. It launched the processes that turned out to be poorly controlled and it can only be resisted from the standpoint of healthy conservatism and the promotion of traditional values.

The article analyzes the characteristic features of the Dutch Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century. During this period, a movement of "patriots" appeared in the Republic of the United Provinces, who in their activities paid great attention to the education of the people, as well as to the school reform and children education. Educational societies and social clubs were formed, uniting people of different social background, engaged in the discussion of pressing socio-political issues. Under the influence of the pan-European Enlightenment movement, such authors as Jan Floris Martinet appeared in Holland, who promoted teaching children the natural sciences and humanities not in the form of traditional lectures in the classroom, but in the form of a conversation between a teacher and a student during an excursion or travel. Of particular importance to the Dutch enlighteners was the experience and writings of German philanthropists, who founded new schools in Germany - philanthropinums. A characteristic feature of the Dutch Enlightenment was the emphasis on family education in the formation of modern man. This was reflected, in particular, in the work of the poet Hieronymus van Alphen, as well as in the increased interest in women's education during this period.

The article is devoted to the consideration of some aspects of creativity in the context of its essential and conceptual involvement in the educational process. Creativity is a social, cultural and psychological process, but both in the industrial and in the post-industrial paradigm, the educational system is in a subordinate position. Human development as self-development is always a creative act. It is impossible to force a person to be creative: creativity, self-actualization, responsibility should grow “from below”, and not descend in the form of command directives “from above”. In order for creativity to become the norm of the educational process, it is necessary to organize it in such a way that all its participants can fully realize themselves in it as individuals. The “hidden” level of creativity, included in the considered model “Four-C”, reveals the space of creative goal-setting, activities and behavior that trigger mechanisms for realizing creative potential and the ability to adequate, dynamic, flexible response to emerging problems, overcoming arising difficulties, mobilizing internal resources of a  person. At the same time, the rationality of the creative process, in which a person is able to penetrate, a particular object of his activity is also determined, accepting it in universal, substantial characteristics, disobjectifying, and not simply using it in a purely external way. Systemic creativity seems impossible without a personal component, but personal creativity is reproduced and funded by the system. The educational system forms an organic unity of creative work and creativity. Decay, disequilibrium, uncertainty, loss in new circumstances at the same time generate and actualize creativity as a response to new challenges, as the only possible way to solve permanently emerging new non-trivial problems, since traditional and classic methods do not help much. Thus, the education system, on the one hand, can be a more or less suitable space for realizing the creative potential of a person, and on the other hand, it itself produces a synthesis of personal and systemic creativity.

The article examines the influence of the phenomenon of conformism on the formation of an artistic image in the Soviet classical choreographic art on the example of the creative path of the outstanding Soviet ballerina Galina Ulanova. The author analyses the phenomenon of conformism in the Soviet artistic sphere and considers the conditions of its origin and development. Using the dialectical method of research, the author makes an attempt to analyze the phenomenon of conformity from a neutral position and determine its role in creating an artistic image. The biographical method of research makes it possible to establish the contribution of a particular conformist artist to the formation of a single art form – Soviet classical choreographic art. The author comes to the conclusion that artists in the course of their creative activity can consciously adhere to the form of conformal behavior as a certain strategy to achieve their creative goals, which can contribute to the creation of masterpieces and the development of art.

The article discusses the methodological problems one faces while working with the feature films in research on Soviet daily urban life. In the cultural anthropology of Soviet society, three methodological concerns should be highlighted. First, feature films are rarely thought of as providing reliable data and play marginal role in anthropological research. Second, the study of Soviet cultural politics in general and feature films in particular, requires bringing diverse disciplines in humanities in a synthesis. Third, the apparent lack of specific methodological guidelines for such analysis can be explained by the ongoing controversies in the theory of cinema and competing approaches to film studies. We found that although in the anthropology of Soviet society feature films are seen as an effective instrument of culture politics, there are but a few cases of studies focusing on feature films. At the same time the expressive potential of cinema and the viewer’s perceptions make films an important source for studying daily city life. On the one hand, the visual imagery of such films contains elements of urban life that are familiar to the viewer and thus provide a context that is understandable and intuitively legible. On the other hand, through the use of various dramatic and cinematographic techniques, certain norms of urban life are established in regard to daily practices, for instance, showcasing desirable images of urban dwellers.  Therefore, analysis of feature films can shed light both on the reality of urban life and on its norms constructed in accordance with the goals of culture politics.  In order to distinguish these two types of representations of urban living, it is necessary to take into account the conventions of the cinematic language evolved in different periods of Soviet history; the key points of culture policy; the actual social and economic opportunities enjoyed by Soviet urban dwellers. Therefore, findings in the field of film studies, culture studies and history of Soviet society provide the necessary context for the analysis of Soviet cinema as an anthropological source. Semiotics and deconstruction are among the main approaches to the study of elements of the cinematic language and mechanisms underlying the construction of ideological messages that these elements convey. In this study, we relied on protocol schemes developed by Helmut Korte as a methodological tool for film analysis.

The article contains a response to the previously published (Ideas and Ideals, 2021, vol. 13, iss. 3, pt. 1, pp. 84–102.) article by P. A. Orekhovsky and V. I. Razumov “The Onset of Narcissistic Culture: Consequences for Education, Science and Politics”. The author considers that the definition of culture as a narcissistic is an effective metaphor that allows to conceptualize a general tendency that now manifests itself in a number of outwardly disparate phenomena. The ethos of modern culture is the self-centeredness of its representatives, the organization and assessment of reality in relation to this center as a natural attitude. The article suggests some of the possible directions for the development of the concept. The foundations of narcissistic culture go back to the demassification of production and devaluation of objective knowledge in information dynamics. The author traces the connection between the spirit of narcissistic culture and the development of subject-practical knowledge (systematized and didactically formalized experience) as a special epistemic type and a kind of alternative to classical scientific knowledge. The article indicates the problems associated with the parallel functioning of two types of knowledge in the educational system. Another natural consequence of the onset of narcissistic culture is radical formalization of the education system, since demonstration and positioning in this type of culture are more important in comparison with the real content. In this regard, the author notes an increasing gap between the circulation of information in communication flows and the achievement of the knowledge by their participants. The generic sign of knowledge is consistency, which, among other things, involves the establishment of meaningful relationships between areas of knowledge that form both the general and professional picture of the world. Constant transformation of the organizational framework of education, controlled by formal signs, destroys, firstly, these relationships. In addition, the author evaluates pseudo-scientific knowledge as one of the manifestations of narcissistic culture. The traditional foundation of the pseudo-science is an intermediate level of education, which connects a reverence towards science with an inability to assess the content of scientific ideas. This foundation is complemented in a narcissistic culture by a general belief in the justification of any views and the sufficiency of one’s own opinion in any case. At the same time, the narcissistic culture has its own resources for growth, and the author sees the opportunity to use them, including the educational practice.