Ideas and Ideals

The article analyzes the portrait of Count Kirill Grigoryevich Razumovsky, painted in Rome in 1766 by the famous artist Pompeo Girolamo Batoni. The portrait has features characteristic of portraits of travelers making the Grand Tour of Europe. In the second half of the 18th century, these were usually young aristocrats completing their education. Young people studied at the best universities; acquired extensive communication experience during their stay in major European centers; improved their skills in horseback riding, dancing and swordsmanship in famous academies, and also acquired knowledge of the art of antiquity by visiting Italy. In the portraits of travelers, Batoni emphasized the elegant dignity of the persons depicted; motifs of ancient architecture and sculpture of Rome testified to their good taste. Kirill Razumovsky also commissioned a portrait from the artist during his Grand Tour. However, the Russian count was already a mature man of 38 years old, who experienced a rapid rise in his youth, when he turned from a shepherd boy into a nobleman, and the collapse of hopes for receiving the hereditary title of hetman in Little Russia shortly before his Grand Tour. Comparison of Kirill Razumovsky portrait with the portrait of the young British traveler Thomas Dundas, which is close in composition, reveals the peculiarities of Pompeo Batoni’s work: by making only minor changes in the composition of the works, the painter skillfully conveyed the inner world of the depicted persons.

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.

The article considers the erotic genre of traditional Chinese art, chun gong hua (‘spring palace paintings’), which was developed in painting. The study uses comparative - historical, cultural and historical methods, as well as methods of systematization, analysis and synthesis. The author traces the formation and evolution of the genre, reveals its specific features. The paper analyzes the system of artistic images of the works of chun gong hua, reveals that they are based on the ideas of Taoism, which are visualized through painting, which made it possible to reveal a second, meaningful plan of paintings filled with metaphors and allegories. Particular attention is paid to the characterization of expressive means, specific techniques and visual techniques of the genre.

The study shows that due to the richness of images, artistic and expressive means and techniques, juxtaposition of the conditional and the real, double transformation of nature, the first impression of seemingly pornographic images of naked bodies and erotic scenes is subdued. The high artistry of the ‘spring palace paintings’ allows us to attribute them to the unique works of Chinese traditional art.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the functioning of metamodernism in the field of Russian contemporary art. Researchers of metamodernism talk about the revival of historicity, depth and affect that were lost with the era of postmodernism. Metamodernism is characterized by oscillation, metaxis, new sincerity, neo-romantic sensuality, reconstruction, etc. In this paper, the author attempts to analyze markers of metamodernism in the visual arts using the example of the artist Vitaly Pushnitsky (St. Petersburg). The material for the study was a research interview with the artist V. Pushnitsky, as well as a semiotic and formal-stylistic analysis of his works (2015-2020). The author comes to the conclusion that through such markers of metamodernism as oscillation, reconstruction and appeal to new sincerity, the artist V. Pushnitsky seeks to show the reality in which the artist is at the stage of searching for new artistic means of expression. Along with this, through certain compositional and color features, V. Pushnitsky pays tribute to such artists as Pierre-August Renoir, Claude Monet, Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon, as well as the Japanese poet I. Kosugi.

The article considers the iconography of Christian art associated with the rainbow motif. A rainbow is a beautiful optical phenomenon in the atmosphere that occurs when light is scattered on water droplets; it has the form of a multicolored arc or two arcs. The shining rainbow in Scripture is closely related to God's acts of communication with the chosen people such as Noah and the prophets. In such iconographic schemes as the Last judgment, the All saints’ Day and the Ascension of the Lord, the rainbow motif, based on the prophetic visions of Ezekiel and John the Apostle, is a symbol of the radiance of the Divine Glory and Majesty of God in His appearance to the prophets. In these iconographies, the rainbow is depicted with different degree of conventionality. Thus, it can be represented in one or two colors, but can also be made with expressive brightness in several colors of the spectrum. In these iconographies, the rainbow often represents the throne of the Lord within the mandorla - an oval or round frame around the figure of Christ or the Virgin, which has a complex symbolism associated with the image of a cloud, with the Divine Glory, as well as with the special nature of the image of Christ or the Virgin, which is outside the physical time and space. In a number of other iconographic schemes, the rainbow motif has the meaning of God's mercy. These are compositions associated with God’s Covenant with Noah, as well as with the Lord Covenant with the chosen people – the Church, which is reflected, in particular, in the compositions of Noah's Ark and the iconography of Our Lady of Mount Nerukosechnaya.

The article explores such a kind of musical genre – a Soviet lyric song, its place in the Soviet everyday life, aesthetic task, and its fate during the 70-year period of life. The author substantiates the reasons why this genre in the Soviet era turned out to be so popular that it became a part of folk culture. The author also studies the phenomenon of some songs of that period, heavily propagated, but not popular among people. The author highlights the idea that even pseudo-folk songs, such as V.G. Zakharov’s songs for the Pyatnitsky Choir, although actively propagandized and often performed from the stage and on the radio, did not really become popular. The article attempts to explain the reasons for this spontaneous mass ostracism by “popular censorship”. Thieves' lyrics as such are not explored, with the exception of the “anthem of prisoners” - the song “I remember that Vanino port.” The author analyzes the reasons for the sudden end of the “golden age” of the Soviet lyric song, which nature ceased to correspond to the commercial interests of post-perestroika Russian song variety.

The article focuses on the arguments given by an Australian researcher John Bigelow who aspires to prove the existence of regular relations between the compositional structure of William Shakespeare’s cycle of 154 sonnets and the system of modal scales in the version of Shakespeare’s outstanding contemporary, composer and theorist Thomas Morley, which served as a basis for musical theory of that time. It is noted that J. Bigelow managed to prove the rightfulness of his own assumptions allowing to disclose such relations. One of the brightest examples he draws is the relations between the first eight sonnets and sonnet 145 and the interval structure of the corresponding modal scales and peculiarities of the triton sound as well as the auditory perception of certain non-tempered thirds and fourths. At the same time, the article points at a certain inaccuracy of Bigelow’s arguments and his lacking the principle of universality as the reasons and observations given by the researcher concern only the smallest part of the cycle and not the whole one. Nevertheless, Bigelow’s conclusions are certainly worth the attention, and one may continue the research of the sonnets cycle in the given direction which might probably lead to a fuller understanding of its compositional structure.

Shakespeares Sonnets (1609) contains several rhyming patterns that were regarded at the time as ‘anomalies’. In a list of ‘Rules’ for poetry published in 1585, the very first prohibition laid down by King James VI of Scotland was that a syllable should never be rhymed with itself. In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. And yet, in Shakespeare’s sonnets, the very first of King James’s prohibitions is broken  ̶  rarely, but repeatedly. If Shakespeare’s successive sonnets are aligned with the successive notes in musical scales for the canonical series of the Renaissance ‘modes’, then the locations of Shakespeare’s rhyme-anomalies coincide reliably with the locations of the notes that are significantly discordant with the tonic according to a musical theory that was published in 1619 by the astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s master-work The Harmony of the World (1619) was dedicated to King James I of England. This work opens with a Dedication to King James, in which King James’s celebrated political successes were credited to his understanding of the ‘celestial harmonies’.    It is argued here that Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence constitutes a ‘microcosm’ that formally echoes Kepler’s theory of the ‘macrocosm’ and ‘the harmony of the spheres’. If Shakespeare could somehow have brought the formal patterning in this ‘microcosm’ to the attention of potential patrons in the Jacobean Court, then he could reasonably have hoped that this might curry favour with those among them who shared ‘Platonic’ interests like those of Kepler.

The present work develops the traditions of intellectual history associated with the re-creation of «hyperreality» of the theatrical and cinema space through scenic biographies. Continuing to adhere to the right-conservative positions, the author made an attempt to touch upon a special facet of this space. He seeks to draw attention to the career of female actresses, who because of their sincere and dedicated service to the high art of the cinema and for the ideological and aesthetic sophistication of their images can be considered genuine «queens of the screen» not only of the Fifth Republic, but also of the world cinematography. Of all the numerous pleiad of French cultural figures of the investigated gender category, the author singles out three large-scale, legendary figures – Annie Girardot, Simone Signoret and Michel Morgan.

The study focuses on the most important stages of the cinema career of these actresses and the concrete results of their activities that make up the contribution to the cinema art, which is considered in direct correlation with the main tendencies of France's social and political development in the newest period of time.

Because of this, a historical and cultural comparative analysis of «being-in-the-art» based on the use of various kinds of sources is carried out in the work.

They, except for sources of personal origin, are of paramount importance media materials in the form of film productions, films, the conceptual evaluation of which is based on both the personal impressions of the author and the research reserve that exists in historiography and cinematography