Scientific Papers of St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts'69. Issues of the Foreign Art Development

In the 7th century, a new monotheistic religion, Islam, was originated. The process of uniting the Arabs on the basis of ideological and religious beliefs led to emergence of a new state – the Arab Caliphate. Art provided a powerful visual language to demonstrate tmight and authority of the Caliph. The restrictions imposed by Islam had a significant impact on the formation of Arab art. Although images of living creatures were used in the ornamentation of secular buildings, for example, we can find them in the mosaics and sculptures of the palace complex of Khirbat al-Mafjar, the strict prohibition was fully present in the architectural decoration of religious constructions. Nevertheless, despite these restrictions, the visual arts of Islamic countries developed as a self-sufficient phenomenon. Constrained by religious attitudes, the masters of the Arab Caliphate were forced to invent abstract forms of art that could fully influence the adherents of the new faith. The need for diversity and the search for variability with an extremely limited range of motifs led to the fact that ornamentation took on a special place in Islamic art. The Umayyad era is the period when ornament became a special pictorial medium and patterns took a central place in the decoration of cult architectural structures. The Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where examples of some of the earliest Islamic ornaments are presented, is of great interest for this study. The article examines the mosaics of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and analyzes the ornamental motifs used in its decoration during the reign of the Umayyad dynasty.

In the first half of the 17th century, artists from the Northern Netherlands, such as Pieter Saenredam of Haarlem, implemented innovative ideas in architectural painting and engraving. While the followers of Vredeman de Vries continued the mannerist tradition in depicting architectural fantasies, Saenredam turned to the real-life Romanesque and Gothic churches and town halls. The search for new artistic imagery occurred against the backdrop of a widespread passion for collecting material evidence of the past and composing texts dedicated to old buildings. The article compares the visual representation of images of Dutch medieval architecture based on the manuscripts of the Utrecht antiquarian Arnoldus Buchelius and the works of the Haarlem master of church “perspectives” Peter Saenredam. The purpose of the article is to assess the influence of text and graphic sources on the perception of Dutch monuments of the Middle Ages that were preserved at the time the images were created. The emergence of early modern Dutch architecture and its representation largely took place through the genre of chorographic literature, in which medieval structures were seen not as a sign of a “barbarian past”, but rather as the surviving legacy of a heyday. The popularization of paintings depicting monuments of the Middle Ages contributed to the consolidation of a limited repertoire of compositions: “portrait” format, panorama, urban profile, hybrid view. Turning to epistolary sources allows us to study in more detail the specifics of the search for new artistic forms of Northern Dutch artists of the post-Reformation period, evaluate the contribution of antiquarians to this process and expand the methodology for studying architectural painting and graphics.

The categorical apparatus of the Baroque style includes the concepts of diversity, dynamics, excess, contrast, but one of the leading terms defining the artistic principles of the era can be recognized as the concept of «bizarre». Modern Russian art history studies (A.V. Stepanov, A.K. Yakimovich, V.V. Degtyarev, L.D. Chistova) considers the conceptual problems of analyzing the phenomena of the Baroque era as a source of formation of theoretical research principles that allow interpreting the artistic context of the formation of figurative structures in a system of methodological approaches to the study of the space-time continuum, concepts of the conditional «other», systems of active combination of visual dominants that make up the semantic core of the style. The phenomenon of Baroque wit, according to Baltasar Gracian and his contemporaries, consists in the ability to combine disparate things, which influenced fantastic and emphatically conventional images that exploit the principles of a phantasmagoric combination of disparate elements into an illogical but holistic system. During the XVII century, the category of «bizarre» was transformed under the influence of cultural and historical patterns into the concept of «exotic», akin to the realization of a visible difference from the formed principles, alien, falling out of the understandable context and traditional values of the era. In the era of Great Geographical Discoveries, the role of stating the status of the «bizarre» is often performed by scientific illustration – an ethnographic image, a travelogue telling about a journey to distant lands, a costume treatise. The image of a foreigner and views of other lands appear in Hans Burkgmayr (1508). The concept of the «bizarre» is transformed into the concept of the exotic, referring to the principles of orientalism in the XVII century and to ethnographic themes, the «bizarre» is perceived not as a trope, a figure of speech that allows you to connect the disparate, but as the embodiment of the exotic, alien, incomprehensible, «other».

The painting “The Reveler” by Isaac Koedijck (1617–1666) in the Hermitage collection is the only work of this fijnschilder located in Russia (Inv. GE-1862). However, the history of several of his pictures in the 18–19 centuries were associated with Russian collections. “The Reveler”, dated 1650, was created shortly before the Dutch master left for Batavia (1651). The composition presents a man sitting in the interior with a glass in his hand, whose gaze and toasting gesture are directed at the viewer. Nearby on the table some objects form a still life, which is dominated by a luxurious silver cup stand – bekerschroef – with a roemer. The cup stand in auricular style, decorated with the figure of the child Bacchus sitting on a barrel with a glass and a bunch of grapes in hands, rests on a base with three dolphins heads. The figurative motif repeats almost in detail the silver and partially gilded bekerschroef created in 1642 by the Hague master Andries Grill (1604–1665) (Kunst Museum, Den Haag, inv. 0153887). Most likely, Koedijck included this expensive item to give his composition a more representative character. No status symbol like this has been found in any other work by this artist. Perhaps the cup stand was in the possession of the person who commissioned the painting. It is no coincidence that it is depicted next to the central character raising a glass: on your health!

This article brings to the Russian art history sphere a new data about the creative heritage of the English artist of the second half of the 18th century George Morland, and also some unknown facts of his biography. Exclusive information gained from modern and historical foreign sources emphasizes the importance of the artist as an undoubted reformer of the British genre painting. The consideration of two paintings of Morland’s early and mature period gives an opportunity to compare his artistic method in both cases and to prove the radical change of it within a very short period of time. That radical transformation influenced the overwhelming majority of the following English genre painters. Morland’s program genre work is analyzed properly as it became a turning point for the development of the British genre painting in general. Besides, the article draws reader’s attention to the information, missed by previous researchers, about the high demand and relevance of George Morland’s works with his contemporaries in England and on the Continent, in Britain a century after his death and around the world nowadays.

The article examines the phenomenon of the so-called “military friendship” between the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, which formed in the post-Napoleonic era and lasted almost until the Crimean War. It manifested itself not only in the sphere of foreign policy, but also in culture, was widely reflected in the plastic arts, it determined the content and appearance of many official monuments in the era of Nicholas I. These monuments are diverse - these are temples, military monuments, and figurative sculpture. In the case of sacred buildings and partly military monuments, a carefully selected “national” style played an extremely important role: Gothic in Prussia (it was reflected in the projects of K.F. Schinkel) and Russian in Russia (Cathedral of Christ the Savior, monuments in the fields battles of the Patriotic War of 1812 and in Poland). A characteristic feature of many monuments of that era is their certain content and formal similarity, internal connection with German, primarily Prussian and, to a lesser extent, Bavarian monuments. This was due to the personal relations of the Russian emperor with the Prussian royal court and his deepest respect for the memory of the Russian-Prussian alliance. At the same time, Nicholas I, having absorbed German ideas, implemented them on a large scale, corresponding to the role of Russia on the world stage – both in meaning and also in terms of the geography of the installation of monuments, subsequently spreading it to the territory of pacified Poland. The substantive and external similarity of Russian and Prussian military monuments serves as one of the striking examples of cultural ties between countries in the Nicholas era.

The article examines one of the most dynamically developing trends in contemporary art – video art, which evolving as screen art, inherited the language of cinema and television. Actively using and creating various kinds of manipulations, originally invented by the founders of cinema, video art makes a number of researchers to see in its conceptual basis the phenomenon of the impossibility of a clear classification, which results in the absence of established terminology for today. The most expressive artistic practices (according to the authors) used in the creation of video works, such as, slowing down, framing, referring to classical subjects, etc., are considered. An attempt has been made to describe the main problems of works of new visuality, which clearly manifested the strategy of their development at the end of the 20th century, and today demonstrate their multidimensional redundancy. The rapid development of technology has made new tools and techniques used in creating video work available for the artistic world; it has significantly changed not only the technology and aesthetics of video, but also the psychology of perception. Over time, thanks to the digital format, video art has gained the ability to undergo various forms of transformation in search of unprecedented visual experiences. The emerging role of the media artist as an analyst of reality in the modern world has become an obvious consequence of the use of the digital format and a wide range of media technologies when creating works. Video art, continuously transforming, progressing and revising traditional schemes used in screen art, has become entrenched in the artistic consciousness as a full-fledged means of exploring and visualizing various current aspects.

The article discusses the main stages of the formation of mono-ha movement. In their practice, artists of the “school of things” shift the focus from content and figurativeness to form and space in order to explore the material object itself and the relationships that arise between these two aspects (in some cases, space is not included in this “formula”, and the viewer observes interaction of several materials). At the same time, artists strive for minimal impact on the material, trying to preserve its natural, pristine state. The art of mono-ha developed under the influence of the European movement of arte povera (“poor art”), American minimalism and other artistic movements of the mid-20th century, however, conceptually it is more connected with the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, based on meditation with a concentration on either some object or a thought. Artists, like Zen Buddhists, strive to achieve harmony through accepting the naturalness of this world, concentrating on being in a specific place and at a specific time. The interaction of Japanese and Western art gives rise to a variety of plastic ideas and artistic forms. Analyzing the concept of perception of form and space by the Mono-ha masters, an attempt has been made to prove that the Mono-ha art movement is an important stage of the integration of Japanese art into the world artistic space.

The article presents the work of one of the leaders in contemporary art in Mongolia, Purevsukhiin Baigal, who has successfully proved herself in painting, graphics and, having defended her thesis on art history, conducts serious scientific research in the field of cultural heritage. In addition to presenting her life path and the detailed graphic and pictorial cycles created, the article explicates a creative method in which the appeal to the history and mythopoetics of the Mongolian peoples plays a leading role. This, in turn, opens up opportunities for revealing the artistic image of two triptychs “Ertniy nuudel” (Mong. – “Ancient nomads’ encampment”) and “On tsagiin khelhees” (Mong. – “Connection of Times”) by the Mongolian artist Purevsukhiin Baigal, the only works in Russia that are kept in the collection of the State Art Museum of the Altai Region. The means of artistic expression used by the artist are analyzed, the main idea of the works is explicated; the historical aspect of P. Baigal’s graphic and pictorial creativity is considered. The analysis was based on the fundamental categories of culture of the Eurasian nomads: the cultural constant “Homeland” and the mythologeme of the Deer – golden horns.

The article examines the status and the meaning of white in the works by K. S. Malevich. Particular attention is paid to the painting “Suprematist composition. White on White” (1918), as well as to the specifics of the third period in the development of Suprematism (the period of the “white square”, according to the periodisation of the artist himself). To embrace this work, as well as all the works by Malevich of this period, the viewer has to differentiate close colours, involving his comprehensive visual experience, which stimulates the processes of sense making implying a possibility of loss of visual. Malevich in his works is reconsidering optical properties and symbolic meanings of white hereby demonstrating his personal concepts of time and absolute. The idea of “white on white” is interpreted as a concept of free creativity, as a pathway via “zero forms” towards the new. The artist exploiting a concept of “economy” to designate the fundamentals of the creative method of suprematism, which brings it closer to the interpretation of the concept in religious culture, in patristic, where it is used to define visible and speculative, as well as the paths to comprehension of truth. Malevich has left some of his works in Вerlin 1927. Later, the works have been redistributed between American and European museums, therefore suprematism directly influenced the development of neo avant-garde practices in the second part of 20 century. The idea of “white on white” was embraced by the circles of minimalistic and conceptual art in the period 1960-s – 1970-s as a significant creative modality. The continuity is defined not as much through analysing the works of art, but mainly on the level of theory and methodology due to involvement of artists in the discourse. The authors of the article noted the shift in perception of the “White on White” to literary essays at the turn of 20th and 21st as, which were mostly concentrated on analysis of substantial nature and physical qualities of white as a pigment and paint. In this context, “White on White” is perceived as dissolution and coming back to nature.

The article is devoted to the appearance of special works of monumental painting in Swedish schools, during the period from 1897 to 1915, when the largest number of murals were executed and a unified national program for decorating this type of space was formed. The rise of art for public spaces at the turn of the century coincided with a breakthrough in Swedish pedagogy and interest in aesthetic education. The author considers the new role of art in schools, the emergence of special organizations engaged in ordering and paying for the creation of monumental works, the list of depicted themes and motifs, as well as their content, as manifestation of the public position and ideological propaganda within the school education.