An example of the interaction between art and culture. Development on the theme "art around us"

Problems of synthesis of arts

Many domestic art historians, including Murina, Vanslov and Stepanov, addressed the problems of art synthesis.

The problem of interaction between the arts - their relationship, interconnection, mutual influence - is one of the most important problems aesthetics, which was also repeatedly developed in art criticism. It crosses purely theoretical questions related to the interpretation of the system of arts and their specificity with real ones. creative issues artistic practice. The nature of the interaction between the arts in some cases significantly influences the artistic usefulness of certain specific creative results. Each of the arts is connected with thousands of threads not only with many phenomena of social life and with other forms of social consciousness, but also, in principle, with all other types of artistic creativity. These connections may be more or less direct or indirect, they may be more or less important, but they always exist and largely determine the nature and state of any art in a particular era.

Each of the arts, although it is directly, directly connected only with certain aspects of life and has limited specific expressive properties, is nevertheless capable of artistically cognizing the essence of life, human relationships, social development and in this sense reflect the world as a whole. Therefore, each art is, in principle, independent and does not need to perform its functions in some crutches or supports borrowed from other arts. At the same time, each art also needs the help of other arts, because its possibilities for directly reflecting reality are limited, and its special advantages over other arts are purchased at the price of a certain incompleteness in the direct depiction of life.

The theory of synthesis of arts developed around the search for criteria and patterns that determine the interaction of architecture, sculpture and painting. It is characteristic that arts that are synthetic in nature, for example, drama and opera theatre, ballet, cinema, circus, and pop, which, unlike painting or sculpture, are unable to exist outside the alloy of various artistic means and languages ​​that form them, do not need theory. The theory of synthesis of fine arts and architecture is constructed as a substantiation of the principles of connections between different types arts that allow achieving a holistic unification of heterogeneous spatial-figurative systems.

Monumental creations of various classical eras. Behind last years, starting from the late 60s, with the introduction of painting and sculpture into modern construction, interest in the problems of synthesis not only increased, but also took a slightly different direction due to the need to take into account various factors put forward by the era of scientific and technological revolution.

According to Hegel's theory, the subject of various arts is one and the same and at the same time not the same: the unity of the general and the individual, the universal and the specific is contained in this very subject.

The dialectic of the general and the specific in the artistic sphere, most fully revealed by Hegel, is essential for understanding the interaction between the arts.

On the one hand, each art strives to maximally identify, strengthen and develop what constitutes its unique feature, distinguishes it from all others and is its advantage over them. But, on the other hand, each art also strives to take into account and use the experience of others, exchange achievements with them, expand its capabilities and boundaries, having learned the peculiarities of the behavior of its fellows. The tendency towards individualization is complemented by a tendency towards mutual influence and synthesis. Always distinguished by “uncommon facial expressions,” they at the same time jointly solve the same problems. Pushing away from each other, they strive at the same time to become related to each other.

Genuinely artistic achievements usually associated with balance and harmony in the interaction of opposing tendencies (Ill. 1). Emphases can be placed in one direction or another, but as soon as the relative predominance of any tendency turns into an absolute one, art experiences a crisis and, ultimately, is destroyed. Absolute differentiation and specification, leading to the separation of one art from all others, is just as destructive for it as absolute integration, which in fact means absorption, substitution of this art others.

The deepest internal basis for the synthesis of arts is human action, which allows completely dissimilar types of creativity to unite into an organic artistic unity and makes this unification truthful and convincing. This is most obvious in the performing arts, where it is the action, realized primarily in the actor’s play, in his stage behavior, that constitutes the basis and essence of artistic image. Around acting all other arts unite and serve him: image, music, etc. (a stage performance can include all existing arts).

But all other types of synthesis also have an effective basis, more or less directly expressed. In the plastic arts, this basis is those real processes human life, for the flow and spatial design of which architecture is created. It includes painting, sculpture, decorative - applied works taking into account the nature and development of life processes occurring in it. The connection with action in book illustration and in vocal music, but even here it is present in the subtext. Different sides, facets and hypostases of integral human action provide the basis for all the diverse types of creativity, and the synthesis of the arts is aimed at a more complete, complex, artistic expression of the character and essence of people’s life.

At artistic association arts, each of them makes its own contribution to the synthetic whole, enriches this whole with the specific capabilities and features inherent in this art (Ill. 2).

From all of the above, V.V. Vanslov gives the following definition of the synthesis of arts - it is an organic artistic whole that has a new quality in relation to each art included in it.

The synthesis of plastic arts also includes decorative and applied arts (folk art and design). Functionally significant utilitarian things, as well as objects of purely decorative purposes, form a single ensemble with architecture and the fine arts included in it. Through this unity of all components, the lifestyle and aesthetic ideal of society are revealed.

It is difficult to achieve and is a real creative as well as theoretical problem. This problem is most often solved in relation to the entire living environment.

The synthesis of plastic arts was characteristic of all great eras of development of human artistic culture. The synthesis of arts in Russian artistic culture of the second half XIII- beginning of the 19th century.

The arts included in the synthesis are united on the basis of common life, ideological and artistic content. At the same time, they do not repeat, but complement each other, sound not only in unison, but also form a kind of counterpoint, converge in unity, but retain their differences. Synthesis can only be achieved by the joint solution of common substantive problems using specific means of all arts, that is, such an architectural and visual complex in which each of the arts, while maintaining its specificity, complements the whole with special capabilities and unique artistic colors.

Sometimes synthesis is passed off as a random adaptation to architecture of decorations and images that do not follow from its essence. Sometimes synthesis is understood as an attempt to revive soulless architecture with the help of fine art. Monumentality is often replaced by external design, reminiscent of advertising posters, puzzles, or pure abstractions. The images are permeated by schematism, artificiality, and poor taste.

Sometimes, on the ends of standard, featureless houses, artists mechanically transfer ornaments borrowed from folk art, but not so much decorating the architecture as emphasizing its facelessness. Contradictory works also arise when the achieved visual and architectural ensemble is destroyed by the unsuccessful inclusion of elements of decorative and applied art.

The first most important condition for the emergence of a true synthesis is that architecture, first of all, must itself be art. Fine art can, and often should, take part in the formation of its artistic appearance.

Sometimes you can come across a kind of underestimation of the artistic significance of architecture as such.

Striving for the artistry of architecture, however, first of all, they rely on synthesis, on fine art, forgetting that without the artistry of architecture itself, synthesis will not work.

When architecture itself is artistic, that is, truthful and expressive, it needs fine art as the development and concretization of the architectural image itself. It is necessary not as a replacement, but as a complement and “continuation” of its artistry.

When we're talking about about synthesis, then a union of two equal arts is assumed, directed towards a common goal and giving a new artistic quality. Each of the synthesized arts contributes to this new quality.

True synthesis is achieved only on the basis of humanism and realism in both architecture and fine art. After all, each of these arts is by its nature truthful and humane, and it is in this that they meet each other halfway and are able to unite to achieve a common goal.

The humanism of architecture is that it is intended for the progress of man and humanity, that is, it meets the nature of life, the material and spiritual needs of people certain society, helping their formation and development. The realism of architecture lies in the truth of its design, function and appearance in relation to the way of life of people and their social and aesthetic ideal.

The question of interaction between the arts cannot be posed in the abstract. In the development of artistic culture, this interaction can have a double meaning. In some cases, interaction can be fruitful, having positive consequences, in others - unfruitful, giving negative results. Whether the interaction of arts is fruitful or unfruitful - it is impossible to answer this question in a general form. Everything depends on the specific nature of the interaction, as well as on the ideological and social basis on which it occurs.

In a spatial artistic system of arts synthesis, its artistic and figurative integrity is determined by the nature of the manifestation of the general laws of the integrity itself and their interaction with the laws of individual types of art. The general, developing and manifesting itself in the particular and unified, is enriched and acquires individual uniqueness.

synthesis art aesthetics

INTERACTION OF THE ARTS - mutual contact and influence of different types of art on each other in the process of their historical development. In the artistic culture of each country and era, types of art exist and develop not in isolation, but in connection with each other. As a rule, every historical era one or another type of art dominated, influencing others and leaving its mark on them.

In Italy of the Renaissance, painting dominated, in Germany of the 18th-19th centuries - music, in Russia, France and England of the 19th century - literature. This determined the uniqueness of artistic culture as a whole, created fertile ground for the influence of the dominant art on others (visual trends in Italian music XVI century, the musical character of German romantic poetry, literary influences in Russian painting and music of the 19th century V. etc.). But even with the harmonious development of all arts, interactions arise between them.

Each of the arts is capable of artistically understanding the essence of life, human relations, social development, that is, reflecting the world as a whole. At the same time, each type of art simultaneously needs the help of others, because its possibilities for directly reflecting reality are limited. The basis of the processes of interaction between the arts that occur in the development of artistic culture at all stages of its history is rooted in this dialectic of the general and the specific in the artistic sphere.

On the one hand, each type of art strives to maximally identify, strengthen and develop what constitutes its unique feature, distinguishes it from all others and is its advantage over them, justifying its right to exist. But, on the other hand, each art also strives to take into account and use the experience of others, exchange achievements with them, and expand its capabilities and boundaries. The tendency towards individualization is complemented by a tendency towards mutual influence and synthesis (see Synthesis of the Arts). The arts develop as if experiencing the simultaneous action of both centrifugal and centripetal forces. Always distinguished by “uncommon facial expressions,” they at the same time jointly solve the same problems. Separating, they strive to become related to each other.

An example of the interaction of arts in Russian artistic culture can be the influence of cinema on painting, theater and other forms of art. In painting, this influence is expressed, for example, in close-up images and fragmented compositions - techniques that were not widespread before the era of cinema. In the theater, the influence of cinema is reflected in the multi-episode and “edited” composition of the play, manifested in the conciseness and rapidity of the dialogue, in the use of such techniques as “dissolves” (in pictures of the past, memories, dreams, etc.), “ close-ups"(highlighting the details of the action), "voicing" the hero's thoughts (with the help of the presenter, through a loudspeaker, etc.), finally, in the inclusion of film footage in the action.

With all the specificity of visual and expressive means individual arts there is a connection between them, which is expressed in the fact that they are subordinate to certain general patterns, and in the fact that under certain conditions certain arts can use the means of other arts.

The features of mutual influence of various arts can be traced in any type of artistic creativity. The influence of one art on another is fruitful when it is carried out on the basis of preserving the specifics of any type of art and leads to its enrichment with the features of another, to expansion artistic possibilities and funds. But it is unfruitful when it destroys the specificity of a given art, replacing it with the specificity of another, suppressing its own nature. So, on the one hand, in modernism there is a substitution of the specifics of painting with the properties of music, which is used to substantiate abstractionism, and on the other hand, the substitution of the specifics of music with the properties of painting, which is used to substantiate “concrete” (noise) music. In both cases, each of the arts is destroyed.

For the artistic culture of society, which fulfills the task of comprehensive and harmonious development of the individual, one of the leading patterns is the tendency towards the development of arts as a single system. The interaction between them serves to expand the horizons of each of the arts, deepen artistic knowledge peace.

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The textbook completes the author's line of G.I. Danilova in art for primary school. It examines the characteristics of certain types of synthetic arts, as well as the processes of their mutual influence and mutual enrichment. Contains extensive illustrative material.
The methodological apparatus includes the following sections: “Questions and tasks for self-control”, “Creative workshop”, “Topics of projects, presentations or messages”. The assignments contain links to Internet resources. At the end of the textbook there is a list of recommended readings.

The problem of boundaries and interaction of arts.
The entire history of the development of artistic creativity is two opposing, mutual processes: from syncretism (undivided artistic thinking and creativity in primitive society) to the formation of individual types of art and from individual arts to their synthesis. In the history of world artistic culture, both of these processes are quite fruitful and equally important.

Let's try to figure this out. Indeed, the formation of art forms is, on the one hand, the history of their divergence, their acquisition of specific features. But none of the arts claims the palm; they all coexist peacefully in a friendly family. This can be seen in the relationship between theater and screen arts: cinema and television. When in late XIX V. cinema was opened, many predicted the inevitable death of the theater. It seemed that the Great Mute would take away all spectators from the theatrical art. Subsequently, an equally serious threat to the theater began to come from television, because this spectacle came to every home. Videos and the Internet, which have recently spread rapidly, also posed danger. But today the theater not only exists, it continues its triumphal march around the world, while maintaining its special status and specific features.

Content
Preface 3
I. Synthetic arts: their types and features
1. Space-time arts 7
1.1. Characteristics of synthetic arts 7
1.2. The problem of boundaries and interaction of arts 14
2. ABC of theater 20
2.1. Laws of theatrical art 20
2.2. Theater among other arts 26
3. Actor and director in theater 30
3.1. Acting Secrets 31
3.2. The art of directing 35
4. The Art of Opera 42
4.1. From the history of opera - 42
4.2. Opera - a union of music and theater 47
5. In the world of dance 57
5.1. From the history of the origin and development of dance* 58
5.2. The art of choreography and its means of expression 62
6. Fairyland - ballet 68
6.1. From the history of ballet art* 69
6.2. Expressive possibilities of ballet 75
7. The Art of Cinema 80
7.1. The first steps of cinema* 81
7.2. Expressive means of cinema 85
7.3. Cinema in the dialogue of arts 92
8. Different films are needed 97
8.1. Types of cinema 98
8.2. Variety of feature film genres 107
9. Screen arts: television, video 112
9.1. Properties of television and its expressive capabilities 113
9.2. World of Video Art 122
10. Multimedia art 126
10.1. Kinds computer art 127
10.2. Computer technology in the hands of an artist 135
11. Entertaining arts: circus and stage 140
11.1. In the world of circus art 142
11.2. Variety Art 153
II. "Under the shadow of friendly muses"
12. Fine arts in the family of muses 163
12.1. Commonwealth of Fine Arts 164
12.2. Fine Arts and Photography* 171
12.3. Fine Arts and Dance 175
13. Artist in theater and cinema 180
13.1. The art of scenography 181
13.2. Film artist 189
14. Architecture among other arts 196
14.1. Architecture and Fine Arts 197
14.2. Architecture - “frozen music” 203
15. Commonwealth of Arts and Literature 208
15.1. “Words and colors have long been related...” 209
15.2. “Become music, word...” 212
15.3. Literature, theater and cinema 215
16. Music in the family of muses 221
16.1. Music and Visual Arts 222
16.2. Music is the soul of dance 229
17. Composer in theater and cinema 237
17.1. The tasks of a composer in a theatrical performance. 238
17.2. Why is music needed in a film 242
18. When an opera turns into a performance 249
18.1. Creators of the opera performance 250
18.2. The role of the director and actor in opera 255
19. Creation of a ballet performance 260
19.1. And the miracle of the performance 261 is born
19.2. “Petrushka” - a masterpiece of ballet art* 265
20. At the premiere in drama theater 273
20.1. The art of being a spectator 274
20.2. Director at rehearsal* 277
21. How a movie is made 280
21.1. The path to the screen is not easy and slow 281
21.2. On film set 284
21.3. Film editing and scoring 289
How to watch and evaluate theater performance(movie) 294
Books for additional reading 295
Sources used 297.

Introduction 4

1. What is art? 5

2. Interaction of art and technology 7

3. Interaction of art and technology: development prospects. 8

4. The manifestation and role of new technologies in art. 10

5.Problems 12

6. Conclusion 13

7. References 14

8. Sources used 14

Introduction

Historical milestones in the history of modern art and technology are widely known in the West and information about them can be easily found in media art centers, public libraries, universities and art academies. In Russia this vital information It is simply missing that studying the impact of new technologies on art provokes difficulties. The relevance of this topic is obvious, because both art and science are integral and necessary areas in the life of every person.

This work aims to find out the features of the influence of new technologies on art, to consider the specifics of the interaction between art and science, the product of which are new technologies, on modern stage and characterize the results of the interaction of new technologies and art.

1. What is art?

There are many definitions of art. Let us name the main approaches to understanding this phenomenon. Firstly, art is a specific type of spiritual reflection and mastery of reality. Over the years, art scholars have further added: "aimed at shaping and developing a person's ability to creatively transform the world and oneself according to the laws of beauty." It should be noted that the very fact of the existence of a purpose in art is controversial, and the concept of beauty is relative, since the standard of beauty can vary greatly in different cultural traditions (for example, in Western and Eastern cultures), and is established through the triumph of the ugly (I. Bosch, A. Durer, modernism and postmodernism) and even completely denied (the art of the absurd). Secondly, art is one of the elements of culture in which artistic and aesthetic values ​​are accumulated. Thirdly, it is the form sensory cognition of the world. Three methods of human cognition can be distinguished: rational (logical, abstract, based on thinking); sensual (based on emotions, feelings) and irrational (based on intuition). In the main manifestations of human spiritual cultural activity, in the block of socially significant knowledge that represents the symbolic appearance of culture (science, art, religion), all three are present, but each of the spheres has its own dominants: science-rational, art-sensual, religion-intuitive. Fourthly, in art, a person’s creative abilities are manifested (the problem of the artist-creator). Fifthly, art can be considered as a process of a person’s mastery of artistic values, giving him pleasure and enjoyment (the problem of perception and understanding of art).

Art is multifaceted, it is the human soul. Art is the richest world beautiful images, this is a flight of fantasy, this is the desire to understand the meaning of life and human existence, this is the concentration of human creative powers... Art is multi-tiered, skyward Buddhist pagodas, exquisite ligature of Muslim ornaments, the mournful face of the Mother of God looking at us from Russian icons. .. Art is the perfection of ancient statues, the grandeur of medieval Gothic, beautiful images of Renaissance Madonnas, the riot of air, light, life of the Impressionists, these are the riddles that surrealism asks us... Art is the greatest creations of Dante and Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Pushkin, paintings by Leonardo and Rubens, Picasso and Matisse, brilliant music of Bach and Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, sculptures of Phidias and Polykleitos, Rodin and Maillol, performances by Stanislavsky and Meyerhold, Brecht and Brook, films by Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky. Art is what surrounds us in everyday life, comes into our home from TV and video screens, sounds on the stage and in audio recordings.

If we try to succinctly define what art is, we can say that it is "image" - the image of the world and man, reworked in the mind of the artist and expressed by him in sounds, colors, forms. Artistic images reflect not only reality, but also the worldview and worldview of cultural eras. Researchers, trying to understand the nature of art, saw in it both the implementation of the instinct of decoration and imitation of nature, and a means of communication between people and a source of knowledge of the world, and a kind of coding of information about historical periods and peoples, they considered art as a text and a sign system, as a game, pleasure, a manifestation of the irrational and unconscious principle in a person, they saw in it a way of self-expression and self-awareness of humanity through the personality of the artist. All these interpretations reflect accumulated knowledge about art and reveal various facets of culture.

2. Interaction of art and technology

The 20th century is called the century of technology and integration. In this regard, the problem of the relationship art and technology. It is in the modern era that artistic photography, cinema, television, pop music, and light music appear. Thanks to technology, the “linguistic” expressive capabilities of art are expanded. Theater is no longer only about the actor’s performance and the director’s skill, but also about the lighting and musical design of the performance. Sometimes lasers, slides, cinema, topography are used in theatrical productions (Prague Theater Laterna Magica). A new method of sound production is emerging in music - electronic. The “intonation vocabulary of the era” (the expression of the Russian composer and music critic B. Asafiev) is replenished due to the establishment of the noise element in music and the emergence of the sphere of urban sound.

The rapid development of computer technology and technology, as well as the use of computers, have made it possible to obtain unusual sounds using electronic synthesizers. The emergence of “electronic music” was prepared not only by technical progress, but also by a change in artistic thinking itself, which became more synthetic, reflecting the integrative processes of technogenic civilization. The latest computer synthesizers - video synthesizers - are based on the principle of converting electronic sound into visual forms. Thus, already in the early 80s, the American composer D. Berman in his compositions uses a video synthesizer for translation electronic sounds into color spots.

Another “synthetic” type of creativity is multimedia production, which involves the demonstration of slides and films while performing music. The first attempt at such creativity was made at the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1958 in the pavilion of the Philippe company. This composition was called "Electronic Poem": three arts - architecture (a specially built pavilion according to the projection of the Greek architect Xenakis), color projections (developed by the French architect Le Corbusier, who also owned the general concept) and electronic music (written by the American composer, experimenter in the field of electronic music Varèse) - remaining independent and acting in parallel, they united into a single whole. In multimedia, art can merge with the environment, nature, music is filled with the noises of everyday life, various means are used in “performance” - sounds, pictures, smells, colors. Thus, the interaction of art and technology, leading to the emergence of new synthetic genres and types, contributes to expanding the scope of traditional artistic culture.

3. Interaction of art and technology: development prospects.

According to the conclusion of researchers of the problem of interaction between art and technology, currently there is an increasingly noticeable inconsistency in the relationship between the fields of art and the world of technology.

Throughout human history, art and science have interacted widely and in many ways. There are areas where art influences technology and production, as well as areas where the process of such interaction looks more than natural (an example of such interaction is design and architecture). Because technology and art are in continuous development, their interaction always remains dynamic.

Art historians have identified several periods in history when the nature of such interaction changed qualitatively. The recent period includes the instant reaction and reflection of the art sphere to technological events and their meanings. This is the case with the use of certain technologies in order to create new forms of art. For example, photography.

It is clear that over the past two decades we have been experiencing one of the fundamental changes. When considering the prospects for using technology to create new forms of art, advances in computer technology offer far greater opportunities than even revolutionary developments such as the invention of photography or cinema. An interesting aspect of the new perspectives is that if in the process of photographing it is difficult to predict many of the nuances of the creative result itself, then when using computer technology there is a fairly large technological gap that must be overcome at the beginning of the creative process. This is confirmed by the fact that many people who are capable of becoming online artists using new technologies in their creativity traditionally shy away from technical education and have not yet achieved the level of technical competence necessary to realize their own artistic potential through new technical capabilities. It is clear that a certain amount of new creative possibilities can be gleaned from this rapidly developing field, but first a sufficient amount of effort must be expended in educating and supporting artists seeking to master new things. We hope that the skills acquired by the artist will be properly reflected in their work.

As historians of modern art note, today in Russia there is a unique situation for the prosperity of computer art. First of all (comparing with the experience of the West), the percentage of professional artists with a good training background is disproportionately large in relation to the population of Russia. Unlike the Western style of education, where a person with artistic inclinations can study exclusively humanities subjects from a young age, without bothering to study technical disciplines, in Russia a large percentage of class time is allocated to the study of exact disciplines, at least until the end of high school. Finally, despite the openness of Russian society and the availability of various types of information about technologies from the West, the Russian population is in a state of increased attention to technological and computer innovations, compared to their counterparts in the West. As a result of these factors, artists in Russia represent a group ideally suited to “absorb” new technologies and use new techniques in their work.

Close collaboration between geographically distant artists through the creation of a single work of art is one of the new paradigms made possible by the advancement of technology. Education of artists in the field of new technologies and how they can be used in the creation of new forms of art is another area that various tandems of modern experts and artists are working on.

4. The manifestation and role of new technologies in art.

As a result of the technical revolution, dramatic changes took place in all spheres of human activity, including art. New technologies have influenced the artistic environment, and as a result, a new phenomenon of art has emerged - digital arts.

Digital arts are understood as such types of artistic activity, the conceptual and productive basis of which is determined by the digital environment. The emerging new formation is actively discussed by specialists from a wide range of fields related to art, culture, science and technology. Appearance digital arts led to the emergence of new artistic genres and forms. Fields such as 3D animation, virtual reality, interactive systems and the Internet have revealed unprecedented creative possibilities. Already established art forms - cinema, two-dimensional animation, video art, music - have also been greatly influenced by digital technologies, contributing to the creation of new genre subtypes.

Using the language of digital culture, the emergence of digital arts immediately contrasted with itself all other art - traditional, which is called analogue in relation to digital. Digital art is an open system, therefore it develops in the context of all art and actively interacts with analog art, influencing it. Thus, first of all, the most traditional types of fine art - painting, graphics, sculpture - were influenced by digital arts. Holographic images began to appear, imitating paintings, sculptures, reliefs, even architecture. The art media most actively influenced the synthetic arts - happenings and performances.

What have new technologies brought to art? The answer to this question will simultaneously record the main features of modern art, formed under the influence of technology.

Interactivity is an opportunity for the viewer to come into contact with the artist and even participate in the creation of works.

New artistic means.

The elitism of digital (most often network and media) art.

The most progressive of the modern art movements today is video art, which has progressed noticeably thanks to digital technology. It is the most democratic form of art in production, where, apart from a camera that can be rented, almost nothing is needed. If it were not for digital technologies in the field of video, then today we would finally say goodbye to such a phenomenon as independent cinema. However, there are problems with exhibiting video art, since the equipment needed for high-quality display is not cheap.

WEB design and VJ-ing are closest to salon art, with which they find complete understanding and fusion. As is typical for traditional salon art, web design and VJ-ing use artistic means, avoiding conceptual independence and obeying the wishes of the customer. It is with WEB design that network art is most often confused, which has nothing to do with it and is indeed know-how that arose as a result of the advent of digital technologies, but not in the visual sphere, but in communications.

Network art today is no longer limited to interactive Internet projects, it goes into reality, creating networks that unite people and create new horizontal means of communication from person to person, bypassing the propaganda machine of the mass media. In this area of ​​art, “analog and digital” experience the most interesting collisions. Having begun as a purely digital art, network art paradoxically evolved into an analogue one, greatly influencing such phenomena as actionism (media activism appeared) and happenings (flash mob appeared). It is noteworthy that the art of nicknames and virtuals naturally connects with the most radically analog art, which exists only at the moment of its creation and requires the direct presence of the author/viewer/participant.

Digital technology has had a huge impact on music. Thanks to digital, electronic culture emerged (“drum’n’bass”, “chaos”, “easy”, “techno”), which has remained leading in the field of non-academic music for the fourth decade. Electronic means are now a powerful means for synthesizing any musical direction, including classical academic music with modern music. So the most popular is the synthesis of rock and pop music, in dance music– these are “ambient”, “gothic dark wave” and “emo”. Electronics here, as in rock of the 60s and 70s, give the sound a psychedelic touch. Partially due to the predominance of noise effects merging with the harmonies, due to the medium and slow tempos and funky rhythms.

Today, digital technologies are penetrating deeper and deeper into our lives and everyday life; the period of admiration for them has been replaced by a period of reflection and criticism. This is especially noticeable in the field of mass media. Television is increasingly playing the role of executor for humanity and placing it in the position of a servant of the growing trade turnover. It actively assimilates the discoveries of artists and uses these discoveries in advertising. In this situation, artists either play along or try to resist, which is also a useful trainer for PR strategies.

5.Problems

Due to the rapid penetration of the technogenic environment into the humanities, not all spheres of cultural life were able to quickly adapt. It is obvious that problems arise in the way of perceiving “high-tech art” or art media.

The first is the elementary technical ignorance of our contemporaries. The viewer is still often unable to understand the language and use the technologies that the artist offers him; he often does not own a computer at all and, of course, is not privy to the subtleties of existing discourses related to the art of new technologies. But this is perhaps not the most important thing.

As Kirill Shamanov notes, “the Internet puts a person face to face with the whole world. But, alas, the hopes and euphoria associated with the emergence of new opportunities disappeared, revealing former problems with greater severity. In the new situation, we increasingly find traces of unresolved philosophical conflicts of the past. From virtual abysses we again fall into analog abysses, real and, as it turns out, more tenacious” 1.

New digital means for the artist’s self-expression, especially constantly updated hi-tech, no longer cause delight, are noticeably profane and more reminiscent of sport than art. Many people deliberately refuse to use them, returning to analogue and low-tech; authenticity is coming into fashion.

Identifying art as digital or analog is not entirely correct. Each artist chooses for himself whether he should do his work using a sequence of sticks and zeros or make do with familiar means. At the same time, there are two concepts associated with digital and analog that are of great importance - virtuality and reality. They are basic not only for scientific and technological revolution, but also for the entire 20th century and especially modernism with its construction of “virtual” utopias in “real life”. So art, after the information explosion, returns from the utopian Zion to the reality from which it once turned away.

The artist of new technologies in Russia is still marginal not only in society, like any artist in general, but also in the local field of contemporary art. He resembles not a revolutionary bringing enlightenment to the masses, as he would like, but a “lonely muezzin on a technological-philosophical minaret” 2.

6.Conclusion

So, having considered the interaction of art and technology, it turned out that the influence of new technologies on art is undeniable. As a result of the influence of technology on the arts, the phenomenon of digital arts, or art media, has emerged, which is characterized by interactivity, elitism, new artistic means, forms and genres. The most common types of digital art are video art, net art, and animation.

The problem of assessing this influence remains ambiguous. Experts in the field of art and culture are divided into two camps - those who accept this influence and consider media art to be a step in development, a promising direction, and those who do not accept it, assessing media art as degradation. It remains to be noted that this problem of the struggle between conservatives and innovators is typical for any stage of cultural evolution.

7.References

“Russian Album” - from traditional art forms to the newest ones

Orlova, E. Musical education in the context of digital arts // Music at school. Music and Electronics. – Combined issue, No. 1. – 2005. – P.71-74.

Shamanov K. Exhibition “New Countdown. Digital Russia together with Sony"

Culturology. Textbook for students of technical universities / Ed. Bagdasaryan N.G. 5th edition, rev. and additional M.: Higher School, 2004.

Carmine Culturology

8. Sources used

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-A0fIrZxh8EJ:www.tisbi.ru/resource/library/Philos/t2/t2.htm+%D0%92%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0 %B8%D

http://bibl.tikva.ru/base/B1724/B1724Part9-143.php#

1 Shamanov K. Exhibition “New countdown. Digital Russia together with Sony" / http://www.suggestive.ru/theory/vol011/index.htm.

Are there any inappropriate topics for art? The best definition was given by V. G. Korolenko (1853-1921): “... one can speak about everything, but not in every way» . Anti-art theorists think differently: “The only rule for the perfect artist is be true to your creative intuition and do what you want“There are no mistakes, you can write in any way. There is one problem, but an insoluble one: how to distinguish creativity from nonsense or, more mildly, success from failure?

Refusal of mimesis (“not to copy the external form, but to interpret it”) leads to the loss of the boundaries between talent and mediocrity. Therefore, we will talk about art in the traditional sense - occupied by the external world, and not just by the artist’s subconscious, and therefore capable of error. There are no unacceptable topics, but artistic failure is possible. What causes it? What does “not in every way” mean? Aristotle also named possible mistakes: contradicting truth, morality and the rules of art. The same is said by another esthetician who recognizes that art reflects the world, Nikolai Hartmann (1882-1950): “distortion of known reality” can occur due to (1) creative impotence, (2) a tendency to exaggerate certain aspects of an object at the expense of others (Gothic sculptures, classicist tragedy), (3) replacing aesthetic goals with non-aesthetic ones.

Art and facts: the boundaries of fiction. As always, there are two extremes. P. V. Annenkov (1812-1887), in a letter to I. S. Turgenev dated January 26, 1853, talks about his dispute with P. A. Katenin (1792-1853), who condemned Pushkin for slandering Salieri. “To the latter I answered that no one thinks about the real Salieri, but that this is only a type of gifted envy. Katenin objected: Be ashamed! After all, I believe you are an honest person and cannot approve of slander. My answer to this: Art has a different morality than society. And he told me: there is only one moral.”

This is another aspect of the old problem of mimesis and creativity and the same old mistake: the world in a work of art is declared just the same that the real world. Fact is inviolable; if the real Salieri did not kill Mozart, then the fictional one cannot do this. Then the question arises: what can you write about a really existing person, and is it possible? Could the fictional Salieri have entered a different door than the real one? Say a phrase that the prototype did not say? To be consistent, you cannot fantasize. Fiction is slander; literature is impossible.

Therefore, the other extreme is more common. “The poet has only one duty: to be true to himself and to create characters so that they do not contradict themselves; human truth is his law; historical he is not bound by the truth. If it fits into his drama, so much the better; doesn’t fit - he can do without it,” said A.K. Tolstoy (1817-1875).

We again face the problem of mimesis and creativity and again see how the world is declared in a work of art just not those that the real world. Of course, the fiction is justified: shifting chronology, introducing fictional characters and other deviations from the facts are not yet an artistic failure. But to contrast facts with “human nature” means to look for this “nature” not in historical reality, but somewhere in the land of chimeras. The investigations will not take long to arrive. Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863): “Art could do without life truth, since she Truth, with which it must be penetrated, consists in the correctness of observations of human nature, and not in the authenticity of facts. Names characters don't mean anything."

It is impossible to separate the human and the historical as sharply as A.K. Tolstoy declares: a historical lie is inevitably a lie of character.

Otherwise it happens like this. Data:"Saint-Just at the time early youth took the new social status for his family very seriously, the noble dignity acquired by his father in military service... But, having broken away from his circle, he never joined the new one, and as a result found himself practically in isolation, which he soon had to make sure. The first youthful feeling turned out to be unexpectedly strong and deep. Thérèse Jelly was fifteen years old, Antoine almost a year younger. Probably at the end of 1785 or at the beginning of 1786, he proposed - and was refused by her father, the notary Antoine Jelay. In July 1787, his chosen one was hastily married to the son of another Blerancourt notary. It became impossible to stay at home, and it was time to choose something to do: he turned nineteen, graduated from college. However, neither his grandfather’s legal career nor his godfather’s spiritual career, which promised prosperity and a quiet life, attracted him. Only military service is worthy of a nobleman, only in Paris and only in the royal guard, as he later stated during interrogation. But this required considerable funds, and the mother did not want to waste money... Having collected silver items that came to hand, Louis Antoine runs to Paris. But three weeks later, at the request of his mother, he was arrested and sent to the correctional boarding house Marie de Saint-Colon for six months. The forced leisure forced Antoine to think about a lot. First of all, why was he rejected? Why did the top of the third estate of Blairencourt reject him? And why was he arrested and imprisoned without trial or investigation? He did not commit a crime: being the legal heir of his father, upon reaching adulthood (at the age of 25) he became the owner of all movable property. The six months spent at Madame de Saint-Colon's boarding house became a turning point. At the same time, Saint-Just was destined to experience a personal drama and feel like a victim of social injustice.” Interpretation:“You can devour me with your eyes, former Chevalier de Saint-Just, who began revolutionary activity from stealing his own mother's money. You are a thief and a friend of thieves...” Not here human truth - because no historical.

A play about the Nord-Ost hostage crisis is being staged in London. “Despite the fact that the performance accurately conveys the plot of the course of events during the capture, final scene, when the security services release gas before the assault begins, one of the terrorists puts her handkerchief to the mouth of the hostage sitting next to her, trying to save her from the deadly gas. But then Russian special services burst in, mistake both of them for terrorists and kill them. Co-chairman of the public organization “Nord-Ost” T. Karpova does not see such a presentation as provocative or an attempt to whitewash terrorists. In her opinion, this is just a scenario vision.” All that remains is to make a film about the commandant of Auschwitz, who saves Jews by dressing them in German uniform, after which they die at the hands of Soviet soldiers. There will also be a “scenario vision”. Here we see a substitution more dangerous than Katenin’s naive rigorism: it is not fiction that is called slander, but slander that is called fiction.

“Poets should not,” notes Jean-Baptiste Dubos (1670-1742), “kill Brutus at the hands of Caesar.” They also should not force Lensky and Olga to sing “Oh, the viburnum is blooming,” which was the case in English film adaptation“Eugene Onegin,” or attribute to Marx, as T. Stoppard does (“the most famous and successful of European playwrights”), the following words: “The broken lives and insignificant deaths of millions will be recognized as part of a higher reality, a higher morality, which is useless to resist. I see the Neva, red with blood, illuminated by tongues of flame, and coconut palms on which corpses dangle...”

The real-life Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) even spoke unambiguously about Bakunin’s more moderate revolutionary sadism: “All the abominations that inevitably accompany the life of declassed people from the upper social strata are proclaimed ultra-revolutionary virtues.” The formulation “insignificant deaths of millions” is unthinkable in the mouth of a man who wrote: “The Paris of the workers with its Commune will always be celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. His martyrs are forever etched in the great heart of the working class." The author's vision cannot be used as an excuse here. This is no longer fiction, this is ignorance or a lie. Marx in the play - not the one and only not the one, what's in reality. “If I wrote a novel,” asked A.P. Chekhov (1860-1904), “where I have an anatomist dissecting his living wife and infant children for the sake of science, or a scientist doctor going to the Nile and copulating with a crocodile and a rattlesnake for scientific purposes.” snake, then wouldn’t this novel really be slander? But I could write interestingly and intelligently.”

As Lessing also noted, if the author “takes characters other than historical ones, or even completely opposite to them, then he should not take historical names. It is better to attribute actions known to us to completely unknown individuals than to impose inappropriate characters on known individuals.” N. Hartmann distinguishes between “life truth” and “essential truth”. The second (common to all arts) cannot be neglected in principle; the first (necessary for literature and fine arts) - it is possible to create fantastic images, subject to loyalty to the “truth of the essence”, that is, for the sake of an artistic purpose, and not out of whim. One side of poetic truth is “internal consistency, unity, isolation, consistency, the other side is life truth, and this latter has one pole of its essence outside poetry, in what is transcendental to it.” real world, of course, not in its particulars, but still in its essential features... Vitally untruthful poetry cannot convince us, that is, it is not poetry at all...” At the same time, “the poet presents some image in a mythically exaggerated form and still reaches the realm of essence...”

Fantasy is different from lies: distortion of facts is permissible only for aesthetic purposes. Let us turn to the well-known polemic in the history of literature between Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) and Johann Peter Eckermann (1792-1854) about Goethe’s tragedy “Egmont”. “The historical Egmont was married and left behind nine, and some say eleven, children,” writes Schiller. - This circumstance could be known or not known to the poet - depending on what interested him; but he should not have left it unattended, since he brought into the tragedy the circumstances that were its natural consequence (Egmont was afraid by emigrating to bring the king’s disfavor upon his family and, remaining in the Netherlands, died on the scaffold. - G.Z.). What is Egmont in tragedy? By depriving him of his family and children, the poet destroys the consistency of his behavior. He is forced to explain Egmont’s ill-fated reluctance to leave as frivolous arrogance and thereby too much reduces our respect for the hero’s mind, without compensating for this loss from the senses.” “If Goethe,” Eckermann objects, “had created his hero the way Schiller wanted him to be, that is, without frivolity, a husband filled with all kinds of virtues and the father of either nine or even eleven children, who would have withstood his violent death and tears of his loved ones?.. Egmont leaves the life that smiled at him, he - happy Egmont, full of strength and youth." We see two possibilities for creating an artistic image based on one real object - the life of Count Lamoral Egmont (1622-1668). I don’t know whether the more realistic interpretation defended by Schiller was implemented, but it does not cancel Goethe’s (whether that one was successfully implemented is another question).

Still, an error remains an error: the author may not know something or, knowing it, neglect it. The character of Vysotsky’s song “Dialogue at the TV” Zina “addresses her husband with the words: And he looks like - no, really, Van - like his brother-in-law... But a brother-in-law is his wife’s brother, which means Zina cannot have a brother-in-law.” How to deal with such mistakes? “If [the poet] composes the impossible, he makes a mistake; but if [thanks to this] he makes this or that part of the work more striking, then he is doing the right thing... However, if it was possible to more or less achieve this goal without contradicting the corresponding art, then the mistake was made incorrectly, for it should, if possible, not be allowed at all mistakes... there is less error if the poet did not know that the doe does not have horns than if he describes it inimitably.”

Aristotle clearly did not imagine such an approach to truth in art as described in Agatha Christie’s (1890-1976) novel “The Unfinished Portrait.” The editor says to the aspiring writer: “You may have written all this wrong, but you see them as ninety-nine percent of the readers see them, that is, those people who know nothing at all about these things. And these ninety-nine percent of readers will never enjoy knowing carefully selected facts - they want fiction, plausible lies. Remember, everything must be believable."

So, if readers think a doe has antlers, write doe with antlers. If readers think God answers prayers, communists eat children, human races are not equal, write the way they think they will buy your book. If they want to hear that the only worthy life is that of a peasant, a soldier of fortune, or a rich loafer, write it, the more often the better. It doesn't matter what actually exists: they don't pay for it. Art has a clearly defined consumer; the consumer is right. Is not it?

Art in a class society: the boundaries of the universal. If a person does not recognize the existence of classes, this problem does not exist for him. But there are classes, and there is a problem. The extremes in its solution will be either the absolutization of the class approach (even with the verbal denial of classes) and the attribution of art to the sphere of propaganda (more broadly, the service sector), which corresponds to interests one way or another community, when “alien” art, by definition, has no value (Proudhon: “as soon as I think that the statue of the Venus de Milo was an image of a Greek deity, I smile, and all its aesthetic charm disappears for me”), or the absolutization of the universal and the hopeless search for it somewhere then in addition to class, that is out of interests really existing people, outside of history, and the dialectical golden mean is the recognition that the universal exists through the class; different classes at different stages of history embody it to varying degrees. The value of a work of art is given by the universal human perception of a representative of a particular class.

For any social phenomenon you can look from the right (from the position of the top) and from the left (from the position of the bottom of society). The position of the lower classes is illusory to varying degrees depending on the era; the position of any superiors is illusory at its very core - because it presupposes eternity social order, at which they are at the top. Therefore, art is always “objectively leftist”. This position contains the maximum of universal humanity (both morally and scientifically), since it denies the eternity of inequality. “The fact that the statue of Phidias reflected the slavery of the majority... is not at all so reliable. Every curve of the body of the beautiful statue did not reflect slavery, it reflected freedom, and moreover, not only in its limited historical form, but also in that unconditional one, which will always be close to humanity, freeing it again and again.”

The goal of humanity is to destroy classes, not to reconcile them. Over the 6 thousand years that class society has existed on Earth, no one has proven its eternity. A person resigns himself to the inevitable - aging, loss, death, if the inevitability is genuine. But the inevitability of social inequality is not in this category. Therefore, morality has not come to terms with the fact that most people are sacrificed to inequality. Art did not resign itself either. The universal in morality and in art protests against class division and especially against attempts to make it eternal, replacing the destruction of classes with the chimerical idea of ​​peace between the classes left intact. A person who shares the illusions of the upper classes about the possibility of a harmonious structure of class society lives in an unreal world; his art will also be deceitful, prone to exaggerating certain aspects of an object at the expense of others, moreover, the secondary ones at the expense of the main ones.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) wrote the essay “If Sharks Were People.” In this case, he writes, “culture would reign in the sea” - schools would appear where small fish are taught how to properly swim into the mouth of a shark; the morality that they must sacrifice themselves to the sharks; a religion according to which true life for them begins in the belly of a shark... finally, art. “There would be beautiful canvases depicting shark teeth in bright colors; They would imagine the mouths of sharks as parks for walking, where you can frolic to your heart's content. In theaters on the seabed they would show fish rushing into the shark’s mouth in heroic delight...”

Class society inevitably gives rise to lies in art. The litmus test here is the relationship of art to protest against inequality. It is indisputable that so far the protests have not reached their goal and old world resisted. The question is how to evaluate the protest and what to condemn for: for insufficient radicalism or for excessive radicalism? It is no coincidence that Saint-Just, and not Louis XVI or Danton, became the victim of the lies of R. Sabatini (1875-1950). The bourgeoisie expects only one thing from the artist: variations on a theme "The power of money is eternal." This principle is like red flags posted in our minds; the one who steps over them risks a lot. Within this circle, in the exciting pursuit of a fee, it is most effective to depict the horrors arising from the rejection of the market structure of society. D. Bykov sets out the “moral” of the new novel “Joppa Island”: “... of course, the market is disgusting, but all other options are even worse.” “Write: “Hair should not stick out on the head,” noted Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) , - and you will have tremendous success with the bald ones.”

The preaching of moderation and accuracy in dealing with the powers that be becomes the ideological core of modern Russian art, which runs counter to humanistic traditions of the past and therefore doomed to rule the classics in a lackey spirit. Even in the cartoon “The New Bremen Men” based on the script by V. Livanov (2000), filmed as a continuation of “The Bremen Town Musicians”, the troubadour and the princess repent to the king for their previous rebellion. Even music did not stand aside: pianist V. Afanasyev, who loves to comment on his interpretations, blessed us with an interpretation of “Two Jews” by M. P. Mussorgsky - a rich Jew is more unhappy than a poor one, because wealth will not make him equal with non-Jews - and performed the play as a joint the complaint of the characters, forgetting, obviously, that neither in the drawings of V. Hartmann, nor in the music there is anyone except two Jews - neither the governor, nor the constable - and no other conflict other than the clash of wealth and poverty. Have pity on the rich and don't count your money in their pockets.

The new version of the ballet “Spartacus” by N. Kasatkina and V. Vasilyov (2002) depicts the banditry of rebel slaves, which the main character, left alone, looks at with horror (of course, he wanted the best, but you can’t change human nature, etc.) . It is clear that the triumph of slave owners looks not only inevitable, but also eternal. Superficial truthfulness hides a deep lie: in fact, the rebels are guilty not of going against the world of violence, but of not going all the way, taking its laws for granted. In the classic production by Yu. Grigorovich, the disintegration of the rebels is interpreted using the image of Aegina, personifying the temptations of the old world, which is not only more consistent with the specifics of ballet, capable of expressing both concrete events and abstract concepts in dance, but is also true in essence: slaves who exchanged Spartacus to Aegina - the fight for freedom to the fight for success in the wolf world - are doomed. Spartacus is alone not in moderation, but in radicalism, in the desire, not understood by the slaves, to end oppression as such, and not to break through to previously inaccessible pleasures.

And surely the creators of such opuses consider themselves exponents of the universal as opposed to the class. But in fact, this is precisely the extermination of what is universal - consent to social inequality, private property and the existence of classes. The reason is banal: in the absence of state subsidies for the arts, the only hope is patrons of the arts, and they cannot be angered. It is unlikely that I will be mistaken if I say that the social ideal of many artists does not go beyond the dream of highly cultured rich people who give money to art without setting conditions. For now, while waiting for this grace, they prove their loyalty with caveman anti-communism, and then they are surprised by the growth of Nazism. It is impossible to convince the poor that they themselves are to blame for their poverty - this is too obvious a lie; But when it is forbidden to look for the true culprits, it is very easy to find imaginary ones - with a different skin color and accent.

The desire to take the side of the elite in the class struggle, declaring oneself part of the “elite,” inevitably leads the artist to moral and then creative degradation: after all, exposing the vices of the people and the “tyranny of the majority” is the safest occupation in the world. "Now classic literature is in demand to the same extent as 100 and 200 years ago, says writer V. Pietsukh. - That is, the same approximately 4% of the country’s population cannot exist outside its atmosphere (this is such a mysterious constant), but give everyone else a damn best case scenario“my lord stupid”, and at worst - a scrapper from Channel One. The reader of the classics now is a refined intellectual, just like in 1907.” The mystery of the “4%” is quite simply explained by the restoration and return of the country to the level of 1907 in almost all indicators; but if you perceive this society and this figure as the norm, and the Soviet period as a deviation from the norm, you will inevitably come to socioracism - a doctrine in which the dominant social class is declared the highest breed of people.

The class struggle on the part of the upper classes is expressed precisely in the verbal denial of the class struggle. The owners do not go to demonstrations demanding lower wages; they strive to change the consciousness of workers so that they do not go out on demonstrations demanding an increase in it. And the art that helps them in this matter is false (contradicts the truth) and inhumane (contradicts morality). Is this art? In a strict sense - no. Art addressed to any group of people - not only class, but also professional, age, ethnic - is flawed by definition. It is art only to the extent that it goes beyond these boundaries and addresses the human rather than the group. “Poetry addresses not only a subject of such and such a monarchy... a citizen of such and such a republic or a son of such and such a nation,” wrote V. Hugo (1802-1885). - She addresses the person who everything person."

Perhaps best of all, G. I. Uspensky (1843-1902) expressed this idea in famous story"Straightened it up" dedicated to the statue Venus de Milo: the sculptor “needed both the people of his time, and all centuries, and all peoples to eternally and indestructibly capture the enormous beauty in the hearts and minds human beings, to acquaint a person - a man, a woman, a child, an old man - with the feeling of happiness to be person show us all and delight us with the opportunity to be beautiful, visible to all of us... The artist created an example of such a human being that you... living in today's human society, absolutely cannot imagine capable of taking the slightest part in the order of life to which you made it. Your imagination refuses to imagine this human being in any of the present human positions without disturbing his beauty. But since to disturb this beauty, to crumple it, to cripple it into the current human type is unthinkable, impossible, then your thought... cannot help but be carried away by a dream into some infinitely bright future. And the desire to straighten, to free the crippled present person for this bright future... joyfully arises in the soul.”

What is intended exclusively for women or men, drivers or mathematics professors, blacks or whites, owners or hired workers, Russians or Papuans, and will not find a response from other groups of people, is not art in the strict sense (but is an instrument of propaganda or a subject of entertainment ) and takes place among other artifacts left by man on Earth; even art intended for such a special group of people as children can be called art only if it is addressed not only to children (T. Jansson, A. Lindgren, A. M. Volkov, etc.). Therefore, one is taken aback by praises like “Eduard Asadov is a poet for girls” or “all these details reveal in Waterhouse a deep connoisseur of male fantasies” (did the author of the monograph understand that, wanting to praise the artist, he undeservedly called him a pornographer?).

We owe to the interests of groups the appearance of a sea of ​​artifacts called “ popular literature", "salon painting", "boulevard theatre", "serials", not to mention the stage as a special entertainment and propaganda phenomenon and official, "ceremonial" art that clearly serves the interests of the authorities. As the playwright and esthetician V. M. Volkenshtein (1883-1974) noted, the art historian must “to distinguish the history of production from the history of consumption - the history of genuine creative inventions from the history of surrogates... that at one time satisfied a social need...".

The question of the moral impact of these artifacts deserves special attention. “Mass” pseudo-art, as we know, exploits primitive thoughts and passions, stereotypes of mass consciousness, giving an ersatz satisfaction in life to people deprived of the true joy of life. At the same time, formally it can “teach good things” - honesty, loyalty, moderation - everything, with the exception of rejection of the existing system, thus turning a person into a commoner, and the influence of art into the education of a slave.

In modern Russia, there is clearly a period of demand for such values. The bourgeoisie is strengthening its power, and to the main theme of liberal propaganda - “become a millionaire, it’s cool” - a side theme is increasingly being added - “don’t become a millionaire, they have too many problems that you can’t cope with, live modestly, work honestly, don’t try.” It won’t be possible to change anything anyway.” And most importantly, don’t think about who you’re honestly working for.

The editor of the “glossy” magazine “L’Officiel-Russia” E. Khromchenko happily reports: “Today in Russia everything is returning to normal: the words “morality” and “morality” have ceased to evoke a smile. Family is back in fashion. The values ​​are gradually falling into place. Burgundy jackets with gold buttons have sunk into oblivion, in hotels Russians have stopped paying with wads of cash tied with a rubber band... Our magazine is for those women who are aimed at the psychology of eternal values... Girls are taught that the main thing is a good education, what is needed make money with your brains... You need to dream not only that you have a nice, beautiful apartment, but that you have a beautiful entrance, beautiful house, beautiful street, beautiful city, beautiful world..."

As they say, everyone is in favor. The problem is that this will not happen under capitalism. The world under capitalism was, is and will remain blatantly ugly, being divided into two worlds - for the poor and for the rich. The wealth of some presupposes the poverty of others, both among people and among countries. It's not about the wads of cash tied with a rubber band, but where it comes from. Bourgeois “normality” is abnormal from a universal human point of view: it is a disguise, plastic cards disguise cash, the family disguises debauchery (the market demand is All for sale), beautiful words- life at someone else's expense. Therefore, it is too early to rejoice that the words “morality” and “morality” have ceased to cause a smile. When they are uttered by the current “masters of life”, you don’t want to laugh - it’s time to cry.

How not to remember Plekhanov: “...immoral practice does not always need immoral theory. On the contrary, an immoral theory can often be an obstacle to immoral practice. This is why people who are immoral in practice often love moral theory. Who wrote Anti-Machiavelli? That Prussian king who, perhaps more diligently than all other sovereigns, adhered to the rules set out in the book “The Sovereign.”

The end of the period of cynicism and Russia's entry into the period of hypocrisy is reflected in art or what replaces it. Freedom of speech gives us a good opportunity to look into the muddy soul of a liberal snob. Writer M. Shishkin, who in 1991 “defended democracy” at the White House, and now successfully continues this activity in Switzerland, says: “It’s better not to remember the barricades now. In Russia, the main value is softening morals. Those who call people out into the street fan up human anger and bitterness... I do what I can to soften morals - I write my books... Russian literature today is still sick with an indecent disease that it picked up in the market, but it seems to be improving on the mend...” The same magazine (in May 2007) announces: “Intelligence is fashionable!” “What are the idols of today’s youth? - asks the editors of the magazine. - Those who drive around in boomers and wear gold chains with several carats of diamonds, or those who have achieved the blessings of life with their minds, sweat and perseverance? I want to believe that the world is changing for the better..."

In vain. The world doesn't change. People with diamonds, but without intelligence, live off the labor of people with intelligence, but without diamonds. For the system to function, it is necessary to cultivate a succession of both the first and the second, instilling greed in some, and “eternal values” in others, which boil down to one thing: sit still, good places are taken. " Mass art“You won’t be left without work.

Artifacts of propaganda and entertainment may have aesthetic merits, like other material objects, be it a tank or freshly fallen snow, but this does not make them works of art. Their impact “can never go beyond... entertainment; it can deliver pleasant sensations, confirming the experience the perceiver already has or enhancing it with random novelty of material, but it... never expands or deepens a person’s horizons in the same way as happens in the experience of catharsis.”

In this sea there may be works of art classified there according to formal criteria (an adventure or “women’s” novel, a portrait of a representative of the fatty of this world, a detective film), but time puts everything in its place, separating art from what looks like it outwardly. It is the group that dies away along with those groups to which it was addressed (women as a group of professional housewives are a social and transitory phenomenon, and not biological and eternal); the universal lives. “If the cult of antiquity was preserved throughout various eras,” wrote the German (GDR) literary critic Werner Kraus (1900-1976), “it is because it expressed features common to all these eras... Only a radical restructuring of the world caused by capitalism , destroyed the dream of heroic and exemplary antiquity." In England, classicism dominated throughout the 18th century. - only the industrial revolution, having given capitalism an adequate technical basis, irreversibly changed the culture of Europe.

We've come to the problem dying works of art, set at one time by A.I. Herzen (1812-1870): “Romanticism and classicism were to find their coffin in the new world, and not just one coffin - in it they were to find their immortality. Only the one-sided, false, temporary things die, but in them there was also truth - eternal, all-human; she can't die..."

Works of art - part current culture, Having lost their relevance, they become cultural monuments. There is a loss of the ethical component of the work of art; aesthetic properties may be preserved, but in a different way. “In ancient works of art we are often struck by a unique flavor, a feeling of something that could be called the poetry of remoteness. In the poems of Homer, in Greek tragedies, in Egyptian sculptures, in paintings of Italian primitives, in the Divine Comedy itself, there are forms and motifs that play a primary role in their original artistic construction, but which we no longer perceive aesthetically, because they are mute to our intuition. And yet, that is precisely why they evoke in us a feeling of longing for the distant past... a desire to recreate the environment that surrounded the work of art, in which it arose and of which it served as an expression...”

The reason is that there is no impassable boundary between art and non-art. What comes close to this border can cross it from one side or the other: sport - go into circus art, photography (very rarely) - into fine art, documentary film - into art, a children's toy - into a figurine; on the other hand, what was art ceases to be it: the ruins of buildings become part of the natural environment, landscape, dead ideas- part social environment past.

In a capitalist society there cannot be oases of anti-bourgeois art, just like nothing at all that is not subject to the elements of the market. The subordination of man to the market surpasses in its strength all the dictatorships of the past: if in pre-capitalist societies folk culture is preserved as a direct continuation of the primitive one, then capitalism replaces it with mass culture, purposefully created for sale and sold for consumption. Living in this society, people should not produce anything for themselves - neither tomatoes, nor jokes - but should specialize in the production of one product, buying everything else on the market. Therefore, all searches for special “leftist” art are meaningless. K. Capek (1890-1938), having gone through the possible meanings of the term “proletarian art”, came to the conclusion that the term is empty. And it is true: that which makes the wage-earner a representative of his class strengthens the existing system; that which shakes the system is addressed to the universal, and not specifically proletarian. The situation is not the same as it was on the eve of the bourgeois revolution, where the future victorious class already existed in the depths of absolutism.

New art can only arise in a new, classless society. Theorists of German Social Democracy spoke about this: both the right - Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), who came to an excessive conclusion about the apolitical nature of art serving “pleasure”, and the left - Franz Mehring (1846-1919) and Clara Zetkin (1857-1933 ). “It seems to me that the passionately awaited Renaissance is possible only on the island of the blessed - in a socialist society. Only the hammer of revolution, which will crush the prison of capitalism, will bring freedom to art.”

When the development of capitalism reaches highest point, it is not universal prosperity that begins, as liberals believe, but stagnation and degradation on the eve of either revolution or the destruction of humanity, to which art reacts sensitively. It develops while capitalism develops, and decays when it begins to decay. The reason is not the “end of history” and the beginning of consumer “post-history”, incompatible with creativity (F. Fukuyama), but the end of capitalism, incompatible with the continued existence of humanity. Therefore, the crisis of art began earlier in the most developed countries. F. Mehring wrote about this in his article “Capitalism and Art” (1891), noting that for Russia at that time the situation was different - Russian capitalism had not yet exhausted its progressive potential, and Russian art continued to amaze the world. But in the era of globalization, such exceptions are impossible.

Art is addressed to the universal human. However, it is also impossible to completely separate it from class. It would be very good if everything came down to the formula: “realism in art can be neither socialist, nor capitalist, nor Soviet or proletarian,” if truth and lies, good and evil, eternal and transitory, art and propaganda existed in different worlds. Unfortunately, everything is not so simple: the appeal of art to the universal always takes the form of an appeal to a person of a particular society, era, class; “there is no other path to the eternal and unconditional except that painful path that leads through the limited conditions of time.”

What is the relationship between artistic value and progressive ideas? That progressive ideas can be poorly expressed is clear. Can reactionary ideas be expressed with talent? “Of course, all the great writers of the past worked in spite of their limitations, but this limitation is not an external appearance, but the result of historical, class conditions, a feature of the individual physiognomy of the writer. The historically limited side is closely related to the writer’s merits to world history.” An artist who serves the ruling class marks his work with the mark of its prejudices and crimes. But sometimes it is so insignificant that it can be neglected; then we are talking about classics without any connection with political progressiveness.

“The education of the lower classes, which, out of prudence, is allowed innocent theatrical entertainment by those in power, consists of religion, diligent and honest practice of their craft, blind obedience to their prince and admiration of the head before the excellent order of social subordination.” Who writes this? Nietzsche? Unter Prishibeev? Police Inspector Javert? No, Count Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806).

And in his plays we see good, gullible kings who punish evil ministers in the end, and we do not see the slightest social protest of the lower classes, we see servants who are ready to live and die in their place for the good of their masters, we see noble princes who do not doubt their right to order , and in “The Green Bird” there are also sharp attacks against the ideas of the Enlightenment, made from a religious position. Nevertheless, “Princess Turandot” is destined for immortality, because the fabulous atmosphere of the commedia dell’arte with its unique balance of high impulses and sneering commentary on them - a balance that prevents pathos from becoming boring and laughter from becoming vulgar, neutralizes the conservative ardor of the author: the devotion of servants becomes the devotion of friends, the kindness of the king - just kindness, the prince and princess - just young and stubborn people, and the conviction in the inviolability of the existing system - a feeling of the joy of life.

Work of art in similar cases rises above the author's intentions. The Moscow Kremlin is more than a royal residence; the poetry of the troubadours is more than knightly arrogance; Scribe's vaudevilles are more than the cheerfulness of the victorious bourgeoisie; the monument to Nicholas I by Klodt is more than a tribute to the memory of the monarch; and, if you like, “Volga-Volga” is more than entertainment for the people, needed by the Soviet nomenklatura in the midst of repression. “Radetzky's March” does not remind us of the punitive field marshal, the statues of ancient gods - of the dark deeds of the priests, of slavery, of the death of Socrates, executed for disbelief in the Olympians. I hope that in the future people will also be able to look at art that is connected with existing religions.

In other cases, it is impossible to ignore the reactionary orientation in art. But this does not necessarily deprive it of artistic value. The content of a work of art is reality, which it reflects. The artistic expression of false thoughts is valuable not just for its “form”, but for the element of truth that is in the content of these thoughts.

The above primarily applies to music and painting on religious subjects, which was very well noted by K. G. Paustovsky (1892-1968) when analyzing the painting by M. V. Nesterov (1862-1942) “Vision to the Youth Bartholomew”: “The most remarkable in this picture there is a landscape. In the air, as pure as spring water, every leaf, every modest corolla of a wild flower is visible... All this seems precious. That is how it is. This is a spectacle of grasses, blue-eyed rivers, hills and dark forests, which, as it were, listens to a ringing sound flying in a low voice, reveals in us such depths of love for our native land that it costs a lot of work even for ourselves. calm person hold back involuntary tears."

When J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) depicts Gollum unable to eat Elven bread (“No,” he wheezed with effort, “dust, ashes! They will choke us!” “It’s a pity,” said Frodo, “nothing We don't have anything else. If you tried, maybe this food would help you, but, apparently, you don't even want to try. Maybe later..."), before us is the reaction of a believer to the scientific picture of the world, although The Catholic author and religious readers undoubtedly see the atheist’s refusal to find solace in faith.

In the suite “Planets” by Gustav Holst (1874-1934) (“Mars bringing war”, “Venus bringing love”...) is often seen as an illustration of the delusional constructions of astrologers that attracted the attention of the composer. But Holst reproduces through the means of music not Mars in space (the distance from the Sun is 228 million km, the length of the day is 24 hours 37 minutes, etc.), but the war on Earth, associated in human culture with the image of the red planet. About, What exactly depicted, we must judge not by the views of the author, but by reality - as we know it. “It is necessary for a writer to distinguish between what an author actually gives and what he gives only in his own imagination.”

In my opinion, Michelangelo’s “Pieta” with the incredibly young and calm Madonna does not illustrate an episode of the Gospel, but depicts temporary And eternal - that which goes away, And what remains - the only possible way for sculpture is through human bodies, supposedly Christ and Mary. “She has a youthful face, but this is not a sign of age, she is given as if out of time,” notes the art critic, immediately straying into religious rhetoric, “here we are shown not so much suffering as a condition of redemption, but rather beauty as a consequence of its acquisition ". But Michelangelo depicted mourning (“pietà”), not ascension; You can only understand what kind of lament he embodied in marble by turning to reality.

"Idealization rural life with its patriarchal way of life, contrasted with the hell of a capitalist city, an escape from social evil into nature and to the “people of nature” - these are the motives that motivated the conservative romantics to raise the problem of nationality... But we see in their art the promotion of the principle not of class, but of moral assessments of people... the motive of protecting ordinary people from the pride and tyranny of the rich and powerful... affirming the need for national color in art and showing the artistic significance of folk art." And their political reactionism helped them in their search, because any political ideal has roots in reality, reflects one side or another of it; it is never completely false. You can see better from one position, worse from another, but there is no absolute blindness. There is also no absolute vigilance, which the winning class always ascribes to itself.

No class is equal to humanity, but it exists only through classes; progress in a class society is relative: morality also suffers from progress when one class asserts itself at the expense of others. Justice flees from the camp of the winners (words French writer Simone Weil) - and finds an ally in art. Progress can also be seen - and rejected! - its inhuman, class-limited side. Therefore, art not only can, but must stand on the side victims not only regression, but also progress, while at the same time being able to see historical necessity. Let us remember “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” by V. I. Surikov (1848-1916); “The Legend of Montrose” by W. Scott (1771-1832); the Lucerne “Dying Lion” - a monument to the Swiss mercenaries who died during the defense of the Tuileries by B. Thorvaldsen (1770-1844); opera by U. Giordano (1867-1948) “André Chénier”; the death of the slave-owning South in the novel “Gone with the Wind” by M. Mitchell (1900-1944); “Days of the Turbins” and “Running” by M. A. Bulgakov (1891-1940). At the same time, let us remember the frightening figures of the victors - Louis XI by W. Scott; Ivan the Terrible by A.K. Tolstoy; Peter I from Surikov; Mitchell's Yankee "carpetbaggers"; the new “red” authorities in V. Veresaev’s novel “At a Dead End”. Most shining example- reflection in art of the fate of Mary Stuart. None of the authors, from W. Scott and F. Schiller to S. Zweig and R. Bolt, took the side of the bearer of progress, Elizabeth of England, despite recognizing her services to England and condemning the attempts of Mary Stuart to overthrow Elizabeth and nullify her politics. Art can go very far in sympathizing with the vanquished and criticizing the victors; the only thing it has no right to do is turn sympathy into a political program of reaction.

The artist is helped not by progressiveness in itself, but by that, however insignificantly small, element of the universal human element that is present in any political ideal. Talent highlights it like a magnifying glass, distracting us from other aspects of reality, and forces us to recognize its existence - for example, to see in “The Dying Lion” a monument to people who died in an unequal battle, no matter with whom or for what. But if the artist violates the measure and tries to justify the reaction as such, he will collapse. Such an extreme case is an outright lie - an attempt to portray the impossible, passing it off as possible for political reasons. Thus, D. Bykov, in the impulse characteristic of Russian Westerners to be greater Europeans than the Europeans themselves, builds on the basis of “The Burden of the Whites” the following construction: “Only old Bull, in his naivety, respectable beyond measure, dreamed of instilling morality and true faith» .

These are not poems, but rhymed lies, whose artistic value is like a rhymed message that people went to Auschwitz to improve their health. “Never before has fate shown so much cruelty to humanity as by handing over these heroic peoples to European convicts, scoundrels, deprived of the virtues of both their country from which they left and the country to which they came, and whose treachery, cruelty and meanness these conquered [peoples] rightly deserve the contempt.” These are the words of an English liberal of the 18th century. Adam Smith (1723-1790).

Regarding any ideological bias, one can repeat what David Hume (1711-1776) said about religious bias: “No poet can ever be charged with any religious principles so long as they remain only theoretical principles and do not master him so much.” that cast a stain on him fanaticism or superstitions. When this happens, they destroy the sense of morality and violate the natural boundary between vice and virtue."

“Wordsworth did not stop writing good poetry because he began to support the Tory party. Both had common source- loss of former sensitivity to suffering, the desire to push away from oneself the spirit of intense criticism that gave rise to it best works. Passion for the revolution, disappointment in it, philosophical understanding of the reasons for its collapse, a frantic search for a way out, an attempt to find it in an in-depth analysis of inner life required a great sense of citizenship... When all this was supplanted by traditionally religious thinking, confidence in the absolute correctness of one’s ideas and persistent desire instill them in everyone, poetry is dead."

Art and morality: the limits of tolerance. Thesis: “The value of art is not beauty, but right actions.” Antithesis: “By their nature, Art and Morality form two autonomous worlds that have no direct and internal subordination in relation to each other.” Let's check in practice who is right and to what extent. The poems of Bertrand de Born (c. 1140-1210) clearly do not teach right actions:

Neither a merry feast nor love

They won't stir up my blood like that,

Like the roar of a military blizzard.

A lor! A lor! Ruby! If!

Let the earth fall on the chest

Both knights and servants!

Shall we condemn? Hardly. But not because morality does not extend to art, but because morality extends to our perception of art: condemnation in in this case smacks of the worst immorality - hypocrisy. Art can reflect the aesthetic moment of immoral behavior, distracting from all other aspects of life. Demanding that an artist not touch on such topics is pointless: a person obsessed with the search for perfection will not pay any attention to this requirement, and he will be right. Perfection is inherent not only in the morally positive, but art, while it remains itself, is occupied perfection: aesthetic properties of the world that do not exist in isolation from extra-aesthetic ones, but are not reducible to them. I think this was meant by A. S. Pushkin (1799-1837), who noted the words of P. A. Vyazemsky (1792-1880) “the duty... of a writer is to warm with love for virtue and inflame with hatred for vice” with the following comment in the margin : "Not at all. Poetry is higher than morality - or at least a completely different matter... what does a poet care about virtue and vice? Is it really the same poetic side?