Artistic convention in art and literature. Moscow State University of Printing. Questions for the exam

an integral feature of any work, associated with the nature of art itself and consisting in the fact that the images created by the artist are perceived as non-identical to reality, as something created by the creative will of the author. Any art conditionally reproduces life, but the measure of this U. x. may be different. Depending on the ratio of plausibility and fiction, a distinction is made between primary and secondary fiction. For primary fiction. a greater degree of verisimilitude is characteristic when the fictionality of the depicted is not declared or emphasized by the author. Secondary U. x. - this is a demonstrative violation by the artist of verisimilitude in the depiction of objects or phenomena, a conscious appeal to fantasy, the use of the grotesque, symbols, etc., in order to give certain life phenomena a special sharpness and prominence.

CONCEPT (lat. conceptus - concept). - 1. S.A. Ac-

Koldov-Alekseev (1871-1945), Russian philosopher, cultural

torologist and literary critic of the Russian diaspora, believed that

K. “there is a mental formation that replaces us

in the process of thought an indefinite set of objects

comrades of the same kind” (Likhachev, 34.). Unlike

Askoldov’s interpretation, D.S. Likhachev suggests that K.

“does not arise directly from the meaning of the word, but clearly

is the result of a collision of dictionary meaning

words with personal and folk experience of a person... Potential

tions of the concept are wider and richer, the wider and richer the cultural

human experience” (Ibid., p. 35). K. exists

in a certain “ideosphere” determined by the circle

associations of each individual person, and arises

in the individual consciousness not only as a hint of the possibility

possible meanings, but also as a response to the previous

human language experience as a whole is poetic, pro-

stuttering, scientific, social, historical. K. not

only “replaces”, facilitating communication, the meaning of words

va, but also expands this meaning, leaving opportunities

for conjecture, fantasy, creation of emotional

nal aura of the word. At the same time, K. seems to be

between the rich opportunities that arise in

basis of its “replacement function”, and limitations -

mi, determined by the context of its application. Poten-

tions opened in the vocabulary as a separate

person, and language as a whole, Likhachev calls the con-

ceptospheres, noting that the conceptosphere

national language (as well as individual) especially

more so than the richer the entire culture of a nation (person). Every

K. can be deciphered differently depending on

from the momentary context and individuality of the con-

chain carrier. So, in K. “stranger” has the meaning

Has this person read A. Blok and in what context?

this word is used; in K. "intelligentsia" - how

the person speaking or writing refers to the object

mentions; in K. “damask steel” - what poetic works-

knowledge read by the person hearing or pronouncing

this word. Phraseologisms also have their own K.

(“Balaam’s donkey”, “Demyan’s ear”, “legends of the

rina deep"). 2. See Concetto.

Lit.: Askoldov-Alekseev S.A. Concept and word // Russian speech.

New episode. L., 1928. Issue. 2; Likhachev D.S. Conceptosphere of Russian

language // Liberation from dogma. History of Russian literature: state-

knowledge and ways of studying. M., 1997. T. 1. G.V. Yakusheva

CONCEPTUALISM, CONCEPTUAL AND SKUS -

with t in about (lat. conceptus - concept) - the art of ideas,

when an artist creates and demonstrates not so much art

a work of art, as much as a certain art

government strategy, concept, which, in principle,

generally, can be represented by any artifact

or simply an artistic gesture, an “action”. Roots

K. - in the work of a number of avant-garde groups of the 10-20s:

futurists, dadaists, OBERIU. Classic production

conducting K. - “sculpture” by Marcel Duchamp “Background”

tan" (1917), which is an exhibition on

public view of the urinal.

In Russia, K. is recognized as a special artistic

new direction and manifests itself in the unofficial

art of the 1970s. In poetry, K. is associated with creativity

Vs.Nekrasov, Yan Satunovsky, D.A.Prigov, Lev

Rubinstein and Andrei Monastyrsky (Prigov and Ru-

Binstein later form a kind of duet, and Mo-

Nastyrsky will create the action group “Collective

actions"), in prose - V. Sorokin, in figurative

art - Ilya Kabakov and Erik Bulatov. Using

avant-garde desire for purity and self-sufficiency

style of a dedicated artistic form, conceptualists

transfer the central problematic to a different plane,

no longer dealing with the form itself, but with its conditions

emergence, not so much by the text as by the context.

Vs. Nekrasov notes that it would be more correct to call K.

"contextualism". As a result, relationships change

a significantly more active position. "The artist smears

on the canvas. The viewer is watching. The artist stops brushing

on the canvas and begins to smear it on the viewer” (Kabakov).

In artistic practice, K. moves from the author's

monologism to the plurality of equal languages.

its functional diversity (“speech”) - the author. "Not

we own the language, and the language owns us,” this post-modern

nist thesis, which appeared in some sense as a result

volume of the general linguistic turn in philosophy

20th century, found his most direct artistic

real embodiment precisely in K.

Concrete poetry, in the same way objectifying and repudiating

alien language, nevertheless, used its texture, str-

striving for original imagery and expressiveness. TO.,

in extreme cases, refuses to create at all

works of art and, accordingly, from any im-

manent expressiveness. Caught in a dramatic

situations of language alienation, K. handles the language, ver-

her, with a multiplicity of languages, like a “black box”,

inorganic matter. In the center it turns out not even

“elementary as fundamental” (Vs. Nekrasov),

and an empty object. The image has been removed, only one remains

frame. Instead of an image there is a fiction, a simulacrum. Price-

tra no. The artist manipulates the edges, the frame. Image

expression in Kabakov’s “albums”, text in “catalogs”

L. Rubinstein and Sorokin’s “novels” are a simulacrum,

visibility of images and text. This is emphasized

the appearance in the general row of actually empty objects -

tov - a white sheet in an album, an unfilled card

in a catalog, blank pages in a book. They have the same nature

yes - eloquent silence. Partly reproduced here

the mechanism of ritual is being exhausted, in the sacred space

in which all actions are recoded. Only in role

the sacred signified in this case is

also an empty object. Serial equipment Kabakov, Rubin-

Stein, Sorokin, Monastyrsky and the Collective group

tive actions" - the limit of artistic reduction,

the quintessence of minimalism. And small forms here

no longer suitable. Taking empty objects, bare structures,

Kabakov, Rubinstein and Sorokin accumulate artistic

significant effect bit by bit, “small impact-

mi", purely external permutations, formal,

non-structural variations. In order to silently

speech has become eloquent, a rather thunderous

great toolkit.

In the Soviet situation in the surrounding linguistic diversity

diversity, of course, the language of communist

some propaganda and Soviet mythology. Conceptual

art that worked with this language was called

sotsarga (“socialist art”). The first social

Tov's works appeared in the late 1950s

giving to the creativity of the Lianozov group (see Specific

poetry). In painting and graphics - with Oscar Rabin, in

ezii - from KKholina, G. Sapgir, Vs. Nekrasov. In the 1970s this

Prigov continued the line - already within the framework of the general con-

conceptualist movement, called "mos-

Kovsky school of conceptualism."

In the 1980s, for the new poetic generation (after-

Soviet day) K. is already a venerable tradition. Pro-

the problem of alienated language, someone else's word is still

in the spotlight. Quotability becomes indispensable

element of lyrical verse (among the so-called “ironists” -

A. Eremenko, E. Bunimovich, V. Korkiya), and the new social

tists - T. Kibirov and M. Sukhotin - sometimes bring

quotation up to centon (especially Sukhotin.) K. and today

nya has a noticeable influence on young poets and artists

dozhnikov.

Lit.: Groys B. Utopia and exchange. M., 1993; Ryklin M. Terrorists

ki. M., 1993; JanecekJ. The theory and practice of conceptualism in Vsevolo-

yes Nekrasova // UFO. 1994. No. 5; Zhuravleva A.M., Nekrasov V.N. Package.

M, 1996; Eisenberg M.N. A look at a free artist. M., 1997;

Ryklin M. Art as an obstacle. M., 1997; Tar E. Terrorism

ical moralism. M., 1998; Kulakov V.G. Poetry as a fact. M., 1999;

Godfrey T. Conceptual art (Art and ideas). L., 1998; Farver J. Global

conceptualism: Points of origin 1950s-1980s. N.Y., 1999. V.G.Kulakov

ARTISTIC CONVENTION in a broad sense

the original property of art, manifested in a certain difference, discrepancy between the artistic picture of the world, individual images and objective reality. This concept indicates a kind of distance (aesthetic, artistic) between reality and a work of art, awareness of which is an essential condition for adequate perception of the work. The term “convention” is rooted in the theory of art, since artistic creativity is carried out primarily in “forms of life.” Linguistic, symbolic expressive means of art, as a rule, represent one or another degree of transformation of these forms. Usually, three types of convention are distinguished: convention expressing the specific specificity of art, determined by the properties of its linguistic material: paint - in painting, stone - in sculpture, word - in literature, sound - in music, etc., which predetermines the possibility of each type of art in display various aspects of reality and the artist’s self-expression - a two-dimensional and flat image on canvas and screen, staticity in fine art, the absence of a “fourth wall” in the theater. At the same time, painting has a rich color spectrum, cinematography has a high degree of image dynamism, literature, thanks to the special capacity of verbal language, completely compensates for the lack of sensory clarity. This condition is called “primary” or “unconditional”. Another type of convention is the canonization of a set of artistic characteristics, stable techniques and goes beyond the framework of partial reception and free artistic choice. Such a convention can represent the artistic style of an entire era (Gothic, Baroque, Empire), express the aesthetic ideal of a specific historical time; it is strongly influenced by ethnonational characteristics, cultural ideas, ritual traditions of the people, and mythology. The ancient Greeks endowed their gods with fantastic powers and other symbols of deity. The conventions of the Middle Ages were affected by the religious-ascetic attitude towards reality: the art of this era personified the otherworldly, mysterious world. The art of classicism was prescribed to depict reality in the unity of place, time and action. The third type of convention is a proper artistic device, depending on the creative will of the author. The manifestations of such a convention are infinitely diverse, distinguished by their pronounced metaphorical nature, expressiveness, associativity, deliberately open re-creation of “forms of life” - deviations from the traditional language of art (in ballet - a transition to a normal step, in opera - to colloquial speech). In art, it is not necessary that formative components remain invisible to the reader or viewer. A skillfully implemented open artistic device of convention does not disrupt the process of perception of the work, but, on the contrary, often activates it.

There are two types of artistic conventions. Primary artistic convention is associated with the very material that a given type of art uses. For example, the possibilities of words are limited; it does not make it possible to see color or smell, it can only describe these sensations:

Music rang in the garden

With such unspeakable grief,

Fresh and sharp smell of the sea

Oysters on ice on a platter.

(A. A. Akhmatova, “In the Evening”)

This artistic convention is characteristic of all types of art; the work cannot be created without it. In literature, the peculiarity of artistic convention depends on the literary type: the external expression of actions in drama, description of feelings and experiences in lyrics, description of the action in epic. The primary artistic convention is associated with typification: when depicting even a real person, the author strives to present his actions and words as typical, and for this purpose changes some of the properties of his hero. Thus, the memoirs of G.V. Ivanova“Petersburg Winters” evoked many critical responses from the heroes themselves; for example, A.A. Akhmatova she was indignant that the author had invented dialogues between her and N.S. that never happened. Gumilev. But G.V. Ivanov wanted not just to reproduce real events, but to recreate them in artistic reality, to create the image of Akhmatova, the image of Gumilyov. The task of literature is to create a typified image of reality in its acute contradictions and features.
Secondary artistic convention is not characteristic of all works. It presupposes a conscious violation of verisimilitude: Major Kovalev’s nose, cut off and living on its own, in “The Nose” by N.V. Gogol, the mayor with a stuffed head in “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin. A secondary artistic convention is created through the use of religious and mythological images (Mephistopheles in “Faust” by I.V. Goethe, Woland in “The Master and Margarita” by M.A. Bulgakov), hyperboles(the incredible strength of the heroes of the folk epic, the scale of the curse in N.V. Gogol’s “Terrible Vengeance”), allegories (Grief, Dashing in Russian fairy tales, Stupidity in “Praise of Stupidity” Erasmus of Rotterdam). A secondary artistic convention can also be created by a violation of the primary one: an appeal to the viewer in the final scene of “The Government Inspector” by N.V. Gogol, an appeal to the discerning reader in the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky“What to do?”, variability of the narrative (several options for the development of events are considered) in “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” by L. Stern, in the story by H.L. Borges"The Garden of Forking Paths", violation of cause and effect connections in the stories of D.I. Kharms, plays by E. Ionesco. Secondary artistic convention is used to draw attention to the real, to make the reader think about the phenomena of reality.

This ideological and thematic basis, which determines the content of the work, is revealed by the writer in life pictures, in the actions and experiences of the characters, in their characters.

People are thus depicted in certain life circumstances, as participants in the events developing in the work that make up its plot.

Depending on the circumstances and characters depicted in the work, the speech of the characters in it and the author’s speech about them are constructed (see Author’s speech), i.e., the language of the work.

Consequently, the content determines and motivates the writer’s choice and depiction of life scenes, the characters of the characters, plot events, the composition of the work and its language, i.e. the form of the literary work. Thanks to it - life pictures, composition, plot, language - the content is manifested in all its completeness and versatility.

The form of the work is thus inextricably linked with its content and is determined by it; on the other hand, the content of a work can only appear in a certain form.

The more talented the writer, the more fluent he is in the literary form, the more perfectly he depicts life, the deeper and more accurately he reveals the ideological and thematic basis of his work, achieving unity of form and content.

S. of L.N. Tolstoy’s story “After the Ball” - scenes of the ball, execution and, most importantly, the author’s thoughts and emotions about them. F is a material (i.e. sound, verbal, figurative, etc.) manifestation of S. and its organizing principle. Turning to a work, we directly encounter the language of fiction, composition, etc. and through these components F, we comprehend the S. of the work. For example, through the change of bright colors into dark ones in the language, through the contrast of actions and scenes in the plot and composition of the above-mentioned story, we comprehend the author’s angry thought about the inhumane nature of society. Thus, S. and F. are interconnected: F. is always meaningful, and S. is always formed in a certain way, but in the unity of S. and F., the initiative always belongs to S: new F. are born as an expression of a new S.

No matter how periodically the interest in the problem of genres intensifies, it has never been the center of attention of film studies, finding itself, at best, on the periphery of our interests. The bibliography speaks about this: not a single book has been written either here or abroad on the theory of film genres. We will not find a section or at least a chapter on genres not only in the already mentioned two books on the theory of film dramaturgy (V.K. Turkin and the author of this study), but also in the books of V. Volkenshtein, I. Weisfeld, N. Kryuchechnikov, I. Manevich, V. Yunakovsky. As for articles on the general theory of genres, literally the fingers of one hand are enough to list them.

Cinema began as a chronicle, and therefore the problem of photogeny, the naturalness of cinema, and its documentary nature absorbed the attention of researchers. However, nature not only did not exclude genre sharpening, it presupposed it, as was already shown by Eisenstein’s “Strike”, built on the principle of “montage of attractions” - the action in the style of a chronicle was based on episodes sharpened to the point of eccentricity.

In this regard, documentarian Dziga Vertov argued with Eisenstein, believing that he was imitating the documentary style in feature films. Eisenstein, in turn, criticized Vertov for allowing play in the chronicle, that is, cutting and editing the chronicle according to the laws of art. Then it turned out that both of them were striving for the same thing, both were breaking the wall of old, melodramatic art from different sides in order to come into direct contact with reality. The directors' dispute ended with Eisenstein's compromise formula: "Beyond the game and the non-game."

On closer examination, documentary and genres are not mutually exclusive - they turn out to be deeply connected with the problem of method and style, in particular, the individual style of the artist.

Indeed, already in the very choice of the genre of the work, the artist’s attitude to the event depicted, his outlook on life, his individuality is revealed.

Belinsky, in the article “On the Russian story and Gogol’s stories,” wrote that the author’s originality is a consequence of the “color of the glasses” through which he looks at the world. “Such originality in Mr. Gogol consists of comic animation, always prompted by a feeling of deep sadness.”

Eisenstein and Dovzhenko dreamed of staging comic films, and showed remarkable abilities in this (meaning Dovzhenko’s “The Berry of Love,” the script for Eisenstein’s “M.M.M.” and the comedy scenes of “October”), but they were still closer to the epic.

Chaplin is a comedy genius.

Explaining his method, Chaplin wrote:

Belinsky VT. Collection cit.: In 3 volumes. T. 1.- M.: GIHL.- 1948, - P. 135.

A.P. Dovzhenko told me that after “Earth” he was going to write a script for Chaplin; He intended to convey the letter to him through S.M. Eisenstein, who was then working in America. - Note. auto

“In the movie The Adventurer, I very successfully sat myself on the balcony, where I was eating ice cream with a young girl. On the floor below I placed a very respectable and well-dressed lady at a table. While eating, I drop a piece of ice cream, which, melted, flows down my pantaloons and falls on the lady’s neck. The first burst of laughter comes from my awkwardness; the second, and much stronger, causes ice cream to fall on the neck of a lady, who begins to scream and jump... No matter how simple it may seem at first glance, two properties of human nature are taken into account here: one is the pleasure that the public experiences when seeing wealth and brilliance is in humiliation, another is the desire of the audience to experience the same feelings that the actor experiences on stage. The public - and this truth must be learned first of all - is especially pleased when all sorts of troubles happen to the rich... If I, say, dropped ice cream on the neck of a poor woman, say some modest housewife, it would not cause laughter, but sympathy To her. Besides, the housewife has nothing to lose in terms of her dignity and, therefore, nothing funny would happen. And when the ice cream falls on the rich woman’s neck, the public thinks that this is how it should be.”

Everything is important in this little treatise on laughter. This episode evokes two responses—two bursts of laughter—from the viewer. The first explosion is when Charlie himself is confused: the ice cream gets on his trousers; hiding his confusion, he tries to maintain external dignity. The viewer, of course, laughs, but if Chaplin had limited himself to this, he would have remained just a capable student of Max Linder. But, as we see, already in his short films (original studies of future films) he is groping for a deeper source of humor. A second, stronger burst of laughter occurs in the said episode when the ice cream falls on the rich lady's neck. These two comic moments are connected. When we laugh at the lady, we express sympathy for Charlie. The question arises, what does Charlie have to do with it, if everything happened because of an absurd accident, and not by his will - after all, he does not even know what happened on the floor below. But that’s the whole point: thanks to his ridiculous actions, Charlie is both funny and... positive. We can also do evil through absurd actions. Charlie, with his absurd actions, unknowingly changes circumstances the way they should change, thanks to which the comedy achieves its goal.

"Charles Spencer Chaplin. - M.: Goskinoizdat, 1945. P. 166.

Funny is not the coloring of the action, funny is the essence of the action of both the negative character and the positive one. Both are revealed through the funny, and this is the stylistic unity of the genre. The genre thus reveals itself as an aesthetic and social interpretation of a theme.

It is this idea that Eisenstein emphasizes to the utmost when, in his classes at VGIK, he invites his students to stage the same situation, first as a melodrama, then as a tragedy, and finally as a comedy. The following line of an imaginary scenario was taken as the theme for the mise-en-scène: “A soldier returns from the front. He discovers that during his absence his wife had a child from someone else. Throws her away."

Giving this task to students, Eisenstein emphasized three points that make up the director’s ability: to see (or, as he also said, “to fish out”), to select and to show (“to express”). Depending on whether this situation was staged in a pathetic (tragic) plan or a comic one, different content and different meaning were “drawn” out of it - therefore, the mise-en-scène turned out to be completely different.

However, when we say that a genre is an interpretation, we do not at all claim that the genre is only an interpretation, that the genre begins to manifest itself only in the sphere of interpretation. Such a definition would be too one-sided, since it would make the genre too dependent on performance, and only on it.

However, the genre depends not only on our attitude to the subject, but, above all, on the subject itself.

In the article “Questions of Genre” A. Macheret argued that genre is “a method of artistic sharpening”, genre is “a type of artistic form”.

Macheret's article was important: after a long silence, it attracted the attention of criticism and theory to the problem of genre, and drew attention to the meaning of form. However, the vulnerability of the article is now obvious - it has reduced the genre to a form. The author did not take advantage of one of his very correct remark: the Lena events can only be a social drama in art. A fruitful idea, however, the author did not use it when he came to the definition of the genre. A genre, in his opinion, is a type of artistic form; genre - degree of sharpening.

Eisenstein S.M. Favorite Prod.: In 6 vols. T. 4, - 1964.- P. 28.

Macheret A. Questions of genre // Art of cinema.- 1954.- No. 11 -P. 75.

It would seem that this definition completely coincides with the way Eisenstein approached the genre interpretation of mise-en-scène, when, while teaching students the techniques of directing, he “sharpened” the same situation into either comedy or drama. The difference, however, is significant. Eisenstein was talking not about the script, but about the line of the script, not about the plot and composition, but about the mise-en-scène, that is, about the techniques of performing a particular: the same thing, it can become both comedic and dramatic, but what exactly it becomes is always depends on the whole, on the content of the work and its idea. When starting classes, Eisenstein in his introductory speech speaks about the correspondence of the chosen form to the internal idea. This thought constantly tormented Eisenstein. At the beginning of the war, on September 21, 1941, he writes in his diary: “... in art, first of all, the dialectical course of nature is “reflected”. More precisely, the more vital (vital. - S.F.) art, the closer it is to artificially recreating in itself this basic natural position in nature: the dialectical order and course of things.

And if there (in nature) it lies in the depths and basis - not always visible through the veils! - then in art its place is mainly in the “invisible”, in the “unreadable”: in structure, in method and in principle... "

It is amazing how much artists who worked in very different times and in very different arts agree on this idea. Sculptor Burdell: “Nature must be seen from the inside: to create a work, you should start from the skeleton of a given thing, and then give the skeleton an external design. It is necessary to see this skeleton of a thing in its true aspect and in its architectural expression."

As we see, both Eisenstein and Burdell talk about an object that is true in itself, and the artist, in order to be original, must understand this truth.

Questions of film dramaturgy. Vol. 4.- M.: Art, 1962.- P. 377.

Masters of art about art: In 8 vols. T. 3.- M.: Izogiz, 1934.- P. 691.

However, maybe this only applies to nature? Perhaps we are talking about a “dialectical move” inherent only to it?

In Marx we find a similar thought regarding the course of history itself. Moreover, we are talking specifically about the nature of such opposite phenomena as the comic and the tragic - they, according to Marx, are shaped by history itself.

“The last phase of the world-historical form is its comedy. The gods of Greece, who were already once - in a tragic form - mortally wounded in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, had to die again - in a comic form - in Lucian's Discourses. Why is this the course of history? This is necessary so that humanity can cheerfully part with its past.”

These words are often quoted, so they are remembered separately, out of context; It seems that we are talking exclusively about mythology and literature, but it was, first of all, about real political reality:

“The struggle against German political reality is a struggle against the past of modern peoples, and the echoes of this past still continue to weigh on these peoples. It is instructive for them to see how the ancien regime (old order - S.F.), which experienced its tragedy among them, plays out its comedy in the person of a German native from the other world. The history of the old order was tragic while it was the power of the world existing from time immemorial; freedom, on the contrary, was an idea that overshadowed individuals - in other words, while the old order itself believed, and had to believe, in its legitimacy. While the ancien regime, as an existing world order, struggled with a world still in its infancy, on the side of this ancien regime there was not a personal, but a world-historical error. That is why his death was tragic.

Marx K., Engels F. Soch. T. 1.- P. 418.

On the contrary, the modern German regime - this anachronism, this blatant contradiction of generally accepted axioms, this insignificance of the ancien regime exposed to the whole world - only imagines that it believes in itself, and demands that the world imagine it too. If he really believed in his collected essence, would he hide it under the appearance of someone else's essence and seek his salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is rather just a comedian of such a world order, the real heroes of which have already died!

Marx’s thinking is modern both in relation to the reality we have experienced and in relation to art: aren’t the words that we just read the key to the painting “Repentance” and to its main character, the dictator Varlam. Let us repeat them: “If he really believed in his own essence, would he hide it under the appearance of someone else’s essence and seek his salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is rather just a comedian of such a world order, the real heroes of which have already died.” The film “Repentance” could have been staged as a tragedy, but its content, already compromised in itself, at this transitional moment in history required the form of tragic farce. Less than a year after the premiere, the director of the film, Tengiz Abuladze, remarked: “Now I would direct the film differently.” What does “now” mean and what does “differently” mean? We will return to these questions when the time comes to say more about the painting, but now we will return to the general idea of ​​art, which reflects the dialectical course of not only nature, but also stories. “World history,” Engels writes to Marx, “is the greatest poetess.”

History itself creates the sublime and the funny. This does not mean that the artist just has to find a form for the finished content. The form is not a shell, much less a case into which the content is placed. The content of real life in itself is not the content of art. Content is not ready until it has taken shape.

Marx K., Engels F. Ibid.

Thought and form do not just connect, they overcome each other. Thought becomes form, form becomes thought. They become one and the same. This balance, this unity is always conditional, because the reality of a work of art ceases to be a historical and everyday reality. By giving it form, the artist changes it in order to comprehend it.

However, have we not strayed too far away from the problem of genre, getting carried away by discussions about form and content, and now starting to talk about convention? No, now we have only come closer to our subject, for we have the opportunity, finally, to get out of the vicious circle of genre definitions that we cited at the beginning. Genre - interpretation, type of form. Genre - content. Each of these definitions is too one-sided to be true enough to give us a convincing idea of ​​what defines a genre and how it is shaped through the process of artistic creation. But to say that genre depends on the unity of form and content is to say nothing. The unity of form and content is a general aesthetic and general philosophical problem. Genre is a more specific issue. It is connected with a very specific aspect of this unity - with its conditionality.

The unity of form and content is a convention, the nature of which is determined by the genre. Genre is a type of convention.

Convention is necessary, since art is impossible without restrictions. The artist is limited, first of all, by the material in which he reproduces reality. Material is not itself a form. The material overcome becomes both form and content. The sculptor strives to convey the warmth of the human body in cold marble, but he does not paint the sculpture so that it resembles a living person: this, as a rule, causes disgust.

The limited nature of the material and the limited circumstances of the plot are not an obstacle, but a condition for creating an artistic image. While working on a plot, the artist creates these limitations for himself.

The principles of overcoming this or that material determine not only the specifics of a given art - they feed the general laws of artistic creativity, with its constant desire for imagery, metaphor, subtext, background, that is, the desire to avoid a mirror image of an object, to penetrate beyond the surface of a phenomenon into the depths, so that comprehend its meaning.

Convention frees the artist from the need to copy an object and makes it possible to reveal the essence hidden behind the shell of the object. Genre, as it were, regulates convention. Genre helps to reveal the essence, which does not coincide with the form. The conventions of the genre, therefore, are necessary to express the unconditional objectivity of the content, or at least the unconditional feeling of it.

ARTISTIC CONVENTION

An integral feature of any work, associated with the nature of art itself and consisting in the fact that the images created by the artist are perceived as non-identical to reality, as something created by the creative will of the author. Any art conditionally reproduces life, but the measure of this U. x. may be different. Depending on the ratio of plausibility and artistic fiction (see artistic fiction), a distinction is made between primary and secondary fiction. For primary fiction. a greater degree of verisimilitude is characteristic when the fictionality of the depicted is not declared or emphasized by the author. Secondary U. x. - this is a demonstrative violation by the artist of verisimilitude in the depiction of objects or phenomena, a conscious appeal to fantasy (see science fiction), the use of the grotesque, symbols, etc., in order to give certain life phenomena a special sharpness and prominence.

Dictionary of literary terms. 2012

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what ARTISTIC CONVENTION is in the Russian language in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

• CONDITIONALITY in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  , -i, w. 1. ohm conditional. 2. A purely external rule entrenched in social behavior. Captured by conventions. The enemy of all...
• ARTISTIC
  AMATEUR ARTISTIC ACTIVITY, one of the forms of folk art. creativity. Teams X.s. originated in the USSR. All R. 20s the Tram movement was born (see...
• ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  ART INDUSTRY, industrial production. methods of decorative and applied art. products serving for art. household decoration (interior, clothing, jewelry, dishes, carpets, furniture...
• ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  "FICTION", state. publishing house, Moscow. Basic in 1930 as State. publishing house literature, in 1934-63 Goslitizdat. Collection op., fav. prod. ...
• ARTISTIC in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS, a sport where women compete in performing gymnastics combinations to music. and dance. exercises with an object (ribbon, ball, ...
• CONDITIONALITY in the Complete Accented Paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
  conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, conventions, …
• CONDITIONALITY in the Thesaurus of Russian Business Vocabulary:
  
• CONDITIONALITY in the Russian Language Thesaurus:
  Syn: contract, agreement, custom; ...
• CONDITIONALITY in the Russian Synonyms dictionary:
  virtuality, assumption, relativity, rule, symbolism, convention, ...
• CONDITIONALITY in the New Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
  1. g. Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (1*2,3). 2. g. 1) Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (2*3). 2) ...
• CONDITIONALITY in the Complete Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  convention...
• CONDITIONALITY in the Spelling Dictionary:
  convention,...
• CONDITIONALITY in Ozhegov’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  a purely external rule entrenched in social behavior in captivity of conventions. The enemy of all conventions. convention<= …
• CONDITIONALITY in Ushakov’s Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  conventions, g. 1. units only Distraction noun to conditional in 1, 2 and 4 meanings. Conditionality of the sentence. The conventions of theatrical production. ...
• CONDITIONALITY in Ephraim's Explanatory Dictionary:
  convention 1. g. Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (1*2,3). 2. g. 1) Distraction noun by value adj.: conditional (2*3). ...
• CONDITIONALITY in the New Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
  I distracted noun according to adj. conditional I 2., 3. II g. 1. abstract noun according to adj. conditional II 3. ...
• CONDITIONALITY in the Large Modern Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  I distracted noun according to adj. conditional I 2., 3. II g. 1. abstract noun according to adj. conditional II 1., ...
• FANTASTIC in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  in literature and other arts - the depiction of implausible phenomena, the introduction of fictional images that do not coincide with reality, a clearly felt violation by the artist...
• AMATEUR ARTISTIC ACTIVITIES
  amateur performance, one of the forms of folk art. Includes the creation and performance of artistic works by amateurs performing collectively (clubs, studios, ...
• AESTHETICS in the Newest Philosophical Dictionary:
  term developed and specified by A.E. Baumgarten in his treatise "Aesthetica" (1750 - 1758). The New Latin linguistic formation proposed by Baumgarten goes back to the Greek. ...
• POP ART in the Dictionary of Postmodernism:
  (POP-ART) ("mass art": from English, popular - folk, popular; retrospectively associated with pop - suddenly appear, explode) - the direction of artistic ...
• ARTICULATION TRIPLE CINEMATOGRAPHIC CODE in the Dictionary of Postmodernism:
  - a problem field that was constituted in discussions between film theorists and semioticians of a structuralist orientation in the mid-1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the appeal (or return) of film theory...
• TROITSKY MATVEY MIKHAILOVICH in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia:
  Troitsky (Matvey Mikhailovich) - representative of empirical philosophy in Russia (1835 - 1899). The son of a deacon in a rural church in Kaluga province; graduated...
• FANTASTIC in the Dictionary of Literary Terms:
  - (from the Greek phantastike - the art of imagining) - a type of fiction based on a special fantastic type of imagery, which is characterized by: ...
• Troubadours in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  [from Provençal trobar - “to find”, “to invent”, hence “to create poetic and musical works”, “to compose songs”] - medieval Provençal lyric poets, songwriters...
• VERSIFICATION in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  [otherwise - versification]. I. General concepts. The concept of S. is used in two meanings. It is often regarded as a doctrine of the principles of poetic...
• RENAISSANCE in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  — Renaissance is a word first used in its special sense by Giorgio Vasari in Lives of Artists. ...
• IMAGE. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  1. Statement of the question. 2. O. as a phenomenon of class ideology. 3. Individualization of reality in O. . 4. Typification of reality...
• LYRICS. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  The division of poetry into three main types is traditional in literary theory. Epic, literary and drama seem to be the main forms of all poetic...
• CRITICISM. THEORY. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  The word "K." means judgment. It is no coincidence that the word “judgment” is closely related to the concept of “court”. Judging is, on the one hand,...
• KOMI LITERATURE. in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  Komi (Zyrian) writing was created at the end of the 14th century by the missionary Stefan, Bishop of Perm, who in 1372 compiled a special Zyryan alphabet (Perm ...
• CHINESE LITERATURE in the Literary Encyclopedia.
• PROPAGATIONAL LITERATURE in the Literary Encyclopedia:
  a set of artistic and non-artistic works, which, influencing the feelings, imagination and will of people, encourage them to certain actions and actions. Term...
• LITERATURE in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  [lat. lit(t)eratura lit. - written], written works of social significance (for example, fiction, scientific literature, epistolary literature). More often under literature...
• ESTONIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  Soviet Socialist Republic, Estonia (Eesti NSV). I. General information The Estonian SSR was formed on July 21, 1940. From August 6, 1940 in ...
• SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  (Shakespeare) William (23.4. 1564, Stratford-on-Avon, - 23.4.1616, ibid.), English playwright and poet. Genus. in the family of a craftsman and trader John...
• ART EDUCATION in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  education in the USSR, the system of training masters of fine, decorative and industrial arts, architects-artists, art historians, artist-teachers. In Rus' it originally existed in the form...
• FRANCE
• PHOTO ART in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  a type of artistic creativity based on the use of the expressive capabilities of photography. F.’s special place in artistic culture is determined by...
• UZBEK SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
• TURKMEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
• THE USSR. RADIO AND TELEVISION in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  and television Soviet television and radio broadcasting, as well as other media and propaganda, have a great influence on ...
• THE USSR. LITERATURE AND ART in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  and art Literature Multinational Soviet literature represents a qualitatively new stage in the development of literature. As a definite artistic whole, united by a single socio-ideological...
• THE USSR. BIBLIOGRAPHY in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
• ROMANIA in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  (România), Socialist Republic of Romania, SRR (Republica Socialista România). I. General information R. is a socialist state in the southern part of Europe, in ...
• RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERAL SOCIALIST REPUBLIC, RSFSR in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB.
• LITHUANIA SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  Soviet Socialist Republic (Lietuvos Taribu Socialistine Respublika), Lithuania (Lietuva). I. General information The Lithuanian SSR was formed on July 21, 1940. From 3 ...

Image and sign in a work of art, the relationship between these concepts. Aristotle's theory of mimesis and theory of symbolization. Life-like and conditional types of image. Types of conventions. Fiction. Coexistence and interaction of conventions in twentieth-century literature.

Subject of discipline“Theory of Literature” - the study of the theoretical principles of fiction. The purpose of the discipline is to provide knowledge in the field of literary theory, to introduce students to the most important and current methodological and theoretical problems, and to teach the analysis of literary and artistic works. Objectives of the discipline- study of the basic concepts of literary theory.

Art has as its goal the creation of aesthetic values. Drawing its material from a variety of spheres of life, it comes into contact with religion, philosophy, history, psychology, politics, and journalism. Moreover, it embodies even the most sublime objects in sensual form<…>", or in artistic images (Old Greek eidos - appearance, appearance).

Artistic image, a common property of all works of art, the result of the author’s comprehension of a phenomenon, a process of life, in a way characteristic of a particular type of art, objectified in the form of both the whole work and its individual parts.

Like a scientific concept, an artistic image performs a cognitive function, but the knowledge it contains is largely subjective, colored by how the author sees the depicted object. Unlike a scientific concept, an artistic image is self-sufficient; it is a form of expression of content in art.

Basic properties of an artistic image- objective-sensory character, integrity of reflection, individualization, emotionality, vitality, special role of creative fiction - differ from such properties of the concept as abstractness, generality, logicality. Because the artistic image has multiple meanings, it cannot be fully translated into the language of logic.

An artistic image in the broadest sense ndash; the integrity of a literary work, in the narrow sense of the word; character images and poetic imagery, or tropes.

An artistic image always carries a generalization. Images of art are concentrated embodiments of the general, typical, in the particular, individual.

In modern literary criticism the concepts of “sign” and “sign-ness” are also used. A sign is the unity of the signifier and the signified (meaning), a kind of sensory-objective representative of the signified and its substitute. Signs and sign systems are studied by semiotics, or semiology (from the Greek semeion - “sign”), the science of sign systems based on phenomena that exist in life.

In the sign process, or semiosis, three factors are distinguished: sign (sign means); designatum, denotation- the object or phenomenon that the sign indicates; interpretant - the influence by virtue of which the corresponding thing turns out to be a sign for the interpreter. Literary works are also considered from the aspect of iconicity.

In semiotics there are: indexicals- a sign that denotes, but does not characterize a single object, the action of the index is based on the principle of contiguity between the signifier and the signified: smoke is an index of fire, a footprint in the sand is an index of human presence; signs-symbols are conventional signs in which the signifier and the signified have no similarity or contiguity; these are words in natural language; iconic signs- denoting objects that have the same properties as the signs themselves, based on the actual similarity of the signifier and the signified; “Photography, star map, model - iconic signs<…>" Among the iconic signs, diagrams and images are distinguished. From a semiotics point of view, artistic image is an iconic sign whose designatum is value.

The main semiotic approaches are applicable to signs in a work of art (text): identifying semantics - the relationship of a sign to the world of extra-sign reality, syntagmatics - the relationship of a sign to another sign, and pragmatics - the relationship of a sign to the group using it.

Domestic structuralists interpreted culture as a whole as a sign system, a complexly structured text, breaking up into a hierarchy of “texts within texts” and forming complex interweavings of texts.

Art ndash; this is an artistic exploration of life. The principle of cognition is placed at the forefront of the main aesthetic theories - the theory of imitation and the theory of symbolization.

The doctrine of imitation is born in the works of the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. According to Aristotle, “the writing of epics, tragedies, as well as comedies and dithyrambs,<…>, - all this as a whole is nothing more than imitation (mimesis); They differ from each other in three ways: either by different means of imitation, or by different objects, or by different, non-identical methods.” The ancient theory of imitation is based on the fundamental property of art - artistic generalization, it does not imply naturalistic copying of nature, a specific person, a specific fate. By imitating life, the artist learns about it. Creating an image has its own dialectic. On the one hand, the poet develops and creates an image. On the other hand, the artist creates the objectivity of the image in accordance with its “requirements”. This creative process is called process of artistic cognition.

The theory of imitation retained its authority until the 18th century, despite the identification of imitation with a naturalistic image and the excessive dependence of the author on the subject of the image. In the XIX-XX centuries. The strengths of the theory of imitation led to the creative success of realist writers.

A different concept of cognitive principles in art - symbolization theory. It is based on the idea of ​​artistic creativity as the recreation of certain universal essences. The center of this theory is doctrine of symbol.

Symbol (Greek symbolon - sign, identifying mark) - in science the same as a sign, in art - an allegorical multi-valued artistic image, taken in the aspect of its iconicity. Every symbol is an image, but not every image can be called a symbol. The content of a symbol is always significant and generalized. In a symbol, the image goes beyond its own limits, since the symbol has a certain meaning that is inseparably fused with the image, but is not identical to it. The meaning of a symbol is not given, but given; a symbol in its direct form does not speak about reality, but only hints at it. The “eternal” literary images of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Don Juan, Hamlet, Falstaff, etc. are symbolic.

The most important characteristics of a symbol: the dialectical relationship of identity and non-identity in a symbol between the signified and the signified, the multi-layered semantic structure of the symbol.

The symbol is close to allegory and emblem. In allegory and emblem, the figurative-ideological side is also different from the subject, but here the poet himself draws the necessary conclusion.

The concept of art as symbolization appears in ancient aesthetics. Having adopted Plato’s judgments about art as an imitation of nature, Plotinus argued that works of art “do not simply imitate the visible, but go back to the semantic essences of which nature itself consists.”

Goethe, for whom symbols meant a lot, connected them with the vital organic nature of the principles expressed through symbols. Reflections on symbol occupy a particularly large place in the aesthetic theory of German romanticism, in particular in F.W. Schelling and A. Schlegel. In German and Russian romanticism, the symbol expresses primarily a mystical otherworldliness.

Russian symbolists saw unity in the symbol - not only of form and content, but also of a certain higher, Divine project that lies at the basis of being, at the source of all things - this is the unity of Beauty, Good and Truth, discerned by the Symbol.

The concept of art as symbolization, to a greater extent than the theory of imitation, is focused on the general meaning of imagery, but it threatens to take artistic creativity away from the multicolored nature of life into the world of abstractions.

A distinctive feature of literature, along with its inherent imagery, is also the presence of artistic fiction. In works of different literary movements, movements and genres, fiction is present to a greater or lesser extent. Both forms of typification existing in art are associated with fiction - life-like and conventional.

Since ancient times, in art there has been a life-like method of generalization, which presupposes compliance with the physical, psychological, cause-and-effect and other laws known to us. Classic epics, the prose of Russian realists and the novels of French naturalists are distinguished by their similarity to life.

The second form of typification in art is conditional. There is primary and secondary convention. The discrepancy between reality and its image in literature and other forms of art is called primary convention. This includes artistic speech, organized according to special rules, as well as the reflection of life in the images of heroes, different from their prototypes, but based on life-likeness. Secondary convention ndash; allegorical way generalizations of phenomena based on the deformation of life reality and the denial of life-likeness. Artists of words resort to such forms of conditional generalization of life as fantasy, grotesque in order to better comprehend the deep essence of what is being typified (the grotesque novel by F. Rabelais “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, “Petersburg Tales” by N.V. Gogol, “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). Grotesque ndash; “an artistic transformation of life forms, leading to some kind of ugly incongruity, to a combination of incompatible things.”

There are also features of secondary convention in figurative and expressive techniques(tropes): allegory, hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy, personification, symbol, emblem, litotes, oxymoron, etc. All these paths are built on a general principle conditional relationship between direct and figurative meanings. All these conventional forms are characterized by a deformation of reality, and some of them are characterized by a deliberate deviation from external plausibility. Secondary conventional forms have other important features: the leading role of aesthetic and philosophical principles, the depiction of those phenomena that do not have a specific analogy in real life. Secondary conventions include the most ancient epic genres of verbal art: myths, folklore and literary fables, legends, fairy tales, parables, as well as genres of literature of the New Age - ballads, artistic pamphlets (“Gulliver’s Travels” by J. Swift), fairy tales, scientific and social philosophical fiction, including utopia and its variety - dystopia.

Secondary convention has long existed in literature, but at different stages of the history of world art of speech it played a different role.

Among the conventional forms in works of ancient literature, the following came to the fore: idealizing hyperbole, inherent in the depiction of heroes in the poems of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and satirical grotesque, with the help of which the images of the comedic heroes of Aristophanes were created.

Typically, techniques and images of secondary convention are intensively used in complex, transitional eras for literature. One of these eras falls on the end of the 18th - first third of the 19th centuries. when pre-romanticism and romanticism arose.

The Romantics creatively processed folk tales, legends, traditions, widely used symbols, metaphors and metonymies, which gave their works philosophical generality and increased emotionality. A fantastic movement arose in the romantic literary direction (E.T.A. Hoffman, Novalis, L. Tieck, V.F. Odoevsky and N.V. Gogol). The conventionality of the artistic world among romantic authors is an analogue of the complex reality of an era torn apart by contradictions (“Demon” by M.Yu. Lermontov).

Realist writers also use techniques and genres of secondary convention. In Saltykov-Shchedrin, the grotesque, along with a satirical function (images of mayors), also has a tragic function (image of Judushka Golovlev).

In the 20th century the grotesque is reborn. During this period, two forms of grotesque are distinguished - modernist and realistic. A. France, B. Brecht, T. Mann, P. Neruda, B. Shaw, Fr. Dürrenmatt often creates conditional situations and circumstances in his works and resorts to shifting temporal and spatial layers.

In the literature of modernism, a secondary convention takes on leading importance (“Poems about a Beautiful Lady” by A.A. Blok). In the prose of Russian symbolists (D.S. Merezhkovsky, F.K. Sologub, A. Bely) and a number of foreign writers (J. Updike, J. Joyce, T. Mann) a special type of myth novel appears. In the drama of the Silver Age, stylization and pantomime, the “comedy of masks” and the techniques of ancient theater were revived.

In the works of E.I. Zamyatin, A.P. Platonov, A.N. Tolstoy, M.A. Bulgakov, scientistic neo-mythologizing predominates, due to the atheistic picture of the world and associated with science.

Fiction in Russian literature of the Soviet period often served as an Aesopian language and contributed to the criticism of reality, which manifested itself in such ideologically and artistically capacious genres as dystopian novel, legend story, fairy tale story. The genre of dystopia, fantastic in nature, was finally formed in the 20th century. in the works of E.I. Zamyatin (novel “We”). Memorable works of the dystopian genre were also created by foreign writers - O. Huxley and D. Orwell.

At the same time, in the 20th century. Fairy-tale fiction also continued to exist (“The Lord of the Rings” by D.R. Tolkien, “The Little Prince” by A. de Saint-Exupéry, the dramaturgy of E.L. Schwartz, the work of M.M. Prishvin and Yu.K. Olesha).

Life-likeness and convention are equal and interacting methods of artistic generalization at different stages of the existence of verbal art.

1. Davydova T.T., Pronin V.A. Theory of literature. - M., 2003. P.5-17, chapter 1.

2. Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. - M., 2001. Stb.188-190.

3. Averintsev S.S. Symbol // Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. M., 2001. Stb.976-978.

4. Lotman Yu.M. Semiotics // Literary encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1987. P.373-374.

5. Rodnyanskaya I.B. Image // Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. Stb.669-674.

For students should get acquainted with the concepts of image and sign, the main provisions of the Aristotelian theory of imitation of art of reality and Plato’s theory of art as symbolization; know what artistic generalization is in literature and what types it is divided into. Need to have an idea about life-likeness and secondary convention and its forms.

Students must have clear ideas:

• about imagery, sign, symbol, paths, genres of secondary convention.

The student must to get skills

• the use of scientific, critical and reference literature, analysis of life-likeness and secondary conventions (fantasy, grotesque, hyperbole, etc.) in literary and artistic works.

1. Give examples of artistic image in the broad and narrow meanings of the term.

2. Present the classification of signs in the form of a diagram.

3. Give examples of literary symbols.

4. Which of the two theories of art as imitation does O. Mandelstam criticize in the article “The Morning of Acmeism”? Give reasons for your point of view.

5. What types of artistic conventions are divided into?

6. What literary genres are characterized by secondary convention?