EASTERN BORDERS OF ART NOUVEAU: FROM JAPAN TO TURKESTAN

Abstract

The article is devoted to the complex analysis of the peculiarities of the perception of the «East» by artists of the second half of the 19th — early 20th century in the process of formation of new aesthetic and visual qualities of the creative paradigm of Art Nouveau. For this purpose, we have identified the Oriental historical and cultural regions that were as distinctive as possible in their influence on the interpretive method of the artists of the emerging modernist movements. Initially prepared by external socio-­political circumstances, the interest in certain eastern areas had internal reasons determined by artistic tasks. At the international level, the genesis of poetic aspects in the interpretation of real motifs, which began in Romanticism, organically coincided with the discovery by Western civilization of the artistic achievements of Japan, the fascination with which led to a qualitatively new understanding of the possibilities of visual language in the art of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, in the context of the history of domestic art, the masters of Russian Art Nouveau, at different stages of its development, had not only pan-­European, but also their spiritual and geographical eastern reference points, such as Byzantium, the Caucasus and Turkestan. It is on the example of the synthesis of figurative influences of the above-­mentioned cultures in this study revealed the specificity of Orientalism in the art of the Art Nouveau era as a complex multifaceted phenomenon, which was based on the poetic imperative of creativity.