Idealno-realna lepota u teurgijskom stvaralaštvu - teme i pojmovi likovne estetike srebrnog veka Ruske kulture

Abstract

The paper explores the Christian-intoned philosophical aesthetics of the figurative arts during the silver age of Russian culture. In this period, which covers the second half of the nineteenth and the first two decades of the twentieth century, Russia's speculative thought, based on the Orthodox patristic and philosophical idealism, promoted the original religious philosophy, which highly valorized the importance of comprehensive gnoseology and ontology of "total-unity", true knowledge sought only through the absolute - an ideal which in itself synthesizes a real beauty, truth and goodness. That is why the Christian fine arts and aesthetics of this period in Russia were built only as an organic segment of a holistically interpreted philosophy of life, recapitulated by its essential principle - Christ. In order to systematize various aspirations, ideas and concepts of this artistic aesthetics, the paper singles out and explains three major themes that are intertwined. These are: the beauty (integral with goodness and truth), Christlike according to Dostoevsky, ideal-real according to Soloviev; theurgical creation, viewed both as artistic (free and transformative) and as an ascetic likeness to God; and the icon, which - through a philosophical-theological interpretation of an apophatic-kataphatic antinomy, reverse perspective and symbolism - integrates the issue of beauty and creativity into a common discourse, entering the Orthodox apologetic front before western art and culture, from the renaissance to the modern digital age.