Orthodox Artistic Culture as a Traditional Means of Sacralization of Basic Social Ideals

Abstract

This paper studies the phenomenon of a canonical orthodox icon-painting as a historically unaltered sacral space, which has operational characteristics of a sacralization system while semioticfigurative structure of this space contains information on values of orthodox religion. А role icon-painting has played in the life of the Russian nation (in retrospective) and a part icon-painting plays in present-day social and cultural space were both studied. And finally, problems of modern icon-painting and a part icon-painting plays in formation of a positive national and religious identity, peculiarities of one’s perception of icon-painted characters were all studied in this paper. The topic covered is currently important due to sacralization of mass culture values and global desacralization (secularization) of values which are important to religious communities such as justice, generosity, conciliarism, patriotism, love, loyalty and others. Main method used is literature review of recent (up to date) studies on this topic. A critical analysis of Russian and foreign literature sources published during the last 10-15 years was carried out, with focus on system of basic cultural ideals’ sacralization. A brief review of major “sacral theories” is presented, as well as a brief review and a critical analysis of recent papers on the topic. It is inferred that the sacral art is able to resist desacralization of basic generally valid values and promote re-sacralizing of objects, which have historically lost their sacral meaning. This fact, in its turn, contributes to the establishment of generally valid values of the nation and formation of a positive national and religious identity.