Position Of Artist Research Articles

‘Archetypal Load of Tension’: Idiosyncratic Idioms of Surrealism Created by Aleksander Krzywobłocki and Margit Reich-Sielska in the 1930s in Lviv

This article examines the artistic contributions of two members of the ‘artes’ group, active in Lviv (Lwów during the interwar period) from 1929 to 1935: Aleksander Krzywobłocki (1901–1979) and Margit Reich-Sielska (1900–1980). Situated within the ‘artes’ milieu, which emerged as the most cohesive community among phenomena with a surrealist profile in the history of Polish art, their creative endeavors have faded from the collective memory of subsequent generations of art historians and critics, both within and beyond Poland. With the aim of elucidating the distinctive characteristics of Krzywobłocki and Sielska’s artistic attitudes, deeply rooted in the cultural landscape of interwar Galicia, this study explores their work as both manifestations of the avant-garde milieu in Lviv and contributions to the transnational surrealist movement. This examination takes a relational approach, considering their artistic output within a framework of trans-local and trans-regional connections. Drawing upon the works of various surrealists active in different European centers, I juxtapose the artistic approaches of Krzywobłocki and Sielska with other practitioners of the movement to highlight both convergences and differences in their expressions. By situating their artistic profiles within the broader modalities of surrealism as a polycentric movement and within the unique cultural context of Lviv—a city marked by its multiethnic, multicultural, and multiconfessional character—I argue that their imaginings should be classified as idiosyncratic idioms of surrealism. This hybrid expression, which developed on the peripheries of European artistic hubs, is primarily distinguished by an ‘archetypal load of tension’—a continual quest for archetypal content that has been lost in the modern world.

Slikar Ivan Benković i hrvatska iseljenička zajednica u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama od 1912. do 1918. godine

In the period from the 1880s to the end of World War I, several Croatian artists resided in the USA. In the 1880s, these included the Dubrovnik painters Vlaho Bukovac and Niko Zec, and in the early twentieth century, painters Bela Csikos Sesia, Robert Auer, and Oton Iveković, and sculptors Rudolf Valdec and Dujam Penić, as well as the lesser-known sculptors Pavao Kelečić Kufrin and Ivan Bulimbašić. With the exception of Oton Iveković, who painted the parish church of St John the Baptist in Kansas City in 1910, they did not significantly contribute to the cultural space of the Croatian diaspora during this period. The first Croatian artist who actively engaged with the diaspora was the painter and graphic artist Ivan Benković (Rečica, 1886 - Chicago, 1918), a member of the first generation of students at the newly founded future Academy, at that time the Temporary Higher School for Arts and Crafts in Zagreb. After receiving his diploma in 1911, he briefly stayed in Vienna and Paris before emigrating to New York in the spring of 1912. He then lived in Chicago from 1915 until his death. Most of his artworks and documentation, preserved in private archives, remained largely unknown to researchers until recently, and his life and work during his stay in the USA were almost completely unknown. From 1913, Benković closely cooperated with the Croatian Union in New York, the first major political organization of Croats in the USA. Upon moving to Chicago in 1915, he collaborated with the Croatian National Community, the Croatian Community of Illinois, and the Croatian Falcon in the west. During World War I, he supported the Yugoslav movement through his artistic work, cooperating with the Yugoslav Union and the Yugoslav Committee in London. Benković’s work on the design of Croatian-American printed matter included a variety of magazine covers, memorials, and diplomas, as well as the logotype of the most widespread Croatian-American daily newspaper, Hrvatski svijet, which was renamed Jugoslovenski svijet in 1917. He translated the contemporary aspirations towards national expression, incorporating reworked folk motifs from his homeland into the American environment. Through his artistic contributions to shaping the visual identity of Croatian-American printed matter and artworks with national themes combined with contemporary artistic solutions, he actively participated in constructing the cultural identity of emigrants during the continuous process of their positioning within “other” cultures. The role of culture and art is crucial in building a collective identity, especially during times of significant political upheaval, such as the years before and during World War I. Benković found himself at the right time in the position of a visual artist in America, acting as a “fighter for shaping national identity.” Until 1918, alongside Meštrović, who was renowned in America at that time due to the publication of his art in the Croatian-American press, Benković was the only prominent Croatian artist who successfully connected with the political efforts of the Croatian diaspora. Nevertheless, his oeuvre remained largely anonymous, limited to the Croatian community, which nearly forgot him after the disappointment with the developments in the Yugoslav situation after 1918.

“Some Sort of Machine without a Body”

AbstractFrom the mid-1950s, Basel harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer (1909–1973) promoted the harpsichord as a modern instrument, commissioning numerous composers to contribute to a new repertoire. To this end, she turned to György Ligeti, who completed Continuum for her in 1968. The composer had already used the harpsichord in ensembles several times, but now he had to think about it in a soloistic function for the first time, starting from a specific performer with her specific instrument. In this paper, I focus on this relationship between composer, performer-commissioner, and instrument, drawing primarily on the correspondence between Ligeti and Vischer preserved at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. These unpublished letters document their collaboration and how both negotiated their artistic positions and aesthetic concepts of the harpsichord as “some sort of machine.” An in-depth analysis of Ligeti and Vischer's exchange about the instrument's peculiarities and performance issues allows us to better understand their self-conception as artists and their ideas of “modernity.” Furthermore, this case study sheds light on a specific period in the history of an instrument that through the efforts of performers like Vischer was transformed from an artifact of the past to an emblem of the present.

Outsmarting the algorithm or leaving the grid through surveillance artivism

Privacy feels like a distant memory since it is virtually non-existent nowadays. Cameras are all around, though we are not only visually monitored from any possible angle, but also with every movement and every trackable parameter. Faced with the feeling of being transparent and constantly recorded by various systems, the idea of becoming invisible is explored: finding inspiration from the ways that artists have tackled the issue of surveillance in their work – being exposed and evading it. Discussing artistic approaches as a means of raising awareness and exploring strategies to outsmart the algorithms can offer us alternative ways of existing outside the world of electricity and its manifold constraints. As the issue has been around for some time, the introduced artistic positions span the past 50 years and allude to the fast-evolving technologies in artistic research projects but also performances and artworks, which appear aesthetically pleasing at first glimpse but are insinuating a much more severe topic. Artworks inside the museum or gallery space might be much more refined, although intervention in the public space may reach a wider and more diverse audience. Raising the question of the evaluation, interpretation and exploitation of the material, the current discourse around artificial intelligence comes to mind and specifically the implications of machine learning and image generation in regard to the authenticity of the image in general, precipitating a broader conversation on surveillance and its antidotes.

The Measurement and Coherence of Taste: Analysing the Music, Art, and Literary Tastes of French Academics

By analyzing the responses given by a population of French academics to three open questions about their favourite musicians, writers, and painters, this article examines the frequent use in the sociology of cultural practices of genre classifications as indicators of taste. Do the theories of eclecticism and dissonance stand up to analysis when we move away from genre classifications that are widely assigned between legitimate, average, and popular in favour of questions that relate to a preference for certain artists? How should we differentiate between artists within the space of taste and thus determine the existence or not of relative unity? Using network analysis, the article shows that each sphere of taste has its own organization according to differing supply structures and their respective fields of production. Meanwhile, it is possible for tastes in music, literature, and art to intersect, and to obtain categories of taste that are relatively coherent from the point of view of the position of the different artists in the space of the tastes expressed. These categories of taste are also related to the social characteristics of respondents. Finally, we observe that “cultural transgressions”—citing preferences for artists from spheres that are distant from one another in terms of legitimacy—occur in music. These transgressions consist in the expression of a taste for musicians who have little legitimacy in combination with very legitimate tastes in literature and art.

КОНСТАНТИН НИКОЛАЕВИЧ ИГУМНОВ: ПРОРАСТАНИЕ ТРАДИЦИЙ

The article describes the multifaceted activities of Konstantin Nikolayevich Igumnov. It reviews the main sources, which reflect the personality traits of the outstanding Russian musician, as well as the principles of his performing and teaching work. The composer’s holistic approach to working on the embodiment of a musical composition is analyzed. Integrity is considered as an aesthetic category, which is a criterion for the artistic value of a work and its interpretation. A comparative analysis of the 1947 audio recording of Tchaikovsky’s cycle “The Seasons” performed by Igumnov with the interpretation of this opus by his “musical grandson” M. V. Pletnev is presented based on the video recording from the 1983 concert in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. The article focuses on tempo-rhythmic, agogic, intonation-dynamic, dramatic features, and reveals the commonality of the meaningful approach. At the same time, it is noted that the two outstanding performing versions of the composition differ markedly. The value parameters inherent in the Russian performing arts of the first half of the XXth century — integrity, naturalness and psychological truthfulness — are later supplemented by such necessary criteria as conceptuality, originality of approach to the stylistic features of music and skillful “weaving sound matter”, which is revealed when comparing the interpretations of the cycle. The stylistic diversity, polymorphism, and fundamental synthetism of the musical and performing art of the late XXth century determine the different artistic attitudes of performers.

Психолого-педагогічні аспекти розвитку малюнків старших дошкільників засобами музики

The article is devoted to highlighting the psychological and pedagogical aspects of the problem of the development of drawings of 5–6-year-old children by means of music. The presented content is the result of experimental pedagogical research, which proves the hypothesis that the use of music in the pedagogical process contributes to the child’s interest in drawing, the development of his/her visual thinking and artistic imagination, the emergence of the creative idea of the drawing and the enrichment of its content, affects the expressiveness and general aesthetics of the drawing. The psychological aspect of the development of drawings consists of creating conditions and helping the educator to develop the child’s artistic attitude to the perception of a musical piece, interest, and readiness for image creation, creating an imaginary image, and the desire to visualize it by means of painting. The pedagogical aspect consists of the development and substantiation of pedagogical conditions for the development of a drawing by means of music. These are defined as follows: training of future educators and self-education of educators in the field of musical art, competence in the field of image formation of older preschoolers; adequate selection of musical works; selection and justification of forms of pedagogical work, methods of interaction, visual tasks, etc. The main pedagogical condition is the educator’s willingness to help the child develop the ability to transfer imaginary images inspired by musical accompaniment into a picture. Music, adequately involved in the pedagogical process, contributes to the development of the child’s emotional sphere, awakens creative imagination, and creates space for the development of his/ her visual thinking. The child’s experience of perceiving music in images, combined with the experience of artistic and aesthetic self-expression and creative invention in the search for image methods and expressive means of painting, has a positive effect on the content and expressiveness of his/her drawings. The drawing develops from a scheme to an original artistic image.

The King’s Sculptor During the 16th and 17th Centuries: Review and New Contributions to the Understanding of an Artistic Position

Este trabajo pretende profundizar en las particularidades que rodearon a los artistas que alcanzaron el puesto de Escultor de la Real Cámara o del rey entre 1552 y 1701. El punto de partida lo supondrán los trabajos que el profesor Martín González publicó en los años 90 aunque, si bien sus intereses se ocuparon fundamentalmente de las obras promocionadas por la Corona en este periodo, las páginas de este artículo se centrarán en los condicionantes que este título comportó para la forma de vida y el desarrollo profesional de los artistas que lo ostentaron. Este cambio de perspectiva, conllevará el descubrimiento de nuevos aspectos sobre el prestigio y los riesgos que suponía para estos autores trabajar para la Corte.

BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES AND THE FUTURE OF ART

In this paper, we follow the position of art, artists and works of art with regard to the conditions in which the work of art is created, in an environment ruled by capitalist relations and the high-tech environment that accompanies them. The transition from analog to digital formats has opened new perspectives for artistic creation and distribution of works of art, but also problems related to copyright protection and fair monetization of works of art. The advent of blockchain technology, especially the Ethereum blockchain platform with open source technology and smart contracts, has enabled more efficient communication, distribution and monetization of artwork. The focus of this paper is especially narrowed on the emergence of NFT (Non Fungible Tokens) that can be carriers of the value of a work of art. They enable the uniqueness of the work to be maintained through controlled scarcity. We will present the ERC-721 standard, which enables the creation of NFT, as well as the first five leading platforms for placing NFT tokens on the blockchain through selected examples.

Darius Milhaud’s vocal cycle «Machines agricoles»: outrage or confession?

Relevance of the study. Darius Milhaud's vocal cycle Machines Agricoles (op. 56) was written in 1919. The significant date of creation of the cycle in the year of the end of the First World War forever tied it to a dramatic cultural and historical context, which did not remain aloof from Milhaud's artistic tasks, but was reflected by numerous semantic overtones in the concept of the work, the principles of organization and the original characteristics of the musical language. However, the vocal cycle Machines Agricoles appears in most musicological works as an example of the artist's joke, vocal curiosity, "Dadaist provocation" and the manifestation of youthful enthusiasm. It is a fairly established opinion that the cycle does not deserve any special attention, because it contains nothing but an outrageous declaration of everyday life. Therefore, turning to the cycle Machines Agricoles in the broad context of the intersection of many cultural layers of that time, identifying the semantic dimensions of their actualization in the original work of art and determining the main vectors of its understanding is an urgent question of modern musicology..
 The main objective of the study is to identify the specifics of the design and organization of the vocal cycle Machines Agricoles by Darius Milhaud as an expression of the artist's unique spiritual world.
 The scientific novelty is determined by the fact that the composition of the cycle is considered as a unique semantic continuum, which was conditioned by the emotional and intellectual flows of the spiritual life of Darius Milhaud. For the first time, the text of the work is examined in a broad contextual field, in which Machines Agricoles appear as a confessional phenomenon.
 The methodology of the article is based on historical, comparative, genre-stylistic and phenomenological methods of analysis.
 Results / findings and conclusions. Darius Milhaud's vocal cycle Machines Agricoles appears as a unique phenomenon of his spiritual life. Іn the cycle are reflected the mental and psychological characteristics of the artist's personality, which determined his unique role in the cultural context of France between the two world wars, as well as the difficult fate of his works written in the second half of the 20th century.
 Machines Agricoles are organically included in the context of French music and appear as the discovery of mental models and worldview guidelines that determine the specificity of national culture. Pastorale as a special spiritual dimension of human existence in the post-apocalyptic environment of post-war Europe; a sense of the subtle semantic layers of the artist's self-realization in the context of French musical traditions inextricably linked to the concept of mastery, clarity, "doneness"; the desire to create a complete sound world from equal layers of meaning, formed by expressive timbre means (the voice and each instrument has its own line) - all this testifies to the depth of the concept of the cycle and its unique role in the formation of Milhaud's creative credo.
 The paradoxical non-acceptance of these aspects of the composer's work in the majority of historical sources caused a misunderstanding of the originality of Milhaud's artistic position in the works of later years, prevented us from feeling the boundless sincerity, emotional vulnerability and trusting intonation of the author's address to the listener.
 Darius Milhaud's vocal cycle Machines Agricoles appears as an intimate confession of the author, which transforms a traumatic life experience into a new spiritual space, opens up opportunities to enter the world of perfect balance, and is evidence of the sound of a vulnerable soul that, despite everything, retains its human essence and ability to create.

REPRESENTATION OF DIALECTISMS IN THE PROSE OF YURIY VYNNYCHUK: PHONETIC ELEMENTS

The article is devoted to the study of the Naddniester dialect units, in particular, to the study of their individual authorial specificity in the fiction. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the specifics of the Naddnistrian dialect units and their local phonetic features in the prose works of Yu. Vynnychuk. Objectives of the study: to highlight the specifics of the writer’s work with dialectal units; to characterize the phonetic features of the Naddnistrian dialect and its nomination; to form a corpus of Naddnistrian dialectal units used by the writer at the phonetic level; to identify and characterize the specifics of the representation of dialectal elements in the prose works of Yu. Vynnychuk at the phonetic level of the language structure. The object of the study is the language of Yuriy Vynnychuk’s prose works, which contain dialect elements. The subject of the study is the Naddnistrian lexical dialects (in particular, their phonetic features) in the works of Y. Vynnychuk. The source material is based on Yuriy Vynnychuk’s novels “Tango of Death”, “Malva Landa” and the collection of short stories “Windows of Frozen Time”. The study of the factual material was conducted in the aspect of synchrony on the basis of the general scientific method of observation and description of linguistic phenomena. The methods of external and internal interpretation are applied. The specificity of the Naddnestrian linguistic elements is established by means of the comparative method, the method of contextual analysis allowed to fix the dialectal features at all language levels and to establish the meaning of a certain lexeme in a certain context. The corpus of the Naddnestrian dialectal units used by the writer is formed and the phonetic units of the Naddnestrian dialect are distinguished (in the suffix -sk- the sound [s′] turns into [s]; cases of apocopy; the presence of alegroforms; alternation of [o] with [i] and [o] with zero sound; transition in unstressed position of [e] to [i]; assimilation by softness of front dental hard consonants; regressive adjacent dissimilation by the method of formation: [чт] > [шт]; transition of [а] to [е] after soft and hissing consonants; use of prothetic [г], [в] at the beginning of the word before vowels; transition of unstressed [о] to [у]; absence of insertive [l] after labial; depalatalization of [р]; use of mn instead of mj). It is proved that the phonetic linguistic elements used are sufficiently representative of the Naddniester dialect. The selected phonetic dialects are a stylistic category; their use is subject to artistic attitudes, i.e., the reproduction of the character’s natural speech, an indication of his belonging to a certain ethnographic group. Prospects for further study of the stated problem are seen in a thorough study of dialect units in contemporary fiction, in particular the Naddniester dialect, since it is one of the least studied in this aspect.

Performatively Archiving the Early Web: One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age

The abrupt closing of the web hosting service GeoCities – one of the most popular websites inhabited by users in the 90s – is a well-known example of the importance of web archiving for saving digital cultural heritage. GeoCities’ shutdown is a warning for today’s social media user-generated content that might suffer the same fate. Various web archiving organisations archived and nowadays present GeoCities pages. Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied engage with GeoCities’ legacy in their project One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age (2010–ongoing). This paper expands on the archival strategies of the artists and places their practice in the context of web archiving organisations – specifically Archive Team, the Internet Archive, and Restorativland – to understand how an artistic position may open up other ways of engaging with digital cultural heritage. This paper considers the archival practices of the organisations, artists, and users as a network of care, enabling different forms of remembrance. Whereas the archiving organisations preserve and present GeoCities statically, Lialina and Espenschied take a performative archival approach, in which they re-perform the dataset with old and new users. Through circulation and narration, One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age builds on the memories of the artists and users and aims to give the GeoCities heritage back to users. The project invites users to interpret and make meaning of GeoCities and embraces the fluidity of digital cultur e, whilst embodying the future archival insecurity of commercial platforms.

The Orphic Gazelle: A Critical Iconology of the Zoomorphic Trope in Franz Marc and Rainer Maria Rilke

The article explores the curious landing of the gazelle in Franz Marc’s pictorial text (1913) and Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem (1907). An analysis of the iconographic and pictorial apparatus sets the foundations for a comparison to the poetic restitution of the same zoomorphic trope. Concepts from Visual Studies and recent iconological-anthropological schools of thought support a hypothesis of migration across time and medium of the gazelle’s symbolism and iconicity. Further, the critical iconology method reveals the possibility of autonomous expression for the zoomorphic trope in the idiosyncrasy produced by her torsion and gaze direction. Consequently, the gazelle offers a new path for decoding a precise historical and artistic attitude beyond expressionist pantheism. The implications of her alienating Orphic gaze are clarified when considered in contextual works and concern the visual projection towards a necessary turning point regarding Rilke’s and Marc’s ontological-aesthetic position. Beyond traditional symbolism, the gazelle depicts a transition toward formal experimentalism in the face of the impending First World War. It outlines the capacity of animal physicality to describe its genesis. Moreover, it illustrates the modern attitudes held towards culturally constructed change by distancing herself from hermeneutic overwriting while moving between precise ontological-aesthetic coordinates.

THE EXCEPTIONAL PHENOMENON ON THE CONCERT STAGE: THE ANALYSIS OF THE PERFORMING STYLE (ON THE OCCASION OF THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF KONSTANTIN IGUMNOV)

The work is based on refl ections on the performing style of the outstanding Russian pianist K. N. Igumnov. The context of the work includes statements about Igumnov by D. A. Rabinovich, G. M. Kogan, Ya. I. Milshtein and modern researchers. The emphasis is on the pianist’s interpretation of the works of P. I. Tchaikovsky. The role of Igumnov as the founder of a large pianistic school is emphasised. The author of the paper also considers the transformation of Igumnov’s artistic attitudes in the creative activity of his students and in the performing style of modern pianists.

Leadership Question and the Writer’s Style: A Literary Stylistic Analysis of Adaobi Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to You By Chance

This paper interrogates some artistic positions taken by Adaobi Nwaubani in projecting leadership issues in I Do Not Come to You by Chance. The paper notes that in spite of the enormity of critical attention on leadership in African critical space, bulk of the critical materials center around the ineptitude of African leaders and its consequent underdevelopment of African societies and the suffering of the mass. Literary critics hardly pay attention to those artistic positions through which authors project leadership issues in their texts. It is against this backdrop that this paper is dedicated for interrogation of some aspects of literary techniques, through which Nwaubani addresses leadership issues in her text. The work reveals how the author uses characterization and setting to expose the corrupt nature of most political leaders in Nigeria, their gluttony, and the deteriorating nature of some public institution. It has also revealed the complicit roles played by former colonial masters, and world institutions in entrenching criminality in Africa, especially in the Nigerian leadership. The paper concludes that both contents and form are very critical in understanding a literary work and so, an analysis of one at the expense of the other may scuttle the totality of the import of the issues authors raise in their texts.

Role models versus modes of rule: the foundation of GfZK, a public-private museum in Leipzig

ABSTRACT The history of founding GfZK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig reflects both immediate post-1989 euphoria and the conflicting interests and social fears of that time. In the summer of 1989, a group of West German art enthusiasts (patrons, collectors, and entrepreneurs) travelled to Leipzig to meet the East German art historian Klaus Werner. The latter put forth the idea of establishing a new museum in his town, which the West German colleagues accepted and a plan was set in motion. Still, without its own building, the GfZK organized remarkable exhibitions and projects in public spaces throughout the 1990s. At the same time, concerns evoked that the “imported” novel artistic positions would devalue local art production and that, through their money, the private patrons were gaining disproportionate influence to shape public taste and the concept of art. From today’s perspective, both assumptions can be debunked. Through its financing in a public–private partnership, GfZK has embodied a unique museum model in the eastern German states, and the model has proved to be exceptionally productive even beyond the founding years.

«Преодолевшая символизм»: ирония в лирике А. Ахматовой первой половины 1910-х гг.

The article proposes ways to solve the problem of the specifics of acmeistic irony based on the material of Anna Akhmatova's early lyrics. In the early 1910s acmeists entered into an open dialogue with symbolists, offering a new artistic attitude and forms of its implementation in a poetic word. The acmeists opposed the "hopeless" irony of their predecessors, who realized the intractable conflict between the individual and the "collective". For Akhmatova, a dialogue with I. F. Annensky was important, in whose poetry the subject plan creates a symbolic paradigm and is a symbol of the tragic clutch of I and the Other. The irony in Akhmatova's work was initially due to such a basic feature of the poet's artistic thinking as a constant feeling of the possibility and even the need for a different view, a different point of view. The nature of this poetic phenomenon is thus dialogic and intersubject. Self-irony as an internal and external device of sharpening allows the poet to speak in a new way about a woman, her creative potential and the drama of her personal fate. Forms of irony are revealed through analysis of male and female masks of lyrical self, through images and motifs, complex subject organization of poems. The intersubject and dialogic nature of the heroine's experience opens the reader up the possibility of perceiving a lyrical event in several semantic perspectives (dramatic/tragic and ironic). Hidden irony is revealed by a holistic analysis of individual works.

The Application of Post-Humanism in Digital Media Visual Design——Cyberpunk 2077 as an Example

This paper answers the meaning of “post-humanism” and explains the characteristics of Cybopunk digital media style under the influence of post-humanism. Based on this, we analyze the application of this art style in games by taking Cybopunk 2077 as an example. Finally, I will explain the value of posthumanism to modern media technology and digital culture. To explain the value of post-humanism in modern media technology and digital culture is to better convey the art philosophy of “post-humanism” and the artistic attitude behind it to the public, promote the development of media technology, and further promote and expand the diversity of digital culture.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТЕЙ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОГО ХАРАКТЕРА В ИСПОЛНИТЕЛЬСКОМ ИСКУССТВЕ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННЫХ СКРИПАЧЕЙ

The article deals with the influence of some features of the Russian national character on musical thinking and performing practice. The work aims to outline the problematic aspects of the topic and consider them on the example of the phenomena of Russian violin art of the XIXth – XXIst centuries. Among the main aspects of the topic are the following: forms of reflection of the national character in creativity and performing art; factors that influenced the formation of national traditions of Russian violin art; uniqueness and degree of expression of a certain quality of national character in Russian music-performing art. The paper undertakes a brief review of the authors who dealt with the problems of musical creativity and performance in relation to the regularities of national psychology (B. V. Asafiev, N. G. Shakhnazarova, M. A. Smirnov, etc.). Special attention is paid to the transformation of performing qualities in connection with changes in the “national psychological complex” (M. A. Smirnov) influenced by various sociohistorical and artistic attitudes. The material of the study is mainly the reviewers’ conclusions concerning the peculiarities of the style of national violinists, whose work belongs to different historical periods: to the period of formation of the traditions of national violin art at the turn of the XVIIIth – XIXth centuries, to the Soviet era and to the current state of violin art from the late XXth – early XXIst century and up to our time. The outcome of the analysis of various phenomena of Russian violin art of the XIXth – XXIst centuries is the conclusion that the national uniqueness of performance, as a result of the reflection of certain features of national perception of the world and emotional reactions, is differently manifested in different style contexts. But up to our time, the performing art of Russian violinists retains the qualities (for example, intonation with semantic and psychological content of sound, singsong in sound production), ensuring the recognisability of national musical and stylistic traits, in one way or another associated with the specifics of the national character.

THE PICTURE OF THE WORLD IN APHORISTICS BY STANISŁAW J. LETZ

Based on the analysis of the axiology of dominants and worldview of Stanislaw Jerzy Letz, the article examines the features of the artist's world picture, which made a significant contribution to the world aphoristics of the twentieth century. The main factors that determined his ideological and artistic position are identified, and the philosophical nature of his work is emphasized. It is found out that the priorities for the writer are anthropocentric and ontological problems. In the center of the aphoristics by S. J. Letz an individual appears in their existential and axiological dimensions. Despite the dominant satirical pathos of the writer's work, the idea is proved that the positive programme of the thinker correlates with the moral foundations of life, with trust in a person. Humor and satire in the artistic system of Stanislaw Jerzy Letz become means of understanding the world and a kind of form of resistance against unacceptable reality. The role of cultural and historical memory, the connection of generations in overcoming universal evil is understood. There are selected concepts that identify the artist's world picture such as freedom, an individual, belief, time, law, history, a reason, power, an idea, and a word. The principles of the artistic structure of aphorisms are analyzed. Considerable attention is paid to the study of the means which allow one to get into the deep meaning of the utterances and expand their semantic capacity: paradoxical, metaphorical, parodic transformation, language play, associativity, oxymoronicity, and semantic shifts. The development of the concepts and vectors of intertextual connections, the features of their verbalization in the artist's world picture are considered on the specific examples. The complex system of internal overlaps between aphorisms is studied. They reflect various aspects of thought and illustrate its multidimensional nature, complexity of human existence, and at the same time encourage the reader to a dialogue and intensify their intellectual activity. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the genre specifics of Letz's aphoristic heritage, which, combining lyrical and satirical components, is distinguished by a philosophical view of the world. As a result of the study, it is claimed that the key to the author's picture of the world by Stanislaw Jerzy Letz is freedom as a philosophical and social category, freedom as a prerequisite for creativity.