The term art is ambiguous most often it. Artist is an ambiguous term. Art. The history of its development in Russia

September 21, 2017

An artist is a rather ambiguous term, which is usually understood as a representative of any spectacular art: theater, music, ballet, cinema, stage or circus. In the feminine form, the word "artist" is used.

The meaning of the word "artist"

An artist is (fr. artiste, medieval - lat. artista - a craftsman, artist, master from lat. ars - art) a person who conducts his activities in the field of art. An artist is called such a person who shows his talented skill in front of the audience. The meaning of the word is very voluminous in its essence. It combines several directions in its concept.

So, an artist can be an opera singer, a circus worker, a dramatic actor, a stage performer or a performer of roles in films. Artists are also divided into musical, choreographic, stage, as well as dancers. A figurative, ironic interpretation of this word is also in demand.

An artist is a person who has a high skill in some creative field. From the word "artist" the adjective "artistic" is formed, which characterizes a person as a person with creative skills or gifted in the artistic field.

Also, an artist can be called an artist in the narrow sense: a painter, sculptor, architect, engraver. The word "artist" was not known in ancient times. The Greeks and Romans under this word understood two expressions. So, an artist could be both an artist-artist and a craftsman.

In the modern world, it is difficult to draw a specific line that could determine where artistic activity ends and handicraft work begins. Therefore, the word "artist" is a concept that sometimes refers to the masters of one industry or another, bringing into their work a little bit of taste and understanding of the elegant.

The origin of this concept

The ancestors of the artists, oddly enough, were shamans and sorcerers. Just the representatives of this kind of activity turned out to be the first people who sang songs and demonstrated various dance movements, reincarnating as the patrons of the clan - totem animals. However, it is worth noting that shamans and sorcerers did not make any special efforts to arouse sympathy among their contemporaries, since their main goal was to connect with the other world.

It turns out that, according to its inner content, the word "artist" can be applied to anyone who seeks in any way to give the impression of beauty, grace or harmony. At the same time, it does not matter whether the idea of ​​beauty being embodied is a personal creation and a manifestation of the talent of a particular person, or whether it is an example of skillful imitation.

Artist or actor

Both terms come from French. They are, of course, interconnected. However, to consider that they are synonyms is an erroneous assumption.

So, an actor is a person who has a profession that can be applied on a theater stage, in a film frame or an advertising video. Actors are performers of diverse roles.

Comparison of consonant words

The main distinguishing feature of the actor is his narrow specialization. A person is exclusively engaged in the performance of roles. He can play both a comedic role and a tragic one. The actor must have the ability to masterfully impersonate and perfectly fit into the image of a particular hero. Outwardly, such a transformation occurs with the help of a successful make-up and selection of costumes. Actors must have the right characteristics to be successful.

However, it is worth noting that a person who has reached heights in her creative activity is called an artist. This word is always included in the honorary state title.

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Actual

Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous

Art (lat. experimentum - experience, test) - figurative understanding of reality; the process or result of expressing the internal or external (in relation to the creator) world in an artistic image; creativity directed in such a way that it reflects the interests of not only the author himself, but also other people. Art (along with science) is one of the ways of cognition, both in the natural sciences and in the religious picture of the perception of the world. The concept of art is extremely broad - it can manifest itself as an extremely developed skill in a particular area. For a long time, art was considered a kind of cultural activity that satisfies a person's love for beauty. Along with the evolution of social aesthetic norms and assessments, any activity aimed at creating aesthetically expressive forms has gained the right to be called art. On the scale of the whole society, art is a special way of knowing and reflecting reality, one of the forms of artistic activity of social consciousness and part of the spiritual culture of both man and all mankind, a diverse result of the creative activity of all generations. In science, art is called both the actual creative artistic activity and its result - a work of art. In the most general sense, art is called craftsmanship (Slovak. Umenie), the product of which gives aesthetic pleasure. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as: "The use of skill or imagination to create aesthetic objects, settings or activities that can be shared with others." Thus, the criterion of art is the ability to evoke a response from other people. TSB defines art as one of the forms of social consciousness, the most important component of human culture. The definition and evaluation of art as a phenomenon is the subject of ongoing debate. During the Romantic era, the traditional understanding of art as craftsmanship of any kind gave way to a vision of it as "a feature of the human mind along with religion and science." In the XX century. In understanding the aesthetic, three main approaches have been outlined: realistic, according to which the aesthetic qualities of an object are immanent in it and do not depend on the observer, objectivist, which also considers the aesthetic properties of an object to be immanent, but to some extent dependent on the observer, and relativistic, according to which aesthetic the properties of an object depend only on what the observer sees in it, and different people may perceive different aesthetic qualities of the same object. From the latter point of view, an object can be characterized according to the intentions of its creator (or lack of any intentions), for whatever function it was intended. For example, a goblet that can be used as a container in everyday life may be considered a work of art if it was created only for ornamentation, and an image may turn out to be a handicraft if it is produced on an assembly line.

In its first and broadest sense, the term "art" (art) remains close to its Latin equivalent (ars), which can also be translated as "skill" or "craft", as well as to the Indo-European root "composing" or "make up". In this sense, everything that was created in the process of deliberately compiling a certain composition can be called art. There are some examples that illustrate the broad meaning of this term: "artificial", "art of war", "artillery", "artifact". Many other commonly used words have a similar etymology. Artist Ma Lin, an example of painting of the Song era, circa 1250 24.8 H 25.2 cm art antiquity knowledge

Until the 19th century, the fine arts referred to the ability of an artist or artist to express their talent, to awaken aesthetic feelings in the audience and to engage in the contemplation of "fine" things.

The term art can be used in different senses: the process of using talent, the work of a gifted master, the consumption of works of art by an audience, and the study of art (art history). "Fine Arts" is a set of disciplines (arts) that produce works of art (objects) created by gifted masters (art as activity) and evoke a response, mood, convey symbolism and other information to the public (art as consumption). A work of art is the intentional and talented interpretation of an unlimited number of concepts and ideas in order to communicate them to others. They may be created specifically for a specified purpose, or they may be represented by images and objects. Art stimulates thoughts, feelings, representations and ideas through sensations. It expresses ideas, takes many different forms, and serves many different purposes. Art is a skill that can be admired. Art that evokes positive emotions and mental satisfaction with its harmony can also evoke a creative response from the perceiver, inspiration, incentive and desire to create in a positive way. This is how the artist Valery Rybakov, a member of the Professional Union of Artists, spoke about art: “Art can destroy and heal the human soul, corrupt and educate. And only bright art can save humanity: it heals spiritual wounds, gives hope for the future, brings love and happiness to the world ".

The concept of art

Word " art" both in Russian and in many other languages ​​it is used in two senses:

• in narrow sense it is a specific form of practical-spiritual development of the world;
• in wide- the highest level of skill, skills, regardless of the way in which they are manifested (the art of a stove-maker, doctor, baker, etc.).

- a special subsystem of the spiritual sphere of society, which is a creative reproduction of reality in artistic images.

Initially, art was called a high degree of skill in any business. This meaning of the word is still present in the language when we talk about the art of a doctor or teacher, martial art or oratory. Later, the concept of "art" began to be increasingly used to describe a special activity aimed at reflecting and transforming the world in accordance with aesthetic standards, i.e. according to the laws of beauty. At the same time, the original meaning of the word has been preserved, since the highest skill is required to create something beautiful.

Subject The arts are the world and man in the totality of their relations with each other.

Form of Existence art - a work of art (poem, painting, play, film, etc.).

Art also uses special means for reproduction of reality: for literature it is a word, for music it is sound, for fine art it is color, for sculpture it is volume.

Target art is dual: for the creator it is artistic self-expression, for the viewer it is the enjoyment of beauty. In general, beauty is as closely connected with art as truth with science and goodness with morality.

Art is an important component of the spiritual culture of mankind, a form of knowledge and reflection of the reality surrounding a person. In terms of the potential for understanding and transforming reality, art is not inferior to science. However, the ways of understanding the world by science and art are different: if science uses strict and unambiguous concepts for this, then art -.

Art as an independent and as a branch of spiritual production grew out of the production of the material, was originally woven into it as an aesthetic, but purely utilitarian moment. an artist by nature, and he strives to bring beauty everywhere in one way or another. The aesthetic activity of a person is constantly manifested in everyday life, social life, and not only in art. going on aesthetic exploration of the world a public person.

Functions of art

Art performs a number public functions.

Functions of art can be summarized as follows:

• aesthetic function allows you to reproduce reality according to the laws of beauty, forms an aesthetic taste;
• social function manifested in the fact that art has an ideological impact on society, thereby transforming social reality;
• compensatory functions allows you to restore peace of mind, solve psychological problems, “escape” for a while from the gray everyday life, compensate for the lack of beauty and harmony in everyday life;
• hedonic function reflects the ability of art to bring pleasure to a person;
• cognitive function allows you to know reality and analyze it with the help of artistic images;
• predictive function reflects the ability of art to make predictions and predict the future;
• educational function manifested in the ability of works of art to shape a person's personality.

cognitive function

First of all, this cognitive function. Works of art are valuable sources of information about complex social processes.

Of course, not everyone in the surrounding world is interested in art, and if they are, then to a different degree, and the very approach of art to the object of its knowledge, the angle of its vision is very specific compared to other forms of social consciousness. The main object of knowledge in art has always been and remains. That is why art in general and, in particular, fiction is called human science.

educational function

Educational function - the ability to have an important impact on the ideological and moral development of a person, its self-improvement or fall.

And yet, cognitive and educational functions are not specific to art: other forms of social consciousness also perform these functions.

aesthetic function

The specific function of art, which makes it art in the true sense of the word, is its aesthetic function.

Perceiving and comprehending a work of art, we not only assimilate its content (similar to the content of physics, biology, mathematics), but pass this content through the heart, emotions, give sensually concrete images created by the artist an aesthetic assessment as beautiful or ugly, sublime or base. , tragic or comic. Art forms in us the ability to give such aesthetic assessments, to distinguish the truly beautiful and sublime from all kinds of ersatz.

hedonic function

Cognitive, educational and aesthetic are merged in art together. Thanks to the aesthetic moment, we enjoy the content of a work of art, and it is in the process of enjoyment that we are enlightened and educated. In this regard, they talk about hedonistic(translated from Greek - pleasure) functions art.

For many centuries, in socio-philosophical and aesthetic literature, the dispute about the relationship between beauty in art and reality has continued. This reveals two main positions. According to one of them (in Russia it was supported by N. G. Chernyshevsky), the beautiful in life is always and in all respects higher than the beautiful in art. In this case, art appears as a copy of the typical characters and objects of reality itself and a surrogate for reality. Obviously, an alternative concept is preferable (G. V. F. Hegel, A. I. Herzen and others): the beautiful in art is higher than the beautiful in life, since the artist sees more accurately and deeper, feels stronger and brighter, and that is why he can inspire with his own the art of others. Otherwise (being a surrogate or even a duplicate), society would not need art.

works of art, being the substantive embodiment of human genius, become the most important spiritual and values ​​that are passed down from generation to generation, the property of the aesthetic society. Mastery of culture, aesthetic education is impossible without familiarization with art. The works of art of past centuries capture the spiritual world of thousands of generations, without mastering which a person cannot become a person in the true meaning of the word. Each person is a kind of bridge between the past and the future. He must master what the past generation left him, creatively comprehend his spiritual experience, understand his thoughts, feelings, joys and sufferings, ups and downs, and pass it all on to posterity. This is the only way history moves, and in this movement a huge army belongs to art, expressing the complexity and richness of the spiritual world of man.

Kinds of art

The primary form of art was a special syncretic(undivided) complex of creative activity. For primitive man, there was no separate music, or literature, or theater. Everything was merged together in a single ritual action. Later, separate types of art began to stand out from this syncretic action.

Kinds of art- these are historically established forms of artistic reflection of the world, using special means to build an image - sound, color, body movement, word, etc. Each type of art has its own special varieties - genera and genres, which together provide a variety of artistic attitudes to reality. Let us briefly consider the main types of art and some of their varieties.

Literature uses verbal and written means to build images. There are three main types of literature - drama, epic and lyrics, and numerous genres - tragedy, comedy, novel, story, poem, elegy, short story, essay, feuilleton, etc.

Music uses audio. Music is divided into vocal (intended for singing) and instrumental. Genres of music - opera, symphony, overture, suite, romance, sonata, etc.

Dance uses means of plastic movements to build images. Allocate ritual, folk, ballroom,

modern dances, ballet. Directions and styles of dance - waltz, tango, foxtrot, samba, polonaise, etc.

Painting displays reality on a plane by means of color. Genres of painting - portrait, still life, landscape, as well as everyday, animalistic (image of animals), historical genres.

Architecture forms a spatial environment in the form of structures and buildings for human life. It is divided into residential, public, landscape gardening, industrial, etc. There are also architectural styles - Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Art Nouveau, Classicism, etc.

Sculpture creates works of art that have volume and three-dimensional form. Sculpture is round (bust, statue) and relief (convex image). The size is divided into easel, decorative and monumental.

Arts and Crafts related to application needs. This includes art objects that can be used in everyday life - dishes, fabrics, tools, furniture, clothes, jewelry, etc.

Theatre organizes a special stage action through the play of actors. The theater can be dramatic, opera, puppet, etc.

The circus presents a spectacular and entertaining action with unusual, risky and funny numbers in a special arena. These are acrobatics, balancing act, gymnastics, horse riding, juggling, magic tricks, pantomime, clowning, animal training and so on.

Movie is the development of theatrical action based on modern technical audiovisual means. The types of cinematography include fiction, documentary films, animation. By genre, comedies, dramas, melodramas, adventure films, detectives, thrillers, etc. are distinguished.

Photo fixes documentary visual images with the help of technical means - optical and chemical or digital. The genres of photography correspond to the genres of painting.

Stage includes small forms of performing arts - dramaturgy, music, choreography, illusions, circus performances, original performances, etc.

Graphics, radio art, etc. can be added to the listed types of art.

In order to show the common features of different types of art and their differences, various grounds for their classification are proposed. So, there are types of art:

• by the number of means used - simple (painting, sculpture, poetry, music) and complex, or synthetic (ballet, theater, cinema);
• in terms of the ratio of works of art and reality - pictorial, depicting reality, copying it, (realistic painting, sculpture, photography), and expressive, where the artist's fantasy and imagination create a new reality (ornament, music);
• in relation to space and time - spatial (fine arts, sculpture, architecture), temporal (literature, music) and space-time (theatre, cinema);
• by the time of occurrence - traditional (poetry, dance, music) and new (photography, cinema, television, video), usually using rather complex technical means to build an image;
• according to the degree of applicability in everyday life - applied (arts and crafts) and fine (music, dance).

Each species, genus or genre reflects a particular side or facet of human life, but taken together, these components of art give a comprehensive artistic picture of the world.

The need for artistic creation or enjoyment of works of art increases along with the growth of a person's cultural level. Art becomes the more necessary, the further a person is separated from the animal state.

Art as a structural element of human culture is its universal language, the universal language, functioning in all social time and in all social space.

A. N. Iliadi argued that it is enough to present at least one of the countless masterpieces of art in order to understand what actual significance they retain for the present, since they are, first of all, monuments (often the only ones) that, in an emphatically emotional form, testify to the life of past eras, about social processes and events from the life of those generations under which they were created. Therefore, according to them, in all possible versatility, the descendants of the culture of past eras are recreated in the unity of its material and spiritual sides. Even when the evidence of historians and scientific treatises, political and religious doctrines, codes of morality and morality have been preserved from this era, art and only art can unite all this into an integrity, isomorphic to the life of a seemingly irretrievably past era. This happens because art conveys to us not just information about the facts of history, events and scientific discoveries. Through the centuries, masterpieces of art carry the meaning and meaning of life, as it seemed to the person of that era, not only in the general tribal sense, but also in the personal experience of significance, and in the sense of their life activity, their struggle for hopes and ideals, from which thoughts ultimately crystallize, aspirations, experiences and struggle for the future or against it of certain people, estates, classes, peoples, states.

“The significance of art as a universal language of human culture,” A. N. Iliadi rightly concluded, “is enshrined in the artistic and imaginative structure of its constructions, making it the most complete of all language systems known to mankind (natural languages, languages ​​of science), available for the education of humanity as a whole, and not only outside the ethnic or state boundaries of a given era, but also in subsequent centuries. Thus, a kind of dialogue is established between different generations, actualizing the experience of the past life activity and creating the possibility of a further “jump” into the social future from the springboard of this actualized experience.

Thus, art as a universal language of culture is, on the one hand, the reproduction of this culture in its specific systems, i.e., the reproduction of a concrete historical way of life of people of different eras and ethnic regions, and on the other hand, the affirmation and development of the reflected way of life, reflected culture. This is a complex mechanism of dialectics of culture and art, a way of life and its artistic resultant.

Art, being a universal language of culture, a special sign system, uses various signs. But the signs are purely artistic.

Art sign- a term denoting reality not in the purely objective being of art, but rather in its functioning.

Because of this, the starting point is not the problem of the sign as such, but the problem of isolating sign diversity, which manifests itself primarily in social life - consumption, perception of art. An element of an artistic form, whether it be a melodic turn, an architectural detail, or an isolated image of a separate object in painting, has four properties of a sign:

• 1) it has meaning;
• 2) informs us about something different from it;
• 3) is used to convey information (although not ordinary, but colored by the emotional and aesthetic attitude of the author to the represented);
• 4) functions in a semiotic situation (as long as the work is not perceived by us, it does not exist for us as a phenomenon of art). Therefore, such an element can be called an artistic sign.

But four more properties distinguish this artistic sign from the usual one. Each means in art is highly ambiguous, while the sign is singular and stable in meaning. The ambiguity of each of the expressive means of art has a dual nature. Its various meanings depend, on the one hand, on the situation and context in which it is applied (E. Basin calls such a polysemy "speech"), and on the other hand, on its interpretation by perceiving individuals ("linguistic polysemy"). Both kinds of polysemy are not wholly arbitrary. As Basin writes, works of art are always perceived not only by the eye of the individual, but through him through the eyes of the "social subject" - society. That is why the "linguistic" meaning of works of art is largely determined by society and relatively independent of the individual. Thus, in art, in addition to “speech” meaning and “speech” polysemy, there is a linguistic meaning - a relatively stable social and generally significant ". Nevertheless, the ambiguity of the expressive means of art remains an indisputable fact. Both in music and in painting, yes

and in any kind of art, the sign cannot be unambiguous. The content (the meaning that the author puts into it) is not always read by the addressee completely adequately. Sometimes this content can be even more complete than the author himself intended. Often the content that the perceiver extracts is already the one that the artist had in mind. The specificity of music lies in the fact that performance is of great importance in perception. Cases are well known when the first performance decided the fate of a work. And even when we look only at the musical text, we unwittingly act as an interpreter. (However, when perceiving a pictorial canvas, we are in a certain way its interpreter.) It is no coincidence that the performance of his works is so important for a composer. The second difference of an artistic sign is that it cannot be isolated from a given context and used without changes in another context, as is typical for an ordinary sign. Finally, the most important differences are the large independent role of the form of an artistic sign and its different relationship with content than that of ordinary signs. With them, in most cases, the material form is arbitrary in relation to the meaning. In art, even with a slight change in form, the content also changes. We are not indifferent, for example, in what register, what instrument, at what tempo this or that melody is performed, not to mention the change in at least one or two sounds in it. In the same way, without prejudice to the content, one cannot rearrange the words in verses, thereby changing the rhythm, or replace any word with a synonym. One of the reasons for the impossibility of obtaining a complete picture of a painting from a reproduction is the change, even with a high level of technology, of all elements of form, color, texture, etc. That is why the concept of "artistic sign" can only be used as a metaphor.

Since we are interested in the nature of the correspondence of artistic signs to the forms of real objects, from all the numerous existing classifications of signs, we take the one that is based on the division of signs according to their type of relationship with denotations (it was first proposed by C. Pierce). And although today semiotics has gone far from Peirce's theory and is often very critical of it, this kind of classification of signs can help in many ways to explain the specifics of artistic signs. From this point of view, signs are divided into three groups:

• 1) signs-images (iconic signs);
• 2) signs-signs (symptoms, indexes, indicators);
• 3) conventional signs (signs-symbols).

By analogy with this, three main types can be distinguished among artistic signs: artistic images that will be close to classical signs-images, artistic “expressive devices” (including intonational signs) and artistic “symbolic means”. The term "symbol" is ambiguous and has different meanings in different areas. Therefore, it should be borne in mind that here it is used only in one of many senses, namely, as a designation of elements of an artistic form, which are analogous to a conventional sign and which must be compared with types of signs outside of art. However, before such a comparison can be made, an important caveat must be made. It should be emphasized that the proposed division of artistic signs is exceptionally approximate, conditional, arising from the ambiguity and multifunctionality of each of them. A specific artistic medium used in a particular work of art is characterized simultaneously from the pictorial, expressive, and symbolic (conventionally sign) sides. Artistic depiction and artistic symbolic means are always, to some extent, expressive devices at the same time, since emotional expressiveness is an integral, obligatory quality of any art and “permeates” through and through the entire fabric of a work of art. Expressive device and symbolic means often (although not always, not in all types of art) have at least some features of the image. Finally, images and expressive devices necessarily contain features of conventionality, which brings them closer to symbolic means. Therefore, it is more accurate to speak of the coexistence of three types of artistic signs.

In relation to the language of art, the concept of a sign system can only be partially applied.

An artistic language has three properties of a sign system: the connection of existing "signs" and the introduction of new ones based on rules, the dependence of the meaning of a "sign" on its place in the system. But other properties of the usual sign system are not inherent in it. It is impossible to compile a “dictionary” of the means used in this art form for several reasons, and in particular, due to the fact that the artist almost does not use ready-made means created by others, but creates new means on the model of those that existed before. Consequently, the language of each type of art is not a set of ready-made "signs" ("words"), but only certain typical forms, from which the author repels when creating his own language, consisting largely of new original elements. In the absence of such elements, the artist's work is perceived as banal in terms of language, epigone, having no independent value, although more than once there have been projects to create a dictionary of artistic language, for example, music, based on linking it to natural language.

Another difference between an artistic language and a sign system is the impossibility of translating texts created on its basis into another artistic language. Here we mean not the well-known cases of creating new, independent works in one art form based on images of another type (a program musical work based on the plot of a poem or a picture, a theatrical staging or film adaptation of a novel, etc.), but translations that are completely equivalent to the original capable of replacing it.

The stated position is not refuted by the well-known fact of the existence of full-fledged translations from one language into another in the literature. The fact is that when translating prose, the artistic language (as a system of figurative means) does not change at all; only the material (verbal language) becomes different. In poetry, however, translation becomes already a kind of independent creativity, since in the transition to another verbal language, part of the figurative means of the original inevitably changes. However, this also applies to many prose works, marked by a high degree of poetry.

In different types of art, different signs can have similar content, and, conversely, similar signs can express different content: the art of painting and music are different sign systems. N. N. Punin wrote about this:

What is said once and in this particular language cannot be repeated by translating into another language - this is the law for all artistic creativity 1 .

M. M. Bakhtin also speaks about this. However, linking the impossibility of translation from one language of art to another with the problem of the text, Bakhtin writes:

Behind every text is a system of language. In the text, it corresponds to everything repeated and reproduced and repeated and reproduced, everything that can be given outside the given text (givenness). But at the same time

Art, its types Polysemy of the term. Two main meanings: 1) skill, skill, developed by experience and knowledge; 2) creative activity aimed at creating works of art, more broadly - aesthetically expressive forms.

Etymology Art. - glory. iskous - experience, church. - glory. Greek art. τέχνη - skill, skill, craft Today, English is used. Art and German Kunst, close to their Latin equivalent - Ars, which can also be translated as "skill" or "craft"

Definition of art Art is a special form of social consciousness and spiritual activity, the specificity of which lies in the creative reflection, reproduction of reality in artistic images.

Art is part of culture. Culture is a set of industrial, social and spiritual achievements of people. This is a certain internal unity of forms of thinking that distinguishes the era and creates it as an integrity, the unity of style, imprinted in the forms of economic, political, spiritual, religious, practical, artistic life.

Types of art These are historically established forms of creative activity that have the ability to artistically realize the content of life and differ in the ways of its material embodiment (word in literature, sound in music, plastic and color materials in fine arts, etc.).

Three groups Spatial or plastic arts: fine arts (painting, graphics, sculpture), arts and crafts, architecture, photography. II. Temporal or dynamic arts: music, literature. III. Spatio-temporal (synthetic, spectacular): choreography, theater, cinema. I.

MUSIC IN THE CULTURE OF PRIMARY SOCIETY PERIODIZATION Stone Age: 2 million years ago BC e. - Paleolithic 10,000 BC. e. - Mesolithic 5000 BC. e. - Neolithic Bronze Age 2700 BC. e. Iron Age between 1500 and 1400 BC e. CHRONOGRAPH 2.5 million years - the age of the most ancient archaeological finds. 35 -10 millennium BC. e. - the era of the Upper Paleolithic, the period of the emergence of art.

The main features of primitive art Ritual-magical essence; Collectivity of activity; Practicality (applied character); Syncretism is the original unity, fusion, indivisibility of what subsequently breaks up into independent spheres of art: music, poetry, theater, dance, painting, sculpture, the beginnings of architecture, decorative and applied arts; Mythology.

Cave paintings are the main genre of fine art of primitive people. Petroglyphs are carved images on a stone base (from other Greek πέτρος - stone and γλυφή - carving). 1864 - the first cave paintings discovered by the French paleontologist F. Garrigou. The most famous caves today are Lascaux (France), Altamira (Spain).

Megaliths Megaliths (from the Greek μέγας - large, λίθος - stone) are prehistoric structures made of large stone blocks connected without the use of cement or lime mortar. The term was proposed in 1849 by the English researcher A. Herbert in the book "Cyclops Christianus"

Types of megaliths menhir (a single vertically standing stone up to 20 m high) cromlech - a group of menhirs forming a circle or semicircle dolmen - a structure made of a huge stone placed on several other stones (similar to a gate), etc.

Main achievements Architecture Construction of temples (Sumer), pyramids and temple complexes (Egypt). 1792 -1750 BC e. - the years of the reign of Hammurabi, the construction of the ziggurat of Etemenanki, known as the Tower of Babel.

Ziggurat A cult building in Sumer (tower), consisting of 3 steps - platforms in accordance with the three main deities - Anna (god of heaven), Enlil (lord of air and earth, son of Anna), Enki (lord of the world's waters, wisdom and keeper of human fate). Upstairs there was a small temple - the dwelling of the god, which could be reached by special stairs. The long rise was associated with the idea of ​​an endless journey to the sky. The coloring of the platforms is symbolic: the lower one is black - the underworld, the middle one is burnt brick - earthly life, the upper one is white and red - the sky. The Temple of God is blue.

Egypt Old Kingdom (2800 -2250 BC) - construction of pyramids New Kingdom (c. 1580 - c. 1070) - construction of huge temple complexes.

Features of the pictorial canon in relief Compositional organization of scenes based on order, for example, when depicting a procession, figures are arranged one after another, at regular intervals, with repeated gestures

Peculiarities of the pictorial canon in the relief Diversity of scale of the figures (for example, the pharaoh is the largest figure); Image of a person: head and legs in profile, and torso and eye - in front; the whole figure was outlined by a single line; What is farther is depicted above;

7th c. BC e. - Assyrian king Ashurbanipal founded in his palace of Nineveh the largest of the known libraries, Among the records dating from the 26th century. BC e. , there are already examples of genres of folk wisdom, cult texts and hymns. The found cuneiform archives brought to us about 150 monuments of Sumerian literature, among which there are myths, epic tales, ritual songs, hymns in honor of kings, collections of fables, sayings, disputes, dialogues and edifications.

The Epic of Gilgamesh The most ancient and significant monument of Sumerian literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh (“The Tale of Gilgamesh” - “About Who Has Seen Everything”). The history of the discovery of the epic in the 70s of the 19th century is associated with the name of George Smith, an employee of the British Museum, who, among the extensive archaeological materials sent to London from Mesopotamia, discovered cuneiform fragments of the legend of the Flood. A report on this discovery, made at the end of 1872 in the Biblical Archaeological Society, caused a sensation.

Egypt The appearance of writing in the period of the Early Kingdom (c. 3000 -2800 BC) - hieroglyphs; in hieroglyphs at the beginning of the third millennium BC, writing material began to be made from papyrus (a herbaceous plant).

Literature The heyday of literature falls on the period of the Middle Kingdom. There were various genres: fairy tales, teachings, myths, stories (for example, "The History of Sinuhet" - an autobiographical story), hymns in honor of the gods, poetry. "Book of the Dead"

The "Book of the Dead" The "Book of the Dead" was the ancient Egyptian religious texts that were placed in burial places to protect the dead and admonish him in the afterlife. The "Book of the Dead" was compiled from the period of the New Kingdom (16th century BC) to the end of the history of Ancient Egypt. Richly illustrated texts were written on sheets of papyrus and invested in the veils of mummies.

VEDAS Vedas (Sanskrit Veda, literally - knowledge) - monuments of ancient Indian literature (late 2nd - early 1st millennium BC) in the ancient Indian (Vedic) language. The Vedas, or Vedic literature, are collections of hymns and sacrificial formulas (Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda), theological treatises (Brahmins and Upanishads). The Vedas are a source of information on the socio-economic and cultural history of ancient India.

Vedic literature "Rigveda" (veda of hymns) - a collection of mainly Rigveda religious hymns, the first known monument of Indian literature. Formed by the 10th century. BC e. This is e. the most ancient and significant of the Vedas, a valuable source for the study of ancient Indian history and mythology. Consists of 10 books, uniting 1028 hymns. The Mahabharata is the older of the two great Mahabharata epics of ancient India. The time to which her main legends go back, the time of her “heroic age” is the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. e. , the era of tribal wars and the formation of the first states in the Ganges valley. The process of cyclization of these legends and the addition of the whole epic ends, apparently, by the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. (no later than the 4th century BC, in any case), the written fixation of the Mahabharata can be attributed to the 3rd - 4th centuries. n. e.

Theater - Mysteries During the period of the Middle Kingdom, mysteries developed on the basis of rites in honor of the god Osiris. According to the myth, Osiris, the god of fertility, was once the king of Egypt and taught the Egyptians how to cultivate the land and plant gardens. He was killed by his jealous and envious brother Seth. Osiris' son Horus challenged Set to a duel and defeated him. After that, he resurrected Osiris, allowing him to swallow the eye torn from Seth. He did not stay on earth, but began to rule the world of the dead. According to one version, Osiris was revived by Isis.

Isis is the sister and wife of Osiris, the mother of Horus, and, accordingly, of the Egyptian kings, who were originally considered earthly incarnations of the falcon-headed god.

Performances of mysteries (according to Herodotus) were carried out in 16 cities of Egypt. The participants in the action sculpted a statue of Osiris, next to which stood Isis and his sister Nephthys in mourning clothes and with loose hair. In their lamentations, they begged Osiris to return to life. Osiris was reborn in the process of rituals (search, mourning, burial, "great battle").

Music was an important component in all three layers of the art of ancient cultures, which can be distinguished in accordance with their purpose: Folklore (from the English. Folk-lore - folk wisdom) - folk song and poetry with elements of theatrical and choreographic; Temple art - cult, liturgical, grown out of ritual actions; Palace - secular art; its functions are hedonistic (pleasure) and ceremonial.

Musical Instruments The most common images of the harp, harp, so it can be considered the most popular and revered musical instrument. It is known from written sources that the flute was revered in Sumer and Babylon. The sound of this flute instrument, according to the Sumerians, was able to bring the dead back to life. Apparently, this was due to the very method of sound production - breathing, which was considered a sign of life. At the annual feasts in honor of Tammuz, the ever-resurrecting god, flutes sounded, personifying the resurrection. On one of the clay tablets was written: "In the days of Tammuz, play me the azure flute ..."

Musical Instruments Ancient Egyptian musical instruments are stored in various museums around the world: harp (number of strings from 6 to 22), wooden flutes and drums (in Florence and the Louvre), nabl (stringed instrument with a long neck - in Berlin). Most researchers are inclined to believe that ancient Egyptian music was monophonic.

Music in India Music in ancient India was a trinity of singing, dancing and instrumental music. Ritual music has been widely developed. It is believed that Indian music was monophonic.

Musical Instruments of India The instruments used in practice are very diverse - these are drums, bells, bells, gongs, shells; the main percussion instrument is tabla (reminiscent of small timpani). Among other instruments, the flute, the saranga (a bowed stringed instrument with a leather upper deck, where there were strings playing - 3 or 4 and resonating - from 11 to 41), sitar (seven-stringed plucked), wine (the queen of sitar instruments, a seven-stringed plucked instrument with two pumpkin resonators under the fretboard).