The primary form of art was a special syncretic(undivided) complex creative activity. Everything was merged together in a single ritual action. Later, from this syncretic action began to stand out individual species art.

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, words, etc. Each type of art has its own special varieties - genera and genres, which together provide a variety of artistic attitudes to reality. Let's 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 lyric poetry and numerous genres - tragedy, comedy, novel, story, poem, elegy, short story, essay, feuilleton, etc.

Music uses sound means. Music is divided into vocal (intended for singing) and instrumental. Music genres - opera, symphony, overture, suite, romance, sonata, etc.

Dance uses plastic movements to construct images. There are ritual, folk, ballroom,

modern dance, ballet. Dance directions and styles - waltz, tango, foxtrot, samba, polonaise, etc.

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

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

Sculpture creates works of art, having volume and three dimensional shape. The sculpture can be round (bust, statue) and relief (convex image). By size it is divided into easel, decorative and monumental.

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

Theater organizes a special stage performance through the performance of actors. The theater can be dramatic, opera, puppet, etc.

Circus presents a spectacular and entertaining performance 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, etc.

Movie is the development of theatrical performance based on modern technical audiovisual means. Types of cinema include feature films, documentaries, and animation. Genres include comedies, dramas, melodramas, adventure movies, detective stories, thrillers, etc.

Photo captures documentary visual images using technical means - optical, chemical or digital. The genres of photography correspond to the genres of painting.

Stage includes small forms of stage art - drama, music, choreography, illusions, circus acts, original performances, etc.

Design is a design activity aimed at improving the life activity of each person by creating a constructive ergonomic image of a holistic, aesthetic environment and objects that make up part of this environment. Design is the design of objects in which form corresponds to their purpose.

To the listed types of art you can add graphics, radio art, etc.

Each type, genus or genre displays a special side or facet human life, but collected together, these components of art provide a comprehensive artistic picture of the world.

The need for artistic creativity or enjoyment of works of art increases with growth cultural level person. Art becomes more necessary the further a person is from the animal state.

Art is a creative reflection of a person's worldview. Expressed in numerous forms of works of art, such as types of art, genera and genres.

There are main groups of art that arose as a result of the means of reproduction with which people create artistic images:

Spatial or plastic arts.

Each group directly consists of species that are characterized by the method of material transmission.

Spatial types include numerous types of decorative and applied arts, fine arts, photography and architecture.

Decorative and applied art, in turn, consists of: carving, painting, decorating products, artwork with stone and metal, papier-mâché, ceramics, lace, embroidery.

Fine art consists of graphic movements in art: lithography, engraving; painting - monumental, easel, landscape, still life, portrait, historical and everyday genre, animalism, icon painting; and sculpture - relief and volumetric sculpture.

Dynamic- temporary forms of art. They mainly differ from plastic types by the presence of a compositional basis, which is revealed over time.

This includes two large type: literature and music.

The art of literary reflection of a worldview is divided into: fiction, historical, scientific, educational, reference literature.

The musical direction in art is divided into: genre (march, song, symphony, etc.) and type (theater, chamber, symphony, etc.).

Spatially- temporary types of art or spectacular, aesthetic, implying such types as: cinema, choreography, performing arts and literature.

Theatrical art consists of the following sections of works: dramatic work, tragic and comedic work, musical.

Cinematography includes: drama, fantasy, comedy, tragedy, historical movement.

To display artistic painting the world is not enough, just one direction of art. This became the basis for the creation of such a wide variety of types and forms of perception of the world by people. Types of art differ from each other in the object of the image and the visual means used.

Option 2

What exactly art is is actually not entirely clear, since art can mean completely different activities and completely different shapes. Even simple communication between people can be an art; for example, if one person tells something to another, then to some extent he is engaged in the art of monologue.

Nevertheless, the classification exists and is quite clear, which is based on the forms that arise historically. Since ancient times, people have been able to perform activities that did not directly bring any practical benefit (for example, painting) but provided something else, and this is how pure art appeared. Applied art also arose, but against the backdrop of practical benefits, for example, people could make clothes or some household items that were decorated with additional elements.

These two forms still exist and are often mixed, and also blur the boundaries between art and everyday life. A typical example may be folk arts. For example, ornaments that are used simply for some objects or surfaces, but at the same time can also contain complex codes that are transmitted in a certain community, clan, or people.

If we talk about varieties, which for the most part belong to pure art, then we should highlight: painting or fine arts, sculpture, music, architecture. In addition, there is a layer of so-called kinetic art, which represents options such as dance, pantomime or something similar. A separate part There are also various, let's say, pop genres, such as theater.

Contemporary art often offers a mixture of different genres and can be something completely surprising. For example, the installation may be a combination of music and painting and kinetic art. There may be conceptual or action art, which generally represents certain actions that can be performed in a chosen (for certain reasons) space and with a certain meaning and sequence.

Often modern creative people they make some action as such art, and here the boundary between everyday life and art is also blurred in some way. However, academic genres continue to exist to this day.

Among all types of art, it is customary to place fiction in first place, although perhaps the only reason for this is its much wider audience than that of works of other types of art.

Fiction - an art form in which material carrier figurativeness is ordinary, or everyday, language. Like other forms of art, literature reproduces, or depicts, objects and situations. But since she uses her tongue for this, unlike fine arts in the proper sense of the word (painting, sculpture, etc.) and from synthetic arts (theater, cinema, television, etc.) uses “immaterial” images (G. Lessing), devoid of direct visual clarity and authenticity: the word does not have features of visual similarity to what it means. The immateriality of images determines some of the limitations of literature, but at the same time the words used by the writer make it possible to comprehend reality compactly and quickly in all the diversity of its manifestations, comprehended not only by feeling, but also by intellect. The writer is able to present a person as a thinking and speaking being, to bring closer artistic text with journalistic or philosophical.

Music - a type of art in which artistic images are formed with the help of sounds. Music is characterized by a particularly active and direct impact on the inner world of a person. Sounds as the basis of musical imagery and expressiveness are devoid of the semantic specificity of words and do not reproduce visible pictures the world, as a pictorial image does. But sounds have an intonational nature, which expresses centuries-old speech experience, the experience of rhythmic movements, embodied, in particular, in theater, dance, etc. Music is also given expressiveness by such components of a musical composition as melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, polyphony, texture, etc. The existence of a musical work is inseparable from its performance: without a performer, such a work is just a musical notation. Music can be performed using means: there is vocal, instrumental, vocal-instrumental music. Music exists in different types and genres. There is symphonic, opera and chamber music; but there is also music of song, dance, symphony, sonata, suite, heroic or comic opera, etc. Artistic images of music are highly generalized. But at the same time, they are distinguished by enormous emotional power, capable of integrally expressing human existence. Music is capable of expressing the subtlest shades of human feelings and influencing the deep psychology of a person.

Painting – a type of fine art, the originality of which lies in the creation of artistic images using paints applied to any hard surface (base). Painting visually reproduces the coloristic richness of reality, its spatiality and objectivity, embodies wide circle ideas about the lives of people, society and nature. Depending on the materials used by the artist to create painting(oil, glue, wax, etc.), there are such types of painting as oil painting, tempera, painting on plaster (fresco), encaustic (wax painting on board), etc. There are different genres paintings: landscape, portrait, still life, history painting, everyday genre, etc. Types of painting also differ: easel painting, or painting, icon painting, panorama and diarama, monumental and decorative painting, decorative painting, etc. The discovery of foreshortening, perspective and light and shadow modeling has significantly enriched painting. However, if there was progress in painting, it did not lie in the growing ability of the painter to copy what “really is,” but in the ability to create the impression that we see the object he depicts. Even the most believable images cannot be called simply copies. A typical example is two of Picasso’s drawings: “Hen with Chicks” (1941) and “Rooster” (1938). The first of them shows a very realistic picture of a hen bending over her chickens; the second shows a war rooster. If in the first case Picasso clearly sought to convey the hen's anxiety and her care for her tiny chicks, then in the second case he was least concerned about the external resemblance of the depicted rooster to its prototype (if such a thing existed at all); the artist sought to convey, first of all, the aggressiveness, arrogance and stubbornness of the rooster.

Film art - a type of artistic creativity that was included in the system of synthetic arts in the 20th century.

In the 20s of the last century, the period of silent cinema ended, and diverse possibilities of expression were discovered and realized artistic thoughts on the screen, the entire genre system of cinema has been updated. Its synthetic nature is revealed in the fact that it provides a synthesis of different arts: literature, painting, music, theater.

Architecture – a type of art whose task is to create structures that meet the utilitarian and spiritual needs of people, including, of course, their aesthetic needs. As a field of art, architecture appears in the cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. As an original art, it developed by the 5th century. BC. V ancient Greece. Up to mid-19th V. in synthesis with painting, sculpture, decorative arts architecture determined the style. Romanica, Gothic, Renaissance, classicism are, first of all, characteristics of the architecture of certain periods of past eras. WITH late XIX V. architecture yields leadership in the formation of the dominant artistic style painting and sculpture. Modernism, constructivism, postmodernism are, first of all, a certain painting and sculpture, and only then – architecture.

Sculpture - a type of fine art, the specificity of which is in volumetric implementation artistic form in space. The sculpture represents primarily the forms of people, less often animals, and even less often a landscape or still life. There are two main types of sculpture: round sculpture (statue, group, torso, bust) is designed to be viewed from many angles; relief sculpture represents an image on a plane perceived as a background.

There are also other types of art: choreography, theater, photography, circus, pop art, decorative and applied arts, etc.

The concept of "art"

What is "art"? This term does not have a simple or intuitive meaning. Most people understand this word to have completely different, contradictory meanings. And at the same time, it is a very important entity that surrounds us from all sides.

Let's try to figure it out. First, let's look at the meaning of this word in the most popular source of information - in the computer encyclopedia Wikipedia: ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

Art(from “the arts of creation”) - the process or result of expressing the inner world in an (artistic) image, a creative combination of elements in a way that reflects feelings or emotions.

For a long time art was considered a form cultural activities that satisfy a person’s love for beauty. Along with the evolution of social aesthetic norms and assessments, any activity aimed at creating expressive forms in accordance with aesthetic ideals has acquired the right to be called art.

On the scale of the entire society, art is a special way of knowing and reflecting reality, one of the forms public consciousness and part of the spiritual culture both man and all humanity, a diverse result of the creative activity of all generations.

The concept of art is extremely broad - it can manifest itself as extremely developed skill in a particular area.

Agree, it is quite difficult to understand. It’s as if they specially encrypted and hid the meaning from all the uninitiated. Now let’s try to interpret this term in a human way: simpler and more concise.

Art is a tool of culture

It skips in the description keyword, but it is buried in a mass of nonsense. This important word is “culture”. Art is the main instrument of culture. It is through culture that the term “art” is easiest to understand.

Culture is what distinguishes a person from an animal; it is all the accumulated information of humanity, passed on from generation to generation. Animals are in constant development, passing changes to their descendants through genes. Humanity, in addition to genetic development, uses information development. People are born and die, but the information they record remains forever in the culture, and is constantly available to new generations. Art is specific intellectual or physical objects through which culture is transmitted.

There is no need to understand culture only as something lyrical, opposed to the scientific and technical. Official science is only one of the sections of culture. In science, information about the outside world is carefully sorted, sorted, put into shelves, and turned into formulas. Culture contains not only formulas, but also poorly structured information that has not yet been amenable to scientific analysis. People have already grabbed hold of this information, but have not yet fully realized it, so they do not use exact words to describe it, but numerous examples, situations, actions, and similar images.

Doesn't remind you of anything? This poorly structured information is what art is based on.

Art is the transmission of unstructured information.

Filtering art

Does the stingy scientific formulation not suit you? Not surprising. For most people, the word “art” is clearly associated with words such as “beautiful”, “creativity”, “skill”, “skill”, “masterpiece”, but not with the term “unstructured information”. All this can be explained in a little more detail by understanding the process of creating works of art.

Modern authors sometimes create things that are terrible in quality and content, but are nevertheless considered part of art. For real connoisseurs, these facts do not fit in their heads. Art critics even came up with special categories “ modern Art" and "high art" to separate one from the other. The good, the kind, the eternal should not be on the same level as the bad, the evil and the momentary.

But both are art. And you don’t need to think that “modern” is a designation only for what has appeared in our 21st century. Obscene paintings, books, and statues have been sold in markets since time immemorial. Perhaps even in the Stone Age there were cave drawings of this kind. Only all these creations, aimed at satisfying current needs, have not survived to this day. When the foam of modernity settles, everything temporary evaporates, leaving only the dry residue of the best masterpieces.

This is how art works: creators create works of the most different styles, directions, quality, but only the best specimens – masterpieces – end up in the treasury of culture. Masters of their craft are initially aimed at this result - to leave a mark on culture, therefore they consider it in their works eternal themes, which will be relevant to both contemporaries and descendants. In people's memory, unpleasant and insignificant events are quickly forgotten, for purely psychophysiological reasons; only pleasant or vivid memories are remembered for a long time, giving emotional strength with each memory. That's why everything classical works seem so wonderful to us, and for the same reason we associate the words “art” and “beautiful” together. The input filters of a culture are designed so that only what matches universal values, promotes further development humanity.

From this point of view, the entire dispute among art critics comes down to what part of art should be considered art: the whole variety of unstructured information, or only what has already passed through the filters of universal human values.

The pace of our lives accelerates every year. The period by which one can determine whether a work has become a classic has been reduced to literally 10-20 years. It is definitely necessary to separate the eternal from the momentary, but for this it is necessary to study both sides of art, and not isolate yourself from modern trends. After all, we, as a whole human community, decide what descendants will watch and what will dissolve in the abyss of time. Every year more and more information appears, and less and less time is given to sort it. Because of this, strange and awkward works suddenly receive the high title of classics. It is worth putting things in order in the structure and assessment of the arts so that large quantity people could participate in this process, and so that cultural filters could do their job as well as they did before the advent of the digital age.

Art is the ability to create beauty

Let's consider that very “filtered art” that will ultimately remain in the memory of mankind. To designate it, you can come up with a more elegant and concise formulation:

Only three words were needed for the definition, but at the same time the whole meaning fits in them: the source, the means, and the goal.

There are also three actions that are important for art: comprehension new (to motivate creativity), expression thoughts and feelings (to use skills, mastery), belief(to reach the consciousness of connoisseurs). The first three components - the very essence of art, these other three components - do not relate to art, but are necessary for it. In pure, disinterested art one never pays any attention Special attention for these actions. If an emphasis is placed on some element (comprehension, expression, belief), then art becomes a tool for some other action, and ceases to be itself.

The figure shows a diagram of the art in the form of a regular hexagon. In this diagram, one similarity can be seen, if you move counterclockwise: comprehension, creativity, expression, craft, belief, enjoyment. This is reminiscent of the cycle of any product: study, modeling, design, production, distribution, consumption. It turns out:

Art - the cycle of production of goods for the soul

A hexagon is a closed figure; there is tension inside it. Each face is opposed to its opposite face.

Expression is the opposite of pleasure.

Pleasure is a need, a craving for the beautiful and spiritual. Expression is a possibility, something a person can do. Often there are not enough opportunities to meet needs. To obtain new needs you need to change opportunities.

Craft is opposed to comprehension.

Production is focused on creating ready-made ideas, they are honed to perfection, a lot of effort is put into the finished production. Therefore, the emergence of new knowledge is not beneficial to production: everything will have to be rebuilt to accommodate new ideas, resources will have to be spent on it, and the ideal will have to be achieved again. Changes in production never occur voluntarily, only under the pressure of external circumstances (example: the successful role of an actor closes all other roles for him, he is forced to play what he does best). To comprehend the new you need to distract yourself from the old.

Persuasion is the opposite of creativity.

With the help of persuasion, production products are distributed and consolidated. “Belief” is the same ossified structure as “craft”. It opposes new creations and does not allow them to reach the consumer. (example: true fans of a series of computer games always greet a new game in the series with hostility, no matter how good it is). To create something new, you need to be disappointed in the old.

This internal tension causes the entire system to almost always stand still. Only when one of the three elements of movement (enjoyment, comprehension, creativity) becomes stronger than its opposite (elements of inertia: conviction, craft, expression), only then changes occur in the entire cycle. Changes occur, and immediately the elements of inertia begin to ossify again, until the next change.

Art goods

Now let’s look at what kind of “goods for the soul” art produces.

All art products are sensations with the help of which a person perceives the world, namely: smells, tastes, touches, colors, movements, sounds, thoughts. In general, all our sensations about the world can be divided into two groups: sensations of form and sensations of movement. The sense of color, which is at the junction of these two groups, gives us the most complete information about the world.

As can be seen from the diagram, movement and form are two opposites from which the whole world consists. Perhaps consciousness is the third full-fledged component of the world, then the diagram can again be presented in the form of a regular hexagon, but so far this cannot be achieved, there are not enough facts. Try it, maybe you will be able to prove this theory.

Let's consider each sensation separately.

Smell - analysis of the chemical composition of a form at a distance (using gas analysis (individual atoms detached from the analyzed object)).

Taste is a direct analysis of the chemical composition of the form.

Touch is the sensation of encountering form. But the form itself cannot be directly felt.

Acceleration is the sensation of changing speed. If we move at a uniform constant speed, then there is simply nothing to feel it. The sensation of movement itself is inaccessible to consciousness.

Sound is the sensation of waves of air density emitted by the movement of a form. In this case, sound itself is a movement (wave). The hearing that perceives sounds, as it were, analyzes the movements that have occurred around.

Thought - long-term analysis of movements. Represents assumptions about what movements may occur after some time. Assumptions are made on the basis of movements that have already occurred (experience). The more experience, the more complex and closer to the truth the thoughts. It's like a sense of smell, but not for objects and their atoms, but for events and their consequences.

The movement of form is light. As stated above, we cannot directly sense shape and movement. Also, we cannot fully feel their fusion - light. Only a small part of it (called color) is accessible to perception.

All sensations of movement and the sensation of color are simulated by a person using a computer. A new one is practically being created virtual world, for the completeness of which only the sensations of taste, smell, and touch are missing. And people are constantly trying to make virtuality more and more like the real world.

God, who created the world, created man in his own image and likeness. Man’s desire to create and create is that part of God that he has endowed us with, possessing which we become like gods. Art is a manifestation of the desire to create and create your own own world like God. Previously, creators created only separate parts of the world they conceived, now well-coordinated teams of creators create entire imagined worlds.

There is a universal rule: “90% of everything created in the world is complete nonsense and is not worth your attention.” This rule applies to art and all its types separately. In every form: in music, in films, and in computer games - only about 10% of all works created are real masterpieces, everything else is slag, making up 90%. There is nothing good in it, but it is necessary, slag is the dark background against which they shine bright light the remaining 10% of the works.

Classification, types and forms of art

Let us analyze all the forms of art created by mankind according to their composition of sensations.

Let's start looking at the diagram from bottom to top. We look at a person and highlight all his senses: nose (smell), tongue (taste), skin (touch), eyes (vision), ears (hearing). There is also something with which it evokes feelings: the whole body and the mouth (vocal cords). Well, what ultimately processes all the received feelings is the brain.

Encoding. All senses can be encoded: thought can be encoded into text, sound, movement, color and shape; sound can be encoded into text or image; shape is encoded as color; and in general, everything that does not have a form, everything that consists only of waves - color (as well as form encoded into color), movement, sound, thought - everything can be encoded as a sequence of “0” and “1”.

The nose perceives smells, and the only form of human activity that works on these senses is perfumery. It is very controversial to call perfumery art, but calling it low art (as opposed to the expression “high art”) is quite possible. Smells in physical sense- This is the recognition of chemical elements in a gaseous state.

The tongue perceives tastes, and again there is only one form of human activity that works on these feelings - cooking. But cooking is more complex, it includes the creation of smells, tastes, and shapes. The same applies to lower art. Taste in the physical sense is the recognition of chemical elements that are in any state, unlike odors, but only in close proximity.

The skin perceives the touch of other physical objects. Shape sensations are used in design of all varieties, in fine arts, V sports(the art of sports includes cybersport , military art). The form is directly felt only in the immediate vicinity, so most often its sensations are perceived at a distance using color coding.

The eyes perceive color, which carries most of the information about the world around us. As already mentioned, form and movement are encoded in it, and all types of art related to them also apply to color. But the main thing for the eyes is fine art, which, with the advent of special devices, was continued in the form photographic art And animations.

At the intersection of movements and sounds is theater. Sounds themselves are used in more complex types arts, and are also divided according to their form into music , singing, speech. Speech is sounds that carry thought, and includes calligraphy. But the main thing is what thoughts are contained in this text. A special type of thought is humor. The controversial point is whether it is art at all? But in our country this is definitely a special kind of art. Includes such forms as jokes, parodies, gags. The text is used in more complex forms: in literature(books) and press(newspapers, magazines), while additionally using images in the form of photographs.

The higher up on the diagram, the newer the storage media storing works of art.

With the advent of video recording, the old arts were transformed. The theater was transformed into movie. Musical compositions V video clips. Other types of art of movement and sound: animation, sports, dance, concerts - have not changed, but have become available in the form of recordings.

With the advent of computers and the binary storage system, most previous storage media (such as image, video, audio, text) can be encoded and stored in this binary system without modification. Some old forms of art have been transformed into new ones on the computer: design + animation in modeling, text + movement in programming. And on the basis of these new arts even more complex ones appeared - computer and video games(modeling(design, image, animation), theater(movement, sound, music, speech), programming(movement, text)) and sites(programming (motion, text), press, animation).

At the very top of the diagram are information intermediaries.

Designs, images and photographs can be found at exhibitions.

Animations and films are created and reproduced in film studios.

Musical compositions are replicated in music studios.

Literature and press are published in book publishing houses.

Computer games are created and published in computer studios and publishing houses.

Television distributes everything that can be encoded in video.

Radio distributes everything that can be encoded into audio.

The Internet distributes everything that can be encoded into a binary system.

A more correct, but also more difficult to understand, diagram of the arts

To enlarge the image, click on it

Conclusion

Thus, computer games- a composite art form consisting of many previous art forms. And the Internet is a huge public museum of almost everyone known species creativity.

In contrast of classical art only that this is new and not yet filtered information. Masterpieces on the Internet are placed on the same shelves next to low-grade works that will be forgotten in a week. So far, only individual specialists can understand the information diversity of the oversaturated market. We, on this site, will help you navigate the turbulent flow of the modern look art.

Having defined art as a single phenomenon, it should be borne in mind that such “art in general” is an abstraction, an abstraction. In practice, there are various types of art, each of which has its own specifics, sets special tasks and has its own means to solve them. The distribution of arts according to these general characteristics is called the classification of arts. Classification allows you to better understand the character separate work belonging to one type or another.

First of all, the arts are traditionally divided according to the way they “exist” and are perceived into temporary And spatial . Temporal arts are distinguished by the fact that works unfold and are perceived in time. In this case, a work of art often turns out to be inseparable from a person: the author or performer. Temporary arts include the art of speech or poetry, dance, music, and cinema. Spatial - painting, graphics, sculpture, architecture, applied art, design. Theater occupies an intermediate place - the performance is located in a certain space, but the action unfolds in time. Most often, theater is called synthetic art, since it (just like cinema) combines and synthesizes achievements various arts- poetry, music, painting.

It should be noted that due to the diversity and complexity of art forms, a strict distinction between them according to certain criteria turns out to be practically impossible; one can only talk about the predominance of certain means of expression, forms, and methods. Thus, dance, pantomime, theater, and cinema do not fully fit into the space-time classification. An element of convention is also inherent in another principle of the division of arts, based on the predominance of figurativeness or expressiveness in the arsenal of artistic means.

The fine arts unconditionally include painting, graphics, and sculpture. One of the key principles for creating images is the principle of imitation - mimesis. Images are constructed as similarities to real objects or phenomena; they are recognizable and designed for visual perception. The image created by the artist seems to refer the viewer to its source - I will prototype or prototype . At the same time, the mental correlation of image and prototype, art and reality often influences the aesthetic assessment of a work of fine art - looking at a picture, we involuntarily “compare” it with our own ideas about the depicted phenomena. This moment of recognition, combining our experience with artistically makes contact between the artist and the viewer possible. At the same time, the habit of seeing only the familiar and recognizable in art sometimes creates a barrier between the viewer and a work that belongs to a bygone era or belongs to a culture with a value system different from ours. Modern fine art (since the end of the 19th century) is characterized by a bias towards expressiveness. An extreme manifestation of this trend is non-objective art, which flourished in the twenties of the last century. The works of the avant-garde artists of this era, in terms of the method of creation and the technique used, were classified as fine arts, and in terms of the nature of the images and expressive means– to expressive ones. We can say that expressiveness has always been present in painting, sculpture, and graphics, but in the twentieth century it was “brought to the surface.”

Expressive arts include music, dance, and architecture. The images created by these arts do not have direct prototypes among surrounding objects or phenomena; they can only evoke certain associations. Works of music and architecture are created not on the basis of observation of specific phenomena, but on the basis of “total” impressions of reality, which the artist draws from his inner world. We can say that these arts also create images, but abstract ones. Works that express, first of all, the internal state of the author, with all their “obscurity,” sometimes have a deep psychological impact. First of all, this applies to music - no other art is capable of influencing a person’s mood and feelings with such force. It is no coincidence that in many cultures music lessons were considered as a way of organizing and harmonizing the soul. Dance is also capable of captivating viewers and infecting them with a certain mood, although the range of influence here is somewhat narrower. Therefore, as a rule, he needs musical accompaniment. Architecture has a different impact. Architectural images are static and they are to a greater extent need prolonged viewing and feeling. However, the impression of architecture sometimes turns out to be deeper - a person’s long stay in a certain architectural environment can influence his internal state, creating a psychological mood.

Poetry, theater, cinema occupy an intermediate position - expressiveness and figurativeness are inherent in them equally. This connection is facilitated by the combination on stage or on screen of the achievements of other arts. However, this is not the only reason why theater and cinema are synthetic. The specific means of influence here is the acting of the actor, which also combines figurativeness (the actor portrays, “shows” the character) and expressiveness (facial expressions, voice, movements express different feelings). Actor play is the “necessary minimum” of theatrical action, without which it cannot take place.

The situation is somewhat more complicated with poetry or verbal art. main feature poetry lies in its special material - the word. The word has a multifaceted impact: it carries ideological content– thought, creates visible pictures – images, has an expressive “physicality” – phoneme. Ideally, each word of a poetic text (and poetry is, as it were, an “ideal example” of literature) harmoniously combines meaning, image, and melody.

A brief examination of the types of art allows us to appreciate the diversity of the sphere of artistic creativity - music and dance, theater and architecture in their own way reveal the inner world of a person, characterize the time of their creation, the culture of a particular era. However, when historical approach In the study of artistic culture, priority, as a rule, is given to fine, applied arts, and architecture. The reason for this preference is, first of all, that spatial works are able to outlive the time of their origin for a long time. Theater performances Antiquity, music Ancient China known only from descriptions. We can guess what the dances of people of the Paleolithic era looked like based on ethnographic data, and monuments of fine art that keep the warmth of the hands of our distant ancestors appear directly before our eyes. Thanks to surviving works of architecture, painting, and sculpture, we can see the remains ancient cities, the faces of the great people of the past, we can imagine what the representatives of bygone cultures admired and aspired to.

It is also significant that the perception of spatial arts does not require a significant investment of time; familiarity with the monuments of fine art allows you to quickly get an idea of ​​​​the cultural appearance of the era. Modern technology printing and digital processing visual information allows you to see famous masterpieces of painting with minimal color distortion. Some the situation is more complicated with three-dimensional spatial arts– sculpture and architecture. Their full perception requires a change of point of view. However, here too, the use of several photographs allows us to get an idea of ​​the artist’s intention and its embodiment in the material.

The difficulty of perceiving works of fine art and architecture, compared to poetry, is that they use their own conventional language - the language of line, color, volume, the understanding of which requires some preparation. However, this "disadvantage" visual arts It also has its positive side - works of architecture, monuments of applied art, painting, unlike works of literature, do not need translation, their conventional language is international, it, to a certain extent, goes over barriers, bringing eras, countries and civilizations together. The prehistoric era or ancient cultures whose writing cannot be read are known to us thanks to preserved artifacts, of which the most informative for a cultural scientist are monuments of fine art.

When studying world art, we will also primarily rely on monuments of architecture, sculpture, and painting, if possible and to the extent necessary, supplementing their consideration with examples from the history of music, theater, and literature.

However, before turning to the historical consideration of artistic culture, it is necessary to become familiar with the specific language of fine art, as well as with the division into types and genres accepted in it. This information is summarized in Table 1 below.

Table 1

Types and genres of fine arts.