What is artistic art definition. Art. Functions and types of art

Ask yourself. Probably the majority will answer: Art is architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry in all its forms,- supposing that the matter of which he speaks is equally understood by all men. But in architecture there are simple buildings that do not constitute an object of art, and buildings that have claims to be an object of art, but are not one due to their ugliness. So what is the sign of a piece of art?

A moderately educated person in our circle, and even an artist who has not specifically studied aesthetics, will not be bothered by this question; "Art is an activity that reveals beauty", - such a person will answer.

For the average person, it seems clear and understandable that art is a manifestation of beauty, and for him all questions of art are explained by beauty. Then what is beauty, which, in his opinion, constitutes the content of art?By the word “beauty” we mean only what pleases our eyesight.In order to more accurately understand the stereotype of beauty, I will give a number of examples from the aesthetics of European philosophers:

Founder of Aesthetics Baumgarten writes, beauty is conformity, that is, the order of the parts in their mutual relation to each other and their relation to the whole. The purpose of beauty itself is to please and arouse desire.

Writers Schutz, Sulzer, Mendelssohn And Moritz The goal of art is not beauty, but goodness.

According to Mendelssohn (1729–1786): Bringing the beautiful, cognizable through a vague sense, to the true and good. The goal of art is moral perfection.

According to Winckelmann (1717–1767): Beauty is of three kinds: 1) beauty of form, 2) beauty of idea and 3) beauty of expression, which is possible only in the presence of the first two conditions; this beauty of expression is highest goal art, which was realized in ancient art, as a result of which modern art should strive to imitate the ancient.

According to Shaftesbury (1670–1713): What is beautiful is harmonious and proportional; what is beautiful and proportionate is true; what is beautiful and at the same time truthful is pleasant and good.

According to Hutchison (1694–1747): The purpose of art is beauty, the essence of which is the manifestation of unity in diversity.

According to Gom (1696–1782): Beauty is what is pleasant. And therefore beauty is determined only by taste.

According to Burke (1730–1797): The majestic and beautiful, which constitute the goal of art, are based on a sense of self-preservation and a sense of community.

According to Bath (1713–1780): Art consists in imitation of the beauty of nature and its goal is pleasure.

According to Hemsterhuis (1720–1790): Beauty is what gives the greatest pleasure, and the greatest pleasure is what gives us greatest number ideas in the shortest possible time.

According to Kant: Beauty without a concept and without practical benefit is generally liked, but in the objective sense it is the form of a purposeful object to the extent that it is perceived without any idea of ​​purpose.

According to Schiller: Beauty, the source of which is pleasure without practical benefit. So art can be called a game, but not in the sense of an insignificant activity, but in the sense of a manifestation of the beauty of life itself, which has no other purpose than beauty.

According to Fichte (1762–1814): The world, that is, nature, has two sides: it is the product of our limitations and it is the product of our free ideal activity. In the first sense the world is limited, in the second it is free. In the first sense, “every body is limited, distorted, compressed, constrained, and we see ugliness; in the second, we see inner fullness, vitality, rebirth - we see beauty.”

According to Adam Müller (1779–1829): There are two beauties: one is social beauty, which attracts people as the sun attracts planets - this is predominantly ancient beauty, and the other is individual beauty, which becomes such because the beholder himself becomes the sun, attracting beauty - this is the beauty of new art.

According to Solger (1780–1819): The idea of ​​beauty is the basic idea of ​​every thing. In the world we see only a perversion of the main idea, but art, through fantasy, can rise to the heights of the main idea. And therefore art is a semblance of creativity.

According to Krause (1781–1832): true real beauty is the manifestation of an idea in individual form; art is the realization of beauty in the sphere of the human free spirit.

According to Hegel (1770–1831): Beauty is the illumination of an idea through matter. The truly beautiful is only the spirit and everything that is involved in the spirit, and therefore the beauty of nature is only a reflection of the beauty inherent in the spirit: the beautiful has only spiritual content.

According to Ruge (1802–1880): Beauty is an idea expressing itself. The spirit, contemplating itself, finds itself expressed either completely - and then this complete expression of itself is beauty, or not completely - and then the need appears in it to change its imperfect expression, and then the spirit becomes creative art.

According to Fisher (1807–1887): Beauty is an idea in the form of limited manifestation. The idea itself is not inseparable, but constitutes a system of ideas that appear as an ascending and descending line. The higher the idea, the more beauty it contains, but the lowest also contains beauty, because it constitutes a necessary link in the system.

According to Herbart (1766–1841): Beauty in itself does not and cannot exist, but only our judgment. And these foundations of judgment are in relation to impressions. Eat famous relationships, which we call beautiful, and art consists in finding these relationships - simultaneous in painting, plastic and architecture, and consistent and simultaneous in music, and only consistent in poetry.

According to Schopenhauer (1788–1860): Renunciation of our individuality and contemplation of one of these stages of the manifestation of the will gives us the consciousness of beauty.

According to Hartmann (1842): Beauty lies not in the external world, not in the thing in itself, and also not in the human soul, but in the apparent, which is produced by the artist. A thing in itself is not beautiful, but the artist turns it into beauty.

According to Schnasse (1798–1875): There is no beauty in the world. In nature there is only an approach to it. Art provides what nature cannot provide. In the activity of the free self, conscious of a harmony that does not exist in nature, beauty manifests itself.

According to Bergman: It is impossible to define beauty objectively: beauty is perceived subjectively, and therefore the task of aesthetics is to determine what someone likes.

According to Jungmann (d. 1885): Beauty is, firstly, a supersensible property, and secondly, beauty produces pleasure in us through mere contemplation.

According to Taine (1828–1893): Beauty is a manifestation of the essential character of some significant idea, more perfect than the way in which it is expressed in reality.

For Cherbullier: Art is an activity that satisfies 1) our innate love to images, 2) introducing ideas into these images and 3) delivering pleasure “at the same time to our feelings, heart and mind. Beauty, according to Cherbullier, is not inherent in objects, but is an act of our soul. Beauty is an illusion. There is no absolute beauty, but what seems beautiful is what seems characteristic and harmonious to us.”

According to Koster: Ideas of beauty, goodness and truth are innate. These ideas enlighten our mind and are identical with God, who is good, truth and beauty. The idea of ​​beauty includes the unity of essence, the diversity of its constituent elements and order, which brings unity to the diversity of manifestations of life.

According to Veron (1825–1889): Art is a manifestation of feeling transmitted externally by a combination of lines, shapes, colors or a sequence of gestures, sounds or words, subject to certain rhythms.

According to Charles Darwin (1809–1883): Beauty is a feeling characteristic not only of man, but also of animals, and therefore of the ancestors of man. Birds decorate their nests and appreciate the beauty in their pairs. Beauty has an impact on marriages. Beauty includes the concept different characters. The origin of the art of music is the calling of males to their females.

According to Spencer: the origin of art is play. In the lower animals, all the energy of life is spent on the maintenance and continuation of life; in a person, after satisfying these needs, there is still a surplus of strength. This surplus is used for play, which turns into art. The game is a semblance of real action; the same is art.

According to Morley, beauty is in the human soul. Nature tells us about the divine, and art is this hieroglyphic expression of the divine.

According to Grant-Allen: Beauty has a physical origin. He says that aesthetic pleasure comes from the contemplation of beauty, while the concept of beauty comes from a physiological process. The beginning of art is play; in case of excess physical strength a person devotes himself to the game; with an excess of perceptual forces, a person devotes himself to the activity of art.

According to Curd: Beauty gives us the means of fully comprehending the objective world without considerations with other parts of the world, as is inevitable for science. And therefore, art destroys the contradiction between unity and multitude, between law and phenomenon, subject and object, combining them into one. Art is a manifestation and affirmation of freedom, because it is free from the darkness and incomprehensibility of finite things.

According to Knight: Beauty is the union of an object with a subject, it is the extraction from nature of what is characteristic of man, and the consciousness in oneself of what is common to all nature.

All aesthetic definitions of beauty come down to two basic views: first, beauty is something that exists in itself, one of the manifestations of the absolutely perfect: idea, spirit, will, God; and another thing is that beauty is the pleasure we receive, which has no purpose of personal gain. The judgments written here about beauty and art are by no means all that has been written about this subject. And every day new writers about aesthetics appear, and in their judgments there is the same strange, enchanted ambiguity and inconsistency in the definition of beauty.

Beauty according to Tolstoy in the subjective sense is what gives us famous family pleasure. In the objective sense, we call beauty something absolutely perfect, existing outside of us.

Seeing the purpose and purpose of art in the pleasure we receive from it is the same as attributing, as people at the lowest level of moral development (wild people, for example) do, the purpose and meaning of food in the pleasure received from eating it. European philosophers put the pleasure received from it as the goal of art, and not its purpose in the life of man and humanity.

In order to accurately define art, we must stop looking at it as a means of pleasure, and consider art as one of the conditions human life. Considering art in this way, we will see that art is one of the means of communication between people.

What every work of art does is that the perceiver enters into a certain kind of communication with the one who produced or is producing the art and with all those who, at the same time, before or after it, perceived or will perceive the same artistic impression.

Just as the word, which conveys the thoughts and experiences of people, serves as a means of unifying people, so does art. The peculiarity of this means of communication, which distinguishes it from communication through words, is that with words one person conveys his thoughts to another, while through art people convey their feelings to each other.

The activity of art is based on the fact that a person, perceiving by ear or sight the expressions of another person’s feelings, is able to experience the same feeling that the person expressing his feeling experienced.

The simplest example: a person laughs - and the other person becomes happy; cries - the person who hears this crying becomes sad; a person gets angry, irritated, and another, looking at him, comes into the same state. A person expresses cheerfulness, determination, or, on the contrary, despondency, calmness with his movements, sounds of his voice, and this mood is transmitted to others. A person suffers, expressing his suffering with groans and writhing, and this suffering is transmitted to others; a person expresses his feelings of admiration, awe, fear, respect for known objects, persons, phenomena - and other people become infected, experience the same feelings of admiration, awe, fear, respect for the same objects, persons, phenomena, but this is not yet art.

- Art begins when a person with a goal
convey to other people the feeling he experienced,
calls it by well-known external signs.

Dead island. Arnold Böcklin, 1880-1886. Wood, oil. 80×150 cm

For example, if a boy, who experienced fear from meeting a wolf, tells this meeting and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he experienced, depicts himself, his state before this meeting, the situation, the forest, his carelessness and then the appearance of the wolf, his movements, the distance between him and the wolf, etc. All this, if the boy re-experiences the feeling he experienced during the story, infects the listeners and makes them experience everything that the narrator experienced, is art.

If a boy had never seen a wolf, but was often afraid of him and, wanting to evoke the feeling of fear he had experienced in others, he invented a meeting with a wolf and told it in such a way that with his story he evoked in his listeners the same feeling that he experienced when imagining a wolf - then this is also art. In the same way, there will be art when a person, having experienced in reality or in the imagination the horror of suffering or the charm of pleasure, depicted these feelings on canvas or marble in such a way that others became infected with them. And art will be exactly the same if a person has experienced or imagined a feeling of fun.

- Once viewers, listeners become infected
the same feeling I had
writer, this is art.

Alyonushka. Victor Vasnetsov, 1881. Oil on canvas. 173×121 cm

Evoke in yourself a once experienced feeling and, having evoked it in yourself, through movements, lines, colors, sounds, images, expressed in words, to convey this feeling so that others experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.

Art is a human activity, consisting in the fact that one person, by consciously known external signs, conveys to others the feelings he experiences, and other people become infected with these feelings and experience them.

The material is taken from Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s book “On Art”.

ART

I. in the broad sense of the word, denoting a high level of skill in any field of activity, non-artistic and artistic, i.e. the perfect execution of this work thereby acquires a direct aesthetic. meaning, because skillful activity, wherever and however it manifests itself, becomes beautiful, aesthetically significant. This also applies to the activities of the artist-poet, painter, musician, whose creations are beautiful to the extent that they capture the high skill of their creator and evoke an aesthetic feeling in us. admiration. However Ch. The distinctive feature of artistic creativity lies not in the creation of beauty for the sake of arousing aesthetic pleasure, but in the figurative mastery of reality, i.e. in the development of specific spiritual content and in specific. social functioning.

Trying to determine the meaning of the existence of art as a special sphere of activity, fundamentally different from art in the broad sense of the word, theorists throughout the history of aesthetics. thoughts went in two ways: some were convinced that the “secret” of I. lies in one of his abilities, one calling and purpose - or in knowledge real world, either in the creation of a fictional, ideal world, or in the expression internal the world of the artist, either in organizing communication between people, or in self-directed, purely playful activity; etc. Scientists, discovering that each of these definitions absolutizes some of the inherent qualities of information, but ignores others, affirmed the multidimensionality and versatility of information and tried to describe it as a set of different qualities and functions. But at the same time, information was inevitably lost, and appeared in the form of a sum of heterogeneous properties and functions, the method of combining which into a qualitatively unique one remained incomprehensible.

Marxist-Leninist aesthetics considers I. as one of the main. forms of spiritual mastery of reality. Based on cognition. abilities of societies. human, I. stands alongside such forms of societies. consciousness, as a science, although it differs from it in its subject, in the form of reflection and spiritual development of reality, in its social function. Common in both science and art. consciousness – the ability to objectively reflect the world, to cognize reality in its essence. In this, religion is the opposite of religion (although at certain stages of historical development they were closely related), since religion. consciousness reflects reality incorrectly and is unable to penetrate into the objective essence of things.

Unlike science, which theoretically masters the world, I. masters reality aesthetically, embracing the world holistically, in all the richness of living manifestations of essence, in all feelings. the brightness of the singular, the unique. But, at the same time, in its best works it is a revelation of the truth, a deep penetration into the essence of societies. life. Aesthetic a person’s relationship to the world is manifested in society in the most different forms and, in particular, in any objective activity in which creativity is more or less freely revealed. nature of work. This, in particular, explains the presence of arts. element in certain products of material production. However, I. is historically formed as a special, specific. an area of ​​spiritual production designed to master reality aesthetically: it generalizes, identifies and develops aesthetics. society's relationship to the real world.

Arts consciousness does not have the goal of giving any special knowledge; it is cognizant. is not associated with any private sectors of material production. or societies. practice and does not aim to highlight any special chain of patterns in phenomena, for example. physical, technological or, on the other hand, specifically economic, psychological. etc. The subject of I. is “everything that is interesting for a person in life” (Chernyshevsky N.G., Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 2, 1949, p. 91), it masters the world in all the richness of its manifestations, since they turn out to be the object of practically concrete interest of people. Hence the holistic and comprehensive nature of the arts. consciousness, facilitating the individual in realizing his “tribal essence” (Marx), in the development of his social self-awareness as a member of society, defined. class. I. is called upon to expand and enrich the practical-spiritual experience of a person; it expands the boundaries of the “direct experience” of individuals, being a powerful tool for the formation of people. personality. Specific social function I. lies in the fact that it, being a form of awareness of reality, condenses in itself the infinite variety of spiritual experience accumulated by humanity, taken not in its general and final results, but in the very process of living relationships between societies. a person in peace. I.’s work embodies not only the result of knowledge, but also its path, a complex and flexible process of comprehension and aesthetics. processing the objective world. This is the most important difference. the peculiarity of the “artistic... exploration... of the world” (see K. Marx, in the book: K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, 2nd ed., vol. 12, p. 728). Since in I. the world appears mastered, meaningful, aesthetically processed, the picture of reality in the grand scheme of things is truly classical. I.'s work has orderliness, harmonious logic, and beauty, even if it involves the reproduction of base or ugly phenomena of life. This is not brought into the objective world by the arbitrariness of the subject, but is revealed by the artist in the process of spiritual mastery of reality (man creates “according to the laws of beauty” - see K. Marx, From early works, 1956, p. 566). Perceiving I.’s work, a person, as it were, performs creativity anew. mastering a subject becomes involved in the practical-spiritual experience enshrined in I., which evokes a special feeling of joy in the spiritual possession of the world, aesthetic. , without which neither the creation nor the perception of art is unthinkable. works.

The awareness of societies also has a long history. the role of I. The understanding of I. as a means of social education was outlined already in antiquity (Plato, Aristotle) ​​and in classical. aesthetics of the East (for example, in China - Confucius). According to ancient thinkers, I. has the ability to adjust the definition. image of the human psyche, making him a full member of civil society, a useful servant of the state. Middle-century philosophy interpreted this role in a false theological way. sense; The Renaissance opposed it to the idea of ​​​​the meaning of history in free and comprehensive development personality (Campanella). Enlightenment aesthetics clearly revealed the meaning of the arts. consciousness in practice social struggle, emphasizing the moral-educational (Shaftesbury) and social-mobilizing function of I. (Diderot). The most important role for understanding India as an active society. Representatives of Germany played a force in the struggle for human liberation. classic aesthetics (Goethe, Schiller, Hegel), who understood freedom as “freedom.” However, she posed this problem idealistically, which led to the opposition of “fettered life” to free art (Kant). On the contradictions thereof. idealism indicated Russian. revolutionary democrats who saw in I. a “textbook of life” and saw its function in the “sentence” of its phenomena (Chernyshevsky).

Marxism-Leninism set about educating. roles of I. on history. soil. Being a tool for realizing reality, information is active force society self-awareness, in a class society - class. Knowledge of the world in I. is inextricably linked with its aesthetics. assessment, being social in nature, necessarily includes the entire system of views of societies. person; arts a work is capable of organically expressing its aesthetic. content of philosophy morals, society and political ideas. I. advanced, responding to arriving. development of humanity, plays a progressive role in spiritual development people, in their comprehensive ideological and emotional. growth. A measure of freedom in the exercise of this will educate him. roles are determined by specific social conditions. The exploitation of man by man inevitably leads to a one-sided and sometimes ugly manifestation of ideological education. functions I. Only socialist. provides I. with the opportunity to freely shape each member of society in all the richness of his life relationships and subjective abilities.

Syncretic and predominantly ritual-magical nature of the “works” primitive art the late Paleolithic era (30-20 thousand years BC), despite the lack of manifestation of the actual aesthetic principles, nevertheless allows us to classify them as facts of art. Ancient sculptures, figurines of animals and people, drawings on clay, rock “frescos” are distinguished by their vividness, spontaneity and authenticity of the image, testifying to knowledge and mastery of the language and means of conventional reflection on a plane, and the ability to work with volumes. The definition of primitive art as “realistic”, “naturalistic” or “impressionistic” essentially fixes the “consanguineous” connection between the distant initial and subsequent stages of the development of art, its modern forms and typological characteristics.

Various interpretations of the concept of art reflect various aspects of its social nature and species specificity. Thus, ancient aesthetics emphasized the mimetic, “imitative” moment, emphasizing the cognitive significance and moral value of art. In the Middle Ages, art was seen as a way and means of communion with the “infinite”, “divine” principle: it is seen as a bearer, albeit imperfect, of the image of spiritual, “incorporeal” beauty. The Renaissance returns and develops the ancient idea of ​​art as a “mirror,” “imitation of beautiful nature,” joining Aristotle rather than Plato. German classical aesthetics (Kant, Schiller, Hegel, etc.) considers art as “a purposeful activity without a goal,” “the kingdom of appearance,” “the play of creative forces,” the manifestation and expression of the existence of the “Absolute Spirit,” and makes significant adjustments to the understanding of the relationships of art with empirical reality, science, morality and religion. Russian aesthetics of realism insists on the idea of ​​an organic connection between art and reality, considering it the main subject of “everything that is interesting for a person in life” (Chernyshevsky N.G. Complete collection of works, vol. 2. M., 1947, p. .91). Modern “postmodern aesthetics,” questioning and denying the traditions and values ​​of the “old,” humanistic culture, tries, in the spirit of “new mimesis” (J. Derrida), to reinterpret the relationship of works of art with what lies beyond the edges of the “text” and is classified as “ reality".

Identifying the relationship between art and reality does not exhaust the problem of determining its essence. The specifically universal nature of art is covered and revealed by a number of approaches that presuppose and complement each other; among them it is customary to distinguish the theoretical-cognitive (epistemological), value (axiological), aesthetic-sociological (functional). Considering art from an epistemological perspective, as Plato emphasized, or within the framework of the function it performs, with which Aristotle began his analysis of the Greek tragedy, the theorist in one way or another determines the value significance of artistic cognition and activity. In turn, the value approach cannot neglect the sociological characteristics of the essence and function of art. To understand the specifics of art, the cognitive-theoretical and value aspects are of particular importance, and the place and role of art in public life adequately grasped and revealed through aesthetic-sociological analysis. Kant, having analyzed “judgments of taste,” convincingly showed the independence (albeit relative) of the epistemological aspect. Question about social essence art arises only within the framework of a discussion of its communicative capabilities and functions. After all, art in the proper sense of the word itself creates an audience that understands it and is able to enjoy beauty.

Historically, art arises when a person goes beyond the satisfaction of his immediate physical needs, practical-utilitarian interests and goals and gains the opportunity to create universally, freely, producing things and objects that give him pleasure in the very process of activity. The emergence of art is associated with the satisfaction of the need, first anticipated and then realized, for the production and reproduction of the strictly human character of one’s life activity, and oneself as a universal and universal being. Art reveals, exposes and represents illusively, in “appearance”, that which is hidden - like, goal and mode of action - is contained in the objective-social content human activity, which is an objective source of an individual’s activity. At the same time, art affirms the potential possibility of the universal development of the social individual explicitly - as a real possibility and actual force, without losing sight of the fact that it is realized under the dominance of the “kingdom of necessity.”

Art, by its very nature, is ahead of the norms and ideas of its time, in in a certain sense capable of setting a goal. In the world of artistic imagination, a person seems to soar above the necessities, not fitting into the framework of mandatory compliance with “existence”. In this sense, art creates “possible “dynamic” being” (Aristotle), a world of “expediency beyond any purpose” (Kant). External circumstances do not have absolute power over the internal norms of human attitude towards reality, which art develops “ideally”. Therefore, a work of art is a projection of spiritual aspiration, search for feelings, fantasy of desires, for it is born from a person’s need to transform his sensory attitude to reality, which supplies this need with all required material. Art does not disdainfully turn away from the fullness of life’s manifestations (and in this sense there is nothing “forbidden” for it), but at the same time it does not demand, as L. Feuerbach noted, that its works be recognized as reality. The power of art is manifested in its certain freedom from the factual side of life. It was precisely this feature that Hegel had in mind, who represented the history of art as the “self-movement” of the aesthetic ideal embodied in images, and Belinsky, who saw in “longing for the ideal” an illusory form of expression of the urgent needs of social man, characteristic of art. The ideal as a given and a possible reality receives its objectively true embodiment and justification in art. Reflecting and expressing reality from the standpoint of the highest needs of a developing person, art shows how the present enters the future, what in the present belongs to the future

In principle, art is created by the individual and speaks to the individual. No area of ​​human creative activity can compete with it in the completeness of reflection of all diversity human sensations. This also applies to the artist, the author of the work in which he “expresses himself,” often confiding to the reader, viewer the most intimate secrets of his heart, mind, soul (cf. Flaubert’s words about the heroine of his novel: “Emma is me”). The possibilities of art in revealing the motives of human behavior, action, and experience are unprecedented. By removing the already known, fixed meanings of facts, phenomena, events, the artist exposes and reproduces their inner meaning in an individually unique appearance and form, which is significantly and obviously different from the theoretical scientist (for more details, see: Leontyev A. N. Problems of mental development. M ., 1965, pp. 286-290). Being a creative and partial act, art expects an adequate response. In the process of perceiving a work of art, as a rule, a deeply individual, uniquely personal act, the fullness of the universal, universal nature of the reader, viewer, and listener is revealed. All kinds of deviations due to differences in the level of development of taste, imagination, general and emotional culture of recipients do not cancel this norm of truly artistic perception.

The “imaginary being”, the “possible reality” of art is no less (often more) valid than the objectively existing world that served as the starting point for contemplation and representation; and in form it is an image of the whole in the “shape” of an artistic representation, where a generalization is built through the transition from one specificity to another, and in such a way that image-making necessarily acts as meaning-making (see Artistic image. Typical). So, through art - a special type of spiritual and practical mastery of reality - the formation and development of the ability of a social person to creatively perceive and transform the world around him and himself according to the laws of beauty occurs. Unlike other spheres and forms of social consciousness and activity (science, morality, religion, politics), art satisfies the most important human need - perception, knowledge of real reality in developed forms of human sensuality, i.e. with the help of the specifically human ability of the sensual (“aesthetic ”, visually expressive) perception of phenomena, objects and events of the objective world as a “living concrete whole”, embodied in works of art through creative, “productive” imagination. Since art includes, as it were, filmed form all forms social activities, its impact on life and people is truly limitless. This, on the one hand, deprives all sense of art’s claim to any kind of exclusivity other than that dictated by its species essence. On the other hand, while having a transformative effect on many public spheres and institutions, art retains its inherent characteristics and relative independence. Historically, art develops as a certain system of specific types. These are literature, music, architecture, painting, sculpture, decorative and applied arts, etc. Their diversity and differences are recorded and classified according to criteria developed by aesthetic theory and art history: according to the method of reflecting reality (epistemological criterion) - pictorial, expressive; according to the way of being of an artistic image (ontological criterion) - spatial, temporal, spatio-temporal; according to the method of perception (psychological criterion) - auditory, visual and visual-auditory. However, this is relative. A work that is primarily “fine” is at the same time “expressive” (for example, a pictorial portrait or landscape, acting, etc.), and “expressive” also includes a “figurative” element (such as, for example, “Pictures” from the exhibition” by M. Mussorgsky, dance or architectural image). A classification based on the principle of a dominant feature does not take into account the fact that each type of art uses and represents (in different proportions) all forms and means of artistic “language” - figurativeness, expressiveness, symbolization, temporal and spatial characteristics. Literature occupies a special place in this system of art forms, as the most “synthetic” form artistic imagery. Types of art are a dynamically developing system: in one era or another, one of the types prevails and becomes dominant (epic and tragedy - in Ancient Greece, architecture and icon painting - in the Middle Ages, cinema and television - in the 20th century). With the development of science and technology, the improvement of communication means, new types of art arise; so, in the beginning 20th century cinema appears, and at the end of it - artistic photography, using the principle of “collage” (a technique developed by Braque and Picasso) and claiming the status of a new visual art.

The question “what is art?” acquires relevance and urgency with the advent of postmodernism, which puts many “old”, classical ideas under, including about the aesthetic, about the artistic, and therefore about art. For postmodernists, they retain their significance only as “transcultural, transtemporal values.” Subject to revision ancient performances oh realism. The idea of ​​priority of the so-called is defended. tangible rather than illusionistic objects representing, original remedy interactions between artistic expression and experience Everyday life. “Postmodernist” artistic practice corresponding to this principle is considered (more precisely, presented) as a new and unpredictable step in the rapprochement of art and life, supposedly merging into a “one-time experience.” This approach to art is completely in tune with and adequate to the modernist rejection of a holistic picture of the world, which is in reality discrete and incomplete. However, such a decisive break with the past, the classical heritage is unlikely to be more powerful than the spiritual and practical power of art itself, which continues to amaze and give pleasure to new generations of people.

Experts give the term “art” different definitions, since it is impossible to contain all the enormous meaning that this word carries in one concept, one phrase. It performs a lot of useful functions for humanity. Art shapes spiritual values ​​and fosters an understanding of beauty.

What is art

Let us repeat, there are several definitions of the concept “art”. First of all, this is a high level of skill of a person in any field of activity. If explained in more detail, it can be called the ability to creatively reproduce reality with the help of aesthetic artistic images, objects, and actions. The main types of art are the spiritual culture of society.

The subject of art is the totality of relations between the world and man. The form of existence is a work of art, the means of manifestation of which can be word, sound, color, volume. The main goal of art is the self-expression of the creator through his work, which is created to evoke emotions, experiences, and aesthetic pleasure in the beholder.

Various types of art, the classification table of which shows their division into types, use imagination and illusoryness instead of strict unambiguous concepts. In a person’s life, it acts as a means of communication, enrichment with knowledge, education of values, and also a source of aesthetic joys.

Basic functions of art

Types of art (their table is presented below) exist in the world to perform certain social functions:

1. Aesthetic. Reproduction of reality according to the laws of beauty. Influence on the formation of aesthetic taste, the ability to experience and feel emotions. The ability to distinguish between the sublime and the standard, the beautiful and the ugly.
2. Social. Ideological influence on society, transformation of social reality.
3. Compensatory. Solving psychological problems, Recovery peace of mind and balance. Detachment from gray reality and everyday life by compensating for the lack of harmony and beauty.
4. Hedonistic. The ability to bring positive emotions through the contemplation of beauty.
5. Cognitive. Study and knowledge of reality with the help of which are sources of information about public processes.
6. Prognostic. The ability to predict and anticipate the future.
7. Educational. Influence on the formation of personality and moral development of a person.

Classification of art forms

Art does not have a single form of embodiment. In this regard, it is classified according to different criteria into genres, genera, types, subspecies. There is no one generally accepted system, so art is divided into groups according to certain factors.

Dynamics is one of the criteria by which types of art are classified. The table in this article shows how the types of creativity are divided according to this scheme. So, according to its dynamics, art is divided into:

Temporary (dynamic);

Spatial (plastic);

Spatiotemporal (synthetic).

According to the emotions expressed and the feelings evoked, it is divided into genres: comedy, tragedy, drama, etc.

Types of art are also determined by the materials used:

Traditional - paints, clay, metal, plaster, wood, granite, canvas;

Modern - electrical engineering, computers;

The main classification system identifies 5 main types of art, each of which additionally has several subtypes:

Applied (labor);

Fine;

Spectacular (game);

Sound;

Verbal.

For a clear example, we have provided you with a summary table that contains all the main types of art.

Literature

Material carrier literary type art is a word with the help of which artistic images and written texts are created. It can reflect an epic narration about certain events, a lyrical revelation of the author’s inner world and experience, a dramatic reproduction of the actions that took place.

Literature is divided into:

Historical;

Scientific;

Educational;

Artistic.

Information.

Genres of works are determined by type, form, content.

Music

There is also an art capable of conveying emotions in an audible form - music. It is the embodiment of artistic images, ideas, emotional experiences with the help of silence and sound organized in a special way. This is an art recorded by reproduction and musical notation. Music, depending on its functions, is divided into religious, military, dance, and theater. According to its performance, it can be: instrumental, electronic, vocal, choral, chamber. Basic musical genres and the directions are:

Variety;

Alternative;

Extra-European;

Ethnic;

Popular;

Classical;

Avant-garde.

Applied (labor) arts

Applied arts (the table also calls them spatial) include architecture and

Architecture helps shape the spatial environment. With its help, the design and construction of various structures is carried out. It helps to make the buildings that people need meet their spiritual needs.

Architecture is closely related to the development of technology and technology, therefore, with its help one can judge scientific achievements and artistic features different eras. Among the most famous historical styles buildings can be distinguished baroque, modern, classicism, renaissance, gothic. Depending on the purpose of the buildings, architecture is divided into public, industrial, residential, gardening, etc.

Decorative and applied art is a creative activity aimed at creating objects that simultaneously satisfy the artistic, aesthetic and everyday needs of people. Decorative and applied art to some extent has a national and ethnic character. Among its main types are: knitting, embroidery, lace weaving, pyrography, origami, quilling, ceramics, carpet weaving, artistic painting and processing of various materials, etc. Products are made using various materials and technology.

Fine Arts

Photography, sculpture, painting, graphics as a form of art that uses images, clearly show reality in tangible artistic forms.

Painting is a color representation of reality on a plane. This is one of the oldest forms of art. Depending on the theme of the painting, there are such historical, battle, mythological, animalistic, still life, landscape, portrait, everyday.

Graphics as an art form is the creation of a drawing with a line on a sheet or using a cutter on a solid material, followed by an imprint on paper. This type creativity, depending on the method of drawing, is divided into subtypes: engraving, bookplate, poster, woodcut, lithography, linocut, etching, printmaking. There are also book industrial and computer graphics.

Photography is the art of documenting a visual image, which is performed using a technical means. It has almost the same genres as painting.

Sculpture is the creation of a three-dimensional volume. With the help of this art, relief and round images are created. Based on size, it is divided into easel, monumental, and decorative.

Spectacular (play) arts

Spectacular forms of art are aimed not only at but also at entertaining people. It is precisely the person who is the main object through which spectacular art is conveyed to the viewer. It has several directions.

Choreography is the art of dance. It is the construction of images using plastic movements. Dances are divided into ballroom, ritual, folk, and modern. Choreographic art The ballet is built on musical and dance images, which are based on a certain plot.

Cinema is a synthesis of certain types of arts - theater, dance, literature. It has many genres (comedy, drama, thriller, action, melodrama) and subtypes (documentary, fiction, series).

Circus is a demonstration of entertaining performances. Includes clowning, acrobatics, reprise, pantomime, magic tricks, etc.

Theater, like cinema, is about combining several types of creativity - music, literature, vocals, visual arts, choreography. It can be dramatic, operatic, puppet, ballet.

Variety is an art of small forms that has a popular and entertainment orientation. Includes choreography, vocals, conversational genre and others.

Humanity has been creating and studying art for centuries. It is the greatest spiritual and cultural asset of society and plays a huge role in its development and improvement.

Based on the creative reproduction of the surrounding world in artistic images. Moreover, in a broad sense, art can mean highest level mastery in any field of activity, even not directly related to creativity (for example, cooking, construction, martial arts, sports, etc.).

Object(or subject) art is the world in general and man in particular, and the form of existence is a work of art as a result of creative activity. Piece of art - highest form the result of creativity.

Purposes of art:

• distribution of spiritual benefits;
• author's self-expression.

Functions of art.

1. Cognitive. Art acts as a source of information about the world or a person.
2. Educational. Art influences moral and ideological development individual.
3. Aesthetic. Reflects a person’s spiritual need for harmony and beauty. Forms the concept of beauty.
4. Hedonistic. Close to the aesthetic function, but does not form the concept of aesthetics, but provides the opportunity for aesthetic pleasure.
5. Prognostic. The function of trying to predict the future.
6. Compensatory. Serves to restore psychological balance; often used by psychologists and psychotherapists (fans of the program “Dom-2” by watching it compensate for the lack of their own personal life and emotions; although I would not classify this show as art).
7. Social. It can simply provide communication between people (communicative), or it can call for something (propaganda).
8. Entertaining(for example, popular culture).

Kinds of art.

Kinds of art are different - it all depends on what criterion to classify them by. The generally accepted classification considers three types of art.

1. art:
   • static (sculpture, painting, photography, decorative, etc.);
   • dynamic (for example, silent films, pantomime).

1. Expressive arts(or non-figurative):
   • static (architecture and literature);
   • dynamic (music, dance art, choreography).
2. Spectacular art(theater, cinema, opera, circus).

According to the degree of application in everyday life art can be:

• applied (decorative and applied);
• graceful (music).

By creation time:

• traditional (sculpture, literature);
• new (cinema, television, photography).

According to the time-space relationship:

• spatial (architecture);
• temporary (music);
• spatiotemporal (cinema, theater).

By the number of components used:

• simple (music, sculpture);
• complex (also synthetic: cinema, theater).

There are many classifications, and the definition and role of art is still a cause for constant debate and discussion. The main thing is different. Art can destroy the human psyche or heal, corrupt or educate, oppress or give impetus to development. Task human society- to develop and encourage precisely “light” types of art.

Introduction

The concepts of “art” and “culture” are identical for modern people. But still, the concept of “culture” is much broader than the concept of “art”. It includes the entire entire system of arts and each of its types separately, the entire process of formation of works of art over many centuries, the process of perceiving art, specialized cultural institutions (theatres, museums, concert halls), carrying out storage and broadcasting artistic values. This whole complex system of the existence of art in artistic culture They study special disciplines - art history and aesthetics, which provide material for cultural analysis.

First aesthetic thoughts about art, about what beauty is, we find in the most ancient eastern treatises “Veda”, “Avesta”, among ancient philosophers, in religious medieval works. For German philosopher I. Kant's aesthetics is “the science of sensuality in general.” Another understanding of aesthetics as a philosophy of art is presented in the most vivid form in German classical philosophy by G. G. Hegel.

In the 20th century, problems of art were dealt with by such modern sciences like sociology and psychology. The psychology of art studies the psychology of artistic creativity and the psychology of a certain perception of art. The sociology of art studies the patterns of interaction between art and society, their reflection in artistic creativity and performance.

The purpose of this work: to study the place and role of art in the cultural system, to consider the main issues related to the concept of art, its interaction with other spheres of culture.

Concept of art

The definition of art, its essence.

At the moment, there are many definitions of art. Basic definitions of art:

1. Art is a specific type of spiritual reflection and mastery of reality. For many years, art researchers further added: “aimed at the formation and development of a person’s ability to creatively transform the world around him and himself according to the laws of beauty.” The very fact that art has a purpose is controversial. The concept of beauty is relative. In this regard, the standard of beauty can vary greatly in different cultural traditions.

2. Art is one of the elements of culture in which artistic and aesthetic values ​​are accumulated.

3. Art is form sensory knowledge peace. There are three methods of human cognition: rational (based on thinking); sensual (based on emotions); irrational (based on intuition). In the main manifestations of human spiritual cultural activity, denoting the symbolic appearance of culture (science, art, religion), all three are present. Each of these spheres has its own predominant areas: science - rational, art - sensual, religion - intuitive.

4. Art is a field of manifestation creativity person.

5. Art is the process of a person’s mastery of artistic values, which gives him a certain pleasure and enjoyment.

Art is very multifaceted, as is the human soul. Art is richest world beautiful images, the desire to understand the meaning of life and human existence, concentration of human creative powers.

Art is the perfection of ancient statues, the grandeur of medieval Gothic, the beautiful images of Renaissance Madonnas, these are the riddles that surrealism asks us. Art is greatest creations Dante and Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Pushkin, paintings by Leonardo and Rubens, Picasso and Matisse, brilliant music of Bach and Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, sculptures of Phidias and Polycletus, Rodin and Maillol, performances by Stanislavski and Meyerhold, Brecht and Brook, films Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky.

Art is everything that surrounds us in everyday life, everything that comes into our home from TV and video screens, everything that sounds on the stage, in audio recordings.

Artistic images reflect not only reality, but also attitude and worldview cultural eras, the originality of the culture of the people in different times. All these interpretations reflect the accumulated knowledge about art and open up the diverse facets of culture.