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Culture and Art
Reference:

Art as a form of individual creativity, artistic communication and conceptualization

Rozin Vadim Markovich

Doctor of Philosophy

Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences 

109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310

rozinvm@gmail.com
Other publications by this author
 

 

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0625.2022.1.37303

Received:

13-01-2022


Published:

01-02-2022


Abstract: This article offers solution to the traditional problem of correlation of the artistic form and expressive means of art with individual creativity of the artist and audience. Comparison is conducted on the views L. S. Vygotsky and Mikhail Bakhtin on art. The author formulates the hypothesis that art is a life that is constituted equally on the laws of “Self” and the laws of artistic language and form. The hypothesis is proven by the authorial interpretation of art as a system that includes three different dimensions. The works of the prominent Israeli writer Meir Shalev serve as the illustrations. The first dimension indicates the social conditions of art: "non-utilitarian " (non-production) life of individuals dealing with art, which suggests spare time, opportunity to observe, reflect, experience, and not be criticized. The second dimension is artistic communication, which suggests the so-called division of labor, processes of comprehension and miscomprehension, intermediaries (philosophers of art, critics, and art historians) who help to interpret art and artworks. The third dimension is artistic creativity, the intersection of the lifeworld of the artist (and audience), challenges and creative pursuits, knowledge of the techniques and expressive means of art. The peculiarities of artistic creativity are viewed on the two cases: the description of absolute beauty in the novel “Fontanella” by M. Shalev, and reconstruction of the musical action of “The Poem of Extasy” by A. Scriabin, which encompasses the groups of musical action and symphonic performance of the poem.


Keywords:

art, artwork, understanding, concept, communication, image, musical movement, personality, form, aesthetics

This article is automatically translated. You can find original text of the article here.

 

 

 

        

         I want to discuss a topic that has probably been considered a thousand times, namely, whether art can be conceived rationally, scientifically, or whether it does not lend itself to this action, representing a unique, inimitable life of an individual. "Music," writes Svyatoslav Richter, who actually has subtle remarks about the essence of musical art, "created for playing and listening, does not need words - any interpretation about it is completely unnecessary" [10]. Mikhail Lidsky, commenting on the famous performer, conductor, composer, and musicologist Mikhail Arkadiev, seems to echo Richter: "... Arkadiev always has a lot of all sorts of nonsense... And this is always rather harmful for art <...>          In general, I must say that Mikhail Arkadiev's steady habit of generalizations and deductions of laws and principles in various fields of human thought and activity is the surest path to error. The most common mistake people make is premature generalization. And any generalization cannot be premature, except perhaps the generalization of the Lord God... . Perhaps ? only a practical generalization in one's own performance of all that is not timely. what a person has managed to learn, experience and achieve. Such a practical “generalization”, whether it be Paganini's or Arkadiev's, will certainly be true for them at a certain moment. Every day of life brings new discoveries and new generalizations and new overthrow of previous generalizations. Just have time to rebuild. Which is exactly what I call for in everyday practice. Be alert and flexible, sensitive and receptive. As changeable as life itself and as constant in the main thing as long as it exists" [3]. And such statements, especially from artists, are innumerable.

At the same time, starting with Aristotle, art is discussed and comprehended, as Scriabin once said, "music is alive with thought." And didn't philosophy, aesthetics, science, and art studies contribute to the development of art? Moreover, philosophers and scientists are trying to understand the essence and nature of art. Here, for example, is how the creator of Soviet psychology L.S. Vygotsky describes the mechanism of art's influence on a person; and at the same time, on the one hand, eliminates an individual, his life in art, on the other hand, on the contrary, asserts that art cannot take place without this life and work of the individual.

"Analyzing the structure of stimuli," Vygotsky writes, "we recreate the structure of the reaction. The simplest example can explain this. We study the rhythmic structure of some verbal passage, we deal all the time with non-psychological facts, however, analyzing this rhythmic structure of speech as variously aimed at evoking a functional reaction accordingly, through this analysis, proceeding from completely objective data, we recreate some features of an aesthetic reaction. At the same time, it is quite clear that the aesthetic reaction recreated in this way will be completely impersonal, that is, it will not belong to any individual person, and will not reflect any individual mental process in all its concreteness, but this is only its dignity. This circumstance helps us to establish the nature of the aesthetic reaction in its pure form, without mixing it with all the random processes that it acquires in the individual psyche. This method also guarantees us sufficient objectivity of the results obtained and of the entire research system, because it proceeds every time from the study of solid, objectively existing and factored facts. The general direction of this method can be expressed by the following formula: from the form of an artistic work through the functional analysis of its elements and structure to the reconstruction of an aesthetic reaction and to the establishment of its general laws" [1, p. 40] (our italics).

So, the impersonal "aesthetic reaction of the psyche", "general laws", on the one hand, on the other ? "individual experience", "sincere feeling and fantasy". "The whole task of tragedy, as an art, is to make us experience the incredible, in order to perform some unusual operation on our feelings. [1, p. 236] <...>

We could say that the basis of the aesthetic reaction is the affects evoked by art, which we experience with all reality and force, but find a discharge in the activity of fantasy that the perception of art requires from us every time… All art is based on this unity of feeling and fantasy. [1, p. 271] <...>

Even the most sincere feeling by itself is not able to create art ... a creative act of overcoming this feeling is also necessary, of defeating it" [1, p. 313].

  In my opinion, there is a clear contradiction here, of course, not formally logical, but quite meaningful. "Incredible experience", "fantasy" ? how far it is from "general laws" and "impersonal aesthetic reaction"! However, is it not possible to understand this contradiction dialectically ? both at the same time, as two sides of one whole? For example, Mikhail Bakhtin's concept clearly refers to such a whole ? an "aesthetic object", one side of which is the personality of the artist (or viewer), "I", and the other is an impersonal artistic form and language (word, rhythm, intonation, melody, theme, drama, etc.).  "To enter into the visible, audible, uttered by the creator and thereby overcome the material extra-creative-definite character of the form... when reading and listening to a poetic work, I do not leave it outside of myself as another's utterance... but to a certain extent I make it my own utterance about another, I assimilate the rhythm, intonation, articulatory tension, internal gesticulation... as an adequate expression of my own value attitude to the content… I become active in the form and in the form I take a value position outside the content ? as a cognitive-poetic orientation" [2, pp. 58-59].

How to understand it ? "I, entered into the artistic language", "I am in form and form"? One can also recall Marina Tsvetaeva, who in the article "Art in the light of conscience" writes: "The artist's timidity in front of a thing. He forgets that he is not writing. Vyacheslav Ivanov's word to me is “Just start! Already from the third page you will see that there is no freedom,” that is: I will be at the mercy of things, that is, at the mercy of a demon, that is, only a humble servant <...> And the share of will in all this? Oh, huge. At least not to despair when you are waiting for the weather by the sea<...> My will is hearing, not to get tired of listening until you hear, and not to bring in anything that you haven't heard" [11].

         Does Tsvetaeva, who is in the power of a demon (the "demon of art"?), coincide with the "I" of Bakhtin, who lives and creates "in form and form"? I think there is a lot of similarity here. But these statements can be understood in different ways: the artist has "no freedom", because he is bound, bound by artistic language and possible form, and just the opposite - artistic language and form live according to the laws (or elements) of the life of the "I", the artist's personality. Finally, a third option suggests itself: art is life, which is constituted equally according to the laws of the "I", and according to the laws of artistic language and form. I am inclined to this third option. But to characterize it, first I will tell you how I understand art.     

         The concept of art. This scheme is a generalization of the author's recent studies of art and his works [6; 7; 8]. It describes a system consisting of three interconnected plans. The first one points to the "social conditions of art": this includes the "non-utilitarian" (non-productive) life of individuals struggling in art, assuming free time, the opportunity to observe, think, experience, not be judged, etc. For example, in response to the accusation of the famous Israeli writer Meir Shalev that he promotes archaic revenge and deviant forms of sexual behavior, Shalev responded precisely in the spirit of freedom of creativity and personal beliefs.  

"I," Shalev explains in an interview, "am very interested in revenge as a literary idea. It turns me on. The desire for revenge, in my eyes, is much stronger than jealousy or some religious feelings. Its consequences are tragic. In the novel there are three murders... this angered some of my Israeli readers, they said: it is immoral to write that murder has a therapeutic effect, murder cannot cure! Well, you say, “impossible.” But the fact is that it is possible for certain people, as happened in my novel" [13].

"I would call it not eroticism, but sensuality. I do not give detailed physiological descriptions of sexual contacts anywhere. But I am a sensual person, I appreciate sensations – taste, smell, touch, variety of colors – and share them with the reader…

As for homosexuality, I do not find it a perversion or a disease, it is a variant of normal personal and sexual relations of consenting adults. As, by the way, what is called “adultery”, and the relationship of two men and one woman, two women and one man, two couples. It's their own business…

As for the prohibition of "distribution" – no one can and should forbid a writer to describe life in all its manifestations. Following the logic of those who forbid novels about perversions, it is necessary to prohibit the printing of “Crime and Punishment” Dostoevsky as propaganda of murder and prostitution" [14].

         It is worth paying attention: the reader is also free in the field of art, and is protected from accusations that he misunderstood and experienced something there. He is also protected from direct contact with the characters of the artwork, because, for example, three murders in Shalev's novel "Three Bears Came Out of the Forest" are committed not in front of the reader, but in the world of artistic reality. Another thing is that the reader is not protected from experiences that may be even stronger than in life, if he directly observed the events described in the novel. As one reader writes.

Panda 007. Don't kill? Kill, kill! "A powerful, beautiful and scary novel. Once again, I am convinced that it is not the essence of what the writer is talking about: the plot of Shalev can be retold in a few sentences. And the story will be the most banal, especially if you remove the bloody details. And it's impossible to break away. I strongly suspect that the point here is emotional persuasiveness. The novel is written as if in one breath. You get into this whirlpool of strong emotions... the current picks you up, carries you, and you can't cope with it anymore. And I don't want to cope. The author's persuasiveness is such that while you are reading, you perceive the family story being told simply as a fact – “it was like that.” And only after reading it, you fall into a kind of stupor. The story is about the fact that (according to the apt expression of Lars von Trier) “all shits”. Or, as the heroine of the famous movie said: “Gentlemen, you are animals.” Actually, after that, the question is “How was the Holocaust possible?” removed from the agenda. Here you have the real destruction in one absolutely beautiful Jewish village. Two brutal and targeted murders. Everyone knows everything, everyone is silent" [12].

         The second plan of the art scheme can be called "artistic communication". On the one hand, it is a kind of division of labor: artists create works of art, and the audience reads them (watch, listen), on the other hand, it is broadcast, because you still need to deliver the work to the viewer (book, theater, exhibition, conservatory) and teach him to read and experience the work adequately. At the same time, understanding, but often misunderstanding of the work. So Shalev is well aware of the communication side of his work; at the same time, readers do not always understand his novels.  

         "To tell," Shalev explains in an interview, "an interesting story. It's good to write it. I'm a craftsman: that's how you want to write a good article, a photographer wants to take a good shot, that's how I wanted to write a good story. Strong. And I see that after people have read the book, they cannot forget it. I am very happy about this, so I have penetrated their soul after all and they have nowhere to run away from me. Readers say that the book, on the one hand, caused them suffering while reading, and on the other hand, they could not put it down. It's a great compliment for me. I felt it in the process of working on the novel. It was very hard for me to write it, I left it, and then came back again, it became a special experience for me, more serious than other books" [13].

Here is what one reader writes about Shalev's novel "Esav". "Such positive reviews about the book, and here I am, don't sew the mare's tail. I had to put 3 in order not to put two. This is not my book at all, to be honest, I didn't even read it to the middle, I just stopped torturing myself. I don't know what to write, while reading the book all the time there was a feeling that I was on a carousel. which rotates in the middle of the hubbub of the oriental bazaar: everything flickers, runs, shimmers. colored, and I'm spinning and I can't understand anything at all: where am I, what am I, why am I. Something like that" [12].

         To help such a reader, and indeed the reader (viewer, listener) in the field of art, there are specialists who can be called "intermediaries in art" ? philosophers of art, critics, art historians, teachers. They create schemes, expressive means, samples of the analysis of works of art, concepts of art. Truly, the first significant mediator in history was Aristotle, who wrote Poetics. It is the intermediaries in art that largely determine the understanding (conceptualization) of works of art and himself, but in different ways. "It seems to me," writes Lidsky, "if we talk about the principles of the approach to Bach's music, it is much more important to realize its tense tone. Fully awake, active and humanistic. It also seems to me important to play not the sounds but the connections between them ? in this active attention to the connection and the dynamic PATH lies perhaps the most important secret that Gould and other great Bach performers possessed. I would like to hear the opinion of real great masters, who have Bach's HTK (well?tempered clavier. - V.R.) freely fits in their heads, as the events of epochs and religions of peoples fit under the dome of St. Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople" [3].  

It's all the taste and version of Lidsky: and the tone of other Bach performers is different, and they don't play the connections between the sounds, but the sounds themselves. I'm afraid that every second interpreter and performer will have their own Bach.  

The third plan is the creativity, of course, mainly of the artist, but also of the viewer. As Merab Mamardashvili writes, referring to Proust. "At any moment, the artist must obey and take into account only his instinct, why art is what is most real, there is the harshest school of life and the actual last Judgment" [16, III, p. 880]. We, Mamardashvili clarifies, "should consider art not as a field of occupation of people who are specially appointed for this (some are even appointed geniuses), but as a part of life, as what is necessary in our life is done by the work of thought, which is equivalent to the creation of a work of art <...> A novel, or a text, or a work is the machine of self-change" [4, pp. 157, 354]. "In the XX century, the old truth was clearly understood that a novel, a text, is something in the bosom of which the author of this text is born for the first time as a person and as a living person… what he wrote is the womb in which he became a real "I" for the first time, including he got rid of something and went some way through the text. My testimony is unknown to myself – until the book" [5].

         But what is the creativity of an artist, for example, a writer? Is it not that he must create events of the reality of art from words and artistic language, events in which one can not only live, but solve problems that interest and excite the writer? There are two difficulties here: words and language are not events, not objectivity, besides, it is unclear how all this needs to be organized in order to answer their (the author's) challenges. I will not pretend that I know the answers to these questions, I will offer one reconstruction of Shalev's description of beauty in the novel Fontanella. In this novel there is such a heroine, Pnina, the daughter of the main characters Apupa and Amuma. She is amazingly beautiful, and according to the plot, she does not even come out into the light so that the sun does not damage her skin. Another detail, Apupa, her father takes away from her at the birth of her son Gabriel and brings him up himself. This is how the beauty of Pnina is realized for the first time.    

"Old Schuster sighed. His knees were buckling, his hands were looking for support. Ten Pnins looked at each other and immediately began to spin around in place to see each other from all sides, and when each of them completed the turn, they all laughed at once, pulled out ten hairpins and let their hair down at once. The old Schuster whispered: "No, Pninele..." ? and again "No..." ? but it was too late: a high, even sound, clear and prolonged, was heard, and before the real Pnina had time to understand what had happened, the mirror opposite her split in two, and its fragments fell to the floor. And immediately after him, the mirrors behind her burst, and the reflections on the side walls also crumbled into sparkling fragments. For a moment Pnina was afraid that she, too, was going to crumble, but then one of the fragments bit into her ankle. She screamed, tore out a glass splinter, looked at it and saw a fragment of herself in it.

At the exit from the synagogue, many of the villagers were waiting for her, who heard the loud sound of broken mirrors and the sorrowful cries of the old Schuster, and ran to see what happened there. She passed between them and again saw her beauty in their eyes [her reflection flashing in their eyes], who for the first time saw and realized her beauty. Only now did the men understand why lately, wherever they went, their feet carried them through the school yard and always before the start of classes, or at their end, or at the big break. And the women understood why they were overtaken by abdominal and head pains at exactly the same hours. As for the Yofe family, where this girl was conceived, born and grew up, it, as always, understood what was happening after all and, as always, only with the help of a visual demonstration, because Pnina, returning home, went straight to the closet, opened it, and the hoodie that she once bought Hirsch Landau suddenly became elegant and elegant to her, joyfully shone towards her and, as if slipping, embraced her body" [15, p. 43].

         There are three artistic techniques here: an invented story with Pnina, the image of ten crumbling mirrors and the reaction of the villagers to Pnina. In the center of course is the image of ten mirrors. You can roughly recreate how Shalev thought. But first, it's worth saying something about how he probably understood beauty. In this case, we are talking about absolute beauty, the idea of beauty. Such beauty should strike on the spot ("beauty is a terrible force"), it is not compatible with either family or ordinary life. The question is, how to artistically recreate such beauty? Shalev finds (invents) four images: mirrors, reactions of villagers to Pnina, deprivations of her born son, Pnina's life only at night. The mirror not only reflects, but contains an image. Absolute beauty is an image (image) of colossal power, no mirror, of course, can withstand it. So they crumble. But not only the mirror image can amaze, but also the reflection in the eyes of the men and women of the village. It's easier with images of separation and nightlife. Now we need, as Shalev himself says, to come up with an interesting story. So he composes it.

         However, was it possible to reconstruct this story without knowing the "life world" of Shalev, without realizing that he artistically recreated absolute beauty, without coming to the ideas of crumbling mirrors, the reflection of beauty in the eyes of the audience, separation from his own child, the nightlife of a beauty? I think not. It is possible to understand the artistic image of Pnina only by connecting, bringing together the life world of Shalev, his problems and creative searches, his knowledge of techniques and expressive means of art (write an interesting story, choose a genre, in this episode fantastic, break into themes, in this case there are three, choose words ? "don't get tired of listening until you hear, and don't bring in anything you haven't heard," etc.). It turns out something like what Bakhtin writes about: Shalev enters "the creator into the visible, audible, pronounced", creates an artistic form, and solves his problems with the form, in this case, he lives in the form of absolute beauty created by him. At the same time, what I wrote about: art is life, which is constituted equally according to the laws of the "I", and according to the laws of artistic language and form. I will give another example of creative work ? Aida Aylamazyan's recollection of the construction of the artistic form of the musical action of the poem "Ecstasy" by Scriabin.

  "On July 6, 2005, in Moscow, in the Tchaikovsky Hall, as part of the V International Festival of Authentic Musical and Theatrical Art "Moscow Action", a performance of Scriabin's "Poem of Ecstasy" by several free dance groups took place. The director of the Center for the Musical Movement "Haptahor" psychologist Aida Aylamazyan staged the dances; she studied the musical movement with Olga Kondratyevna Popova, a student and associate of the founder of Heptahor Stefanida Rudneva (1890-1989). The Symphony Orchestra of Russia, which performed the "Poem of Ecstasy", was led by Mikhail Arkadiev, a well-known interpreter of Scriabin. In addition to the Heptahor music movement studio, several other dance groups took part in the dance action (the Art Movement Studio of the Central House of Scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Isadora Plastic Dance Studio at the RUDN, the Persephone Eurythmy Studio, the Buto Dance Theater "Odd-dance Theater", the children's collective "Rhythm Theater" of the College. Gnessin).      

  As the music progressed, free dance groups took to the stage, each wearing their own color. In accordance with the technique of free dance and the dramaturgy of the work, the participants of the musical action joined in pairs or groups, scattered, created rotating circles and round dances, "blossomed" with giant flowers, froze for a moment, and the eye managed to see something resembling ancient round dances, pagan gestures of turning to the sun, then labor movements, then just the joy of a dancing and unfettered person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Although the eye was riveted to the action that unfolded on the stage, the music of the poem was perceived unusually, in a new way, as if for the first time. There was no need, as is often the case at the conservatory, to keep yourself in music, try not to miss important musical details, themes or features of their development. The musical movement further structured Scriabin's music, infused energy into it, cleared the way for the perception of a new amazing form. The viewer, or rather the accomplice of the action, really began to see the mystery that Scriabin wanted to create with the music of the "Poem", and thereby transform the listener.  Here in bright scarlet clothes are the light forces of the spirit, here are the Buto dancers, whose bodies are covered with gray clay, symbolize heavy matter, here is the struggle of the light forces of the spirit with matter, here is the descent of the spirit into matter, etc., etc.

  “The mystery of Scriabin," writes B. F. Schletzer, "was supposed to be the fulfillment, the realization of ecstasy, death and transformation of the universe.” “The realization, not the reproduction, and the universal, superpersonal character of this action are the two moments that determined the development of the Mystery. In miniature, the plan of the Scriabin Mystery is the history of mankind as a process of separation and immersion of spirit into matter, the acceptance of nature into Spirit, victory over the heaviness, inertia, fragmentation of the natural world and a return to unity.” “In Scriabin's notes, the goal and result of historical and cosmic evolution is ecstasy, the experience of which leads to a complete transformation of the cosmos and humanity in it.” He states: “Ecstasy is the peak, there is the last moment, which ... means the whole history of mankind. Absolute being is realized... at the moment of the completion of the Divine creation, at the moment of ecstasy.” “L. L. Sabaneev writes, reproducing the picture that Scriabin repeatedly painted to his friends: ‘He imagined the very secret action of the Mystery, the very processality of its course, as a sequence of experience by all participants in themselves of the entire history of the process of the fall of the Spirit into matter... The word and forms, music and all the incoming artistic entities were supposed to symbolize the successive vicissitudes of the consciousness of the Spirit.’”

         Maybe not all participants had the experience of participating in the mystery, for many participants and audience-listeners – it was just a beautiful, authentic performance of the “Poem of Ecstasy” (several people approached Aida Aylamazyan and asked that Scriabin had conceived the performance of his poem?). But some participants perceived the action as a mystery. For example, one of the members of the Heptahor group, Irina Zinkevich, told me: “When we were finishing, I thought that the end of the world had come and everyone had died.”

“When I was looking for a ‘move’ to Scriabin," Aida writes, "I was actually solving a number of problems. This is really a ‘move’, that is, it was necessary to find some idea that would allow all these tasks to be ‘assembled’, somehow connected in one fell swoop.

 Firstly, it was necessary to treat the well-known Scriabin's ideas of color music; secondly, to his poetic text dedicated to the "Poem of Ecstasy"; thirdly, to deal with the existing interpretations of Scriabin's music.

At the same time it was necessary to solve their own problems: 1) to unite groups of different directions of free dance in a joint action; 2) not to violate the principles of musical movement ? merging with music, living music, improvisational dance, the living presence of participants ‘here and now’, the reality of their experiences. One of the principles is connected with the fact that music is initially taken improvisationally, and then a musical-motor form, composition, is born in collaboration. But in this situation, I had different groups, a lot of participants, mismatched principles of work, etc. And the music was too grandiose, complex, this is a great symphonic work and the experience of such productions of the participating groups of the project was not.

  There were attempts to embody Scriabin's music visually, of course, but we should pay attention to the approach itself ? it is in color on the screen (that is, on the plane) to build a visual series. To me, the approach itself seems wrong, because Scriabin's color music is certainly not a plane and not a screen. I realized that technically the tasks of color music are difficult to solve or are solved straightforwardly, with the loss of end-to-end musical content, these considerations prompted me to abandon the idea of color music, and I tried to sort of forget about it.

   After getting acquainted with the text of the Scriabin poems, I realized that it was better to forget about this, simply because these are bad poems, which means you should not trust them too much. Scriabin's music is incomparable with them. However, I found the very fact of the construction of the text important, as well as the fact that Scriabin was building philosophical systems, and, apparently, I began to look for embodiments of certain philosophical doctrines in his music. And here, on this basis, Scriabin's music was seen not at all impressionistic, as many musicologists describe it, but rather conceptual and symbolic. So it was possible to jump out of the blurry-smeared perception of Scriabin's music, devoid of a strong form and completeness of utterance.

  It was Scriabin's suddenly felt intellectualism that gave the key to the solution and opened some floodgates that freed him from stereotypes, from well-known opinions and approaches.

  By the way, if it's interesting, I noticed that I have to feel the impossibility of the task I'm facing, and only after experiencing the impossibility, after feeling defeat and even collapse, an unexpected thought, image, idea comes, or some moment is caught, a moment of precision, a moment of hitting.

  In the case of Scriabin, it was not a moment, not a separate fragment or some kind of feeling, but suddenly the whole work was seen as a clearly developed, consistent movement of thought, as a symbolic expression of some theosophical (and not only theosophical) ideas, as a very thoughtful and precisely calculated musical form with a clear structure. And this structure was heard and indicated, although at that time I had not yet got acquainted with the score of the "Poem of Ecstasy". And this structure turned out to be surprisingly suitable for the task at hand ? to include different groups in the action, since the themes and parts that differ in nature were clearly distinguished, bearing obviously different energies and spiritual contents. The comparison of these energies, representing the universe of cosmic and spiritual forces as a whole, with dance, with movement peculiar to different directions, unexpectedly revealed that free dance in its various manifestations, plans and experiences also represents this universe of human, and maybe not only human existence. The idea was found.  And then it was thought, or rather, felt, that the living expression of these elements inherent in each of the presented directions (musical movement, rhythmics, Alekseevskaya gymnastics, eurythmy, buto) in their struggle and fusion, opposition and complementarity would be a real action, which would give a sense of mystery as an event taking place here ? the event of uniting people in dance.

   The color scheme naturally followed from the general concept: each theme as an element is offered its own color. Accordingly, instead of flashing color spots and light bulbs, a distinct color solution of the themes and, accordingly, their musical interweaving should have given color combinations. And yet the emphasis was on plasticity and expressiveness of movement, the costume obeyed the movement, beat it. Therefore, by the way, the semi-naked, clay-smeared buto dancers seemed appropriate to me. The ultimate physicality, the density of their dance does not need volatile elements of clothing, does not need a cover.

   About the techniques of work in the process of creating a composition. My job was to propose a concept that infected the participants. It was necessary for them to accept their task, to see their theme in the general structure, in the totality and sequence of other topics, to build their interaction with other participants accordingly, to realize their fate within this piece of music. And then they could work independently within their themes and parts (which was done) - with subsequent discussion and correction, primarily due to the need to create integrity, build a common interaction, put key accents in the general musical and plastic dramaturgy. And I would like to emphasize once again that we were looking for semantic lines of movement of groups, and not creating visual images. Entertainment as a secondary phenomenon arose simply because,  what people (that is, the audience) understood what was happening in front of them.

    Unexpectedly, I received a reproach that the groups were moving too smoothly for improvisational dance, that they followed the path of traditional staging. To this I will answer that logic does not always coincide with reason. Brought to the point of absurdity, the idea becomes unconstructive. People united by music, a common worldview, approach, are able to find and make a single decision without turning into cogs and wheels. By enabling everyone to be present individually and preserving their individual plastic expressiveness, each piece of music requires a certain degree of coordination of actions and, in any case, a combination of efforts, a combination of efforts; otherwise, instead of music, we will have a riot of individual wills. Unfortunately, such a naive point of view exists, allegedly defending the freedom of personal expression. It seems to me that, after all, there will be more personal expression if it is possible to achieve some meaningful artistic result.  

   Finally, the question of whether this action can be repeated? Of course, it is possible to repeat the plastic and spatial pattern of movement, the question is: is it possible to repeat the event at the same time? It turns out that the event cannot be repeated, at least because since then it has not been completed, it lasts, the mystery is not finished. But perhaps the next event is knocking on the world and then it is important to hear his call" [9, pp. 322-324, 334-557].

         The art form that Aida built was groped during the synthesis of at least four processes. One is the clarification of the form and content of Scriabin's symphony "Poem of Ecstasy". Here, of course, the high, I'm not afraid to say, philosophical culture of the life world of Aida worked. The second process is an excellent knowledge of the possibilities and logic of the musical movement, because Aida is, one might say, the "heir in a straight line" of this dance and partly esoteric culture. And in this case, both the wealth of Aida's life world and real generalized knowledge converged. The third process is the formation of the form as a complex, multifaceted musical?motor text in the intended artistic communication. Finally, the fourth is the implementation of the planned ideas in musical action. This experience also confirms Scriabin's statement that "music is alive with thought", in fact, Aida had to build a difficult concept in order to comprehend and assemble her installations and knowledge with the features and content of Scriabin's symphonic music, with the possibilities of the musical movement of several dance groups into one artistic form.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The author of the reviewed article returns to the issue, which, as he himself points out, has been discussed many times in the history of culture: "is it possible to think of art rationally, scientifically, or is it not amenable to this action, representing a unique, inimitable life of an individual?" The main text of the article is a sequence of testimonies from both thinkers (starting with Aristotle) and "artists" (in the broadest sense of the word), for whom art is not a subject of reflection, as for the former, but something that always remains, throughout the entire creative life, "at the fingertips", or in the the direct meaning of this expression, as in "artists" (in the narrow sense of the word), or in that part of the soul that, like the hand of a sculptor or painter, seeks to come into contact with the world. It should be recognized that both the materials themselves presented in the article and the accompanying reflections and assessments of the author are of interest to a wide range of readers. At the same time, the consideration of the chosen topic could be presented in a more "differentiated" way: it seems that the answers to the question posed by the author at the beginning of the presentation, around which all the material is grouped, significantly depend on the art of which era we turn it to, to which kind of art, finally, to which specific artist. It is clear that, for example, the author's "originality", which is a kind of imperative for many modern artists (no matter how, if only "unusual"), was unthinkable not only in the Middle Ages, but also (though for other reasons), for example, in the era of classicism. Just as, according to the thinker, philosophy is an epoch captured in thought, so art is "an epoch captured in an artistic image." In a word, the historical and cultural context "specifies" both the question under discussion and the possible answers to it; it is no coincidence that every truly new era in art felt "uncomfortable" (since objectively it is exactly "new") until it found its historical "prototype", perhaps in a significant way the degree is imaginary (the most famous example, of course, is Renaissance art, which saw a model for itself in Greek or Roman antiquity). Is it possible to bring the "answers" of all eras into a kind of unity? Perhaps it is possible, but this single answer will necessarily turn out to be either incomplete or too abstract. Something similar can be said about art forms. Of course, the "language of music" is almost untranslatable "on the rails of rational discourse," but this, of course, cannot be said about the playwrights of the same classicism, in whose works there is no less "logic" (even "formal") than many "professional philosophers". To some extent, this can be said about fiction in general. Let us recall that in Hegelian aesthetics, such a genre of "romantic" art as poetry already, in essence, "falls out" of art, in it, according to Hegel, there is too rich and heterogeneous content outweighing the form; it is almost not "art" anymore, there is too much "thought" in it. But Hegel did not live to see the time when the realistic novel was established in literature. Marx noted that Balzac provides more for understanding bourgeois society than all political economy. How would Hegel assess such an "overabundance of reflection", would this new phenomenon force him to reconsider the definition of art as a balance of content and form? And the last remark is related to the culture of the last century, in which art already had a powerful "reverse influence" on philosophy. In many cases (as, for example, in Borges) it is difficult to say what you are dealing with – with a literary work familiar in form (a poem or a short story) or with a philosophical essay. And the poems and novels of G. Hesse – isn't this metaphysics? In short, when we discuss modern (often overly "conceptual") art, we must proceed not from the fact that "thought" and "image" are inherently heterogeneous and occur only somewhere in "aesthetic reasoning", but from the need to draw at least some definite boundaries between them. However, these comments should be considered as wishes that the author could take into account in subsequent publications, this article itself is capable of provoking a lively response from the reader, it undoubtedly deserves publication in a scientific journal.
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