Even at first glance, it is clear that a work of art consists of certain sides, elements, aspects, etc. In other words, it has a complex internal composition. Moreover, the individual parts of the work are connected and united with each other so closely that this gives grounds to metaphorically liken the work to a living organism. The composition of the work is thus characterized not only by complexity, but also by orderliness. A work of art is a complexly organized whole; From the awareness of this obvious fact follows the need to understand the internal structure of the work, that is, to isolate its individual components and realize the connections between them. Refusal of such an attitude inevitably leads to empiricism and unsubstantiated judgments about the work, to complete arbitrariness in its consideration and ultimately impoverishes our understanding of the artistic whole, leaving it at the level of primary reader perception.

IN modern literary criticism There are two main trends in establishing the structure of a work. The first comes from the identification of a number of layers or levels in a work, just as in linguistics in a separate utterance one can distinguish a phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic level. At the same time, different researchers have different ideas about both the set of levels itself and the nature of their relationships. So, M.M. Bakhtin sees in a work primarily two levels - “fable” and “plot”, the depicted world and the world of the image itself, the reality of the author and the reality of the hero*. MM. Hirshman proposes a more complex, basically three-level structure: rhythm, plot, hero; in addition, “vertically” these levels are permeated by the subject-object organization of the work, which ultimately creates not a linear structure, but rather a grid that is superimposed on the work of art**. There are other models of a work of art that present it in the form of a number of levels, sections.

___________________

* Bakhtin M.M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. M., 1979. P. 7–181.

** Girshman M.M. Style of a literary work // Theory of literary styles. Modern aspects studying. M., 1982. S. 257-300.

A common disadvantage of these concepts can obviously be considered the subjectivity and arbitrariness of identifying levels. Moreover, no one has yet attempted justify division into levels by some general considerations and principles. The second weakness follows from the first and consists in the fact that no division by level covers the entire richness of the elements of the work, or even gives a comprehensive idea of ​​its composition. Finally, the levels must be thought of as fundamentally equal - otherwise the very principle of structuring loses its meaning - and this easily leads to the loss of the idea of ​​​​a certain core of a work of art, connecting its elements into a real integrity; connections between levels and elements turn out to be weaker than they really are. Here we should also note the fact that the “level” approach very little takes into account the fundamental difference in quality of a number of components of the work: thus, it is clear that an artistic idea and an artistic detail are phenomena of a fundamentally different nature.

The second approach to the structure of a work of art takes such general categories as content and form as the primary division. This approach is presented in its most complete and well-reasoned form in the works of G.N. Pospelova*. This methodological tendency has much fewer disadvantages than the one discussed above; it is much more consistent with the actual structure of the work and is much more justified from the point of view of philosophy and methodology.

___________________

*See, for example: Pospelov G.N. Problems literary style. M., 1970. P. 31–90.

We will begin with the philosophical justification for distinguishing content and form in the artistic whole. The categories of content and form, excellently developed in Hegel’s system, became important categories dialectics and have been repeatedly successfully used in the analysis of a wide variety of complex objects. The use of these categories in aesthetics and literary criticism also forms a long and fruitful tradition. Nothing prevents us, therefore, from using such well-proven philosophical concepts and to the analysis of a literary work, moreover, from the point of view of methodology, this will only be logical and natural. But there are also special reasons to begin the dissection of a work of art by highlighting its content and form. A work of art is not a natural phenomenon, but a cultural one, which means that it is based on a spiritual principle, which, in order to exist and be perceived, must certainly acquire some material embodiment, a way of existing in a system of material signs. Hence the naturalness of defining the boundaries of form and content in a work: the spiritual principle is the content, and its material embodiment is the form.

We can define the content of a literary work as its essence, spiritual being, and form as the way of existence of this content. Content, in other words, is the writer’s “statement” about the world, a certain emotional and mental reaction to certain phenomena of reality. Form is the system of means and techniques in which this reaction finds expression and embodiment. Simplifying somewhat, we can say that content is what What the writer said with his work, and the form - How he did it.

The form of a work of art has two main functions. The first is carried out within the artistic whole, so it can be called internal: it is a function of expressing content. The second function is found in the impact of the work on the reader, so it can be called external (in relation to the work). It consists in the fact that form has an aesthetic effect on the reader, because it is the form that acts as the bearer of the aesthetic qualities of a work of art. Content in itself cannot be beautiful or ugly in a strict, aesthetic sense - these are properties that arise exclusively at the level of form.

From what has been said about the functions of form, it is clear that the question of convention, so important for a work of art, is resolved differently in relation to content and form. If in the first section we said that a work of art in general is a convention in comparison with primary reality, then the degree of this convention is different for form and content. Within a work of art the content is unconditional; in relation to it, one cannot ask the question “why does it exist?” Like the phenomena of primary reality, in the artistic world content exists without any conditions, as an immutable given. It cannot be a conditional fantasy, an arbitrary sign, by which nothing is implied; in a strict sense, the content cannot be invented - it directly comes into the work from primary reality (from the social existence of people or from the consciousness of the author). On the contrary, the form can be as fantastic and conditionally implausible as desired, because by the convention of the form something is meant; it exists “for something” – to embody content. Thus, the Shchedrin city of Foolov is a creation of the author’s pure fantasy; it is conventional, since it never existed in reality, but autocratic Russia, which became the theme of “The History of a City” and is embodied in the image of the city of Foolov, is not a convention or a fiction.

Let us note to ourselves that the difference in the degree of convention between content and form provides clear criteria for classifying one or another specific element of a work as form or content - this remark will be useful to us more than once.

Modern science proceeds from the primacy of content over form. In relation to a work of art, this is true both for creative process(the writer is looking for an appropriate form, albeit for a vague but already existing content, but in no case vice versa - he does not first create a “ready-made form”, and then pour some content into it), and for the work as such (features of the content determine and explain to us the specifics of the form, but not vice versa). However, in in a certain sense, namely in relation to the perceiving consciousness, it is the form that is primary, and the content secondary. Since sensory perception always precedes the emotional reaction and, moreover, the rational understanding of the subject, moreover, it serves as the basis and basis for them, we perceive in a work first its form, and only then and only through it the corresponding artistic content.

From this, by the way, it follows that the movement of analysis of a work - from content to form or vice versa - is not of fundamental importance. Any approach has its justifications: the first - in the determining nature of the content in relation to the form, the second - in the patterns of reader perception. A.S. said this well. Bushmin: “It is not at all necessary... to begin the study with the content, guided only by the one thought that the content determines the form, and without having other, more specific reasons for this. Meanwhile, it is precisely this sequence of consideration of a work of art that has turned into a forced, hackneyed, boring scheme for everyone, having received wide use both in school teaching and in textbooks, and in scientific literary works. Dogmatic transfer of the correct general position of literary theory to methodology specific study works gives rise to a dull template"*. Let us add to this that, of course, the opposite pattern would be no better - it is always mandatory to begin the analysis with the form. It all depends on the specific situation and specific tasks.

___________________

* Bushmin A.S. The science of literature. M., 1980. pp. 123–124.

From all that has been said, a clear conclusion arises that in a work of art both form and content are equally important. The experience of the development of literature and literary criticism also proves this position. Decreasing the importance of content or completely ignoring it leads in literary criticism to formalism, to meaningless abstract constructions, leads to forgetting the social nature of art, and in artistic practice, which is guided by such concepts, it turns into aesthetics and elitism. However, neglecting the artistic form as something secondary and, in essence, unnecessary has no less negative consequences. This approach actually destroys the work as a phenomenon of art, forcing us to see in it only this or that ideological, and not an ideological and aesthetic phenomenon. In a creative practice that does not want to take into account the enormous importance of form in art, flat illustrativeness, primitiveness, and the creation of “correct” but not emotionally experienced declarations about a “relevant” but artistically unexplored topic inevitably appear.

By highlighting form and content in a work, we thereby liken it to any other complexly organized whole. However, the relationship between form and content in a work of art also has its own specifics. Let's see what it consists of.

First of all, it is necessary to firmly understand that the relationship between content and form is not a spatial relationship, but a structural one. The form is not a shell that can be removed to reveal the kernel of the nut - the contents. If we take a work of art, then we will be powerless to “point with our finger”: here is the form, but here is the content. Spatially they are merged and indistinguishable; this unity can be felt and shown at any “point” of the literary text. Let’s take, for example, that episode from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, where Alyosha, when asked by Ivan what to do with the landowner who hunted the child with dogs, answers: “Shoot!” What does this “shoot!” represent? – content or form? Of course, both are in unity, in unity. On the one hand, this is part of the speech, verbal form of the work; Alyosha's replica occupies a certain place in the compositional form of the work. These are formal matters. On the other hand, this “shooting” is a component of the character of the hero, that is, the thematic basis of the work; the remark expresses one of the turns in the moral and philosophical quest of the heroes and the author, and of course, it is an essential aspect of the ideological and emotional world of the work - these are meaningful moments. So in one word, fundamentally indivisible into spatial components, we saw content and form in their unity. The situation is similar with a work of art in its entirety.

The second thing that should be noted is the special connection between form and content in the artistic whole. According to Yu.N. Tynyanov, relations are established between artistic form and artistic content that are unlike the relations of “wine and glass” (glass as form, wine as content), that is, relations of free compatibility and equally free separation. In a work of art, the content is not indifferent to the specific form in which it is embodied, and vice versa. Wine will remain wine whether we pour it into a glass, cup, plate, etc.; content is indifferent to form. In the same way, you can pour milk, water, kerosene into the glass that held the wine - the form is “indifferent” to the content that fills it. Not so in a work of fiction. There the connection between formal and substantive principles reaches its highest degree. This is perhaps best manifested in the following pattern: any change in form, even a seemingly small and particular one, inevitably and immediately leads to a change in content. Trying to find out, for example, the content of such a formal element as poetic meter, poetry scholars conducted an experiment: they “transformed” the first lines of the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin” from iambic to trochaic. This is what happened:

Uncle most fair rules,

He seriously fell ill

Made me respect myself

I couldn't think of anything better.

The semantic meaning, as we see, remained practically the same; the changes seemed to concern only the form. But it is clear to the naked eye that one of the most important components of the content has changed - the emotional tone, the mood of the passage. It went from being epically narrative to playfully superficial. What if we imagine that the entire “Eugene Onegin” is written in trochee? But this is impossible to imagine, because in this case the work is simply destroyed.

Of course, such an experiment with form is a unique case. However, in the study of a work, we often, completely unaware of it, carry out similar “experiments” - without directly changing the structure of the form, but only without taking into account certain of its features. So, studying in Gogol’s “ Dead souls"mainly Chichikov, landowners, yes" individual representatives"of the bureaucrats and the peasantry, we study barely a tenth of the “population” of the poem, ignoring the mass of those “minor” heroes who in Gogol are not secondary, but are interesting to him in themselves to the same extent as Chichikov or Manilov. As a result of such an “experiment on form,” our understanding of the work, that is, its content, is significantly distorted: Gogol was not interested in the history of individual people, but in the way of national life; he created not a “gallery of images,” but an image of the world, a “way of life.”

Another example of the same kind. In studying Chekhov's story“The Bride” has developed a fairly strong tradition of viewing this story as unconditionally optimistic, even “springtime and bravura”*. V.B. Kataev, analyzing this interpretation, notes that it is based on “incomplete reading” - it is not taken into account last phrase the story in its entirety: “Nadya... cheerful, happy, left the city, as she believed, forever.” “The interpretation of this is “as I believed,” writes V.B. Kataev, - very clearly reveals the difference in research approaches to Chekhov’s work. Some researchers prefer, when interpreting the meaning of “The Bride,” to consider this introductory sentence as if it were non-existent”**.

___________________

* Ermilov V.A. A.P. Chekhov. M., 1959. P. 395.

** Kataev V.B. Chekhov's prose: problems of interpretation. M, 1979. P. 310.

This is the “unconscious experiment” discussed above. The structure of the form is distorted “a little bit” - and the consequences in the field of content are not long in coming. A “concept of unconditional optimism, “bravura” of Chekhov’s work emerges recent years”, whereas in fact it represents “a delicate balance between truly optimistic hopes and restrained sobriety regarding the impulses of the very people about whom Chekhov knew and told so many bitter truths.”

In the relationship between content and form, in the structure of form and content in a work of art, a certain principle, a pattern, is revealed. We will talk in detail about the specific nature of this pattern in the section “Holistic consideration of a work of art.”

For now, let us note only one methodological rule: For an accurate and complete understanding of the content of a work, it is absolutely necessary to pay as close attention as possible to its form, down to its smallest features. In the form of a work of art there are no “little things” that are indifferent to the content; according to the well-known expression, “art begins where it begins “a little bit.”

The specificity of the relationship between content and form in a work of art has given rise to a special term specifically designed to reflect the continuity and unity of these aspects of a single artistic whole - the term “content form”. This concept has at least two aspects. The ontological aspect asserts the impossibility of the existence of a contentless form or unformed content; in logic, such concepts are called correlative: we cannot think of one of them without simultaneously thinking of the other. A somewhat simplified analogy can be the relationship between the concepts of “right” and “left” - if there is one, then the other inevitably exists. However, for works of art, another, axiological (evaluative) aspect of the concept of “meaningful form” seems more important: in this case, we mean the natural correspondence of form to content.

A very deep and largely fruitful concept of meaningful form was developed in the work of G.D. Gacheva and V.V. Kozhinov “The content of literary forms.” According to the authors, “any art form is<…>nothing more than hardened, objectified artistic content. Any property, any element of a literary work that we now perceive as “purely formal” was once directly meaningful." This meaningfulness of the form never disappears; it is actually perceived by the reader: “turning to the work, we somehow absorb into ourselves” the meaningfulness of the formal elements, their, so to speak, “ultimate content.” “It’s precisely about content, about a certain sense, and not at all about the meaningless, meaningless objectivity of the form. The most superficial properties of form turn out to be nothing more than a special kind of content that has turned into form.”*

___________________

* Gachev G.D., Kozhinov V.V. Content of literary forms // Theory of literature. The main problems in historical coverage. M., 1964. Book. 2. pp. 18–19.

However, no matter how meaningful this or that formal element is, no matter how close the connection between content and form, this connection does not turn into identity. Content and form are not the same thing, they are different aspects of the artistic whole that are highlighted in the process of abstraction and analysis. They have different tasks, different functions, and, as we have seen, different measures of convention; There are certain relationships between them. Therefore, it is unacceptable to use the concept of substantive form, as well as the thesis about the unity of form and content, in order to mix and lump together formal and substantive elements. On the contrary, the true content of a form is revealed to us only when the fundamental differences between these two sides of a work of art are sufficiently realized, when, therefore, the opportunity opens up to establish certain relationships and natural interactions between them.

Speaking about the problem of form and content in a work of art, one cannot help but touch upon at least common features ah, another concept that is actively used in modern science about literature. We are talking about the concept of “inner form”. This term actually presupposes the presence “between” the content and form of such elements of a work of art, which are “form in relation to elements of a higher level (image as a form expressing ideological content), and content – ​​in relation to lower levels of structure (image as the content of compositional and speech form)"*. Such an approach to the structure of the artistic whole looks dubious, primarily because it violates the clarity and rigor of the original division into form and content as, respectively, the material and spiritual principles in the work. If some element of an artistic whole can be both meaningful and formal at the same time, then this deprives the very dichotomy of content and form of meaning and, importantly, creates significant difficulties in further analysis and comprehension of the structural connections between the elements of the artistic whole. One should, of course, listen to the objections of A.S. Bushmina against the category of “internal form”; “Form and content are extremely general correlative categories. Therefore, the introduction of two concepts of form would require correspondingly two concepts of content. The presence of two pairs of similar categories, in turn, would entail the need, according to the law of subordination of categories in materialist dialectics, to establish a unifying, third, generic concept form and content. In a word, terminological duplication in the designation of categories produces nothing but logical confusion. And in general definitions external And internal, allowing the possibility of spatial delimitation of form, vulgarize the idea of ​​the latter”**.

___________________

* Sokolov A.N. Style theory. M., 1968. P. 67.

** Bushmin A.S. The science of literature. P. 108.

So, in our opinion, a clear contrast between form and content in the structure of the artistic whole is fruitful. Another thing is that it is immediately necessary to warn against the danger of dividing these sides mechanically, roughly. There are artistic elements in which form and content seem to touch, and very subtle methods and very close observation are needed in order to understand both the fundamental non-identity and the close relationship between the formal and substantive principles. The analysis of such “points” in the artistic whole is undoubtedly the most difficult, but at the same time the greatest interest both in terms of theory and in the practical study of a particular work.

? CONTROL QUESTIONS:

1. Why is knowledge of the structure of a work necessary?

2. What is the form and content of a work of art (give definitions)?

3. How are content and form interconnected?

4. “The relationship between content and form is not spatial, but structural” - how do you understand this?

5. What is the relationship between form and content? What is “content form”?

Even at first glance, it is clear that a work of art consists of certain sides, elements, aspects, etc. In other words, it has a complex internal composition. Moreover, the individual parts of the work are connected and united with each other so closely that this gives grounds to metaphorically liken the work to a living organism. The composition of the work is thus characterized not only by complexity, but also by orderliness. A work of art is a complexly organized whole; From the awareness of this obvious fact follows the need to understand the internal structure of the work, that is, to isolate its individual components and realize the connections between them. Refusal of such an attitude inevitably leads to empiricism and unsubstantiated judgments about the work, to complete arbitrariness in its consideration and ultimately impoverishes our understanding of the artistic whole, leaving it at the level of primary reader perception.

In modern literary criticism, there are two main trends in establishing the structure of a work. The first comes from the identification of a number of layers or levels in a work, just as in linguistics in a separate utterance one can distinguish a phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic level. At the same time, different researchers have different ideas about both the set of levels itself and the nature of their relationships. So, M.M. Bakhtin sees in a work primarily two levels - “fable” and “plot”, the depicted world and the world of the image itself, the reality of the author and the reality of the hero*. MM. Hirshman proposes a more complex, basically three-level structure: rhythm, plot, hero; in addition, “vertically” these levels are permeated by the subject-object organization of the work, which ultimately creates not a linear structure, but rather a grid that is superimposed on the work of art**. There are other models of a work of art that present it in the form of a number of levels, sections.

___________________

* Bakhtin M.M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. M., 1979. P. 7–181.

** Girshman M.M. Style of a literary work // Theory of literary styles. Modern aspects of study. M., 1982. S. 257-300.

A common disadvantage of these concepts can obviously be considered the subjectivity and arbitrariness of identifying levels. Moreover, no one has yet attempted justify division into levels by some general considerations and principles. The second weakness follows from the first and consists in the fact that no division by level covers the entire richness of the elements of the work, or even gives a comprehensive idea of ​​its composition. Finally, the levels must be thought of as fundamentally equal - otherwise the very principle of structuring loses its meaning - and this easily leads to the loss of the idea of ​​​​a certain core of a work of art, connecting its elements into a real integrity; connections between levels and elements turn out to be weaker than they really are. Here we should also note the fact that the “level” approach very little takes into account the fundamental difference in quality of a number of components of the work: thus, it is clear that an artistic idea and an artistic detail are phenomena of a fundamentally different nature.

The second approach to the structure of a work of art takes such general categories as content and form as the primary division. This approach is presented in its most complete and well-reasoned form in the works of G.N. Pospelova*. This methodological tendency has much fewer disadvantages than the one discussed above; it is much more consistent with the actual structure of the work and is much more justified from the point of view of philosophy and methodology.

___________________

*See, for example: Pospelov G.N. Problems of literary style. M., 1970. P. 31–90.

The form of existence of art is a work of art (work of art) as a system of artistic images that form a single whole. It represents a spiritual and material reality that arose as a result of human creative efforts, an aesthetic value that meets artistic criteria. A work of art reflects both objective reality and subjective world the artist, his worldview, experiences, feelings, ideas. The means of expressing all this diversity is a unique language of art. “A work of art is a complete effect, resting in itself and existing for itself, and contrasts the latter, as an independent reality, with nature. In a work of art, the form of being exists only as the reality of influence. A work of art, perceiving nature as a relationship between motor directions and visual impressions, is freed from everything changeable and random.”
One of essential principles artistic creativity and the existence of a work of art stands for the principle of unity of form and content. The essence of this principle is that the form of a work of art is organically connected with the content and is determined by it, and the content appears only in a certain form.
Artistic form (from Latin forma - appearance) - the structure of a work of art, its internal organization, the entire complex of expressive means. Created using the visual and expressive means of a certain type of art to express artistic content, the form always indicates the means by which the content is conveyed in a work of art. The content, according to L.S. Vygotsky, is everything that the author took as ready-made, that existed before the story and can exist outside and independently of it. Content is a necessary constitutive moment of an aesthetic object. M.M. Bakhtin wrote in his work “The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Artistic Creativity”: “The reality of cognition and aesthetic action, which is included in its recognition and evaluation in the aesthetic object and is subject here to specific intuitive unification, individuation, concretization, isolation and completion, i.e. comprehensive artistic design using material, we call the content of an aesthetic object.” In other words, content is all artistically reflected phenomena of reality in their evaluative understanding.
The dependence of the form on the content of the work is expressed in the fact that the former does not exist without the latter. Content represents the internal meaning of a certain form, and form represents the content in its immediate existence.
The contrast between content and form is characteristic primarily of the creative stage, i.e. for their mutual, mutual formation, when the artist comprehends what he wants to express in a work of art and looks for adequate means for this. In a finished work of art, form and content must certainly form an inseparable, harmonious unity.
Speaking about the unity of content and form, one should not underestimate the importance of artistic form as an expressive force. It is no coincidence that in the European philosophical tradition since the time of Aristotle, form has been understood as the specific principle of a thing, its essence and driving force. The content of a work of art becomes emotionally perceptible and acquires aesthetic significance due to its implementation in artistic form, which thus actively influences the content. It can contribute to the most complete and convincing disclosure of the content, but it can also interfere with its expression, weaken the power of its impact and, accordingly, perception.
If you carefully analyze a work of art, it is quite easy to discover that all its elements can be divided into formal and substantive. The content elements of a work of art include theme, conflict, idea, characters, plot, plot. The formal elements of a work of art include composition, genre, speech, and rhythm. The specificity of the artistic language of various types of art determines the decisive importance for them of individual formal elements: in music - melody, in painting - colors, in graphics - drawing, etc. The form of the work must have internal unity. Harmony and proportionality of its elements are a necessary condition for the completeness, perfection, and beauty of a work of art.
The content is always structured and expressed only in ways characteristic of art, i.e. essentially inseparable from form. It is multi-level and multifaceted. The highest levels of content are the idea and theme, which determine the entire content structure of the work.
The idea represents the basic figurative and aesthetic meaning. An artistic idea is always original and unique. It may include philosophical, political, scientific and other ideas, but is not entirely limited to them. The structure of the work is very rich, combining both these ideas and all the richness of the aesthetic vision of the world. Art is interested not only in politics, philosophy, science, but also in the entire system of a person’s relationship to the world, to other people, to himself. These relationships, reflected by art, turn out to be more complex and richer than the system of the deepest ideas. Let's reveal an amazing philosophical tale Richard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and we will find in it a huge number of philosophical ideas: moral and physical improvement, the search for the meaning of life and mentorship, loneliness and exile, death and resurrection. But the meaning of this small work is broader than any of these ideas: in it, in the image of a seagull, the essence of a restless and restless human soul is revealed, man’s eternal striving for knowledge, for perfection, for gaining true meaning life:
“And the more Jonathan learned the lessons of kindness, the more clearly he saw the nature of love, the more he wanted to return to Earth. For, despite his lonely life, Jonathan Seagull was born to be a teacher. He saw what was true for him, and he could realize love only by revealing his knowledge of the truth to someone else - to someone who was looking and who only needed a chance to discover the truth for himself.
The idea of ​​“The Seagull,” published as a separate edition at the end of 1970, has drawn more than one generation of readers into the age-old area of ​​allegories. So, Ray Bradbury once said that this book gives him the feeling of flight and brings back his youth.
The theme of a work of art (Greek theme - literally what is put [as the basis]) is an object of artistic depiction, a circle of life phenomena captured in the work and held together by the author's idea - a problem. Theme is one of the most important elements of the content of a work of art. It points to the range of phenomena that serve as the starting point for the creation of a work of art. For example, the theme of L. Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina” is the tragic fate of the relationship between Anna and Vronsky.
In addition to the main theme, the work may contain secondary themes that are closely related to the main one and are subordinate to it. For example, along with the main theme of the relationship between Onegin and Tatyana, in the poem “Eugene Onegin” by A.S. Pushkin there are many side themes: the theme of the relationship between Lensky and Olga, the theme of parental relations, etc.
The theme is closely related to the idea of ​​the work. Together they form a single ideological and thematic basis of the work. The theme finds its further expression through characters, conflicts, plots. This is the next, lower content level of a work of art.
Character is the artistic embodiment of a system of distinctive human properties, which are manifested in his self-esteem, relationships with the outside world and other people, in complex and ordinary life circumstances. Depending on the art direction, characters can be depicted in different ways. They may appear to be conditioned by circumstances. This is exactly how realism portrays them, demonstrating how conditions, events, and phenomena of reality influence the formation of character and its manifestations. These are the heroes of O. de Balzac, C. Dickens, J. Galsworthy. Characters can be considered as derived from heredity and physiological characteristics, as is done in naturalism (E. Zola, E. and J. Goncourt). They may be portrayed as idealized and opposed to the entire surrounding, often hostile, world. This is how many romantics paint characters. This is how M.Yu. Lermontov conveys the character of the hero in the poem “Corsair”:
Since then, with a deceived soul
I became distrustful of everyone.
Oh! Not under our own roof
I was there then, and I was fading.
I couldn’t with a smile of humility
Since then I have transferred everything:
Ridicule, pride, contempt...
I could only love more passionately.
Dissatisfied with myself
Wanting to be calm, free,
I often wandered through the forests
And only there he lived with his soul...
However, every true artist, regardless of the direction of art, strives to depict typical characters in their individual originality, to show the complexity of their development, inconsistency inner life, moral searches.
Conflict is an artistically designed contradiction in a person’s life, a clash of different characters, views, ideas, interests, etc. The role of the conflict and its originality directly depend not only on the reflected aspects of reality, but also on the specific features and means of typification, types and genres of art. For example, in tragedy or monumental painting, conflict manifests itself as direct image struggle opposite characters, and in the lyrics - as an emotional expression of the collision different people and feelings. The depth of the conflict, its severity and completeness in artistic form largely determine the depth of the emotional impact of a work of art on the perceiving subject. As a result, most strong impact per person are possessed by works of art of those types and genres of art that most deeply embody the dramatic conflict.
The plot (French sujet - lit. subject) is a reproduced action in its entirety. The plot represents the spatio-temporal dynamics of what is depicted, the course of events in a literary work. This is a collection of events expressed in artistic form. The plot expresses the narrative side of a work of art, and it organically combines individual episodes, characters, and actions of the heroes.
The plot is characteristic of various types and genres of art. It can be detailed (in historical novels, film epics, etc.), simple (in painting, graphics, etc.). In literary lyricism, fine art, and music, plotless or practically plotless works can be found (for example, in abstract art, in instrumental non-program music, architecture). The most obvious plot is in painting. The plot presupposes action and movement, therefore in those works of art where there is a plot, it develops from the beginning through the climax to the finale. The plot is closely related to the plot, but does not always coincide with it.
Fabula (from Latin fabula - fable, story) is a cultural-typological diagram of the main events set out in their chronological sequence. This is a chain or pattern of events that are described in detail in the plot. For example, the plot of the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky “What to do?” begins with a description of the mysterious disappearance of one of the characters, while the plot of this novel (the unfolding of events in spatio-temporal sequence) begins with a description of Vera Pavlovna’s life in her parents’ house. The plot serves as an auxiliary means for revealing the plot, helping to establish the sequence of unfolding events and understand the goals that the artist pursued with a unique construction of the plot. The plot is more general in nature than the plot.
If we return to the plot again, it should be noted that in large epic works the plot, as a rule, is divided into a number of storylines. Thus, in M.Yu. Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time” there are a number of relatively independent storylines (Bela, smugglers, etc.), which are grouped around Pechorin’s storyline.
As mentioned above, the means of expression and existence of content is form. The process of shaping influences the content through composition, rhythm, and opposition.
Composition (from Latin compositio - addition, composition) - the construction of a work of art, the systematic and consistent arrangement of its elements and parts, methods of connecting images and the totality of all means of their disclosure. Composition is the most important organizing element of an artistic form, giving the work unity and integrity, subordinating its components to each other and to the whole. This is the conscious and semantic ordering of the work. The task of composition is to organize individual disparate elements into integrity. All compositional techniques are determined by the author’s ideological plan and his creative task. Let's look carefully at the painting by P.A. Fedotov “The Morning after the Feast, or
Fresh gentleman." The plot of the picture is taken from life: a minor official received the first order and arranged a reception in his room for this occasion. The morning after the drinking bout, the “fresh gentleman”, having barely thrown a robe over his shoulders, has already put on an order and points it out to his cook. The cook, not sharing the owner’s good mood, points out his holey boots. The idea of ​​the picture is broad: the poverty of the bureaucratic spirit, unable to rise above careerist aspirations, the common sense of the servants, aware of the comical claims of the owner. The composition helps reveal the ideological outline of the work. The picture is built on two figures opposed to each other: an official frozen in a proud pose and a cook expressing the natural sanity of a common person. P.A. Fedotov fills the room in the painting a large number things that explain the plot and plot to us: the remains of yesterday's feast, rubbish on the floor, a book thrown on the floor, a guitar with broken strings, leaning against a chair on which the master's frock coat and suspenders hang. A cage is visible under the ceiling; an awakened cat is stretching. All these details are calculated to create as vivid a picture as possible of a room where everything is abandoned without any regard for decency. This is the world of an insignificant official, devoid of high thoughts and a sense of beauty, but striving to achieve success.
The next element of form is rhythm. Rhythm (Greek rhythmos, from rheo - flow) is the alternation of various commensurate elements (sound, speech, etc.), occurring with a certain sequence, frequency. Rhythm as a means of form-building in art is based on the regular repetition in space or time of similar elements at commensurate intervals. The function of rhythm is to simultaneously separate and integrate aesthetic impression. Thanks to rhythm, the impression is divided into similar intervals, but at the same time integrated into a set of interrelated elements and intervals, i.e. into artistic integrity. A stable repeating rhythm evokes in the perceiving subject an expectation of its repetition and a specific experience of its “failure.” Hence, another function of rhythm is the dynamics of the effects of expectation and surprise. Rhythm, moreover, reflects dynamics, in contrast to symmetry, which reflects statics. The dynamics of rhythm contributes to the creation of an artistic structure that is most adequate to the psychophysical structure of a person, which is also dynamic and mobile.
Essential rhythm has in music, where it manifests itself as a temporary organization of musical intervals and consonances. According to Aristotle, rhythm in music is similar to emotional states person and reflects such feelings and properties as anger, meekness, courage, moderation. Since the 17th century. In music, a timed, accented rhythm was established, based on the alternation of strong and weak stresses. In a poem, rhythm denotes the general orderliness of the sound structure of poetic speech, as well as the real sound structure of a specific poetic line. In fine arts (painting, graphics, etc.) and architecture, rhythm is manifested in various combinations of patterns, colors, arrangement of columns, etc. In choreography, rhythm is a combination of sequences of body movements.
Special place Style occupies a role in shaping. However, it must be remembered that style is not pure form neither form, nor content, nor even their unity. “Style also refers to form, content and their unity, just as in a living organism its “form” and “content” refer to the gene set in a cell. Style is a “gene set” of a culture that determines the type of cultural integrity.” Style (from the Greek stylos - a pointed stick for writing on wax, manner of writing) is a commonality figurative system, funds artistic expression, creative techniques, due to the unity of ideological and artistic content. We can talk about the style of a particular work or genre (for example, about the style of the Russian novel of the mid-19th century), about individual style or the creative style of a particular author (for example, about the style of P. Picasso), as well as about the style of entire artistic eras or major artistic movements (Gothic or Romanesque style, Baroque, Romanticism, Classicism styles).
In the aesthetics of formalism, style is often understood as a commonality of technical techniques that is not related to the content of the works. Thus, the German art critic Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), in his work “Basic Concepts of the History of Art,” divides the entire history of fine art into two styles: linear and pictorial.
Such a formalistic understanding of style leads to a mechanical transfer of the general features of architectural and decorative applied styles to all other types of art, which have a much greater richness and variety of content, and therefore a much greater variety of styles.
Style is not a formal unity of visual and expressive means and technical techniques, but their stable commonality, determined by ideological content. The style of a work of art is not just its external form, but, first of all, the nature of its material and spiritual existence within a certain culture. This is evidence that an aesthetic object belongs to a particular culture. Style understood in this way should not be confused with stylization. Stylization is a deliberate imitation of the artistic style of any author, genre, movement, era, people. Stylization is often associated with a rethinking of the artistic content that formed the basis of the style being imitated. Style performs many functions in the process of creating and perceiving a work of art. In artistic creativity, it directs the creative process in a certain direction, ensures the processing of disparate impressions into a single system, and contributes to the preservation of continuity in the artistic tradition. In the process of artistic perception of a work, style determines the nature of the work’s impact on a person and orients the public towards a certain type of artistic value.
Style has important informative value. It communicates the overall quality of the work. The author, when creating a work of art, always focuses on the viewer, reader, listener, who is invisibly present in artistic creativity as the goal in whose name the artist creates. The perceiving subject also has the author in his consciousness: he knows his name, is familiar with his previous works, understands his artistic skill and taste. All this is a psychological background and motivating motive for the perception of a work of art. The meeting point between the author and the perceiving subject is style, which acts as evidence of authorship, belonging to an era, nationality, culture, art form. Style is a kind of core of the artistic process as a whole. The organic nature of the style, its indisputable unity with the entire formal and substantive structure of the work distinguishes truly great works of art.
Thus, any work of art can be presented as objectively existing reality, having the appropriate material shell and structure.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Good work to the site">

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Posted on http://www.allbest.ru/

The universal categories of dialectics - content and form - are specifically manifested in art and occupy one of the central places in aesthetic theory. Hegel said that content is nothing more than the transition of form into content, and form is the transition of content into form. In relation to the historical development of art, this position means that the content is gradually formalized and “settled” in the genre-compositional, spatio-temporal structures of the artistic language and, in such a “hardened” form, influences the actual content of the new art. In relation to a work of art, this means that the belonging of one or another of its levels to content or form is relative: each of them will be a form in relation to the higher one and content in relation to the lower one. All components and levels of a work of art seem to mutually “highlight” each other. Finally, in art there are special fusions of content and form, these include, for example, plot, conflict, subject-spatial organization, melody.

On the one hand, art has no ready-made content and ready-made form in their separation, but there is their reciprocal formation in the process historical development, in the act of creativity and perception, as well as the inseparable existence in the work as a result of the creative process. On the other hand, if there were no definite difference between content and form, they could not be distinguished and considered in relation to each other. Without their relative independence, mutual influence and interaction could not arise.

Aestheticspecificitycontent

Content in art is an ideological-emotional, sensory-imaginative sphere of meaning and meaning, adequately embodied in artistic form and possessing social and aesthetic value. In order for art to fulfill its irreplaceable function of socio-spiritual influence on the inner world of the individual, its content must have the appropriate features.

Art reflects, reproduces with a greater or lesser degree of mediation and convention various areas natural and social reality, but not in their existence in itself, regardless of the human worldview, with its value guidelines. In other words, art is characterized by an organic fusion of objectivity and internal states, a holistic reflection objective qualities things in unity with human spiritual, moral, social and aesthetic values ​​and assessments.

Artistic cognition, thus, occurs in the aspect of socio-aesthetic evaluation, determined, in turn, by the aesthetic ideal. However, the value side of the content is impossible outside of specific artistic and figurative knowledge aimed at historical reality, nature, the inner world of people and the artist himself, who objectifies the innermost spiritual searches of his personality in the products of art.

The goals of true art are to promote the spiritual, creative, social and moral development of the individual, and to awaken good feelings. This is the root of the deep relationship between the subject of art and the sanctions that determine the aesthetic qualities of its content. In an object of art this is the unity of its content, the unity of the objective and subjective, the unity of knowledge and value orientation to an aesthetic ideal. The functions of art include an irreplaceable impact on the organically integral, undivided inner world of a person. Because of this, the content of art always has a certain aesthetic tone: sublimely heroic, tragic, romantic, comic, dramatic, idyllic... Moreover, each of them has many shades.

Let's note some general patterns manifestations of the aesthetic coloring of the content of art. Firstly, it is not always presented in its pure form. Tragedy and satire, humor and romance, idyll and parody, lyricism and irony can transform into each other. Secondly, a special aesthetic type of content can be embodied not only in the corresponding types and genres of art: thus, the sphere of the tragic is not only tragedy, but also a symphony, novel, monumental sculpture; the sphere of the epic - not only epic, but also film epic, opera, poem; the dramatic is manifested not only in drama, but also in lyric poetry, romance, and short story. Thirdly, the general aesthetic tone of the content of large and talented artists unique, individually painted.

The social and aesthetic specificity of the content is formed in a variety of specific creative acts and works. It is inseparable from the work of imagination and the activity of the artist according to the laws of the material and language of art, from the visual and expressive embodiment of the plan. This inextricable connection between the content of art and the laws of imagery, with the laws of internal order and formal embodiment consists of its artistic specificity.

A manifestation of the specificity of artistic imagery is the dialectical unity of certainty, ambiguity and integrity of content.

Immanuel Kant's idea about the polysemy of artistic image and representation was absolutized by the romantics, for example Schelling, and subsequently by theorists and practitioners of symbolism. The interpretation of the image as an expression of the infinite in the finite was associated with the recognition of its fundamental inexpressibility and opposition to knowledge.

However, in reality, the polysemy of artistic content is not limitless - it is permissible only within certain limits, only at certain levels of artistic content. In general, the artist strives for an adequate embodiment of his ideological and figurative plan and for an adequate understanding of it by those who perceive it. Moreover, he does not want to be misunderstood. On this occasion F.M. Dostoevsky wrote: “... Artistry... is the ability to so clearly express one’s thought in the faces and images of a novel that the reader, having read the novel, understands the writer’s thought in exactly the same way as the writer himself understood it when creating his work.”2

The context of the whole not only gives rise to the polysemy of individual images, but also removes and “moderates” it. It is through the whole that various content components mutually “explain” to each other a definite and unified meaning. Limitlessly contradictory interpretations arise only in isolation from the whole. In addition to the dialectical interaction of certainty and ambiguity, the artistic specificity of the content is expressed in the fact that in a work of art, according to Academician D. Likhachev, a special, unique world of sociality, morality, psychology and everyday life arises, recreated through the artist’s creative imagination, with its own laws.

Another feature of artistic content is the interaction of current socio-aesthetic, moral and spiritual issues with powerful layers of tradition. The proportions of modern and traditional content are different in different cultural and artistic regions, styles and genres of art.

The socio-historical appears in the universal, and the universal in the concrete-temporal.

General properties artistic content, which we talked about above, are uniquely manifested in its various types.

We can talk about the plot nature of artistic and verbal narration as that specific sphere in which the content finds itself. The plot is a specific and maximally complete action and reaction, a consistent depiction of movements not only physical, but also internal, spiritual plan, thoughts and feelings. The plot is the eventful backbone of the work, something that can be mentally excluded from the plot and retold.

Sometimes we can talk about the lack of plot, for example, of lyrics, but by no means about its lack of plot. The plot is present in other types and genres of art, but does not play such a universal role in them.

It is customary to distinguish between direct and indirect artistic content. IN fine arts the visually perceived objectivity and spatiality are directly expressed, and the sphere of ideas, emotional and aesthetic values ​​and assessments is indirectly expressed. Whereas in the art of words, mental and emotional content is expressed more directly, and pictorial content is expressed more indirectly. In dance and ballet, visual-plastic and emotional-affective content is directly embodied, but indirectly - philosophical-semantic, moral-aesthetic plans.

Let's consider the basic concepts of aesthetic analysis, which can be attributed to the content of all types of art. To such universal concepts belongs to the theme (from the Greek theme - subject) - the meaningful unity underlying a work of art, isolated from the impressions of reality and melted by the aesthetic consciousness and creativity of the artist. The subject of the image can be various phenomena of the surrounding world, nature, material culture, social life, specific historical events, universal spiritual problems and values.

The theme of the work organically merges the image of certain aspects of reality and their specific comprehension and evaluation, characteristic of a given artistic consciousness. However, the cognitively objective, directly pictorial side is dominant in an artistic theme compared to such an important component of artistic content as the artistic idea.

The concept of artistic theme covers four groups of meanings. The concept of an objective theme is related to the characteristics of the real origins of the content. This also includes eternal, universal themes: man and nature, freedom and necessity, love and jealousy.

A cultural-typological theme means a meaningful objectivity that has become an artistic tradition of world or national art.

A cultural-historical theme is similar socio-psychological collisions, characters and experiences, choreographic and musical images repeatedly reproduced by art, embodied in the works of outstanding artists, in a certain style and the direction of art, which have become part of the genre or drawn from the arsenal of mythology.

The subjective theme is the structure of feelings, characters and problems characteristic of a given artist (crime and punishment in Dostoevsky, the collision of fate and the impulse to happiness in Tchaikovsky).

All these topics are united by the concept of “concrete artistic theme” - a relatively stable objectivity of the content of a work of art. A specific artistic theme is one of the main categories with the help of which the unique world of a work of art is explored, fused with plastic, musical-melodic, graphic, monumental, decorative and formal embodiment and imbued with a certain type of content-aesthetic attitude to reality (tragic, comic, melodramatic ). It transforms aspects of the object and cultural-artistic theme into a new quality inherent in a given work and a given artist.

In aesthetics, there are concepts to designate the subjective-evaluative, emotional-ideological side of the content. These include the concept of “pathos”, which developed in classical aesthetics, and the concept of “tendency”, which took shape in the works of modern aesthetics.

The category of pathos (from the Greek pathos - deep, passionate feeling) in classical aesthetics is the all-conquering spiritual passion of the artist, which displaces all other impulses and desires, is expressed plastically and has enormous infectious power.

If in pathos, through the innermost subjectivity, through the most intimate aesthetic perception of the world, one shines through Big world aspirations of the artist, then the concept of “tendency” emphasizes the moment of conscious, consistent social orientation, the consistent inclusion of the subject’s worldview into the mainstream of social ideas and aspirations. An open artistic tendency manifests itself in certain genres and styles of art: satire, civil poetry, social novel. However, a journalistically sharpened tendency must certainly develop in art in line with lyrical experience, as a figuratively and emotionally expressed idea.

In other genres and styles, only a hidden, subtextual tendency, hidden in the very depths of the narrative, is possible.

The most important category characterizing the content of art is the artistic idea (from the Greek - type, image, kind, method) - the holistic figurative and aesthetic meaning of the finished work. The artistic idea today is not identified with the entire content of the work, as it was in classical aesthetics, but corresponds to its dominant emotional, figurative and artistic aesthetic meaning. It plays a synthesizing role in relation to the entire system of the work, its parts and details, embodied in conflict, characters, plot, composition, rhythm. It is necessary to distinguish the embodied artistic idea, firstly, from the idea-plan, which the artist develops and concretizes in the process of creativity, and secondly, from ideas mentally extracted from the sphere of an already created work of art and expressed in conceptual form (in criticism, in art history, in epistolary and theoretical heritage).

The primary role for comprehending an artistic idea is the direct aesthetic perception of the work. It is prepared by the entire previous socio-aesthetic practice of a person, the level of his knowledge and value orientation and ends with an assessment, sometimes including the formulation of an artistic idea. With initial perception, the general direction of the artistic idea is grasped, with repeated and repeated perception, the general impression is concretized, reinforced by new, previously unperceived themes, motifs, and internal “linkages.” In the idea of ​​a work, the feelings and thoughts evoked by the content seem to leave the sphere of direct sensory imagery. But precisely “as if”: they should not break out of it completely, at least at the stage of perception of a work of art. If in scientific knowledge an idea is expressed as a certain type of concept or as a theory, then in the structure of an artistic idea an exceptional role is played by emotional attitude to peace, pain, joy, rejection and acceptance. Mention may be made of varying degrees of socio-aesthetic dignity and significance artistic ideas, which are determined by the truthfulness and depth of comprehension of life, the originality and aesthetic perfection of the figurative embodiment.

XartisticformAndherComponents

The material and physical basis of artistic creativity, with the help of which the concept is objectified and the communicative-sign objectivity of a work of art is created, is usually called the material of art. This is the material “flesh” of art that is necessary for the artist in the creative process: words, granite, sanguine, wood or paint.

The material is designed to captivate, promise, beckon, excite the imagination and creative impulse for its re-creation, but at the same time set certain boundaries related primarily to its capabilities. This power of material and conventions imposed by art was assessed by artists dialectically: both as a painful inertia that limits the freedom of spirit and imagination, and as a beneficial condition for creativity, as a source of joy for a master who has triumphed over the inflexibility of the material.

The choice of material is determined by the individual characteristics of the artist and the specific plan, as well as the level of general specific formal and technical capabilities and stylistic aspirations of art at a particular stage of its development.

The material used by the artist is ultimately focused on the leading content and stylistic trends of the time.

In the process of working with the material, the artist has the opportunity to clarify the concept and deepen it, discovering in it new potentialities, facets, nuances, that is, to embody unique artistic content, which as such exists only in the corresponding materialized structure. When creating a new work, he relies on the most general meaning, which is “accumulated” in the material under the influence of the history of culture and art. But the artist strives to concretize this meaning, directing our perception in a certain direction.

The system of material visual and expressive means characteristic of a certain type of art and its artistic language are closely related to the material. We can talk about the specific artistic language of painting: color, texture, linear design, way of organizing depth on a two-dimensional plane. Or about the language of graphics: a line, a stroke, a spot in relation to the white surface of the sheet. Or about the language of poetry: intonation and melodic means, meter (meter), rhyme, stanza, phonic sounds.

The language of art has a specific symbolism. A sign is a sensory object that designates another object and replaces it for the purpose of communication. By analogy with it, in a work of art, the material-pictorial side represents not only itself: it refers to other objects and phenomena that exist in addition to the materialized plane. In addition, like any sign, an artistic sign presupposes understanding and communication between the artist and the perceiver.

The characteristics of a semiotic or sign system are that it identifies an elementary sign unit that has more or less constant value for a certain cultural group, and also the interconnection of these units is carried out, based on certain rules(syntax). Canonical art is indeed characterized by a relatively stable connection between sign and meaning, as well as by the presence of a more or less clearly defined syntax, according to which one element requires another, one relationship entails another. Thus, exploring the genre of fairy tales, V.Ya. Propp makes a justified conclusion that it strictly adheres to the normativity of the genre, a certain alphabet and syntax: 7 fairy-tale roles and 31 of their functions. However, attempts to apply the principles of Propp's analysis to the European novel failed (it has completely different principles of artistic construction).

At the same time, in all types of art, the material and visual side, the symbolic sphere, designate one or another subject-spiritual content.

Thus, if the signs of strict semiotic systematicity in art are by no means universal, but local in nature, then the signs of iconicity in in a broad sense These words are undoubtedly present in any artistic language.

Now, after such a lengthy preface, we can finally move on to the definition of the concept of artistic form itself.

Artistic form is a way of expressing and materially-objectively existing content according to the laws of a given type and genre of art, as well as lower levels of meaning in relation to higher ones. This general definition forms need to be specified in relation to a separate work of art. In a holistic work, form is a totality brought to unity artistic means and techniques for the purpose of expressing unique content. In contrast, the language of art is potential expressive and visual means, as well as typological, normative aspects of form, mentally abstracted from many specific artistic embodiments.

Like content, artistic form has its own hierarchy and order. Some of its levels gravitate towards spiritual-figurative content, others - towards the material-physical objectivity of the work. Therefore, a distinction is made between internal and external form. Internal form is a way of expressing and transforming the orderliness of content into the orderliness of form, or the structural-compositional, genre-constructive aspect of art. External form is concrete sensory means, organized in a certain way to embody the internal form and, through it, content. If the external form is connected with the highest levels of content more indirectly, then with the material of art it is directly and directly related.

The art form is relatively independent and has its own internal, immanent laws of development. And yet social factors have an undeniable influence on the art form. The language of Gothic, Baroque, classicism, and impressionism was influenced by the socio-historical climate of the era, prevailing sentiments and ideals. In this case, socio-historical needs can be supported by mastered materials and means of their processing, achievements of science and technology (Michelangelo’s method of processing marble, the separate system of strokes by the Impressionists, metal structures by the Constructivists).

Even the most stable perceptual factor, not prone to special dynamics, influences the language of art not in itself, but in a social context.

If it is wrong to deny the socio-cultural factors influencing language and the form of art, then it is equally wrong not to see their internal, systemic independence. Everything that art draws from nature, social life, technology, and everyday human experience to replenish and enrich its formal means is processed into a specific artistic system. These specific means of expression are formed in the sphere of art, and not outside of it. Such are, for example, the rhythmic organization of poetic speech, melody in music, direct and reverse perspective in painting.

The means of artistic representation and expression tend to be systematic and internally conditioned and, because of this, are capable of self-development and self-improvement. Every art form has laws internal organization specific means of expression. Therefore, the same means of expression performs different functions in different types of art: line in painting and graphics, words in lyrics and novels, intonation in music and poetry, color in painting and cinema, gesture in pantomime, dance, dramatic action. At the same time, the principles of formation of some types and genres of art influence others. Finally, new forms of expression are created by outstanding creative individuality.

The artistic language is thus formed under the influence of a number of socio-historical and cultural-communicative factors, but they are mediated by the logic of its internal, systemic development. The dominant forms in art are determined general level and the nature of aesthetic culture.

When considering artistic form, we, as when analyzing content, highlight the most common components. Let us dwell on the characteristics of those principles of form-building, without which it is impossible to create works of art of any kind of art. These include genre, composition, artistic space and time, and rhythm. This is the so-called internal form, which reflects the general aesthetic aspect of art, while in the external form the means of expression are specific to its individual types.

Genre - historically established types of works that are relatively stable and repetitive art structures. Genre associations of works of art occur primarily on the basis of subject-thematic similarity and compositional features, in connection with various functions, and according to characteristic aesthetic features. Thematic, compositional, emotional and aesthetic features most often create a systemic relationship with each other. Thus, monumental sculpture and small sculpture differ in thematic, aesthetic, emotional, compositional characteristics, as well as in material.

The genre development of art is characterized by two trends: the tendency towards differentiation, towards the isolation of genres from each other, on the one hand, and towards interaction, interpenetration, up to synthesis, on the other. The genre also develops in the constant interaction of the norm and deviations from it, relative stability and variability. Sometimes it takes on the most unexpected forms, mixing with other genres and falling apart. A new work, outwardly written in line with the norm of the genre, can actually destroy it. An example is the poem by A.S. Pushkin’s “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, parodying the classical heroic poem, which falls out of genre norms work, but also retains individual features of the poem.

Deviation from the rules is possible only on their basis, in accordance with the universal dialectical law of the negation of the negation. The impression of novelty arises only when the norms of other works of art are remembered.

Secondly, the unique, specific content of art interacts with that which stores the “memory” of the genre. Genres are given life by real content, with which they are filled during the period of their origin and historical and cultural formation. Gradually, the genre content loses its specificity, is generalized, and acquires the meaning of a “formula” and an approximate outline.

Composition (from the Latin compositio - arrangement, composition, addition) is a method of constructing a work of art, the principle of connecting similar and dissimilar components and parts, consistent with each other and with the whole. In the composition there is a transition between artistic content and its internal relations in relation to form, and the orderliness of form - into the orderliness of content. To distinguish between the laws of construction of these spheres of art, two terms are sometimes used: architectonics - the relationship of the components of the content; composition - principles of form construction.

There is another type of differentiation: the general form of the structure and the relationship large parts works are called architectonics, and the relationship of the more fractional components is called composition. It should be taken into account that in the theory of architecture and organization of the subject environment, another pair of correlated concepts is used: design - the unity of the material components of the form, achieved by identifying their functions, and composition - artistic completion and emphasis on constructive and functional aspirations, taking into account the characteristics of visual perception and artistic expressiveness, decorativeness and integrity of form.

The composition is determined by the methods of shaping and the peculiarities of perception characteristic of a certain type and genre of art, the laws of constructing an artistic model / canon / in canonized types of culture, as well as the individual identity of the artist and the unique content of a work of art in less canonized types of culture.

The universal means of shaping and expressing ideological and artistic content are artistic space and time - reflection, rethinking and specific embodiment of the spatio-temporal aspects of reality and ideas about them in figurative, symbolic and conditional techniques art.

In spatial arts, space is a form that has become the so-called immediate content.

In temporary arts, spatial images are a form that has become mediated content, recreated using non-spatial material, for example, words. Their role in reflecting the socio-ethical, socio-aesthetic ideas of the artist is enormous. The artistic content of Gogol's works, for example, cannot be imagined outside the spatial image of existence, enclosed by a palisade, and his aesthetic ideal is outside the boundless space, outside the wide, free steppe and the road running into the unknown distance. Moreover, the image of this road is dual: it is both a real, loose, potholed road along which a tarantass or chaise shakes, and a road that the writer sees from a “beautiful distance.” The world of Dostoevsky's heroes - St. Petersburg corners, courtyard wells, attics, stairs, everyday life. At the same time, there are crowded, “cathedral” scenes of scandals and repentances. This is both the isolation of painfully nurtured thoughts and publicly visible action in an open space.

Artistic time performs meaningful functions primarily in temporary arts. In cinema, the image of time stretches and contracts. The impression of temporary movement is determined by many additional means: the frequency of frame changes, camera angles, the ratio of sound and image, plans. This can easily be seen in the films of A. Tarkovsky. The comparison of a person and his personal time with eternity, the existence of a person in the world and in time - such an abstract problem is reflected using purely concrete means. In the aesthetic, meaningful and semantic impression of instrumental music and choreographic performance, the role of tempo and various types rhythm-time relationships. Here, all the means that create the temporary image of the work, and through it the ideological and emotional meaning, are specified by the author or performer. And the perceiver must simultaneously perceive them, having only the freedom of additional figurative and semantic associations.

The situation is somewhat different with artistic time in spatially static arts: the perception of their images is not set by the artist with such rigidity. But just as a weightless word that has no spatial boundaries constantly reproduces object-spatial images, so the sculptor’s motionless material recreates movement that seems beyond his control with the help of poses, gestures, thanks to the depiction of transitions from one state to another, thanks to the development of movement from one form to another, through angles, volume accents.

Rhythm (from Greek - regularity, tact) - the natural repetition of identical and similar components at equal and commensurate intervals in space or time. Artistic rhythm is unity - the interaction of norm and deviation, orderliness and disorder, motivated by the optimal possibilities of perception and shaping, and ultimately by the content-figurative structure of a work of art.

In art, two main types of rhythmic patterns can be distinguished: relatively stable (regulative, canonized) and variable (irregular, non-canonized). Regular rhythms are based on a clearly identified unit of commensurability of artistic periodicities (meter), which is characteristic of ornamental art, music, dance, architecture and poetry. In irregular, non-canonized rhythms, periodicity occurs outside of strict meter and is approximate and unstable: it appears and then disappears. There is, however, a lot transitional forms between these two types of rhythm: so-called free verse, rhythmic prose, pantomime. In addition, a regular, canonized rhythm can acquire a freer and more complex character (for example, in music and poetry of the 20th century).

To understand the meaningful function of rhythm, we must take into account that it manifests itself at all levels of a work of art. Any rhythmic series of the lowest level of form should not be directly correlated with the theme and idea of ​​the work. The semantic function of rhythm in poetry, music, and architecture is revealed through its connection with the genre.

Rhythm, as it were, “spreads” the meaning of one component throughout the entire structure of repeating components, helps to reveal additional shades of content, creating a vast area of ​​comparisons and interconnections, involving even the lower, formative levels of a work of art into the general content context

Rhythmic series in a work of art can overlap each other, enhancing a single figurative and aesthetic impression.

There is also an imitation of life processes in art with the help of rhythm (the running of a horse, the clatter of train wheels, the sound of the surf), the movement of time, the dynamics of breathing and emotional ups and downs. But the meaningful function of rhythm cannot be reduced to such imitations.

Thus, rhythm indirectly conveys the dynamics of the depicted object and the emotional structure of the creative subject; increases the expressive and meaningful capacity of the work due to numerous comparisons and analogies, due to “pulling” formal repetitions into the semantic sphere; emphasizes the change of themes and intonation-figurative motifs.

Classical aesthetics has long considered proportionality, proportions, the “golden ratio”, rhythm, and symmetry as the formal manifestation of beauty. The golden ratio is a system of proportional relationships in which the whole is related to its larger part as the larger one is to the smaller one. The golden ratio rule is expressed by the formula: c/a = a/b, where c denotes the whole, a the larger part, b the smaller part. These patterns are truly inherent to the artistic form. And most importantly, aesthetic pleasure in the beauty of a form is determined by a high degree of correspondence and adequacy to its embodied content. Such correspondence in aesthetic terms can be regarded as harmony.

InteractionformsAndcontent

Artistic content plays a leading, determining role in relation to artistic form. The leading role of content in relation to form is manifested in the fact that form is created by the artist to express his intention. In the process of creativity, the spiritual-substantive plan and feelings-impressions prevail, although the form “pushes” and even leads it in a number of cases. Gradually the content becomes fuller and more defined. But from time to time it seems to strive to break out of the “shackles” and boundaries of form, but this unforeseen impulse is restrained by the strong-willed, constructive and creative work of the master in the material. The creative process demonstrates the struggle, the contradiction between form and content with the leading role of content.

Finally, the conditioning of form by content is also expressed in the fact that in a finished work of art large “blocks” of form and sometimes its “atomic” level are conditioned by content and exist to express it. Some layers of form are determined by the content more directly, others - less, having relatively greater independence, being determined by technical considerations, formative purposes as such. The lower levels of a work of art are not always possible and necessary to correlate with the content; they enter into it indirectly.

The content shows a tendency towards constant updating, since it is more directly connected with the developing reality, with the dynamic spiritual quest of the individual. The form is more inert, tends to lag behind the content, slow down, and fetter its development. The form does not always realize all the possibilities of the content; its conditioning by the content is incomplete, relative, and not absolute. Because of this, in art, as in other processes and phenomena, there is a constant struggle between form and content.

At the same time, the art form is relatively independent and active. Forms in art interact with the past artistic experience humanity and with modern searches, since at each stage of the development of art there is a relatively stable system of meaningful forms. There is a conscious or intuitive projection of the created form onto the context of forms that precede and act simultaneously, including the degree of their aesthetic “wear” is taken into account. The activity of the form is manifested in the process of historical development of art, and in the act of creativity, and at the level of the social functioning of a work of art, its performing interpretation and aesthetic perception.

Consequently, the relative discrepancy between content and form, their contradiction, is a constant sign of the movement of art towards new aesthetic discoveries. This contradiction is clearly expressed during periods of formation of a new direction, style, when the search for new content is not yet ensured new form or when the intuitive insight of new forms turns out to be premature and therefore artistically unrealizable due to the lack of socio-aesthetic prerequisites for the content. In “transitional” works, united by an intense search for new content, but which have not found adequate artistic forms, signs of familiar, previously used formations are visible, not artistically rethought, not melted down to express new content. This is often due to the fact that the new content is only vaguely perceived by the artist. Examples of such works are “ American tragedy"T. Dreiser and the early stories of M. Bulgakov. Such transitional works usually appear during periods of acute crises in the development of art or intense polemics between the artist and himself, with the inertia of his usual thinking and style of writing. Sometimes, from this collision of old form and new content, the maximum artistic effect is extracted and a harmonious correspondence is created on a new level. In a finished work of art, unity prevails in the relationship between content and form - correspondence, interconnection and interdependence. It is impossible to separate form from content here without destroying its integrity. In it, content and form are connected into a complex system.

The aesthetic unity of content and forms presupposes their certain positive uniformity, progressive and artistically developed content and full-fledged form. It is advisable to distinguish the unity of content and form, meaning that one cannot exist without the other, from the correspondence of content and form as a certain artistic criterion and ideal. In a real work of art, only an approximation to this correspondence is found.

artwork meaning art

WITHlist of literature

1. Bakhtin M.M. The problem of content, material and form in verbal artistic creativity // Bakhtin M.M. Questions of literature and aesthetics. M.1975.

2. Gachev G.D. Content of the artistic form. M. 1968.

3. Hegel G.V.F. Aesthetics. T.1-4, M.1968-1974.

4. Girshman M.M. Literary work. Theory and practice of analysis. M. 1991.

5. Khalizev V.E. Theory of literature. M.1999.

Posted on Allbest.ru

Similar documents

Multicultural space of a work of art. Cultural analysis of the poem by A.S. Pushkin "Tazit". Perception of works of Russian literature by Belarusian schoolchildren. Characteristics of a work of art as a “container” of culture.

course work, added 11/27/2009


Inner world works of verbal art. The world of reality from a creative perspective. The social and moral structure of the world in the work. Art world in A. Akhmatova's poem "To the Muse". Temporal and spatial characteristics.

abstract, added 05/27/2010


Features of literary text. Types of information in a literary text. The concept of subtext. Understanding the text and subtext of a work of art as a psychological problem. Expression of subtext in the story “Heart of a Dog” by M. Bulgakov.

thesis, added 06/06/2013


Revealing the writer’s artistic skill in the ideological and thematic content of the work. The main plot lines of the story by I.S. Turgenev" Spring waters". Analysis of the images of the main and secondary characters reflected in the text characteristics.

course work, added 04/22/2011


Structure, genre form, figurative system of a literary work. The structure of the image of an artistic character: verbal, speech, psychological portraits, name, space-time continuum. Analysis of literary text in high school.

thesis, added 01/21/2017


Social significance content of the work Paulo Coelho"Three Cedars" The worldview position of the author. Motivation of actions and logic of development, character of characters. The language and style of the work, taking into account genre features. Emotional capacity of the story.

book analysis, added 08/07/2013


Reading the literary text of the story by N.V. Gogol "The Stroller". Clarifying the interpretation of unclear words. The stylistics of the work, the rules for arranging words in a sentence. Ideological content, composition and main images of the text, forms of expression used.

abstract, added 07/21/2011


A study of the factors that influenced the writing of the historical novel "Gone with the Wind" by the American writer Margaret Mitchell. Characteristics of the characters in the novel. Prototypes and names of characters in the work. Study of the ideological and artistic content of the novel.

abstract, added 12/03/2014


Social problems, highlighted in the fairy tale story “The Adventures of Cipollino” by Gianni Rodari. Direction, type and genre of the work. Ideological and emotional assessment of the fairy tale. Main characters, plot, composition, artistic originality and the meaning of the work.

book analysis, added 04/07/2017


Identification of the phenomenon of linguistic personality of a character in a work of art. The author and characters of a work of fiction as interacting linguistic personalities. Language personality author. Speech portraits of the characters in the novel "The Collector" by John Fowles.

2. Literature and reality. The concept of “ideality” of art.

3. Objective and subjective, rational and emotional in the art of words

4. Overcoming aesthetic dualism

§ 3. A work of art as a structure

1. Structural model of a work of art

2. What makes up the outer form

3. What is the internal form of a work of art?

4. The difference between the external and internal form with the mobility (“transparency”) of the boundaries between them. The concept of “application” of an image in Potebnya (in the structural aspect).

5. Content (or idea) of a work of art

6. The relationship between the content (ideas) of artistic

7. General concept of structure isomorphism

8. “Formula” of a work of art in terms of structure.

§ 4. A work of art as an act of creativity (the primary epistemological aspect of A. Potebnya’s scientific model).

1. Two stages of creating an artistic image.

2. Primary creation of an artistic image. The essence and mechanism of the psychology of the creative process.

2.1. What is the mechanism for creating an artistic image?

2. 2. Formula of the creative process, the act of creating a work of art.

3. The relationship between content and image (internal form)

1) Uncertainty of content(s).

2) Inequality of content and image (x and a)

4. Conscious and unconscious in the art of words.

6. The sphere of existence of the artistic image

§ 5. A work of art as an object of perception and understanding (secondary epistemological aspect of A. Potebnya’s scientific model)

1. What is available to the reader when perceiving a work of art?

2. Psychological mechanism of perception. The analogy between the act of creativity and the act of understanding a work of art. "Formula" of perception.

1) A (author’s experience) is not equal to a1 (reader’s experience)

2) A1 is not equal to a

3) X is not equal to x1

3. Subjective aspects of the psychology of perception.

3.1. Apperception.

3.2. Subjective aspects of apperception

4. Objective moments of creativity and perception.

5. Methodological significance of the theory of creativity and perception a. Potebni.

§ 6. Problems of analysis and interpretation of a work of art

1. Author's interpretation.

2. Tasks of criticism.

3. Objectives and main object of scientific analysis of a work of art.

§ 7. Specificity and structure of a work of verbal art and its main elements.

1. What is true art?

The main criterion of artistry.

2. The problem of the conventions of art.

2.1. Types and forms of allegory

2.2 Allegory “metaphorical”

2.3.Synecdochic allegory (artistic typicality).

2.4. The relativity of this typology.

2.5. The problem of “conventional” and “life-like” in art

3. Specificity of the verbal image

4. Elements of the figurative system (internal and external forms) of the work and their specificity in the art of words.

4.1. The world and its “representation” in literature.

4.2. Space, time, action in the real world

4.3. Time in literature.

4.4. Space in literature

4.5. Action in the art of words. Action and space.

4.6. Action and time. The category of causality, its genesis in the art of words in the interpretation of Potebnya.

4.7. Narration as an integrating element of the verbal figurative system

4.8. “Point of view” in the narration and composition of a literary work.

4.9. Problems of the specificity of verbal expression of psychological processes and states

4.10. Consciousness and self-awareness in literature

4.11. Generic and genre forms in the art of words

Basic prerequisites.

Literary genera.

Literary genre, its properties and characteristics.

5. More about artistry. General properties of the figurative system of a verbal work of art.

§ 3. A work of art as a structure

(structural aspect of A. Potebnya’s scientific model)

1. Structural model of a work of art

as an analogy to the structural model of a word.

From Potebnya’s point of view, “all those constituent parts that we find in works of art” are similar to the constituent parts of a word. The premise of this is that “every word, as far as our experience extends, certainly passes through the state in which this word is a poetic work.” In cases where a word has turned into a two-part word, in which the internal form is forgotten, lost, and the meaning is directly adjacent to the sound, this previous “poetic” state can be restored by studying the history of the word, i.e. methods of etymological analysis.

Here is an example from Potebnya from his “Lectures on the Theory of Literature”. In the name of the plant “coltsfoot” the internal form is lost. It was associated with the correlation in consciousness of such complex emotional states as love and dislike. Even now we cannot determine these phenomena scientifically, “with the accuracy with which it would be desirable.” But in the language there are traces of the fact that people associated love with warmth, and dislike with cold (for example, in the Ukrainian word “ostuda”, meaning dislike and at the same time “cold”, or in Russian “hateful”, as well as when the word “cold” is used to mean “unloving”). In a Ukrainian song, a mother’s love and a stepmother’s dislike are expressed as follows: “my own mother loves how the summer sun warms, but the stepmother does not love, she is cold like the winter sun.” It is this figurative idea (love - warmth, dislike - cold) that formed the basis for the name of the plant “coltsfoot”, because it has “the upper surface of the leaves is shiny and cold, and the lower one is not green and whitish, soft, warm as if covered with a white cobweb. Thus, the plant is both a “mother” and a “stepmother”. The contrast between the warmth of love and the coldness of dislike formed, therefore, the internal figurative core of the word “coltsfoot”.

The analysis of a work of art is to some extent similar to the etymological study of a word: it should (has the goal) to reveal the structure of the work, establish its figurative core and thereby provide the key to understanding its content.

Whatever the work of art may be: large or small, simple or complex, whatever the individual characteristics of its structure (genre, composition, plot, stylistic, etc.) - it is still the most general the principle of its structure similar the structure of poetic words.

Like a word, it has an EXTERNAL FORM (but if in a word it is a set of articulate sounds, then in a work of art it is its “verbal embodiment”); INTERNAL FORM (in a word - “representation”, symbol, sign of meaning, in a work of art - an image or a series of images representing the content, pointing to it, symbolizing it); and, finally, CONTENT (in a word - lexical meaning, in a work of art - a set of thoughts and moods that author expresses an image and (or) a set of thoughts and feelings that the image evokes in reader).

In general terms, we have already talked about this above, and now we will try to understand all these elements of the work and their relationships with each other in more detail.

The indicated elements are present in a work of art of any type of art: in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, literature... The difference between them lies primarily (although not only) in material, from which the external form of one or another type of art is built. Potebnya himself draws the following analogy, using as an example the simplest type of image - an allegory: “The same elements are in a work of art, and it will not be difficult to find them if we reason in this way: “This is a marble statue (external form) of a woman with a sword and scales (internal form), representing justice (content)."

Like clay and marble in sculpture, color in painting, sound in music, so in literature the material is the word. About the fact that the word is special material, not the same as the above-mentioned materials from which the external form of other arts is built, the conversation is yet to come. Now we want to emphasize other properties common to all arts: firstly, that a verbal work is similar in composition to works of other types of art, and secondly, that its external form, according to Potebna, is not something purely material , inert, strictly formal - already it, being both “external” and “material” (“material”, as the formalists liked to say), is not some kind of “pure” (i.e. “pure” from thought, from meaning) form. Continuing his analogy, Potebnya says about the external form of the same sculpture that “this last one in the statue is not a rough block of marble, but marble, hewn in a certain way,” i.e. already processed (and processing presupposes a certain goal-setting, i.e. some mental, ideal content that the creator expresses in his material, processing, modifying it). Likewise, the external form of a verbal work is not just a collection of articulate sounds. After all, in a word this totality of sounds, according to Potebnya, “is also not sound as material, but sound already formed by thought» 1 . This is especially true for the external form of a work of art.