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9
УДК 7
00! 10.21661/Г-557352 Маслякова А.И.
Культурная идентичность и самоопределение личности на примере памяти камня
Аннотация
Основное содержание исследования составляет анализ горных пород с точки зрения культурологии. Автор приходит к выводу, что внимание к окружающей среде влияет на культурную идентичность и имеет положительный эффект на самооценку.
I Ключевые слова: диалог, самооценка, память, культурная идентичность, камни.
Masliakova A.I.
Cultural Identity and Self-Determination of a Person on the Example of the Memory of a Stone
Abstract
This research aimed to analyze rocks from a culturological point of view. Author comes to the conclusion that attention to the environments affect cultural identity and improves self-esteem.
I Keywords: dialogue, self-esteem, memory, cultural identity, stones.
I would like to thank Dr. Gerald Cipriani for his help with this research.
It is a well-known fact than the city where one lives, the stones with which one is surrounded, affect one's life, one's aesthetic taste. And it seems to me it is high time we paid more attention to the environments we live in and tried to listen to «the memories of the stones» more attentively so as to not only expand our knowledge in the field of Art history, but also improve our self-awareness and self-esteem.
Recently I have been contemplating how many people of various backgrounds and occupations must have been walking along the cobbled streets of the old towns. I could not help but wonder: «How exciting would it be to join them and listen to the stories of their lives, would it not?" Yet, on the other hand, I do believe that the tales of the paving stones themselves might be no less impressive. If only they could speak...
Surprisingly enough, the latter is not so impossible as it may seem at first glance for, having visited various exhibitions of Modern Art, I have noticed that many artists have been paying attention to the «memory of the stones». And it can be argued that, on the whole, there are several ways of revealing their past.
Fig.1. The paving stones of the Old Town in Tallinn
Firstly, as we all know, some stones are already covered with inscriptions, such as Egyptian granite sarcophagi or Viking runestones mentioning Scandinavians who participated in voyages to Western Europe (for instance, the famous Kjula Runestone located in Sodermanland, Sweden). And although it may not always be easy to
decipher their messages, there are plenty of stones lacking even any of those. Yet if you listen attentively, you might hear what the stones are trying to tell you, as confirmed by Stephan Micus' album «The Music of Stones», featuring stone chimes, which was recorded in the Ulm Cathedral in 1989 [2], as well as by the creativity of a Swedish artist Cecilia Edefalk who has collected stones and given them voices that convey their state of mind and history. For example, the blasted stone is naturally quite shaken while the granite rolled by ice sheet tell us about his long life.
And in this regard one should neither forget about the marble (or granite) plaques, placed on the façades of the buildings, referring to the houses which used to stand on the site of the present day edifices (and / or to the outstanding people who lived there), nor underestimate the importance of preserving the elements of the old structures wherever possible, such as, for example, the outlines of the medieval arched windows complementing their modern counterparts, or the Browne Doorway - a rather peculiar monument that one may see in the heart of Galway city, in the Eyre Square, namely, a freestanding limestone entrance to the Renaissance house of the Browne family «leading to the past», as if inviting passers-by to move into another aesthetic dimension hidden from prying eyes [3].
Furthermore, the dialogue between the past and the present may be initiated not only between the participants residing in the same area, so to speak, but also among those who are separated by many miles, as, for instance, the Circus in Bath that was modelled on the Stonehenge and therefore is forever bound to the latter, or the sculptures of Castor and Pollux, flanking the entrance to the Horse Guards Manege in St. Petersburg, which were designed to resemble the famous Fountain of the Dioscuri located in front of the Quirinale Palace in Rome.
Fig. 2. Cecilia Edefalk. «Stones» Moreover, in order to make the «voices of the stones» sound more clearly, one may also initiate a dialogue between the past and the present by exhibiting an object of Modern Art in a historic area, or vice versa - by presenting pieces from a bygone era in a new, contemporary context, and thus combine the «stones of the past» with the «stones of the present», metaphorically speaking [1]. Let us take as an example the Solovetsky Stone - a granite monument to the victims of political repressions in the Soviet Union located in the Trinity Square, not far from the place where the Old Trinity Cathedral - the oldest church in St. Petersburg - used to be, or the Egyptian Sphinxes, made of Aswan granite around the 14th century BC, adorning a quay at the University Embankment designed by Konstantin Thon in the 19th century.
Fig. 3. Tallinn. The Old Town
Fig. 4. Malachite Vase, The Hermitage Museum
And yet, I am virtually certain that it is in a museum that one could truly appreciate the importance of the «memory of the stones» for only there does the symphony of their stories sound so vividly and emotionally. Suffice it to mention the Pergamon Museum in Berlin housing, among other things, the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, the Mshatta Façade, the Victory Stele of Esarhaddon, etc., or the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg walking around which one may find not only antique marble sculptures, gems and cameos (such as the Gorzaga Cameo presented to the Emperor Alexander I by Joséphine de Beauharnais), but also Michelangelo's «Crouching Boy», Jean-Antoine Houdon's «Seated Voltaire» looking rather sarcastically at the visitors, «Cupid and Psyche» created by Antonio Canova, let alone numerous monumental vases made of semi-precious stones (malachite, lapis lazuli, jasper, rhodonite, etc.) which were distributed throughout the halls of the museum according to the orders of the Emperor Nicholas I. And I quite agree with Mikhail Bakhtin
that it is when a person turns from a passive contemplator into an active participant in this dialogue of cultures that the process of their self-determination accelerates enabling them to embrace their cultural identity, improve their self-esteem and become more successful in the future [1].
To sum it up, it seems to me that the preservation of cultural heritage may be considered as a «wedge stone» of our society since the stability and further development of the latter are largely determined by our attitude towards
our history, our past. The variety of the approaches to achieve that goal corresponds to the complexity of the tasks set before us, as confirmed be the examples mentioned above. And I do hope that the next time you walk along the cobbled streets of the old towns, you will pause a little bit and ask yourself the same question as I did at the beginning of this paper, namely: «How exciting would it be to listen to the stories of those stones, would it not?»
Литература
1. Bakhtin M. The Aesthetics of Word Creativity. Available at: http://teatr-lib.ru/Library/Bahtin/esthetic/#_ Toc225599048 (Accessed July 31, 2021).
2. Broughton S. Stephan Micus. Available at: https://www.songlines.co.uk/features/a-beginner-s-guide/stephan-micus-a-beginner-s-guide (Accessed July 31, 2021).
3. Masliakova A. The History of Philosophical Ideas and Their Expression in Art. - St. Petersburg, Asterion, 2020. - 150 p.
УДК l
DOI 10.21661/r-55l466
Маслякова А.И.
Эстетика кино в контексте слияния различных областей искусства
Аннотация
Статья посвящена комплексному исследованию киноискусства и его эстетическим особенностям. Автор подробно изучает вопрос эстетики кино, анализируя конкретные примеры.
I Ключевые слова: литература, искусство, музыка, эстетика, скульптура, архитектура, живопись, кино.
Masliakova A.I.
Cinema Aesthetics in the Context of the Synthesis
of Different Branches of Art
Abstract
The article is devoted to complex research of cinematography and its aesthetic peculiarities. The author draws our attention to cinematic art analyses concrete examples.
I Keywords: literature, painting, sculpture, art, music, architecture, cinema, aesthetics.
I would like to thank Robert Garcia who inspired me to write this article.
As we all know, film comprises different branches of Art - music, architecture, sculpture, literature, painting, etc. Sometimes Art is just a «scenery» against which the action unfolds - let us mention in this regard the famous scene from Federico Fellini's «Dolce Vita» featuring Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. However, more often than not,
works of Art may become the main characters around which the whole plot revolves, just like in William Wyler's film «How to Steal a Million» whose storyline is based on the theft of Cellini's «Venus» which, in fact, never existed. And the same is true about Chuck Connelly's «Bridge to Nowhere», the monumental canvas that a fictional artists Lionel Dobie struggles to finish to the accompaniment of Giacomo Puccini's
