Abstract: the article mentions facts from the history of the ancient art (stages of formation of cave art, peculiarities of the Ancient Egyptian canon in art and etc.) that require scientific research. The author of the article offers explanation of these facts from the point of view of cultural studies and semiotics. The author shows that formation of art (particularly, quasi art of the first cultures when the esthetical point of view hadn’t been formed yet) is a communication and sacral semiosis from one hand and a result of non-utilitarian policy in art that encouraged the outcome of an expert in quasi art and an artist himself.

Keywords: cultural studies, art, quasi art, formation, culture, sign, non-utilitarian, situation, fine arts, canon.

Abstract: the article is devoted to one of the most brilliant pages in history of the Russian art. This is the period of Silver Age that is also sometimes called the Russian cultural Renaissance, which brings it closer to the Western Renaissance of the XV–XVI centuries. That period lasted for quite a short time, yet it was enough time for many new art trends to be created, including Symbolism, Futurism, Modern, Acmeism and Cubo-Futurism. Subsequent historical events such as revolutions, the civil war, totalitarian regime, the Second World War and others, have blurred recollection of the cultural Renaissance and made it more difficult to understand its ending. However, the author of the article is confident that forms of art that had been created at the turn of ХIХ–ХХ centuries, continued to develop. Since the second half of XX century this art has being ‘rehabilitated’. Researchers try to discover all facts related to the art of those times. Yet, in order to understand those times it is not enough just to collect facts. The author of the article offers a new interpretation according to which art is being viewed based on the periodicity principle. This approach allows to find an unusual form of succession in art history. This form of succession can be understood if compared not to preceding art but to most distant epochs.

Keywords: art history, Silver age, art life, retrospectivism, time of culture, transitory period, bifurcation, periodicity principle, Renaissance tradition, new religious concept.

Abstract: the article is devoted to the problem of ideological turn from some Russian intelligentsia from materialism to idealism at the turn of XIX–XX centuries. It is very important to solve this problem in order to understand the ideological life of Russian intelligentsia and to answer the question about genesis of idealism and early symbolism in Russian culture. At the same time, when studying the mechanisms of this ideological transformation, we can also understand both the reason of creating a new esthetical paradigm in literary criticism, overcoming Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s utilitarianism which had been reigning over the minds of radical intelligentsia since 1860’s. The author of the article studies different ideological and cultural factors of formation of intelligentsia’s mind and the reasons why Immanuel Kant’s and Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas became so popular. The author proves that those reasons included spiritual crisis, ‘longing for religion’ and a search for ‘new religious concept’ typical for many well-known figures of that epoch such as Nikolay Berdyaev, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Vasily Rozanov. In the author’s opinion, ideological and cultural shift in intelligentsia’s public mind predetermined ‘abatement of legacies’ in 1980’s when intelligentsia declined the ideas of Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Alexander Pisarev.

Keywords: intelligentsia, idealism and materialism, utilitarianism, esthetics, new religious concept, religion, cultural crisis, Kant, nietzcheism, dionysism.

Abstract: the article is devoted to creative work and times of Andrey Voznesensky, a Russian poet, author, artist and a winner of many titles and rewards including the USSR State Prize, from the point of view of his ‘Uzzah’ poem (written in 1964). This poem about human living in the age of robots is interesting not only because it has many images but also because it has a unique structure and reflects the present times as a drop of water. This is a unique dictionary of ‘hyper-text’. Hyper-text means text that has hyperlinks (references) to other text that the reader can immediately access (definition offered by T. Nelson in 1963). It is unique because the author has managed to find an adequate research method for his text. His text is related to hermeneutics and logistic semantics combined with parasemantics (when one word is associated with another). As a result, a ‘hypertext’ dictionary devoted to Andrey Voznesensky’s creative work was created. This dictionary can really help the reader and researcher to understand the famous poet and his world much better.

Keywords: cultural studies, poetry, hermeneutics, semantics, possible-world semantic, Voznesensky, Uzzah, poetics, text, context, hyper-text, innovation, language.

Abstract: the article discusses the semiotic approach to studying such a historical phenomenon as artillery of XVI–XVIII centuries. The article is based on the supposition that a historical cannon creates heterogeneous text with certain meanings that help to reconstruct the system of signs and recode the text itself. Local cannon text has its inner structure and is being viewed from the point of modern cultural approaches. The author makes an attempt to analyze the structure of cultural text of such historical cannon and evaluates the degree of information richness of such text. The author also views the ability of the cannon text to acquire new meanings and to bring into focus old forgotten meanings when interacting with new cultural contexts. The author also raises a question about historical value of cannon’s text. The author offers a classification of ‘readers’ of canon’s text depending on their interest, manner of text research and the nature of searched information. The results are shown in a table.

Keywords: cultural studies, semiotics, text, context, structure, function, artillery, cannon, information, primary source.

Abstract: the present article is devoted to comparative analysis of the two international film festivals that belong to one (conditional) class A but have completely different structures and priorities in the global motion-picture process. On one hand, the Cannes and Moscow International Film Festivals are very different from the point of view of their interior structure, on the other hand, they are close and interweaved in their art contents. The latter allows to use the method of art review in cultural research. Professional and business life is quite active both at Moscow and Cannes International Film Festivals. Experts in cinematography come all over the world. However, the Moscow Festival is oriented at the audience in the first place. The author of the article describes both general patterns of the festival activities and history of each festival as well as particular festival programs of 2013. Special attention is paid at the process of official selection of award winners, on one hand, and retrospectives on the other hand.

Keywords: cultural studies, art history, film festival, motion-picture process, film industry, awards, retrospectives, video art, cinema of Russia.

Abstract: the author of the article offers and proves the hypothesis about a special art trend in XX century which has its roots in art culture of the second half of XIX century. Most clearly these trends were formulated by German Neoidealists who based on their own creative practice. However, art history viewed Neoidealism as a local phenomenon of German culture while the author of this article describes it as one of the fundamental art tendencies during the last century and a half in Germany and Europe as well as in Russia where it was developed, first of all, in Favorsky’s and his students’ art work as well as work by a number of sculptors and artists. Noteworthy that Neoidealism was not an independently developing phenomenon and interacted with such phenomena as Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Modern, Neoclassicism and Avant-garde. Despite all that, Neoidealism managed to retain its own essence and peculiarity.

Keywords: neoidealism, neoclassicism, neoromanticism, official school of art history, main art trends, fine arts, sculpture, relief principle, monumental art, art theory.

Abstract: Analyzing Arkady Plastov’s late works, we can define the main images and meanings there. Internal harmony typical for work by this master, does not disappear under the influence of new ideas and events in the country’s social and art life. Work created by Plastov during his last ten years of life reflected his attitude to the word. Narrative , selected topics and his preferences in genres were closely connected to his art goals. Opposing to sketches in painting, the artist used expressive opportunities of ‘fast work with nature’ in some of his late works. The author of the article pays special attention at such Arkady Plastov’s portraits and paintings as ‘Grandma Katerina and Tanya Yudina’, ‘Death of the tree’, ‘The Blinds’ and ‘April’. In his late paintings, Arkady Plastov shared his own perception of the world that is based on traditional Russian religious and esthetical views and holistic perception of the world.

Keywords: art history, Arkady Plastov, religious grounds of creative work, Christian system of values, traditional peasant life, composite structure, emphasis on image and meanings, blind, children in art, fine art.

Abstract: the article presents the very first attempt to analyze creative concepts of the gypsy theatre. Based on documents from the RGALI archives, the author of the article analyzes the ‘struggle of strategies’ and choices that have been making the history of the Romen Theatre over the past 80 years. For instance, when there was choice between Gypsy and Russian languages, Russian was not always selected. Quite an important choice was also made between the three concepts, propaganda team, music drama or just music theatre. The author of the article also traces back how social and political views of the artists and attitudes to folklore costumes and choreography have been changing. It is stated that national traditional and mentality were showed in absolutely opposing ways on the stage. It all had an influence on Romen audience and therefore, the role and status of the Romen Theatre in Russian culture. Analyzing strategic success and failures, the author of the article explains the reasons of crisis and describes the most promising ways of developing gypsy theatre art.

Keywords: cultural studies, Russian culture, national traditions, gypsies, gypsy Romen Teatre, conception, costume, play, critics, folklore.

Abstract: Many collisions of Fedor Dostoevsky’s novel ‘Idiot’ (1868–1869) still remain a mystery despite them being studied and interpreted quite widely. It was not by accident when V. Burenin said that Dostoevsky’s ‘Idiot’ touches the very ‘sphere of pathology’. Based on the analysis of Fedor Dostoesky’s ‘Idiot’, the author of the article demonstrates heuristic potential of structural method for analyzing characters. The author of the article also hypothetically reconstructs a mysterious ‘meeting of the two female antagonists’ (Nastasia Phillipovna and Aglaya Epanchina). In that scene (Part IV, Chapter VIII) Nastasia Phillipovna wins morally all of the sudden. Duke Myshkin who is in love with Aglaya plays a role of a moral ‘judge’ here. In order to understand all these contradictions, it is necessary to describe typical patters and causes of opposition between the main female characters as well as Nastasia Phillipovna’s ‘internal duality’ as M. Bakhtin called it.

Keywords: cultural studies, M. Bakhtin, dialogue, Fedor Dostoevsky, literary studies, reconstruction, structuralism, structural method, character analysis, characters.