Theoretical expression of self-portrait in contemporary Russian art history

Keiran Vadim Vyacheslavovich ORCID: 0009-0008-3520-2995 Postgraduate student; Department of Russian Art; St. Petersburg Ilya Repin Academy of Arts 199034, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Universitetskaya nab., 17 pressinfo24@mail.ru

Introduction

Self-portrait in the field of art belongs to the portrait genre, which forms an aesthetic influence on cultural consciousness through the technique of using visual and expressive means in the construction of an artistic image and through the level of embodiment of an ideological composition in the text of art.

The self-portrait has a dual aesthetic structure, which is revealed by the artistic significance of the visual perception of the image and is based on the expressiveness of the artist's ideological ideas about his own personality. Accordingly, in the unity of the self-portrait image, the development of portrait dualism arises, in which the search for image coincidence takes place not within the limits of the reality of the existing image, but within the psychological boundaries of the author's self-awareness, the distinctive semantic characteristics of which are independently confirmed by each of the masters in the text of fine art. Such an assumption formulates a special theoretical interest in the problem of self-portrait, which is included in the general genre of portrait, but has an aesthetic nuance of expositional perception. In order to present the ideological and substantive depth of the concept of "self-portrait", we will consider some characteristic definitions formed in various theoretical aspects of the field of art criticism – from artistic to philosophical.

The content of this article contains works that allow us to form an ideological and overview characteristic of the scientific stratum of modern Russian art criticism, which asserts methodological directions in the development of conceptual and substantive boundaries of self-portraiture in art.

The empirical material of this article is the work of Russian art historians who conducted a study of the portrait genre with a meaningful development of typological boundaries to the subgenre meaning of self-portrait. According to the chronological typologization established in the article, the works of V. N. Stasevich ^[1], Yu. M. Lotman ^[2], D. V. Sarabyanov ^[3] were included during the last third of the 20th century; the theoretical views of contemporaries are revealed in the works of the authors: A. N. Khrenov ^[4], S. M. Gracheva ^{[5, 6]}, E. V. Korotenko ^[7], A. Y. Zorina ^[8], A.M. Sverdlova-Alexandrova ^[9], E. V. Bobrova ^[10], V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina ^[11], L. N. Grankina ^[12], O. A. Krivtsun ^[13], V. S. Turchin ^[14], O. N. Baranova ^[15], M. V. Ermolaeva ^[16], R. L. Zolotareva ^[17], A. I. Kuleshova and M. P. Gerasimova ^[18], A. V. Medvetsky ^[19], G. S. Trifonov ^[20], V. F. Chirkov ^[21].

In the course of the research, hermeneutic and structural-typological methods were used, as well as comparative historical analysis. Further prospects for the study are conditioned by the possibility of making substantive and theoretical additions to the definition of self-portrait in the space of modern art criticism; also, to formulate a hypothesis of the self-portrait's own genre existence in fine art based on combining (and supplementing) the concepts presented in the article that have a descriptive characteristic of self-portrait.

Prolegomena to modern theoretical views on self-portrait (the last third of the 20th century)

The last third of the 20th century in the space of Russian art and art criticism was defined by a period of freedom in understanding the ideological meanings and semantic interpretation of the artistic image. This cultural period formed the theoretical directions of research in the field of the portrait genre, which received a new structural expressiveness through the formation of new conceptual provisions, reflected not only in art criticism, but also in the field of many sciences of the humanities cycle.

It should be noted that the content of the prolegomena does not include the entire scope of scientific research materials devoted to the study of self-portraits; the text contains works that allow us to form an ideological and overview characteristic of the development of the scientific stratum of Russian art criticism in the field of the portrait genre.

Let us consider some theoretical positions determined by the cultural character of the epoch in the field of portrait (self-portrait) genre.

V. N. Stasevich, in his study of the portrait genre, also points to the main importance of form in artistic expression, but more definitely correlates it with the importance of meaningful meaning that reveals the aesthetics of the image: "Any idea of the author, no matter how complex and abstract it may be, is transmitted to others using certain specific means, that is, in a certain formal the embodiment; the content is expressed in the form. The form of expression is the contact that closes the chain of thought that exists between the author and the viewer" ^{[1, p. 24]}. The form acquires the role of an intermediary, a guide between the author's idea and the audience, but with the obligatory condition not only of sensory contemplation, but of her thinking. A self-portrait in such a theoretical perspective becomes the result of creative speculation about the artistic space of one's own world, the expressiveness of which is formed on the basis of psychological personality traits. V. N. Stasevich reveals the idea of personality in the structure of portrait painting: "A person's personality is a complex interweaving of the individual and the general. These two contradictory properties, if considered in an abstract separation, appear in inseparable unity in life, generating innumerable subtleties of human behavior, and consequently, its external signs – facial expressions, gestures, even the nature of hairstyles and clothes" ^{[1, p. 39]}. The idea of dialectical materialism expressed in this fragment about the unity of the individual and the general generates in the representation the necessary pattern of development to a new meaning of the personality itself, but in this case, such an action does not occur. The passage is defined by the disclosure of a new meaning of the portrait (self–portrait) in the position of signification: facial expressions, gestures, hairstyles, clothes, which forms the condition for the program text of semiotics.

Yu. M. Lotman embodied the ideological principles of semiotics in the discussion of the portrait genre, which has found a new theoretical route in the research space.: "The portrait constantly fluctuates on the verge of artistic doubling and mystical reflection of reality. Therefore, a portrait is a mythogenic object by its nature. <...> The portrait is located in the middle between the reflection and the face, created and not made with hands. Unlike a mirror image, two questions apply to a portrait: who is reflected, firstly, and who reflected, secondly. This makes it possible to raise two more questions.: what thought the depicted person expressed with his face and what thought the artist expressed with his image. The intersection of these two different thoughts gives the portrait a three-dimensional space" ^{[2, p. 509]}. The Russian researcher asks a completely new type of questions that affirm the ideological perspective of semiotic meanings through two constructive positions.: 1. The "face-sign" representation, which creates a text of cultural interpretation, and 2. The "mythogeny" representation, which develops a multi-layered layer of the psychoanalytic and the real in the depicted form. Such a theoretical level does not exclude the sphere of pragmatics, in which the search for the main meanings of portrait expressiveness in the visual genre of art was carried out earlier; pragmatics in Yu. M. Lotman acquires the expressiveness of an aesthetic space in which the intersection of "two different thoughts" takes place. The self-portrait in this representation is revealed by the semiotic identity of the signified and the signifier in establishing the unity of the creator and creation, which form, according to the above-mentioned representation of Yu.M. Lotman, not the intersection of the ambiguity of the "conceivable", but the one-dimensional ideological linearity of personal identity (in the self-portrait).

D. V. Sarabyanov reveals his own theoretical view of the pictorial space of a self-portrait in the words: "The history of painting, seen through the monuments of a self-portrait, is realized not so much in artistic categories as in programs expressed, however, not in words, but by faces, poses, eyes or the entourage surrounding the characters" ^{[3, p. 97]}. Sarabyanov establishes the concept of a "program" as an important structural and theoretical position in the historical study of a self-portrait, which in its substantive characteristics is close to the text of Lotman's semiotics, since it reflects the facts of historical meanings more than the self-representation of the author through an artistic image. Accordingly, the terminological expression "programmaticity" in the field of portrait (self-portrait) genre creates a condition for understanding the artistic elements of a self-portrait in a systematic unity, through which not only the psychology of the artist's personality is revealed, but also to some extent his fate in the cultural space of the era. It is possible to cite as an example of the "programmaticity" of the idea of portrait allusions, reflecting the conscious metaphorical immersion of the image in a historical epoch, consistent with the individual's ideas about the space of the cultural text of his destiny.

Thus, the theoretical concepts of Russian art criticism in the field of self-portrait of the last third of the 20th century are revealed by multi-vector trends, in the meaningful meaning of which the main idea is stated about the inseparable unity of the embodiment of the artistic image of a self-portrait with the space of the surrounding cultural existence (being). Such a level of representation forms the condition for the ontology of a self-portrait, which receives a new, own space in the field of aesthetics, the development of ideas of which takes place in the space of modern art criticism.

The modern period is the 21st century

The theoretical positions of modern art criticism are determined by the approach of interdisciplinary research in the field of methodology of various sciences: philosophy, psychology (and psychoanalysis), cultural studies, philology, semiotics, sociology ^{[4, 5, 6]}, which, from the perspective of humanitarian aspects, form the relevance, goals and objectives of scientific knowledge. The self-portrait in the structure of new issues of art criticism becomes, on a theoretical scale, both the object and the subject of study of many scientific works and publications that create the ideological expressiveness of the modern space of Russian scientific thought. Let us turn to the ideological positions of Russian researchers in the field of portrait (self-portrait) genre.

E. V. Korotenko reveals the genre-research characteristics of the self–portrait in the cultural period under consideration: "Self-portraiture in the culture of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries unfolds as an area of experiment, acute innovative searches, which clearly demonstrates the genre of self-portrait in painting. The author's own image, the world of his inner experiences, doubts, aspirations and vices, conflicts and complexes is recognized as the most accessible and interesting material for free form-making and experimentation" ^{[7, p. 32]}. This theoretical concept reveals the importance of personality psychology, which is read in an artistic text in the form of an aesthetic image reflecting, according to E. V. Korotenko, a set of ideological questions positing a new ideological and philosophical aspect in the field of self-portrait research: "Interest in one's own personality, the search for answers to the age-old questions 'who am I?”, “how should I live?“. "what is the meaning of my being?” – they encourage a person to explore the world around them and themselves <...> No one can “look into the inner world” of a person “deeper” than he himself. That is why the processes of self-knowledge reflected in self-portraits, autobiographies, diaries, epistolary cycles, memoirs are so important, i.e. in the complex of cultural texts that can be designated by the term "self-portraiture" ^{[7, p. 31]}. E. V. Korotenko defines the term "self-portraiture", which reflects the peculiarity of the formation of the viewer's perception of self-portrait in in the field of fine art, despite the possible fact of the development and justification of a separate genre of "self-portrait", which excludes subgenre subordination to portrait. The artistic image of the portrait is not conditioned by the above-stated existential questions about the meaning of one's own existence, to which it is possible to add the Shakespearean monologue of Hamlet "to be or not to be!". It is the monologue that manifests itself in the artistic structure of a self–portrait, as opposed to the dialogue of a portrait that includes two persons in the space of the pictorial text - the author and the person being portrayed. A. Y. Zorina cites a similar fact in the study of the artistic features of a self-portrait: "Working on a self-portrait helps to understand oneself as a subject of culture, the creator of forms whose language can be perceived by others <...> If a dialogue (from the Greek conversation, conversation) is a conversation between two or more people, the process of their communication and interaction, then in a self–portrait the dialogue takes on a very special expression. The main theme of the self–portrait is the creation of the face, the image of the artist" ^{[8, p. 95]}. A. Y. Zorina does not indicate in her arguments the "monologue" of the self–portrait (and dialogue is not just a "conversation" or "conversation", in the context of the Attic dialect of the Greek language, this word means exactly reasoning), but evidence The manifestations of any monologue in the field of art are determined by the appeal to the search for answers in the minds of both the author's (in the case of a self-portrait) and the audience (in the case of Shakespeare's Hamlet).

A.M. Sverdlova-Alexandrova forms the structure of self-portrait perception in fine art in more detail, revealing the important fact that: "In the case of a self-portrait, the artist directly exposes his "I" in front of the viewer. When connecting an object and a subject of a creative act, an intermediary link is excluded from the "model–artist–viewer" chain. The dialogue with the viewer takes place directly. In a self-portrait, the artist sets his own rules" ^{[9, p. 321]}. The above scheme is not a new position in the study of self-portraits, a similar ideological characteristic of the relationship only in the structure of the portrait was revealed by Yu. M. Lotman; but the evidence of the formation of the position of "own rules", sometimes going beyond the rules of building an artistic image (for example, in the self-portraits of some contemporary artists A. Zaitsev, V. Konevin, N. Engelke, G. Chermen, S. Pasukhin et al.), creates a condition for categorical addition to the theoretical field of self-portrait research.

E. V. Bobrova examines the position of the self–portrait in modern art with the assistance of a philosophical worldview, on the basis of which it is formulated that: "a self-portrait is the result of reflection, a monologue about oneself, one's time and place in history. Through it, the artist speaks to the viewer in the first person, gives an assessment of his own personality" ^{[10, p. 310]}. The characteristic position of personality psychology in the structure of the author's self-awareness is expressed in the artistic principles of constructing a form defined by the context of existing, according to E. V. Bobrova, social and global processes: "a modern artist acts as a kind of translator of global processes taking place in society, even addressing deeply personal topics. The need for a modern person to identify his Self develops into his need for spiritual food. In this sense, the genre of self-portrait is understandable to the 21st century viewer, since it is easier to "paraphrase" on his own life and helps to establish the greatest trust between the viewer and the artist, erasing possible barriers between them" ^{[10, p. 314]}. It should be noted that the identification of one's own "I" in the field of social existence is conditioned not only by modern processes of globalization, this fact finds its historical reflection in the structure of any ancient grammatical system with a personal pronoun of the first person. An important point of E. V. Bobrova's reasoning is the presentation of a self-portrait as a "guide" of a new socio–psychological quality - "trust", which forms a new conceptual unit of theoretical discourse in the structure of a self-portrait.

V. F. Petrenko and O. V. Mitina present an interesting contemplative passage about reflection in the structure of a self-portrait: "As a rule, a person himself is not able to clearly reflect on his own Self-image, but he can, as in the situation with a self-portrait, express it. <...> in the "soft languages" of art. Such "soft languages" are painting, sculpture, poetry, and even music, and the means of explicating the inner picture of the world (in our case, the image of oneself) is experimental psychosemantics" ^{[11, p. 18]}. It should be noted that in the authors' case of the impossibility of conducting objective "self-reflection", a larger-scale question about the reality of the existence of such an action is revealed, the consideration of which leads to the sphere of conceptuality of relativism. Nevertheless, an important factor in this fragment is the assertion of the concept of "experimental psychosemantics", which becomes a new theoretical counterpoint connecting the artistic image of the self-portrait and the ideological trend in its modern understanding.

L. N. Grankina examines the self-portrait through the prism of philosophical conceptuality, in the field of which "Self-portrait is revealed as a way of exploring the essential intention of culture to self-awareness, personified in the act of self-reflection of a particular artistic personality." <...> The introduction of a self-portrait into a visual work in connection with its mirrored, doubling nature invariably reformulates the artistic text, breaking boundaries, connecting the image with the viewer. The typology of a self-portrait is built as a spectrum of forms of dialogue between the artist and the epoch" ^{[12, p. 89]}. The position of the "essential intention of culture" is reminiscent of the absolute spirit of G. W. F. Hegel, who seeks ways to "self-return" in the process of self-knowledge, leading to the realm of "pure" idealism. An interesting aspect of L. N. Grankina's argument is the idea of "reformulating a literary text", which reveals the image of the author. The position of the semantic unity of the master and the work in the visual space asserts for the viewer a new aesthetic dimension of the art form, which acquires symbolic significance and to which it is possible to ask a question (in continuation of the above–mentioned questions by Yu. M. Lotman) - what did the artist think about himself at the time of the creative act? O. A. Krivtsun formulates approximately a similar judgment, believing that "Any creator, even with the highest degree of self-identification with the created work, is both inside and outside the image. In other words, self-observation and self-correction in creativity occur constantly" ^{[13, p. 55]}. It should be pointed out that in the structure of the artistic image of a self-portrait, it is possible to assert only the degree of "frozen" creative "self-correction and self-observation."

V. N. Turchin, rejecting the possibilities of philosophical polemics, makes an interesting statement in his study of the romantic lines of self-portrait painting: "A self-portrait stands out among portrait works by the specificity of the artistic task itself, which has been waiting for it. A self–portrait is an artist's "self-order" related to the story of his life" ^{[14, p. 166]}. This argument establishes a new expressive conceptual unit of the theoretical sphere of self–portrait - "self-order", which certifies the psychological unity of two texts: artistic, figurative and personal-eventful. The condition of an internal subject self-portrait "self-order" arises in a state of psychological necessity, as well as the position of any external subject portrait order determined by necessity, but only in the field of aesthetic and consumer significance. The absence of a specific form of consumer meaning in a self-portrait (but not a pragmatic one, due to the relationship of the subject of action to the object in the structure of the sign system) leads to the formation of special conceptual characteristics, which O. N. Baranov points out in his arguments: "Self-portrait as a genre included in the panorama of the general development of art is reformed under the influence of changes, easily perceiving the features of meditative painting, space painting <...> it is here that the process of liberating the author from the dictate of duality with a mirror towards active interaction with the social environment is realized" ^{[15, p. 35]}. New modes of theoretical expression of self–portrait in the field of art are emerging - "meditative and cosmic" painting, reflecting aspects of creative "exercise" through artistic and imaginative "self-creation" and creative worldview through passing the limits of one's own personality in the position of "I". Such reasoning has the motives of Hindu (Buddhist) religious philosophy, in which the concept of self-portrait will not be defined by any essential meaning at all, since the manifestation of personal character in the pronoun "I" must be eliminated on the way to world knowledge. Nevertheless, the concepts presented here also reflect a meaningful confirmation of modern views on the theoretically meaningful space of self-portrait.

M. V. Ermolaeva reveals the position of the "psychologism" of the self-portrait, due to the collisions of the creative fate of its author: "The artist's life, reflected in self-portraits, appears as a test, suffering, awareness and mastery of oneself, overcoming, constant struggle with uncertainty, the search for the meaning of one's own existence and its beauty" ^{[16, p. 48]}. According to M. V. Ermolaeva, the struggle with uncertainty in the form of a test becomes the main element of the psychological affirmation of the author in the artistic image of the self-portrait. Accordingly, the meaning of the lexeme "test" acquires the role of a concept, within the meaningful boundaries of which the idea of an additional storyline in the space of a self-portrait is revealed: the artist's creative self-expression seeks to find the unity of "his own existence and its beauty" in an artistic and aesthetic form. L. R. Zolotareva also asserts a similar meaningful meaning of "testing," but only in the context of "empirical psychology," which develops aesthetic effects on the audience through painting techniques and techniques.: "The emotional concept of the self-portrait, its "empirical psychology" was enhanced by pictorial and plastic techniques: by enlarging details, highlighting them through color and textural contrast, unusual lighting, mysterious romantic sfumato, and freedom of brushstroke" ^{[17, p. 3]}. The characteristic conceptual and theoretical development of a self-portrait in this judgment is the phrase "emotional concept", which in modern humanities is defined by categorical content in a greater sense by the field of linguistics, revealing In this category, the interrelation of emotional and psychological processes and linguistic meanings ^{[22, 23, 24]} is more important than art criticism. Nevertheless, it is possible to assume the establishment of the meaning of this concept in the theoretical field of self-portrait by analogy with the categorical apparatus of linguistics, applying an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art. This solution will lead to the consideration of the coloristic rhythm in the painting, the nature of the brush stroke ... not as a technique and techniques of painting, but as a non-verbal language of the author's psychology, which forms a somewhat new perspective on the philosophical and aesthetic problem of the artistic text of the self-portrait.

A. I. Kuleshova and M. P. Gerasimova, in studying the self–portrait image by methods of psychoanalysis, point out that: "Self-portrait is a way of self-discovery, through which the artist tracks his changes and transfers them to canvas or paper in order to look at himself from the outside. He depicts different emotional states each time: falling in love, joy, ecstasy, surprise, anger, sadness. This is not just a study of one's biological structure, but a sublimation, an emotional release" ^{[18, p. 192]}. It is necessary to agree that a self–portrait is not a fact of a mirror "biological structure", but it is quite difficult to accept the equality of the meanings of the concepts "sublimation" and "emotional release" given in the quote. The approach of psychology (and psychoanalysis) in the structural dynamics of the interaction of cultural consciousness and personality behavior reveals the importance of sublimation as the conversion of one form of "mental energy" into another ^[25] or indicates the "transformation of anxious desire into an acceptable form" ^{[26, p. 327]} of ideological contemplation. Sublimation in such a definition will not reveal a "discharge", but a completely opposite effect – it will be an area of "creative accumulation", in the psychological space of which the artist develops his most expressive artistic images that have passed the permissible limits of the existing meanings of the "unconscious". Accordingly, when including the emotional state of the author-artist in the perspective of theoretical views on the structural position of the self-portrait in the genre sphere of art, it is possible to introduce the concept of "sublimation", explaining the idea of the author's "representation" in the form of an artistic image.

A.V. Medvetsky considers the self-portrait to be a social coordinate of theoretical disclosure in the form of a "social purpose", about which he writes: "The genre of self–portrait, changing and evolving in accordance with the change of historical epochs, continues to fulfill its main task - to display not only external similarities, but also to reveal the inner world of the artist, his character, awareness of his social purpose" ^{[19, p. 47]}. Self-portrait, according to the fact of its artistic embodiment, is due to the direct reflection of creative the character of a personality, the psychological structure of which necessarily includes common social models of cultural development. The social purpose of the artist in the self–portrait will be revealed at the psychological level of social ideas about his own professional importance in the cultural life of the era, established by a distinctive feature of conscious dualism in the perspective of the self-portrait image - "I" look at "society" or "society" looks at "me." G. S. Trifonova also cites in accordance with the above theoretical projection A. V. Medvetsky's idea of the declining role of "social purpose" in the image of a self-portrait, due to the cultural and historical characteristics of the time in which "A self-portrait becomes an image of human representations of the world, its state, the location of a person in this world, in the richness of connections, connections and fractures. It becomes clear why the genre of portrait and self–portrait is increasingly being lost in modern art - during the decades of perestroika, a heroic personality serving the common good was washed away; the inferiority of reality was immediately reflected in the washing out of these precious genres" ^{[20, p. 38]}. This position is very different from some of the ideas discussed in the text of the article, for example, E. V. Bobrova, who argues about the importance of self-portraiture in modern art based on the main need of the 21st century society for self-identification. Nevertheless, the cultural concept of the "heroic personality" has indeed undergone significant changes in the process of the formation of a market economy, which has also determined its power over the field of art. The artistic image of the "hero of our time" does not have an external identity with the "heroes" of other ideological periods in the history of the native Fatherland, but the character of national unity and the spiritual world of man are not "washed out" of human life (culture), like some kind of trash from the tray of pragmatic existence. Accordingly, the self-portrait really remains a "precious genre" in which the artistic image is defined not only by the external lines of fine art, but also confirmed by the meaning of the meaning of the fate of the master, who revealed the expressiveness of cultural self-awareness in the objectivity of the aesthetic form.

V. F. Chirkov offers a beautiful literary and aesthetic passage in which he formulates the characteristic ideological, cultural and thematic-specific positions of a self–portrait in art: "A self-portrait in art is a conversation with oneself: frank, confessional, probing. As already mentioned, there are many self-portrait images (picturesque, graphic, as a pure portrait and as a "character" in the structure of a thematic, genre composition and even just a staff). The range of their meaningful and emotional states is extremely diverse: from contemplative to ironic, from them to dramatic images" ^{[21, p. 181]}. Such a theoretical reflection of the self-portrait in the structure of the portrait genre suggests the possibility of its own object-object existence in the space of modern art, where the self-portrait receives the ontology of a "character" combining the idea of an artistic image with the spiritual world of its own author.

Conclusion

Thus, the provisions of modern research lead to the development of a categorical and conceptual framework aimed at revealing the artistic and aesthetic essence of a self-portrait from the perspective of scientific methods of an interdisciplinary approach. New concepts such as "monologue", "trust", "experimental psychosemantics", "reformulation of an artistic image", "self–observation and self-correction", "self-order", "meditative and cosmic painting", "test", "emotional concept", "sublimation", "social purpose", established in the process of studying the theoretical materials of scientific publications, they characterize the meaningful expressiveness of a more accurate understanding of the self-portrait in structural and compositional elements that differ from the artistic form of the portrait in the visual arts. The self-portrait becomes an independent subject within the boundaries of the portrait genre, developing the semantic meaning of its ideological content both within the artistic image and in the space of psychology and social philosophy. Such an assumption necessarily leads to the substantiation of a separate classification statement of the self-portrait in the visual arts, in the modern space of which a common psychological feature of the philosophical self-understanding of the individual is manifested, which is absolutely not reducible to the level of "mass character". Self-portrait in the exhibition space of modernity begins to combine three spheres of cultural expression: tradition, mass character and elitism.