Пигмалион наизнанку. К истории становления мира искусства

The author of this book proceeds from a well-known fact: images and other man-made objects that we today take for art were not always and everywhere artistic phenomena; people often created, perceived, experienced and discussed them in a significantly different way. Any culture deserves to be seen as an integral and self-sufficient universe. Therefore, the meaning of images 'for them' is the same historical reality as our interpretations, which unfold in the plane of the functioning of these images 'for us'. For to be an image, a text, to be art is possible only in the mode 'for': without regard to some subjectivity, outside living socio-cultural contexts, there is no art, no image, no text. Where, when, under what circumstances and how was the idea of ​​art formed and the corresponding cultural practices formed? In search of an answer to this question, the author chose two places in historical space-time that are traditionally opposed to each other in their spiritual nature and cultural orientation - Jerusalem and Athens, two ideas - the biblical prohibition to portray and ancient mimesis. He discovers there parallel trains of thought, which, although they led to mutually exclusive consequences, are essential and symptomatic in themselves. Later, these ideas will enter into intense and dramatic interactions that will determine the fate of plastics in Western culture.