The Linguistic Concept «Russians Are a Fighting Nation» as a Tool to Manage Chinese Social Consciousness

The study focuses on the concept of «Russians are a fighting nation» in the modern Chinese language, which emerged in 2013 and remains unknown to the vast majority of Russians. The concept has become a total synonym for the concept of «Russians» and has a positive connotation unusual for the Chinese language in the nomination of foreigners. The article is a comprehensive study of the «fighting nation» concept with consideration of its chronological, semantic and stylistic development as an instrument of influencing the worldview of the Chinese nation and the formation of its attitude towards other peoples. The study reveals that, initially, the concept of «the fighting nation» was artificially introduced and popularized by the Chinese authorities; then its internal structure was modified from the professional historical and cultural content to its further artificial transformation in 2016 into an Internet meme among the Chinese youth; and, finally, the loss of control over the dissemination of the concept led to the need for a campaign to discredit the «Russians are a fighting nation» concept, which has achieved only limited results. As a new and effective approach to managing the development of the concept, the Chinese authorities proposed to shift the positive features of the concept from the Russians to the Chinese and formulate a new postulate that «the Chinese are the real fighting nation», which has become the main development direction for the «fighting nation» concept for the next few years. The research findings can be applied in efficient international cultural communication, translation, as well as in a range of socio-cultural and linguistic studies

Jazz instrumental music of the second half of the XX – the beginning of the XXI century: expressional, style and culturological aspects

The purpose of the article is to analyze the stylistic development of jazz instrumental music of the second half of the XX –the beginning of the XXI century in the context of the formation of academic music and European culture. The methodology involves the use of historical, culturological, analytical, and comparative methods, which reveals the features of the stylistic development of jazz instrumental music of this period. The scientific novelty lies in the study of the stylistic development of jazz instrumental music of the second half of the XX –the beginning of the XXI century in the context of the formation of academic music and European culture. Conclusions. Nowadays, modern jazz instrumental music is a serious conceptual art that exists in a variety of forms and styles. It can be argued that every style emerged in jazz in the second half of XX – the beginning of the XXI century based on mixing expressive elements of different styles. Both in academic music and in jazz, polystylistic lays the foundations for the formation of a mixed or synthetic style, a musical metalanguage, or, as V. Silvestrov points out, an all-encompassing musical style.

The monastery of Eusebius in Khirbet er-Ras (Kefar Truman)

The present paper publishes the archaeological remains of a monastery church excavated in 1958 at Khirbet er-Ras (Kefar Truman), Israel. The description of the architectural remains, including the three-aisled basilica and the structures surrounding it, is based on the archival documentation. This is followed by the detailed description and analysis of the church's mosaic pavements, preserved in the nave and in both side-aisles, with special emphasis on the mosaic decoration of the nave's central panel, set as a carpet design made up of florets enclosed by outlined scales, whose Levantine parallels are reviewed. In contrast to the sixth-century CE date proposed in previous reports, the setting of the floor is here placed into the third quarter of the fifth century CE based on Leah Di Segni's palaeographic date of the mosaic's inscription located in front of the sanctuary area. Using this revised date as a springboard for further discussion, a less linear stylistic development of mosaic floors covered by floral semis ornaments embedded in plain and outlined scales is suggested.

Prolegomena to the Study of Meroitic Art

The history of Kush is a complex one in which the polities of Egypt, Kerma, Napata, and Meroe shaped the culture and historical trajectory of the Middle Nile Valley. During the Meroitic Period appropriations and adaptations of art from pharaonic and Greco-Roman Egypt and to a lesser extent from the Mediterranean world obscure its art’s fundamental qualities. Because Meroitic artists enjoyed a degree of autonomy, different visual styles and standards of quality coexisted without following particular paths of stylistic development. Michel Baud aptly described Meroitic art as multivalent in nature. Examples of art and architecture have typically been studied and published as individual artifacts without systematically contextualizing them within broader study of Meroitic aesthetics, exploring the nature of Meroe’s appropriations of Egyptian and classical styles and iconography, creating a history of their stylistic development, or considering how the circumstances of their manufacture impacted their appearance. This entry offers a preliminary examination of these as prolegomena to the development of a history of Meroitic art.

The Unstable Object: Glifo, Blow and Sacco at MoMA, 1972

Summary This article discusses three radical objects—the Glifo shelf from 1966, the Blow chair from 1967 and the Sacco chair from 1968—that were all exhibited at Museum of Modern Art’s ground-breaking architecture and design exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape in 1972. The article proposes that these early postmodern objects should not merely be considered a new stylistic development, a new aesthetics or as expressing new conceptions of sociopolitical ideologies; rather, they can be considered as instigating a new epistemological status of objects. A close reading reveals how the structural element of Glifo, Blow and Sacco is hard to trace and how these objects’ physical limits seem to soften or even dissolve. By engaging with the writings of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and Manfredo Tafuri, this article claims that the poststructuralist landscape of ideas has a material counterpart in some objects from the late 1960s and then discusses the political and intellectual implications of such unstable objects.

Modern Church Art of St. Petersburg. Tendentious and Problems of Development

В статье рассмотрены основные тенденции и ряд проблем современного храмового искусства в Санкт-Петербурге. Кратко охарактеризовано состояние искусствоведения и образования в контексте названной темы, выявлены особенности стилевого развития иконописи, монументальной живописи и церковного зодчества, названы конкретные произведения, выполненные в разных видах искусства. The main tendentious and some problems of St Petersburg modern church art are considered in the article. The author briefly describes the state of art history and education in the context of religious art, features of the stylistic development of icon painting, monumental painting and church architecture; names the specific works created in various kinds of art.

Problems and Prospects of Uli Art Idiom and the Igbo Heritage Crisis

In their various books on Igbo culture, Simon Ottenberg, Adiele Afigbo, P-J Ezeh, Herbert Cole and Chike Aniakor make references to ‘Igbo receptivity’, the ‘resurgence of Igbo arts’, and ‘Igbo cultural self-hate’, in an attempt to capture the wandering of Igbo cultural attitudes from one level of experience to another. While ‘receptivity’ and ‘resurgence’ are positive characterisations and paint a picture of resilience, ‘self-hate’ depicts a postcolonial nihilist tendency also at the heart of Igbo culture. If art is one major index for expressing and assessing the culture of a people, the Igbo uli art, arguably spanning three stages of historical-stylistic development, offers a basis on which Igbo culture and heritage can be appreciated and appraised in light of its receptivity, resurgence, as well as self-hate. Relying on the works of the uli women classicists, the Nsukka artists, and the outcomes of the Art Republic workshops, I argue that traditions never die in any finalistic sense, but rather degenerate and then regenerate new ideas, while nourishing and refreshing paradigms which extend the history and experience of the old.