Types and genres of fine arts
some theory
Types of fine arts:Fine art genres:
- Architecture
- Painting
- Graphic arts
- Sculpture
- Arts and crafts
- Theatrical and decorative art
- Design
Portrait (рortrait - French older - portraire - means to depict) is a type of visual art dedicated to the image of a certain person or group of people - an outwardly individually similar display of a person on canvas or paper, with the aim of presenting it to others, showing character, inner world, life values \u200b\u200bdepicted.
Scenery (fr. Paysage, from pays - country, locality), in painting and photography - a type of painting depicting nature or any locality (forest, field, mountains, grove, village, city). Landscape (French paysage, from pays - country, area) is a genre of fine art in which the main subject of the image is the area, natural or human-transformed nature: urban and rural landscapes, types of cities, buildings.
Still life(fr. nature morte - lit. "dead nature") - the image of inanimate objects in the visual arts, in contrast to portrait, genre, historical and landscape themes.
Historical genre works of art that reflect real historical characters or events.
Mythological genre(from gr. mуthos - legend) - a genre of fine art dedicated to events and heroes, which are told in the myths of ancient peoples. All peoples of the world have myths, legends, and traditions, and they constitute the most important source of artistic creativity.Battle genreworks of art that reflect war episodes. An artist who writes on battle themes is called a battle painter.
Household genreworks that reflect episodes from the daily life of people.
Marinaworks of art depicting the sea. An artist who paints the sea is called a marine painter.
Animalistic genre works of art depicting animals.
Composition(lat. compositio - composition, composition) - compilation, combination, combination of various parts into a single whole in accordance with any idea. In the visual arts, composition is the construction of a work of art, due to its content, nature and purpose, the need to convey the main idea, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe work in the most clear and convincing way.What types and genres of fine arts do you like?
Gianni Rodari and his Chippolino can be called a classic of the "animation" of objects. An outstanding project of our time is the program on the NTV channel “Culinary stories”. By means of cinema, or, more simply, a moving picture, it is quite easy to evoke the necessary associations in the viewer. Still life is another matter. This is a static image of inanimate objects, we are not talking about movement here. Moreover, for the purity of the genre, it is extremely undesirable to add eyes, mouths, pens, legs to objects ... How can you animate the inanimate?
And now about how I got sick with the "animation" of objects. Creative people usually say: "I can no longer remember how it started ...". It all started with my acquaintance with the work of the photographer Anatoly Kirillov from Samara. I liked his photographs and asked him to talk about the technique of shooting using the "light brush". So our correspondence and my distance learning began. Almost all of my subsequent still lifes I shot with the "light brush". In short, this is a lighting method, the essence of which is one flashlight with a narrow beam of light. When the camera is mounted on a tripod, sharpness is achieved when the general light is on, then in complete darkness each object is illuminated by a flashlight for 10 seconds or more. This method of setting light has become especially popular recently, when multiple exposure was replaced by the addition of several takes in layers in a graphic editor (in one of the next issues of the magazine we will tell you more about the light brush. - Ed.).
The idea to revive the objects did not come immediately. In the beginning, there were various experiments with light, shooting techniques and productions. For example, this is how the work "Black Cherry" was born. In this work I used one wax candle as the light source. The cherry was poured onto a sheet of Whatman paper and placed in a vertical "formation" to obtain the effect of depth. The original photo was processed in a graphics editor: one red channel was taken and the contrast was increased.
In January 2004, I had a chance to look at the still lifes of artists Alexander Buganin from Ufa and Dmitry Mikhailov from Tomsk in the Alla Bulyanskaya Gallery.
I really liked how they portrayed fruits, namely pears. So I decided to try shooting still lifes with pears. The most interesting in terms of form seemed to me the varieties "Duchess" and "Conference". Having bought pears at the nearest market, on the very first night I started staged shooting. At night, in the kitchen, when the whole family was asleep, unaware of my nightly experiments, I composed compositions of fruits on a stool. The first work worthy of the viewer's attention, which opened the series, was "Portrait of the Duchesse Family". Under the influence of A. Buganin's painting "Letters to an Angel 7" I got the idea to build a panoramic composition that is not standard for a still life. I arranged seven pears in one row, placing them on a meter-long piece of wood. The frame was deliberately framed as a panorama, and the fruits are positioned in different positions to enhance the rhythm and align with the golden ratio lines.
In the process of drawing up the still life, I fell more and more in love with pears. I admired the variety of their forms, interesting, unique texture. Taking them off, I never ceased to be amazed at the photogenicity of these fruits! Their matte surface, like nothing else, conveyed the transitions of light and shade, the richness of texture, shape and volume. The more I looked at pears, the more I became convinced that they were perfect for the role of a parody of people. They are just as diverse in their shapes, have an amazing resemblance to the figure of a full man: the same steep hips and narrow shoulders, the same beer tummy and a voluminous ass! And even each has its own character, like people. And sometimes they claim to be unique and individual. So pears have become my favorite characters in a whole series of photographs.
The next work was born "Portrait of the Duchess couple and a girl playing with a wheel". In this production, the main task for me was to convey the texture and shape of pears as much as possible, as well as, in conditions of tight space and perspective, to cause the viewer to feel a sense of volume and depth. The idea was inspired by the painting by D. Mikhailov "Pear, quince, inkwell". While working on my still life, I came up with a name for it. So I got the idea to animate pears and make a series of photographs telling about the Duchesse family as if it were an ordinary human family. Everything happened spontaneously, at the level of improvisation, and then grew into a long hobby.
From the very beginning, I decided to abandon the banal puppet theater with sewing on eyes-buttons, attaching wire hands and matches-legs.
I still have at my disposal a sufficient amount of means of animating any object. The main one is form. If you give free rein to your imagination, do not set boundaries for imagination, then you can very successfully use light and shadow, texture, composition and color. More precisely, the lack of color.
Initially, I faced the problem of suppressing and removing color digital noise. A simple solution came by itself: no color, no noise! The original was translated into monochrome by a channel mixer. Then the black and white image was toned in sepia. Thus, I was able to kill a whole boat of hares at once! He removed the hated color noise, turning it into a nice-looking grain. He added expressiveness to the texture and focused the viewer's attention on the shape of the pears, since the color distracted from the very essence: the character and "soul" of the subject-character, which was expressed mainly through its shape. I also created the most suitable stylization of still lifes for photographs from the beginning of the last century or for silent films. In fact, the whole series with pears is a silent performance or a genre still life.
After such conclusions, I set about creating a humorous mise-en-scene “How Mr. Duchess flirted with Mrs. Duchess. He really wanted to go fishing. "
Here everything was already like in a theater. First the idea of \u200b\u200bthe scene was born. Then I picked up the props and costumes. I chose the main characters. I thought about the composition. In the process of shooting, I improvised with the light, initially deciding to achieve the effect of the morning sun falling on the scene. To convey the atmosphere of lightness and morning coolness, I draped the background with gauze bandage. Fruits and other objects were illuminated by a flashlight, each one separately. The background and gauze were illuminated with an off-camera flash installed parallel to the backdrop. The spinners and knitting needles played the role of props, supporting the semantic part. Thus, a scene familiar to all was staged when a husband flirts with his wife and tries in every possible way to get permission to go fishing.
My hobby found understanding among loved ones, which could not be said about the rest. Sometimes it came to very ambiguous situations. How do you usually buy fruit in the market? “Please weigh me a kilo of pears. Just put the good ones, put them on my table, ”you say. But I, before buying pears, arrange a real casting. I dig in the box for a few minutes, choosing the most suitable character for the next production. As a result, instead of a kilogram, after a long and careful examination, I buy only 2 - 3 fruits. Of course, these manipulations cause, to put it mildly, strong surprise, and sometimes indignation of the fruit sellers. We had to often change places of casting, so as not to strengthen their desire to call "03".
The next challenge for me was to minimize the objects in the frame. So that unnecessary details do not distract the viewer and do not scatter his attention.
The most successful, in my opinion, can be called the work "The Mourners".
Through ordinary objects, in this case - fruits, I managed to convey emotions and mood. The photo turned out to be tragicomic. Despite the fact that only four ordinary pears and a candle are visible in the photo, their location, composition, light and long shadows create an atmosphere of mystery and sorrow, and the picture is no longer perceived as an ordinary still life.
No graphics editor was used to create this photo. The light of the candle, played by the burning match, was the fill, and the light of the small flashlight became the painting. Next, I decided to achieve a dynamic scene. Again, with the help of the main characters - pears. Several performances were made. The task turned out to be very difficult. I was more successful in conveying the tension and dynamics in my work based on the song of the same name by V. Vysotsky "If a friend turned out to be suddenly ...". The background was a piece of black leatherette. The scene is simple: Climbers (or tourists) pull their friend out of the abyss. No editing, no graphic editor intervention. Pears, clothesline, camera on a tripod, flashlight.
With good humor and a share of self-irony, the production “Photographer” was staged in my nightly Theater of Things. In this still life I tried to convey the spirit of the time when the first Soviet rangefinder camera "Zorkiy" was no less popular than digital compact cameras today.
Once I was lucky to find one amazing pear among the pears. Its shape just perfectly matched the shape of the lower part of the female body. On the same evening, a nude work "My Favorite Model" was done, which subsequently caused a lot of controversy and heated discussions on the pages of the Internet forum сlub.foto.ru.
This was immediately followed by the work "School friends ten years later." It uses two large mother-pears and their babies, small wild pears. The plot was conceived as sadly ironic: the years go by, over the years there are more worries, more children, and the figure grows fat and takes on the shape of a pear.
Little wild pears have found their application in yet another production: "Gulliver". The role of Gulliver is played by a small pumpkin. After using it, I started thinking about performances with animating other fruits and vegetables.
If you can animate an object, then you can kill it. As a writer, director, illuminator and cameraman rolled into one, I had complete freedom 
actions and could easily stage any plot in his "Theater of Things". Reflecting on the fact that in our life there is not only joy, but also suffering, I decided to show one of the problems of our reality in my production of "Sect". The tragedy and torment of the sectarians who are at the mercy of fanatics and swindlers are shown in this still life. Many did not like the way I pierced the pears with knitting needles, but what to do - "ce la vie" ...
On a summer cottage garden bed I caught sight of old huge seed cucumbers. I lifted one of them from the garden bed and was surprised to discover a whole geographical map on its surface. Small veins, cracks, a light brown background, and a rich yellow variegated pattern inspired my next experiment. I found a young small cucumber on the same garden bed and put them side by side. The plot was born instantly: old and young, seasoned and trainee, mature and green. It remains to find a "studio" in the village for staging a still life. It became a bathhouse, the lower shelf played the role of a photo table, and several birch woods became the stage decoration. I always had a tripod and a flashlight with me. One problem remains: how to make the cucumbers stand upright. I had to cheat a little. I put them on several matches, which I then removed from the picture in a graphic editor. You can see the result below. On the same day, in the village, the still life "Gypsies were driving ..." was staged. Bright zucchini and scarlet tomatoes became the heroes of the new scene. The red color of the tomatoes reminded me of the scarlet shirts of gypsies. To add dynamism to the action, a squash of a certain shape was selected, and the tomatoes are positioned as if they were riding it.
Take a look - there are still so many interesting objects around us. In each of them, if you look closely, you can see the hidden potential. They all look like something, they can evoke certain emotions or play the right role. I want to wish all readers to fantasize more, develop their imaginations and, at least sometimes, return to their childhood. May Inspiration not leave you!
Still life(fr. nature morte - "dead nature") - the image of inanimate objects in the fine arts, in contrast to portrait, genre, historical and landscape themes.
The starting point of early still life can be found in the 15th-16th centuries, when it was considered as part of a historical or genre composition. For a long time, the still life retained its connection with a religious painting, framing the figures of the Mother of God and Christ with flower garlands, and also often being located on the back of the altar image (as in Rogier van der Weyden's "Triptych of the Braque Family"). Also in the 16th century, the tradition of creating portraits with the image of a skull was widespread, for example, the portrait of Jean Carondel by Jan Gossaert (see vanitas). Early still lifes often served a utilitarian function, such as decorating cabinet doors or disguising a wall niche.
Still life is finally formed as an independent genre of painting in the work of Dutch and Flemish artists of the 17th century. Objects in still life painting of this period often contain a hidden allegory - either the transience of everything earthly and the inevitability of death (Vanitas), or, in a broader sense, of the Passion of Christ and the Resurrection. This meaning is conveyed through the use of objects - in most cases familiar and encountered in everyday life, which are endowed with additional symbolic meaning.
Dutch still life of the 17th century
The Dutch still life was a unique cultural phenomenon of the 17th century that influenced the further development of all European painting. The Little Dutchmen reflected in their works the world of objects that live their quiet, frozen life. The term “frozen life” (Dutch stilleven, German stilleben, English still-life) began to be used to denote a genre in the middle of the 17th century, first in the Netherlands. Before that, artists called similar paintings, describing the plot: "Little breakfast", "Bouquet of flowers", "Hunting trophy", "Vanity of vanities". The main translation of this term found in literature is “quiet, motionless life”.
Still life in Russian painting of the 18-20 centuries
Still life as an independent genre of painting appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century. The idea of \u200b\u200bit was originally associated with the image of the gifts of the land and the sea, the diverse world of things surrounding a person. Until the end of the 19th century, still life, in contrast to portrait and historical painting, was regarded as a "lower" genre. It existed mainly as an educational setting and was allowed only in a limited sense as painting of flowers and fruits.
The beginning of the twentieth century was marked by the flourishing of Russian still life painting, which for the first time gained equality among other genres. The desire of artists to expand the possibilities of the visual language was accompanied by active searches in the field of color, shape, composition. All this is especially evident in the still life. Enriched with new themes, images and artistic techniques, Russian still life developed unusually rapidly: in a decade and a half, it goes from impressionism to abstract form-creation.
In the 30-40s of the twentieth century, this development stopped, but since the mid-50s, still life has experienced a new rise in Soviet painting, and since that time it has finally and firmly stood on a par with other genres.
Russian still life painters
- Khrutsky Ivan Fomich (1810-1885)
- Grabar Igor Emmanuilovich (1871-1960)
- Petrov-Vodkin Kuzma Sergeevich (1878-1939)
- Konchalovsky Pyotr Petrovich (1876-1956)
- Alberti Petr Filippovich (1913-1994)
- Antipova Evgeniya Petrovna (1917-2009)
- Zakharov Sergey Efimovich (1900-1993)
- Kopytseva Maya Kuzminichna (1924-2005)
- Gevork Kotyants Vartanovich (1906-1996)
- Krestovsky Yaroslav Igorevich (1925-2003)
- Osipov Sergei Ivanovich (1915-1985)
- Pozdneev Nikolay Matveevich (1930-1978)
- Rumyantseva Kapitolina Alekseevna (1925-2002)
- Skuin Elena Petrovna (1909-1986)
- Teterin Victor Kuzmich (1922-1991)
- Shamanov Boris Ivanovich (1931-2008)
It seems that it is indecently simple to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects: it's like playing in the animate and inanimate. But those who are guided by this principle are very much mistaken. Inanimateness, as well as inanimateness, is a separate category in the characterization that has nothing to do with the external signs of some object. Here's how to explain the fact that, according to the rules, the word "corpse" is considered inanimate, and "dead" - animate? Acting at random? In no case! We'll figure out.
For the little ones
Let's start with the very basics. Animated and inanimate objects answer different questions - "who" and "what", respectively. We can say that asking a question is the most primitive, albeit very unreliable way of defining this category. Usually children are introduced to him in the first or second grade. To practice this method, you can fill in the blanks in the following text with your students:
« In sleepy oblivion, a great (what?) Flows. Around (what?) And (what?). (Who?) Was slowly moving his skis, shaking off (what?) The caps from his ears. (Who?) Quickly made a hole, and it started (what?). Soon he pulled out a huge (who?). His mirrored (what?) Shone brightly in the sun". Words to be inserted: ice, scales, fisherman, frost, river, carp, snow, fishing... One word is repeated twice.
Grammatical explanation
But it's worth going further, right? How to determine whether an object is animate or inanimate based on rules rather than intuition? The difference between these two categories lies in the different case forms of nouns. Inanimate nouns have the same nominative and plural forms, while animate nouns have genitive and accusative in the same number. Of course, it will be much easier to understand with specific examples.
Take the noun " cat". We put it in the plural "cats" and begin to decline: nominative - " cats", Genitive -" cats", Accusative -" cats"- as you can see, the forms of genitive and accusative are the same. Whereas for the noun " table", Which for the definition of this category turns into" tables"With declination" tables-tables-tables»The accusative and
Thus, the rule allows you to separate an animate and an inanimate object only when they are set in the plural and the subsequent declension. And then, already by the coincidence of the case forms, this category is determined.
Exceptions
But, as you know, in the Russian language there are very few rules that have no exceptions. So, sometimes it is possible to separate animate and inanimate objects logically. Yes, all living things will be animate, but at the same time mythical creatures belong to the same category ( goblin-goblin-goblin-goblin) and toy names ( matryoshka-nesting-dolls) - here you can still find a logical explanation. As well as card and chess suit-pieces ( spades-spades-spades, pawns-pawns-pawns), which even in their forms do not fit this category.
Go ahead. Inanimate nouns, in turn, include large groups of people ( crowds-crowds-crowds) and some living organisms ( embryos-embryos-embryos; microbes-microbes-microbes) - it is impossible to explain this phenomenon, you just have to accept and remember.
More difficulties
I would also like to add that animate and inanimate objects in the grammatical sense have their own characteristics. So, for example, for animate masculine nouns, the genitive and accusative forms coincide and in the singular: Anton-Anton-Anton, accountant-accountant-accountant, however, this phenomenon is observed only in nouns of the second declension (compare: Dima-Dima-Dima, although this is also an animated masculine noun). So, in principle, this pattern can be used as another simple, albeit not very well-known, way of defining the category of animation in nouns.
I want to confuse
It is worth noting that in Russian there is an image of an inanimate object as animate. This is usually associated with the use of the word as an analogy to a living being: There is a mattress in the shed - Yes, the mattress is weak-willed! or The Russian language is great and mighty! - This language (\u003d captive) will tell us everything.
The exact same phenomenon occurs with the use of animate nouns as inanimate: A kite soars in the blue sky; The fighter went down... Here the category of animate and inanimate is determined based on the semantic content of the noun.
It is worth noting that, despite all the teachers' demands to use the rules, most of the students continue to rely on intuition. As the above examples show, gut instinct is not always a reliable assistant in philology. It can be said unambiguously that the names of professions, the names of people by family, nationality and other groups will always be animated, and the names of animals can also be attributed here. By the way, among the animate nouns, according to some researchers, there are only masculine and feminine words, while the neuter gender is already inanimate, like all the names of objects of nature and other objects.
Practice for the little ones
Now that we have figured out how to distinguish one category of nouns from another, it is worth generalizing all of the above. Animated and inanimate objects for preschoolers, who still have no idea what cases are, differ on the questions of "who" and "what", respectively. For practice, you can play with the kids in "living-non-living", where the word is called, and the child must determine what this object is.
Or, another interesting task for younger schoolchildren is to propose a series of animate nouns that, by replacing one letter, can be turned into inanimate ones: fox (linden), goat (scythe), heron (drop).
To finish the article on how to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects, I would like to say that, no matter how simple this topic may seem, it is better not to tempt fate and not act at random, relying on intuition. A minute spent checking the category of a noun can sometimes change the way you think about it. So spare no effort and practice the great and mighty Russian language.