Archeoart as feature of works of 1960s-1980s Siberian avant-garde artists

A distinctive feature of the Siberian avant-garde as a culturalphenomenon is the artists' appeal to archeoart. The integration of ethnic order occurs at different levels: landscape painting,archaeological drawings, primitive art imitating and creating their own system of signs. There are many definitions for the directions inart, in which there is artistic and esthetic research of the heritage of the ancient and traditional cultures such as "ethnoarchaics","archeoart", "neoarchaics", ''archeoavantgarde", "ethnoavantgarde". Until now we have no correct criteria and features that can assignthe works of artists to one or another direction. The etymology of the word "archeoart" allows finding a new essential basis forclassification. "Archeo" can be interpreted not only through the Greek "archaios", ancient, but also as "arche". This term means"beginning", "root cause", "First Principle", the "starting point", "foundation" in ancient Greek philosophy. In this new semantic fieldarcheoart is presented as art, addressed to the sources, to the origin of things. Siberia provides the legacy of the past to get to when the"beginning began", to the sign system that is not aggravated by an array of social and historical information of the most "naturalsymbolism", which has no gap between man and nature. The prefix "ethno-" gives any base historical and social content. That is whythe artworks with ethnic themes can be attributed to ethnoarchaics or ethnoart, or any other concept formed with the prefix "ethno". Inthe works of Siberian artists there are different levels: "arche" and "ethno". The artists who portray the nature of the Altai, Khakassiaand improvise with the ancient symbols remain at the level of "ethno". But it is possible to use the symbolism of the ancient, let it getinto the subconscious and create artworks that seem to have no hint of the historical artifacts. This will be a highly personal language ofabstraction and creation. On the one hand, the artist achieves the highest abstraction joining "arche", gains universal values. On the otherhand, the artist expresses unique existence as the bearer of the sacred knowledge and of the first principles. Adherence to archeoart is amarker of Siberian avant-grade art. This assertion is proved by the works of such artists as Vladimir Kapelko, Nikolai Tretyakov,Sergei Dykov, Eugene Dorokhov, Andrey Pozdeev, and others.

Keywords

Authors

References