2 5 Proto-Ukrainians about the beauty of the world: the genesis is presented

It will be interesting and important to trace the origins of the aesthetic representations of our ancestors, the level of their creative skills and the consolidation of experience in the images of the relationship to the phenomena of reality (natural forces) and people in themselves. Cultural monuments on the lands of modern Ukraine are attributed by researchers to the Upper Paleolithic era. It was during this period that a primitive clay sculpture appeared: a three-dimensional image of animals, proving mastery of the anatomy of the body and the ability to convey its proportions. Then there are also sculpted female images in which the emphasis is on the reproductive parts of the body (often the head and legs are absent, only the torso). This confirms the awareness of a woman's role in procreation. There are significantly fewer male images of the Paleolithic era. Features of plasticity are a combination of conventional and naturalistic tendencies in images. The female theme reflected the connections of the primitive collective with the natural world: totemic beliefs in the kinship of humans and animals (common ancestor), fertility and magical influence on it. Hence the symbolism of the "Christmas tree" - rhythmically repeating "triangles", "angles" symbolizing the female womb - the place of the mysterious birth of life .

The development of the symbolism of the image took place in the Neolithic era. A woman (mother) held a leading position in the social structure. her image is simultaneously a symbol of mother earth (the development of the cult of the mother coincides with the development of agriculture). Much later, male images begin to predominate.

People create their own images, comprehending their functions, the attitude to these functions, that is, it consists of an emotionally indifferent attitude of a person to his own likeness, which is objectified thanks to the formation of its image and therefore arises as a subject of comprehension and experience. The growing complexity of the symbol of motherhood is connected with the complication of the practical experience of people in the process of transition from animal husbandry to agriculture. Female deities (Mother-ancestor) - bearer of two images: goddesses of agriculture and cattle breeding. Such images are widespread in the culture of Tripoli - one of the ancient civilizations on the territory of Eastern Europe, which arose and became established in the II-II millennia. Before n. there are. in the areas of the middle course of the Dnieper and along the Dniester. A rhombus was a widespread symbol for the representation of femininity in Tripoli culture. He meant a woman-mother, earth, plants. There are many versions of the rhombus, and it always symbolizes fertility, the tree of life, the beginning of everything. Circles - a symbol of the sun - meant the male beginning. During this period, a system of planning housing inside and outside each other was developed: they formed a concentric circle, and the entrances were located towards the center of the circle (representing the kinship of the community). Schematized female statuettes are very often in this culture - a symbol of the goddess of the earth and fertility. These are images molded from clay, which are characterized by a symbolic interpretation of the image with greater conventionality in the transfer of proportions and body shapes, compared to Paleolithic images.

Artistic knowledge and skills have diversified. People of early cultures mastered the technique of making images from bone and horn with sufficiently filigree processing. In the culture of Tripoli, a prominent place is occupied by the manufacture of dishes, figurines of animals and birds. Ornamental images, characteristic of the entire period of the development of visual arts, starting with the Paleolithic era, received great development. Ornamental images are especially common among the successors of the Tripoli culture - the Eastern Slavic tribes, whose formation occurred around the V-III centuries. to n. e. and is connected with Indo-European, Aryan culture. This is the culture of people from Central Asia, the culture of cattle breeders and farmers. The development of ornament in this period is characterized by a variety of lines, carvings, and sketches. they were applied to all man-made objects - ceramic items, battle axes, swords, knives, etc. Lines were symbols of space, determined the distance, location and separation of things from one another, that is, they were a way of recording and transmitting information about things, their location . The symbolism of the tench also had an aesthetic direction. Objects marked with lines, each time unique, acquired a distinctive image, individual ego determination - "souls". The line, which is the basis of all artistic images, is also a sign language. Lines also had a magical character: objects delineated by lines (fenced) fell into a symbolic circle inaccessible to evil forces. Therefore, it is from here that the tradition of enclosing the premises, and subsequently surrounding the city with walls, is formed.

In the 1st thousand Before n. e. the number of sculptural images of a person increased. These are obelisk stelae of the Cimmerians in the steppe territories of the Northern Black Sea region, stone statues of the Scythians. Many of them were built in the same areas in the VI-III centuries. to n. e. - mainly images of Scythian warriors with the attributes of their specialty: swords, quivers, war hammers, maces. It was often depicted as a cornucopia. The Scythians left masterpieces of visual culture: a golden pectoral from the Tolstoy Tomb, numerous images of people and animals of extremely fine workmanship; a gold crest from Solokha, decorated with images of human figures, and a number of other finds from Kul-oba, Chertomlyk, Haymanova Mogila, etc.

Numerous anthropomorphic statues of the Polovtsians - "stone women" - placed on these same lands are widely known. They were not just "traces" of the presence of the people, but also confirmed its rooted image in this space. The ideology of the Slavs in your lands has been known since the III-IV centuries. n. there are. The Slavs of the Dnieper region and the Carpathians worshiped idols, in particular four-faced human statues. They include those found in the 19th century. The Zbruch idol is a quadrangular stone pillar, on all sides of which are carved pictures of human life and cosmogonic representations of the ancient Slavs. It depicts a complex complex that unites three spheres of the world: gods (top row of images), people (middle row), underground world (bottom row). Their imagery is much more difficult, because the real and the imaginary, the heavenly, the earthly and the underground are intertwined in a holistic being. On the upper tier of the stele - a row of Slavic gods. The complex composition, the thoughtfulness of the images, and the pronounced symbolism of the images indicate the period of the creation of the idol - this is the time of a developed mythology with a stable understanding of the function of deities and their "relationship" with people. The named images are symbolic personifications of the whole cosmogonic world represented by the ancient Slavs. This is the system on which the monotheistic faith - Christianity - was later superimposed. It gives birth to another figurative and symbolic system, reflects other views on the world and attitudes towards it.

So, aesthetic objectivity is a symbolic personification of needs, skillful, presented about the world of people of early cultures. Practical formation with the symbolic meanings given to him is a way of creating a spiritual relationship with natural forces, a manifestation of an active image-forming attitude of a person to nature. The aesthetic principle ("the creation" of the world in images) acts as a universal form of interaction with the surrounding world and is the basis for creating the constancy of the experience of interaction within the framework of communities.

Questions for self-testing

1. Reveal the origins of a person's ability to objectively form and objectify relations with the world in aesthetic forms.

2. Analyze the regularities of the formation of aesthetic knowledge as a special sphere of spiritual experience in the historical development of mankind.

3. Determine the objective grounds for the formation of symbolic objectivity and reveal its functions in naive cultures.

4. Explain the concept of the "symbol" of peace, justify its origins and foundations in early cultures.

5. Describe the main ideas of the ancient Indian treatise on aesthetics "Chitralakshan".

6. Give the typical aesthetic characteristics of the gods and heroes of the ancient Indian epic.

7. Reveal the symbolically figurative system of anthropomorphic images in the culture of proto-Ukrainians.

8. What is the relationship between practical and symbolically aesthetic meanings of everyday and cult objects in naive cultures?