Art as an Idea and Concept: on the Problem of Reading Curatorial Projects – МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

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Marina V. BIRYUKOVA
St. Petersburg State University
Universitetskaya emb., 7/9, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 199034
Associate Professor of the Department of Museum Work and Protection of Monuments
Doctor of Science in Cultural Studies
e-mail: m.birjukova@spbu.ru
ORCID: 0000-0003-1635-8077

Antonina A. NIKONOVA
St. Petersburg State University
Universitetskaya emb., 7/9, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 199034
Associate Professor, Deputy Head of the Department of Museum Work and Protection of Monuments
Ph.D. in Philosophy
e-mail: a.nikonova@spbu.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-2235-5211

Art as an Idea and Concept: on the Problem of Reading Curatorial Projects

Abstract: The article examines the problems of the concept of contemporary art, revealed in the context of curatorial projects, from the time of the origin of the curatorial practice in the 1960s to the present. Opportunities to evaluate and analyze contemporary art through understanding of a curatorial project lead, as a rule, to the analysis of a certain text, not a visual form, which since postmodernism has been associated with “anti-form”, the art “beyond aesthetics” or an idea outside the artistic form, as in conceptualism. The text and related categories – intertextuality, context, narrative, discourse, decoding, are still relevant tools for both the theory of art, which has not yet outlived its logocentricity, and the evaluation of curatorial projects by searching for iconic symbols, ideas, context and mythologies. “Exhibition as text” or art as a product of modern diegesis, not mimesis, acts as a phenomenon of contemporary culture in the same way as several decades ago, but with certain changes dictated by the transition of the art criticism corps to the media and the Internet. Reception in social networks only adds additional connotations to the main text of an exhibition, and the institutional art community loses its position, giving way to a non-professional critic. At the same time, the curatorship is still focused on the experience of determining whether the content of exhibitions belongs to art, – the issue which was relevant during the entire period of postmodernism. Accordingly, the researcher analyzes not the visual form, but the “idea” or “concept” of art, and the curator's idea gives more opportunities for understanding it than attempts at aesthetic judgment, as demonstrate the examples of exhibitions at the State Hermitage museum of recent decades: Anthony Gormley. At Full Height. Antique and Modern Sculpture (2011), Lk. 15, 11–32. Rembrandt. Dedication. Alexander Sokurov (2020), Zhang Huan. In the Ashes of History (2020).

Key words: Curatorial Project, Contemporary Art, Curatorial Concept, Art Theory, Art Idea, Museum, Intertextual-ity, Decoding, Diegesis.

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For Citation:

Biryukova, M., Nikonova, A. (2022) Art as an Idea and Concept: on the Problem of Reading Curatorial Projects. International Journal of Cultural Research, 1 (46). 18–35. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2022_1_18

DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2022_1_18