RU WARE POTTERY AND THE PRINCIPLES OF MINIMALISM: TO THE PROBLEM OF THE SENSE OF FORM

Abstract

The comparison of various artistic phenomena, which are separated geographically and chronologically, is a complicated analytical precedent. The matching requires stable criteria, and a distance (spatial, temporal, cultural or artistic) makes the difficulties to the formulation of analytical principles. Different historical epochs form their own independent systems, which do not always imply the possibility of the direct comparison. At the same time, such juxtaposition gives possibility to identify common pictorial and ideological principles of artistic structures, which don’t have the strict identical forms. The comparison of separated artistic phenomena allows to determine the common platform of culture and to discover the integral principle of various artistic systems. This article is devoted to the comparing of two independent art systems. The Chinese Ru ware pottery of the Song dynasty and the international minimalism of the 1960s and 1980s are distanced one from another both territorially and chronologically. At the same time, they are close artistic systems, where the unifying factor is the idea and the sense of form. Within the framework of the article, the very possibility of comparing different artistic systems is considered. The text examines the possible criteria of such comparison. It raises the questions on the principles of the artistic relations. The starting point of the work is the specification of the basic characteristics for the Ru ware pottery and the determination of the basic principles of international minimalism of the 1960s and 1980s. The article examines the specific features and peculiarities of Ru ware pottery, which, despite its popularity, is not enough studied in the Russian analytical space. Besides, the text indicates the specific features of European and American minimalism. This direction also presents material for systematic study. One of the main tasks for this work is the presentation of key parameters related to the form elements of Ru ware pottery and the description of conceptual components related to the international minimalism. Comparing these two systems, authors refer to the basic categories of European theory of art, which appearance is associated with the names of Wilhelm Vorringer and Henry Welflin. The main criteria that allows to compare these artistic trends is «the sense of form» - the concept that was determined in German art-theory in the first half of the XXth century. The use of this categories and the discovery of the concept of the sense of form, allows to show a parallel between the principles of Ru ware pottery and the system of international minimalism of the second half of the XXth century.