Unpopular literature - about the weirdness of the world of people and the wonders of art

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Traveling through space and time, the discovery of unknown lands, undeservedly forgotten directions in art, new technical principles, psychological laws that determine our behavior - this book review is devoted to all this.

Yuri Polunov's monograph “Seeking Knowledge” raises the question - who in distant times, or rather, in the X-XVII centuries, could be called inventors and scientists? Only a few surnames come to mind … Many of them are now only mentioned in passing in the history of science. Others, on the contrary, are widely known, but already as mysterious sorcerers and legendary sorcerers.

These include a simple shepherd boy from the French village of Aurillac, who became not only Pope Sylvester II, but also one of the most enlightened people of his time, a remarkable scientist and brilliant mathematician. So, Herbert taught his listeners to multiply and divide multidigit numbers on an abacus (counting board). Apparently, he was not its inventor, but restored and modernized what was known, but fell into oblivion. According to his student, "Herbert ordered a leather counting board, divided into twenty-seven columns, to the shield-maker, and he also ordered a thousand horn tokens to be made and one of nine Arabic numerals, from one to nine, to be applied to each of them." But the scientist-encyclopedist entered the "popular" (mass) history as a necromancer who seized the papal throne by black magic, and the owner of a bronze head capable of giving an answer to any question.

Raymund Llull, a religious ascetic, was the author of "The Great Art", which was nothing more than a technique for modeling logical operations for enumerating options, that is, the forerunner of "morphological analysis." In one of the many legends about Lulia, it is said that after his death he appeared to the English king Edward and offered him the secret of the philosopher's stone, setting only one condition - to spend the gold obtained with its help on a new crusade.

The publication also tells about Cornelis Drebbel, who in 1625 demonstrated to James I, his retinue and thousands of astonished Londoners who gathered on the banks of the Thames, a submarine invented by him, about Giambattista della Porta, Henry Briggs, John Napier and other worthy people, whose efforts in part, the technically advanced Modernity was created.

And the book by Kristina Kondratyeva “Icon of the XXI century. Kuznetsov's Letter”is remarkable already because in modern Russia there are not so many books written by art critics about the current phenomena of the fine arts. This edition has two authors at once - the artist Yuri Kuznetsov and the author of the text, art critic Kristina Kondratyeva, who found unexpected parallels between the work of a modern Russian icon painter and one of the directions of neo-impressionism - pointillism. After the death of its founder, French artist Georges Seurat, ideas of neo-imperialism were announced in artistic circles irrelevant. According to one of Seurat's associates, Lucien Pissarro, "Pointillism died with him." But European critics could not imagine the rebirth of this style. The method of point writing, based on optical mixing of colors, was revived on Kuznetsov's canvases. According to Kondratyeva, "in a hundred years, the icon painter from Russia Yuri Kuznetsov will lead to pointillism the squeak of ways of transmitting light …"

It is no coincidence that one of the chapters of the book is called "Inspired Pointillism" - in it the author traces the connection of this trend in art with the artistic techniques used by Yuri Kuznetsov to create icons.

“For the icon painter, the spiritual basis of any work is important, therefore, the ornament of Kuznetsov’s icons is not only the basis on which the pointillistic drawing is supported, but also the“spiritual”frame, which arranges the colored dots and petals inside the colored planes. This is how the ornament creates the structure of the icon, its original “body”, and the iridescent dots and petals enliven the image.

The artist uses traditional tempera in his work, but his icons shine like a mosaic made of beads and gems. Kuznetsov explains the need to create a new creative method by the fact that he needs “a color that does not exist in nature. It cannot be conveyed by ordinary painting means: there is no yellow-violet or blue-red color. And in this technique, if you apply three or more (up to 2000) points of seemingly incompatible shades next to each other, the result is a “nonexistent”, unearthly tone …”.

A man and a woman are separated from each other - in addition to the well-known differences - also stereotypes erected by civilization, which are analyzed by Amaria Rai in the book "Ladies Don't Move, or Don't You Girls Think We Have Been Deceived?" It is they who create a very harsh idea of how a real gentleman should act, and how a true lady should act. Many of these stereotypes (including the famous phrase "Ladies don't move") were formed in the era of Queen Victoria, when Britain was the ruler not only of the seas, but also of European, and therefore - world morality.

A little over a hundred years later, the British Empire collapsed, but the ideas about what was permissible and inappropriate, then formed, have survived to this day, despite the fact that the "diet" of modern people included the "Kama Sutra", and erotic prose, and even more sophisticated sex -literature. But the point is not so much in technology as in the psychology of relationships. This book is devoted to how to find in your own mind the fragments of stereotypes that have long lost their relevance, but continue to control our behavior. The author analyzes the main ones, compiling a kind of encyclopedia of myths, and points out the way to deliverance: “Do not allow yourself to live in the victim's cocoon. Start getting rid of it. Today. Now. Forbid yourself to think all the time about your failures, about loneliness, about dissatisfaction with your appearance, partner, work, husband, or the fact that he is still not there, worry about children or their absence, about lack of money, about health problems … Just forbid think negatively for yourself!"

The first section of the book is devoted to myths about men, the second - to myths about women. This is followed by myths about sex and relationships. The edition ends with a test for marital harmony. In order to get rid of illusions, you need to find those myths that dominate you … Dialogues with famous experts - Spanish sexologist Ramon Albareda, Russian psychologist Adolph Harasch, family therapist from the United States Stuart Sovatsky - as well as aphorisms and statements of great sages of the past.

In fairness, it should be noted that some of the signs of the era of Queen Victoria could be very useful. The imposing tome The Discoverers, with a foreword and introductory article by Sir Ranulf Finnes and Royal Geographic Society President Mike Palin, testifies to the life-saving commitment of the English traveler Mary Kingsley.

In 1892, thirty-year-old Mary, who after the death of her parents had control over her destiny, decided to become a researcher and went to Africa. She returned home already famous, bringing a large collection of fish, snakes and insects for the British Museum, which included new species. Once, during an expedition, Mary almost fell into a disguised trapping pit with sharpened stakes at the bottom in the rainforest, and she was saved from death by the fact that she even wore a long Victorian dress with all her petticoats on her wanderings …

The book even includes a separate chapter - "Clothes of expeditions", including the curiosities associated with it. For example, in 1634, the Frenchman Jean Nicolet swam across Lake Michigan in North America: "He put on a colorful Chinese robe, because he was convinced that he was sailing to China and meet with Asians there."

The illustrated edition tells about great explorers, those who discovered unknown lands, mysterious cities and incomprehensible civilizations for the rest. The most "mobile" researcher until the 19th century was not the glorified Marco Polo, whom many historians still reproach for numerous inaccuracies in the text of his book, but Ibn Battuta, who was born in 1304 in Tangier. On June 14, 1325, he set off on one of his first wanderings from Tangier to Mecca. The cities and countries he saw so struck the traveler's imagination that he decided to continue his wanderings, by the end of his life having visited many places about which other inhabitants of the Earth then had at best a vague idea.

The text also describes the life of the aborigines - such as it was before the advent of the discoverers, after whom the European civilization inevitably came with its technical innovations …