Theoretical and Methodological Foundations of the Study of Visual Culture: Social Communication Aspects

Abstract

Research methods. The study uses comparative and systematic approaches that allow comparative analysis of the formation of synthetic forms of art practices and art phenomena in the context of the formation of a visual culture in general.

Сultural discourse is now in the stage of dichotomous assessments, which are defined as dichotomy of culture and post culture, by V. Bychkov, dichotomy of linguistic and visual approaches, dichotomy of verbal and figurative, dichotomy of the Renaissance ocular center, that is, apotocentric optics and optics of polycentric, that is, the optics of the postmodern ocular center. In particular, the dichotomy of text and image (model) is integrative, because it reflects the universalist images of textual and figurative as a relation between verbal and visual in general.

It is important to understand that the current realities of total visualization of culture, which are associated with visual-turning, can not be understood without going beyond the chronological limits of the twentieth century, because the phenomenon of visualization is a co-natural culture in general, starting with the Upper Paleolithic (the haptic naturalism of the figurative image ), ancient cultures  Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, India, China, Japan, Latin America (unfolded hierarchical presentations of the integrity of the world order), Ancient Greece (plastic visions), Middle Ages (mystical luminism), Revived nya (optical anthropocentrism), new and newest time (optical polycenterism).

Results The theoretical and methodological principles of visual culture study from the point of view of social and communication approach are explored and described.

Scientific novelty of the research. In the dissertation research the poly system analysis of the phenomenon of visual culture as a reality of globalization and integration processes of interaction of visual arts of the XX – XXI centuries was carried out.

In the course of the research, the specificity of the concept of "visual culture" as a transversal reality, which is inherent not only in the space of visual turning, but also in the space of culture as a whole, has been identified. In particular, the visual concepts of the ideological orientation of a person in the world as a kind of optical guidance to the culture of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, etc. are defined. The systematic factors of the synthesis of arts as guidelines in the formation of the visual culture of the 20th century are revealed. The ontological artistic nature of globalization and integrative tendencies of visual turning as antithesis of linguistic interpretation of culture in semioology has been reconstructed. In particular, the notion of "text", "discourse" is defined in the measurement of figurative and model explications of the visual culture of the XX-XXI centuries.

Practical significance. The results of the study can be used to introduce new applied socio-communicational technologies, visual culture.

Key words: visual culture, visual rotation, visualization, spirituality, semioology of discourse.