DISCOURSE OF SPRING SYMBOLISM IN EUROPEAN PAINTING OF THE LATE XIX-XX CENTURIES

Abstract

The aim of the article is to highlight prerequisites for emergence and development of symbolic pictures. It was determined that, depending on the specifics of the application, the symbolism of spring in the works of European painting at the end of the XIX-XX centuries combines elements of the awakening of nature and mysterious female images. The allegorical objects of spring are summarized, the complexity of the symbolism of which depends on the individual color and tonal decisions of the artist, his spiritual development, and their imagination about the means of pictorial representation of nature and women. The aim of the article is to outline the art discourse of the symbolism of spring in European art. A complex of general scientific methods of cognition (analysis, analogy, abstraction, and retrospective analysis) was chosen as the scientific method used to solve the tasks. With the help of such cognitive methods as analysis and generalization, the cause-and-effect relationships between the categories «symbol» and «symbolism» in art were investigated. The method of abstraction was used to study several European works of art, and the features of the specific scientific language (signs, symbols, color, etc.) intrinsic to these artworks were determined. The method of retrospective analysis allowed to find and summarize associative images of spring in European fine art. The scientific novelty consists in rethinking the meaning of the image of «spring» by personifying such abstract forms-symbols as the beauty of nature, the youth of a woman, and the philosophical and religious allegory of God’s gift, which takes a visible form in symbolic images of the birth of life. Conclusions: the article specified the essence of the definition of «symbol» through the concept of the iconicity of the object (image) in the context of the color-tonal solution and the semantic content of the work. The works of European artists were analyzed in the context of the representation of spring symbolism. It was found that the symbolism of spring in the artworks of the second half of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century acquires artistic expressiveness because of the images of the awakening of nature and the blossoming of a young woman in whom a new life is born.