The Genesis of Sculpture Parks in the Evolution of Landscape and Monumental-Decorative Arts Synthesis

Abstract

The article is devoted to the sculpture parks as a large-scale, historically rooted, socially and artistic phenomenon. The genesis of sculpture parks in the evolution of landscape and monumental- decorative arts synthesis, along the lines of sculpture aggregates traditional dominance in natural space, from antiquity to the middle of the 20th century is noted in the article. Analyzing the realities of this dominance produced an understanding of artistic synthesis dialectic as a synergistic interaction of components, on the basis of opposition. The range of aesthetic and semantic dominated-opposition complex configurations of sculptures to natural space forms is traced on the rise — in the gardens and parks of Roman antiquity, Renaissance, Baroque, and French classicism; and in decline— in the Rococo, Mature Classicism and Romanticism parks, focused on imitation of original nature. Significant attention is paid to sculpture layout in Russian gardens and parks, which entered into the mainstream of European artistic synthesis from the 18th century, but preserved its dominant role due to exposure and educational capacity. The contribution to the promotion of urbanization in the second half of the 19th century is illustrated as well as how this resulted in a loss of aesthetics for monumental-decorative art and the new urban landscapes, and how aesthetics became the face of the urban subculture, institutionalized stylistic pluralism of social consensus, which linked spatial and temporal arts. The general conceptualization of art, which influenced the reassessment of the importance of modern sculpture on display in natural space, is analyzed in the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. In doing so, the prospect of not only artistic and social, but also conceptual and exhibitional distinguishing features of sculpture parks is determined in terms of its further independent development.