V. Pigulevskiy

Art practice: irony and connotation

The term «art practice» covers such phenomena of culture and aesthetic activity as ready-made, objet trouvé, assemblage, construction, installation, performance, happening, aleatoric music, «Musique concrète», serialism, sonorism, etc. Unlike art where aesthetic reality is opposed to social reality, art practice is the manipulation of objects, sounds and noises, bodily actions in reality itself. In the postmodern condition there is a turn from the intellectualism of modernity to corporeality and textuality, culture is understood as a multi-layered text, in which everything is already «said». There is an idea of impossibility of creating something new and art comes down to quotation of the past, playing with signs and meanings. Creativity is based on extracting meaning, creating connotations, allusions and associations. The techniques of art practice are elimination of the signifier, rupture of symbolic, irony, collages of texts and quotations, structure and bodily practices. The artist constructs an entertaining event in the environment of the city or nature. The status of such a work is probabilistic. Connotations depend not only on the event, provocation and meaning, but also on the cultural context, knowledge and attitudes of the public. By breaking the taboo of Western civilization, art practice draws attention to taboo topics, exposing the problems of Western civilization.

Key words

art, art practice, avant-garde, installation, meaning, irony.

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