The main directions of Western culture of the XX century.

Cultural studies and art history, comprehending phenomena and exploring the processes of development of art of the XX century., is not yet able to judge these phenomena as a whole by their final results. It would be fairer to limit ourselves to identifying the main trends in the development of art in the past century.

XX century art crisis, expressing the highest tension of the fracture. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. democratic realism and impressionism are becoming a thing of the past, and the work of post-impressionists is undergoing major changes. But at the same time there was a major international ideological and art movement, which was called Art Nouveau in Russia, art nouveau in Belgium and France, secession in Austria-Hungary, art nouveau in Germany, liberty style in Italy, modern style in the UK, Tiffany style in the USA. Art Nouveau set the task of creating a new large style, which included a very distinct aesthetic program. In general, the idea of such a program is the idea of creating beauty that is not contained in life that does not satisfy artists. Obviously, art itself served as the sole bearer of the beautiful modern style. Of course, such a program is directed towards art for art and aesthetics. But at the same time, it is aimed at transforming life with aesthetic means. Creativity was understood as an artistic fantasy, likened to the creative forces of nature. Hence the frequent combination of symbolic ideas and decorative motifs. In architecture, flowing, plastic, as if self-forming forms are spreading, in decorative creativity - a stylized floral ornament, spreading on the surface, growing, as if enveloping an object. In painting, flexible lines and spots of color do not distinguish volume, but create a peculiar world where space does not have depth, and objects and figures - mass. The composition itself is determined by the decorative-patterned beginning.

Art Nouveau gravitated to the synthesis of art. Pole S. Vyspiansky (1869-1907) was a poet, playwright, painter, graphic artist, master of architectural interior design. The German P. Behrens (1868-1940) worked as an architect, painter, designer and graphic artist. Belgian X. Van de Velde (1863-1957) acted as a modernist theorist, architect, organizer of decorative and applied arts, painter and graphic artist.

The artists Emil Galle, Eugene Grasse, Eugene Valen, Louis Bo-Nieu, Alfons Mucha and others brought world fame to French Art Nouveau, were at the same time architects, sculptors, graphic artists, designers and were able to do a lot with their own hands.

Art Nouveau managed to organically combine European and Eastern artistic traditions. Oriental motifs not only form a special group of works within this style, but are often used in arts and crafts.

Art Nouveau is directly involved in the rise of circulation graphics, which led to the massive spread of graphic arts in public and personal life. Particularly rapid development was experienced by newspaper and magazine graphics. This was also facilitated by the important fact that the capabilities of the magazine-newspaper zincographic cliché corresponded to the properties of the Art Nouveau pattern, which operates with a wide contour line and a flat spot. Modern artists, in fact, created a new type of book, where the whole design was a single whole, including not only illustrations, but also the font, binding, format, etc. Along with mass circulation editions, expensive, sophisticated publications began to appear The design of which involved not only graphic artists, but also artists of other specialties.

Almost entirely in line with this style, the development of poster art took place. In advertising posters, a substantive-material manner is developed that gives credibility to the image of the advertised product. A special group is occupied by posters containing socio-political motives that formed the basis of the revolutionary poster.

The coup was made by Art Nouveau artists in the arts and crafts: they attached household objects to artistic value. Almost all modernist artists created draperies, furniture, jewelry, etc. Not only whole directions and individual large masters working in this art form appeared, but entire industries began to develop in a new way: porcelain in Denmark (artist K. Thomsen), glass production in France (E. Galle) and opal glass in the USA (L.K. Tiffany).

In 1907, the emergence of the organization German Werkbund, which brought together on a new basis industrialists, architects and artists, marked the beginning of a new era. Modernists wanted to combine highly professional art and household products. But in practice, this led to a sharp stratification. On the one hand, expensive works of art began to be created, and on the other, cheap crafts called kitsch. Products in the style of kitsch are like a cheap phantom of beauty. They are characterized by sentimentality, arrogant pathetics, deliberate eclecticism, excess decor and fake expensive materials. Kitsch was replicated based on industrial imitation of unique products. Since the 1960s he became one of the phenomena of mass culture. Kitsch is most widely used in the design of boulevard products, films and videos, in various forms of standardized household decoration.

Against the backdrop of global problems in the economy, people value their workplace more and more. there is work in Chisinau vacancies appear every day.

The positive aspects of attempts to combine artistic creation and industrial production include the emergence of design, as well as the design of mass products endowed with a standard level of quality. But this, in turn, fundamentally denied the decorative and ornamental stylistics of Art Nouveau. Design, combining various types of design activities, the main goal was the formation of aesthetic and functional qualities of the subject environment. These included not only beauty, but also expediency, profitability, physiological and psychological convenience of using the object. All this indicated a crisis, a critical state of the era of artistic styles.

But the modernist style was not going to give up their positions. He flourished rapidly and magnificently in architecture. True, Art Nouveau did not become an official state style, because its romantic liberties were not suitable for official buildings. Art Nouveau also received no unconditional metropolitan recognition, although constructions were built in this style in Paris, Vienna, and Brussels. The architectural centers of Art Nouveau include cities such as Spanish Barcelona, Italian Turin, German Munich and Darmstadt. Modernism could never pretend to mass architecture, because its architectural fantasies required very high financial costs. This style developed mainly in the architecture of urban mansions and expensive apartment buildings, country villas and summer cottages. Outside, these buildings look like an asymmetric spatial composition, merging volumes that are different in shape and scale. The decorative decoration of facades and interiors reaches incredible sophistication, while the shape and decor of windows, doors, stairs become diverse almost to infinity. Architecture focuses on creating a kind of aesthetic comfort. The most prominent representatives of the Art Nouveau style in architecture were A. Gaudi, in particular, who created the Park Guell in Barcelona and the apartment building Batlo, and J. Hoffman, who built the Stoclet Palace in Brussels, decorated with multi-colored mosaics by G. Klimt. In the United States, architecture is acquiring a vital nature, which is reflected in the construction of single-family country houses. The slogan of American architects is: "Form follows function." In the Art Nouveau style, the American architect F. L. Wright worked.

The use of reinforced concrete frames, which were first used in Paris by O. Per-re, made it possible to create huge “French” windows that expanded the wall from floor to ceiling. Buildings of transitional style still connected a lot with the Art Nouveau style, for example, facing facades with tiles. But a new one was visible both in the unconcealed reinforced concrete frame and on the vast surfaces of glass forming a laconic facade architecture. Rational trends began to manifest themselves most widely and vividly in the construction of various public buildings. Gradually, the emotional aestheticism of modernity is increasingly inferior to constructivism, rationalism and functionalism.