The truth of life and the truth of art in the creative method of Russian sculptors of the second half of the 19th - early 20th century. Toward the articulation of an issue

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of understanding the concept of the “truth of life” with reference to the practice of Russian sculptors of the academic Petersburg and Moscow sculpture schools. Relevance to this topic was given by an active polemic in the ranks of art critics regarding the concept of realism and the criteria for evaluating works of art in the context of the development of this artistic method. A very original interpretation of this problem of the correlation between the truth of life and the persuasiveness of the artistic image was demonstrated in his critical articles by L.N. Tolstoy.Particularly acute polemics unfolded on the relationship between the “truth of life” and the concept of “realism.” The problem of boundaries of freedom of expression of the author was understood by artists and art critics quite differently. Representatives of new trends in Russian sculpture of the boundary period actively used the renewal of the plastic language. In this regard, their views on the credibility of the imaginative solution are not always adequately perceived by representatives of the traditional trends of Russian art in the second half of the 19 century.