Sculpture of tropical and southern Africa - description. "art of tropical africa from the collection m
Black slaves, accustomed to the hot climate, were mainly used extensively to work on cotton and sugar plantations in the North and South America. But African slaves were also in Europe, where they were used as an "exotic" domestic servants. The exact date when the first black slaves came to Europe is still unknown. From the writings of some ancient Greek historians, philosophers and writers that have come down to our time, we can conclude that some (very small) number of African slaves were in Athens and some other city-states of Hellas.
Most likely, ancient Greek travelers bought black Nubian slaves in Egypt and brought them to their homeland. And after Rome defeated Carthage in the 2nd Punic War (218 - 201 BC), and especially after the capture and destruction of Carthage by the Romans (146 BC), the number of African slaves in Europe has increased dramatically. Black slaves appeared in many houses and villas of wealthy Romans. They, like their white counterparts in misfortune, had no rights, completely dependent on the humanity and whim of the owners. It is no coincidence that the Roman scholar Mark Terentius Varro pointed out that a slave is just a talking tool.
When did African slaves appear in medieval Europe?
After the fall of the Roman Empire, black slaves were forgotten in Europe for many centuries. However, in the first half of the 15th century, with the beginning of the Age of Discovery, the Portuguese, looking for sea route to India to establish an uninterrupted supply of spices and other exotic goods, they began to regularly examine the western coast of Africa. They moved further and further every year, mapping the previously unknown coast on the map, often landed, came into contact with the leaders of local tribes. And in 1444, Captain Nuny Trishtan, who reached the mouth of the Senegal River, captured ten blacks there, who he brought to Lisbon and sold at a high price. So the first black slaves ended up in medieval Europe.
Encouraged by the example of Trishtan, some Portuguese captains took up this shameful trade, which brings a good income (it should be noted that the trade of a slave trader in those days was not only considered shameful, but even reprehensible). The example of the Portuguese was followed a little later by the Spaniards, the French, and the British. Entire fleets of ships were annually sent to Africa for slaves. And this went on for several centuries, until the slave trade was outlawed.
AFRICAN GIRLS PICASSO
I understood what the Negroes used their sculptures for... They were weapons. To help people not fall under the influence of spirits again.
P. PicassoBronze head - a prime example the highest craftsmanship of the ancient Benin masters
Few people know that it was sculpture that opened Africa to the Western cultural world and that it was African sculpture that became one of the founders of modern art. And it happened quite recently.
In the collections and museum collections of Europe, sculptural images from Tropical Africa began to appear already in the 18th century, but masterpieces made of wood and metal poured into Europe in a wide stream only in late XIX V. In 1907, a big exhibition dedicated to the culture of the peoples of Africa. The young artist Pablo Picasso, who visited her, was so impressed by what he saw that in a few days he created a masterpiece that was destined to make a real revolution in European art. The painting “The Maidens of Avignon”, painted by him, where the faces of women are stylized as African masks, becomes the first work of cubism, from which new stage development, perception and understanding of art - what we call contemporary art.
The fashion for African sculpture is sweeping Europe, despite the fact that even a few decades before Picasso, Western travelers and missionaries called it nothing more than “primitive” and “ugly”. Of course, everyone has their own views and opinions regarding art and its currents, but African sculpture is neither one nor the other, however, by the standards of European art, it really has a number of features that contrast sharply with our usual and “classical” ideas about sculptural images.
First of all, realism is alien to African sculpture. Images of a person or animal are not at all obliged to convey the correct proportions, on the contrary, the artist highlights those features that seem to him the most important, not paying too much attention to the similarity of the image and nature. Realism, born in Ancient Egypt and for two and a half millennia that reigned in Europe, in Tropical Africa, turned out to be unclaimed in our modern times. For example, in African sculpture, the ratio of the head and body is 1 to 3 or 1 to 2, while the real proportions human body- 1 to 5, and in ancient Greek plastic - even 1 to 6. This was due to the fact that the head, according to African beliefs, contains the divine power and energy of a person. It was the huge heads of African sculptures that caused rejection among European aesthetes of the past, and today they are a widespread reception and visual arts, and graphic illustration around the world. Instead of realism, African sculpture has rich symbolism.
Even the first researchers, and among them the pioneer of the study African art Russian scientist Vladimir Matvey, noted the variety and great importance of plastic symbols used in depicting various realities, for example, a shell or a slit instead of an eye. This symbolism stems from the simple fact that art for an African is not decorative, as in our culture, but a rich social, religious, spiritual burden. Sculpture is part of faith, not just interior decoration. Therefore, it must carry certain information for the believer, protect him or call. At the same time, the Western connoisseur has always been struck by the accuracy of some details of the sculpture - so incompatible, it would seem, with a general disregard for reality. However, these details - for example, hairstyle, scars on the face and body, jewelry - are important to the African not in themselves, but only as indicators, symbols of social or ethnic status. The viewer must clearly know who exactly this sculpture depicts, and the length of the arms or legs (or even their presence) does not play a key role at all.
African sculpture is completely devoid of emotional richness, familiar to us in European art since the time of the Greeks and Etruscans. The facial expressions of ancestors, deities, sacred animals, people are absolutely neutral, the poses of sculptural compositions are static. Emotional expression, such an important element of the daily life of any African, is almost completely absent, which could not but surprise the first experts who studied African art.
Wooden sculptures of great ancestors - a tradition that lives to this day in the villages of Konso, Ethiopia
Bronze plate from a palace in Benin
African sculpture is also characterized by an extreme degree of conservatism. The path of Europe from Phidias to Rodin, which is two and a half thousand years long, seems to us a kaleidoscopic change of artistic styles. Bronze heads of the Nok archaeological culture, sculpted several centuries before new era, look like twins of today's West African statues and masks, as if they were made last week by a Dogon master from Bandiagara. The mystery of this millennial succession continues to amaze researchers around the world.
The first samples of the Nok terracotta jewelry heritage were discovered in 1932: peasants on the Jos Plateau, finding clay figurines in their gardens, usually did not torment themselves with questions about their origin, but adapted them as stuffed animals to scare away birds. The earliest figurines found were carved around the 5th century BC. BC e., the last - 800 years later. However, even after the mysterious fall of the Nok culture, the tradition of sculptural images did not disappear - it was miraculously revived in the 10th century. in culture bronze sculptures Yoruba people in the city of Ile-Ife (Southwestern Nigeria). And although Ile-Ife fell into decay in the 14th century, its sculpture was preserved almost unchanged in the art of Benin, the state of the New Age. Bronze heads, animal figurines, royal regalia made of ivory, bronze and brass are real masterpieces of world art, treasures of museums in Europe and America. Most of the sculptures had a religious significance and were used for funerary cult - as probably the figures of the Nok culture. But Benin both already knew a lot about not only religious symbols but also in aesthetics. Walls, floors and columns in his palace, he ordered to cover with relief metal tiles with hundreds of sculptural images. Here you can see the chronicles of wars, hunting, receiving embassies, some even guess Portuguese guests in wide-brimmed felt hats, curiously examining the capital of Benin.
At the end of the XIX century. the art of Benin perished along with the state conquered by the British. But today's sculptures, used in sacred ceremonies or sold to tourists in shops and airports across West Africa, carry the same canonical features, first sculpted in clay 2,500 years before the first duty-free shops.
In addition to the terracotta and metalwork of the masters of Nigeria, we know of several other centers of the ancient sculptural tradition in West Africa. One of them is the production of original brass weights, which flourished in the territory of modern Ghana from the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century. Their initial purpose is very utilitarian - to measure the weight of golden sand, however, weights began to serve as important social accessories (a man who scored a full set was considered wealthy and respected), and even illustrations for legends and myths. Figurines depicting animals, people, deities, various items, keep stories from life, funny anecdotes, rules of behavior in society.
The fall of the Ashanti civilization under the blows of the British at the beginning of the 20th century. forever interrupted this tradition of a kind of "sculptural literature", which has almost no analogues in the world.
Compared to the countries of the western part of the continent, East and South Africa have not preserved such a rich heritage, however, there are examples of a rich sculptural tradition here too. One of them is the rich creativity of the Makonde people in Mozambique. It was born not so long ago - in the XVIII century. - and was generated by the high demand of European and Indian merchants for wooden figurines with mythological and everyday scenes. Today, in the era of the modern economy, Makonde carvers are organized into cooperatives that are equally successful in trading their ebony products throughout Mozambique.
A WEIGHT WITH THE IMAGE OF A HORNOCOS AND A SNAKE TELLS A PARABLE ABOUT A BIRD WHO WAS IN NO HURRY TO PAY DEBTS TO THE SNAKE. SHE BELIEVED THAT ANY MOMENT WILL BE ABLE TO FLY AWAY FROM THE CREEPING CREDITOR. BUT THE SNAKE HAVE BEEN PATIENT AND, WAITTING FOR THE HORNBORN TO LOSE VIEW, GRABS IT BY THE NECK. THE PARABLE ENDS WITH THE PROVERB OF THE AKAN PEOPLE: “THE ALTHOUGH THE SNAKE DOES NOT FLY, IT CATCHED THE RHINO, WHOSE HOUSE IS IN THE SKY”, THE MORAL OF WHICH IS A CALL FOR PATIENCE AND OPTIMISM.
Even more ancient are the famous "birds of Zimbabwe" - half a meter stone sculptures from soapstone, mounted on columns on the walls of the Great Zimbabwe, which we talked about earlier, in the "History" chapter. This image - in all likelihood, a fishing eagle - now flaunts on the coat of arms of the Republic of Zimbabwe (together with a Kalashnikov assault rifle). However, apart from it, no sculptural works in the area of the famous ancient city was not found.
One example of exquisite makonde wood sculpture
This, however, does not mean that they did not exist. The lack of our knowledge of the sculpture of other areas of Tropical Africa is primarily due to the fragility of the material - traditionally, sculptural images here were made of wood and other organic materials, which in a humid tropical climate quickly fall prey to decay, worms and termites. However, about what sculptural art existed throughout the continent long before the appearance of the first Europeans, can be judged by the rich, not yet fully explored, and therefore mysterious world African masks.
Until the first scientific data received convincing confirmation, scientists - supporters of the exodus from Africa hypothesis - believed that the oldest exodus of people modern type to the north of Africa and further, to the Levant, formed a kind of biological core, from which the peoples of Europe and Asia subsequently arose. However, such arguments suffer from a serious flaw. The fact is that the traces of modern humans in these places almost disappear about 90 thousand years ago. Thanks to climatological studies, we know that it was about 90,000 years ago that a brief but devastating period of sharp global cooling and drought began on Earth, as a result of which the entire Levant turned into a lifeless desert. After the retreat of the glaciers and the new warming, the Levant was quickly settled, but this time by representatives of a different species, our closest “cousin” on family tree- Neanderthals, who, in all likelihood, were pushed south, to the Mediterranean region, as a result of the onset of glaciers advancing from the north. We have no material evidence of the presence of modern people in the Levant or in Europe over the next 45 thousand years, until about 45-50 thousand years ago the Cro-Magnons appeared on the arena of history (as evidenced by the appearance of the Augurian tool-making technique), who challenged the Neanderthals, pushing them north, to their ancient ancestral home.
Thus, most experts today believe that the first modern humans, natives of Africa, died out in the Levant as a result of a sharp cooling and the return of an arid climate, under the influence of which North Africa and the Levant quickly turned into barren deserts.
The corridor that ran through the Sahara slammed shut like a giant trap, and the migrants who found themselves in it could neither return back nor find suitable land. A yawning gulf of 50 thousand years between the disappearance of traces of the first settlers in the Levant and the subsequent invasion there new wave migrants from Europe, no doubt, calls into question the validity of the widespread version that the first exodus from Africa to the north allegedly ended successfully and created the biological core of future Europeans. Let's think about why.
To understand why many European authorities in the field of archeology and anthropology insist that Europeans arose independently and independently of the first exodus from North Africa, it is necessary to remember that here we are dealing with one of the manifestations of cultural Eurocentrism, seeking to explain the consequences of the first exodus. The most important manifestation of this thinking is the unshakable conviction of European scientists of the 20th century. in the fact that it was the Cro-Magnons who migrated to Europe no later than 50 thousand years ago, and were the founders of the people of the "modern type" in the full sense of the word. This human epiphany, which brought an unprecedented flowering of all kinds of arts, crafts and technical capabilities and culture in general, is known among archaeologists under the dry name "European Upper Paleolithic". According to many scientists, it was something like a creative explosion that marked the beginning of an era thinking person on the ground. It is to this culture that impressive cave drawings in the Chauvet and Lascaux caves, as well as exquisite, finely crafted carvings"Venus", which archaeologists find throughout Europe.
At the same time, one can usually hear arguments like “if we really left Africa and if that ancient cultural revolution, which speaks so eloquently about the gift of abstract thinking, came to Europe from the Levant, she best case could represent short halt on the way out of Egypt. Ergo, "we Westerners" (this "we" is explained by the fact that the supporters of this hypothesis are exclusively Europeans or have European roots), are just descendants of immigrants from North Africa. Thus, for many specialists, the northern route is a kind of conceptual starting point for migration, or, better, exodus from Africa. In the next chapter, we will consider why it is logically impossible to assume that the first "people of a completely modern type" were Europeans, and how it happened that the first modern people who could speak, sing, dance and draw were Africans, and this happened. long before the exodus of some of their groups from their native continent.
However, attempts to provide a convincing explanation of how exactly the ancestors of modern Europeans, who once lived in the vicinity of the Sahara, conceived and carried out the Exodus from Africa, are associated with a number of serious problems. To begin with, it should be noted that since the Sahara desert has served as an insurmountable barrier to migrants for the past 100 thousand years, any later invasions of North Africans into Europe could begin with some kind of green refuge - an island of vegetation that still remained in North Africa, for example, from the Nile Delta region, after the interglacial pause. The ancestors of Europeans could not 45-50 thousand years ago make an exodus from the Sahara region directly, except on rafts down the Nile, but genetic history strongly rejects such a possibility.
A green haven in Egypt?
If such a green refuge really existed throughout the long dry period after the interglacial pause in North Africa, it could well serve as a temporary shelter and staging post for the ancestors of future Europeans about 45 thousand years ago. Yes, in ancient times, there were indeed several vast green oases in North Africa, in particular, the Nile Delta in Egypt and the Mediterranean coast of present-day Morocco. A recent find of a child's skeleton in a burial on the Taramsa hill in Egypt, dated approximately between 50 and 80 thousand years ago, indicates that relict population groups could have been preserved there. A number of leading proponents of the exodus from Africa hypothesis immediately drew attention to this find, since it offers a real and quite convincing explanation for the pause of 45-50 thousand years. The most famous among them is Chris Stringer, a staunch supporter of the hypothesis of the origin of modern people from Africa and one of the leaders of the Natural History Museum in London. Stringer argues that the Egyptian child from Taramsa belonged to a colony of inhabitants of the oases of North Africa, and that it was from such colonies that the migrants who left Africa about 50 thousand years ago and became the ancestors of the inhabitants of the Levant and Europe came from.
Yet archaeological evidence of the presence of Cro-Magnons in North Africa is extremely scarce and few. Even those stone tools of the Middle Paleolithic era, which were found in the burial of a child on Taramsa Hill, could well have been created by Neanderthals, and they cannot be considered evidence of the explosive growth of new technologies that penetrated Europe during that era.
Australia problem
But perhaps the most serious problem for the Eurocentric concept of cultural development, which is based on the hypothesis of a northern route of exodus from Africa, is the very existence of Australian aborigines who created their own culture of singing, dancing and painting long before the Europeans and, of course, without any help from them. But then what region of Africa did they come from? What route took them so far, to the ends of the world? Can they be considered a branch of the same exodus in which the ancestors of modern Europeans took part? And, finally, the most important thing: how and why did they get to Australia much earlier than the ancestors of Europeans - to Europe? This riddle gave birth whole line explanation attempts.
It is clear that to answer all these questions, proceeding from the hypothesis of a single northern exodus from Africa to Europe, which took place about 45 thousand years ago, followed by human settlement throughout the rest of the world, as the Chicago anthropologist Richard Klein argues in his classic work, The Development of Man, is simply impossible. The famous zoologist, African expert, artist and writer Jonathan Kingdon goes even further, proving that the first, “unsuccessful” northern exodus of Africans to the Levant, which took place about 120 thousand years ago, led to the settlement of surviving migrants and colonization South-East Asia, and then Australia about 90 thousand years ago. This version also allows only one exit from Africa, and, moreover, along the northern route. Chris Stringer took the easiest route, arguing that Australia was colonized independently of this outcome, and long before the colonization of Europe, as a result of a separate exodus of Africans around the Red Sea (see Figure 1.3).
Much in agreement with Chris Stringer, archaeologist Robert Foley and palaeontologist Martha Lahr of the University of Cambridge also argue that the chain of green oases in North Africa that stretched along the northern route through the Levant was of vital importance to the ancestors of Europeans and inhabitants of the Levant. These researchers have no problem with the number of exoduses from Africa, arguing that in ancient times there were many large and small migrations, starting points for which the oases scattered across Ethiopia and all of North Africa served. This point of view takes into account the significant population growth in Africa itself during the interglacial pause, about 125 thousand years ago.
Lahr and Foley believe that the return of the former cold and arid climate has led to the fact that African continent as if divided into separate inhabited areas-colonies, coinciding with the boundaries of green oases (see Fig. 1.6), whose inhabitants over the next 50 thousand years were separated by insurmountable deserts. According to Lar-Fowley's scheme, the ancestors of the East Asians and Australians could be from Ethiopia, who, having crossed the Red Sea, went on distant wanderings. They could choose the southern route and move along it completely independently of the ancestors of future Europeans. Not so long ago, Foley and Lahr received "reinforcement": the ranks of supporters of the northern and southern exoduses American geneticist Peter Underhill, Y-chromosome researcher. He made a study in which he carried out the synthesis of genetic prehistoric factors. All three scholars postulated an ancient exodus to Australia along the southern route, recognizing that the main route of exodus from Africa was still the northern route, through Suez and the Levant, to Europe and the rest of Asia (Fig. 1.3) and that it took place between 30 and 45 thousand years ago.
Thus, the validity of the opinion expressed by many experts on Eurasia that the ancestors of Europeans were immigrants from North Africa depends on a number of factors. These include the presence of fairly extensive oases of refuge in North Africa and either numerous migrations from Africa at different times, or a very early protomigration from the Levant to the countries of the Far East.
There is also an ideological problem: this is an attempt to reserve the northern route of exodus only for the ancestors of future Europeans.
Speaking at first frankly and bluntly, Jonathan Kingdon argued that the early northern exodus from Africa occurred about 120,000 years ago, during the so-called Emian interglacial pause. Since many corridors in the deserts of Africa and Western Asia were lushly green at that time, prospective migrants to Australia could move further east from the Levant to India without hindrance. Of course, they could stop for a long halt in the green areas of South Asia before moving on to Southeast Asia, where they arrived about 90 thousand years ago. (Under the term " South Asia“I mean those countries located between Aden (Yemen) and Bangladesh that overlook the coastline of the Indian Ocean. These countries include Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, as well as the states located on the Persian Gulf coast: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Beirut, United United Arab Emirates and Iran.)
As evidence of the presence in ancient times reasonable person in the Levant, Jonathan Kingdon refers to numerous Middle Paleolithic tools found in India. Some of them are 163 thousand years old. However, the most serious problem here is complete absence skeletal remains of a modern type human of such antiquity anywhere outside of Africa. Kingdon states that these tools may have been made by pre-modern or archaic people (or Mapa, as he calls them) who were living in East Asia at the same time.
It is clear that in order to get to Australia, the ancestors of the Australians had to cross the whole of Asia from west to east, but we do not have any material evidence that the anatomical modern people made migrations across Asia about 90 thousand years ago, not to mention the earlier era - 120-163 thousand years ago.
barriers in the east
With the dating of the time frame of the colonization of Southeast Asia proposed by Kingdon - 90-120 thousand years - another is connected. serious problem. If, according to his hypothesis, the first wave of migration to Southeast Asia left the lands of the Levant a little later than 115 thousand years ago, it, in all likelihood, disappeared without a trace in the vast expanses of Asia. An analysis of the mass migrations of humans and other mammals from Africa to Asia over the past 4 million years indicates that, with the exception of the first interglacial pause, migrants moving from the Levant to the interior of Asia were faced with many formidable obstacles. In the era when the world was not warmed by the fertile warmth of the interglacial pause, the settlers now and then met high mountains and the heat-dried deserts, which served as insurmountable barriers to the north, east, and south of the Levant. In the north and east stretches the huge Zagros-Taurus mountain range, which, together with the Syrian and Arabian deserts, isolated the Levant from of Eastern Europe in the north and the Indian subcontinent in the south. Under normal climatic conditions glaciation, these were impenetrable mountainous deserts. There was no convenient detour in the north, where the ridges of the Caucasus rose and the Caspian Sea roared.
In ancient times, as in the time of Marco Polo, the most convenient alternative route from the Eastern Mediterranean to Southeast Asia was to get to the Indian Ocean as soon as possible and then move along its coastline. However, the Syrian and Arabian deserts stretched south and east of the Levant, and the only possible route was from Turkey through the Tigris Valley and further south along the western slope of the Zagros mountain range, all the way to the coast of the Persian Gulf (see Figure 1.6). However, this route, which ran through the so-called Fertile Crescent, during periods of cooling and drought at the end of interglacial pauses, also lay through lifeless deserts and, naturally, was closed to ancient migrants.
The practical impossibility for people of the modern type to get from the Levant to Egypt or Southeast Asia in the period from 55 to 90 thousand years ago means that the northern route of exodus from Africa at that time allowed only the ancestors of future Europeans and inhabitants of the Levant to leave the Black Continent, and not the forefathers of the inhabitants of Southeast Asia or Australia. Meanwhile, oddly enough, Europe and the Levant did not undergo any active colonization until about 45-50 thousand years ago, while Australia, which lay on the other side of the world, on the contrary, was intensively settled long before this milestone era. And this means that in order to “reserve” the northern route of exodus only for the ancestors of Europeans, Chris Stringer, Bob Foley and Martha Lahr had to accept the hypothesis that there were separate southern routes in antiquity, which were used by the ancestors of Australians and even Asians. Only the study of genetic history can solve this riddle.
The sculpture of the peoples of Africa has long attracted connoisseurs of the whole world with its originality and dissimilarity to the usual works of traditional Western art. The undoubted advantage of the works of African masters is their peculiar understanding of the reality of the image, as well as the sacred nature of all art.
Magic figurines are the most numerous group of sculptures in tropical and southern Africa. For Africans, these sculptures are the embodiment of the forces of nature, they are able to accumulate the energy of life and release it. Most often they are small figures of a person with large horns, between which a mask is placed (usually, this is an image of tribal leaders, shamans, healers and other people with strong energy).
African masks make up the lion's share of museum collections of African culture in Europe and America. The mask is an indispensable attribute of the majority magical rituals, festive processions and ritual dances. Most often there are masks made of wood, less often of ivory. Despite the fact that African masks are characterized by an extraordinary variety, each of them is made in accordance with the strict canons of the tribes.
Sculpture in traditional African culture is closely associated with the cult of ancestors. In the works of the masters, a special view of the world is read, the desire to express the emotional world of a person, a special aesthetics that defines beauty as closeness to nature, expediency and harmony.
Ideas about aesthetics in Africa are different from European ones. Often, from the point of view of a European, sculptors are too close attention give the genitals of the depicted people. However, within the framework of the cult of fertility, this is a natural and indispensable method. Abstract and schematic representation body and facial features can also be explained by special attention to inner world, as well as a connection with the cult of ancestors. Any sculptural image is closely connected with the world of the dead, which is very different from the world of the living and is an image of the inner essence of things in the mind of the master, expressed in a complex code language.
In addition to images of people and gods, many sculptures represent images of totem animals, as well as zoomorphic images. full of the most real masterpieces of African sculpture of the peoples of the Congo, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, etc.
The special plasticity, lines and emotionality of African sculptures at the end of the 19th century had a strong influence on the emergence of new trends in European painting. Such masters as Braque, Matisse, inspired by the abstraction of African sculptures, created their best works.
Modern African sculptors work in a traditional manner, but use modern materials, including plastic, but wood and ivory remain the main material. According to tradition, ivory sculptures are attributes of royal palaces, so they are made especially carefully and exquisitely.
Article 4
Article 3
Article 2
Article 1
Extracts from the Declaration of the Rights of Culture
Text No. 15
In this Declaration, culture refers to the material and spiritual environment created by man, as well as the process of creating, preserving, disseminating and reproducing norms and values that contribute to the elevation of man and the humanization of society. Culture includes:
a) cultural and historical heritage as a form of consolidation and transmission of the total spiritual experience of mankind (language, ideals, traditions, customs, rituals, holidays ... as well as other objects and phenomena of historical and cultural value);
b) social institutions And cultural processes that generate and reproduce spiritual and material values (science, education, religion, professional art and amateur creativity, traditional folk culture, educational, cultural and leisure activities, etc.);
c) cultural infrastructure as a system of conditions for creating, preserving, exhibiting, broadcasting and reproducing cultural values, developing cultural life and creativity (museums, libraries, archives, cultural centers, exhibition halls, workshops, system of management and economic support of cultural life).
Culture is a determining condition for the realization of the creative potential of the individual and society, a form of asserting the identity of the people and the basis of the mental health of the nation, a humanistic guideline and criterion for the development of man and civilization. Outside of culture, the present and future of peoples, ethnic groups and states lose their meaning.
The culture of every nation, large and small, has the right to preserve its uniqueness and originality. The whole set of phenomena and products of the material and spiritual culture of the people constitutes an organic unity, the violation of which leads to the loss of the harmonious integrity of the entire national culture.
The culture of every nation has the right to preserve its language as the main means of expressing and preserving the spiritual and moral identity of the nation, national consciousness as a carrier of cultural norms, values, ideals.
Participation in cultural life is an inalienable right of every citizen, since a person is the creator of culture and its main creation. Free access To cultural sites and values, which by their status are the property of all mankind, must be guaranteed by laws that eliminate political, economic and customs barriers.
1. Name three major structural element cultures highlighted in the text. (Write out the titles, rather than rewriting the corresponding piece of text in its entirety.)
2. The text names the social institutions that create, preserve and transmit cultural values. Name any two and give an example of the values each works with.
3. The text characterizes the attitude of a person to culture. Using Facts public life, personal social experience, illustrate with two examples the statement that: a) a person is a creation of culture; b) a person is a creator of culture. (In total, there should be four examples in a correct full answer.)
4. Using the text, social science knowledge and facts of public life, give two explanations for the connection of conservation national language while maintaining national identity.
5. Give a title to each of the following articles of the Declaration.
6. The Declaration affirms that culture is the foundation of the mental health of a nation. Using social science knowledge and personal social experience, give two proofs of this.
Text No. 16
When the first African sculptures came to Europe, they were treated as a curiosity: strange crafts with disproportionately large heads, twisted arms and short legs. Travelers who visited the countries of Asia and Africa often talked about the inharmoniousness of the music of the natives. The first prime minister of independent India, D. Nehru, who received an excellent European education, admitted that when he first heard European music, it seemed to him funny, like birdsong
In our time ethnic music has become an integral part Western culture, as well as Western clothing, which has replaced traditional clothing in many countries of the world. At the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. obviously a strong influence of African and Asian decorations.
Much more important, however, is the spread of non-traditional philosophical views, religions. For all their exoticism, despite the fact that their acceptance is often dictated by fashion, they affirm in the minds of society the idea of the equivalence of ethnic cultures. According to experts, in the coming decades, the trend towards interpenetration and mutual enrichment of cultures will continue, which will be facilitated by the ease of obtaining and disseminating information. But will there be a merger of nations as a result, will the population of the planet turn into a single ethnic group of earthlings? There have always been different opinions on this matter.
Political events late XX - early XXI centuries, associated with the isolation of ethnic groups and the formation nation states, show that the formation of a single humanity is a very distant and illusory prospect.
1. What was the attitude of Europeans to the works of other cultures in former times? What has it become in our time? Using the text, indicate the reason for maintaining the trend towards interpenetration and mutual enrichment of cultures.
2. In your opinion, is the prospect of turning the planet's population into a single ethnos of earthlings realistic? Explain your opinion. What is the danger of realizing this prospect?
3. What manifestations of the interpenetration of cultures are given in the text? (List four manifestations.)
4. Some countries set up barriers to the spread of foreign cultures. How else can an ethnic group preserve its culture? Using social science knowledge, the facts of social life, indicate three ways.
5. Plan the text. To do this, highlight the main semantic fragments of the text and title each of them.
6. Scientists believe that the progress of technology and technology contributes to the interpenetration of cultures. Based on personal social experience and the facts of public life, illustrate this opinion with three examples.
Text No. 17
main manifestation moral life human is a sense of responsibility to others and to himself. The rules by which people are guided in their relationships constitute the norms of morality; they are formed spontaneously and act as unwritten laws: everyone obeys them as they should. This is both a measure of society's requirements for people, and a measure of reward according to merit in the form of approval or condemnation. The right measure of demand or reward is justice: the punishment of the offender is just; it is unfair to demand more from a person than he can give; there is no justice outside the equality of people before the law.
Morality presupposes relative freedom of will, which provides the possibility of a conscious choice of a certain position, decision-making and responsibility for what has been done.
Wherever a person is connected with other people in certain relationships, mutual obligations arise. A person is motivated to fulfill his duty by his awareness of the interests of others and his obligations towards them. In addition to knowing moral principles, it is also important to experience them. If a person experiences the misfortunes of people as his own, then he becomes able not only to know, but also to experience his duty. In other words, a duty is something that must be performed for moral, and not for legal reasons. From a moral point of view, I must both perform a moral act and have a corresponding subjective frame of mind.
In the system of moral categories, an important place belongs to the dignity of the individual, i.e. awareness of its social significance and the right to public respect and self-respect.
(According to the materials of the encyclopedia for schoolchildren)
2. The newspaper published untrue information discrediting citizen S. He filed a lawsuit against the newspaper for the protection of honor and dignity. Explain Citizen C's actions. Give a piece of text that may help you explain.
3. The text notes that in addition to knowing moral principles, it is also important to experience them. Based on the text, your own social experience, the knowledge gained, explain why moral feelings are important (name two reasons).
4. Plan the text. To do this, highlight the main semantic fragments of the text and title each of them.
Text No. 18
Culture is often defined as "second nature". Cultural experts usually refer to culture as everything man-made. Nature is made for man; he, working tirelessly, created the "second nature", that is, the space of culture. However, there is a flaw in this approach to the problem. It turns out that nature is not as important for a person as the culture in which he expresses himself.
Culture, first of all, is a natural phenomenon, if only because its creator, man, is a biological creature. Without nature, there would be no culture, because man creates in the natural landscape. He uses the resources of nature, reveals his own natural potential. But if man had not crossed the limits of nature, he would have been left without culture. Culture, therefore, is an act of overcoming nature, going beyond the boundaries of instinct, creating something that can be built on top of nature.
Human creations arise initially in thought, spirit, and only then are embodied in signs and objects. And therefore, in a concrete sense, there are as many cultures as there are creative subjects. Therefore, in space and time there are different cultures, different forms and centers of culture.
As a human creation, culture surpasses nature, although its source, material and place of action is nature. Human activity is not entirely given by nature, although it is connected with what nature gives in itself. The nature of man, considered without this rational activity, is limited only by the faculties of sense perception and instincts. Man transforms and completes nature. Culture is activity and creativity. From the origins to the sunset of its history, there was, is and will be only a “cultural person”, that is, a “creative person”.
(According to P.S. Gurevich)
1. The writer decided to create a novel about the life of his contemporaries. First, for several months he built the main storyline. After the writer decided on the images of his characters, he set to work, and a year later the novel was published. Which piece of text explains this sequence of actions? What kind of art is represented in this example?
2. Plan the text. To do this, highlight the main semantic fragments of the text and title each of them.
3. What approach to the definition of culture is discussed in the text? What, according to the author, is the disadvantage of this approach?
6. The author uses the phrase "man of culture" in a broad sense. What person in modern conditions, in your opinion, can be called cultural? What do you think parents should do in order for their child to grow up as a cultured person? (Invoking social science knowledge and personal social experience, indicate any one measure and briefly explain your opinion.)
