The Ukrainian Art of the 20th – Early 21st Centuries: an Attempt to Identify the National Context

The article attempts to identify certain features inherent in modern Ukrainian art, which is caused by the need to understand those distinctive features by which it can be recognized in the world context. Relevance of research. Against the background of the processes of Ukraine's integration into the world cultural and artistic space, in connection with the need to fight for own right to national identity and demonstrate own achievements, natural questions arise: what is the uniqueness of modern Ukrainian art and what is its contextual model. The purpose of the study is to research the historical and cultural basis of the modern Ukrainian art formation, to outline the vectors of development and to find the features that distinguish national art in the world context. Research methods. The research methodology is based on a combination of general scientific, historical, cultural and art studies methods. Research results. The attention is focused on the significant achievements of Ukrainian artists of the academic and realistic school, which span from the end of the 19th century and until today. Thanks to thorough art education in Ukraine, strong foundations for high-quality academic and classical art education have historically been formed. Respectively, for Ukrainian artists until now, classic realistic forms of art are much closer, and Ukraine in international artistic context continues to be mostly associated with the academic and realistic school. Against the background of the modern visual practices development, Ukrainian art is also close to the art directions of European modernism of the beginning of the 20th century. In particular, post-impressionism, abstractionism and other modernist currents are still relevant methods of work. The innovative possibilities of the modernism aesthetics in Ukraine were deeply rethought on a national basis and are used to update the national outlook. Despite the fact that art of modernist trends occupies a significant place in the modern Ukrainian cultural context, in general, there is still a greater tendency towards objectivity. Ukrainian artists concentrate much more on materiality and sensuality than on objectlessness and incorporeality; they are characterized by picturesqueness, melodiousness, special importance is given to colour. Artists turn to plasticity as a means of artistic expression, to work with textures. Tendency of ideology, expansion of content with additional meanings, symbolic images or structural-plastic solutions is also highlighted, which refers to the art of non-conformism, to ‘silent’ protest and experiments of artists in times of total control over creative expression. Today, young artists in Ukraine broadcast Ukrainian uniqueness to the world and raise important issues of national identification. Currently, the following trends can be traced in creativity in various forms: vector of ‘great ideas and contents’ associated with academic school; vector of special sensuality and introspection, which gravitates to visual language of Ukrainian non-conformists; vector of artistic forms and tools of abstractionism, dominance of rhythm and pictorial plasticity, which is attributed to reflections of avant-garde; conceptual, spatial-installational and performative vector (the latter is almost not characteristic of Ukrainian art). Conclusions. Conclusions are made about the recognizable cultural trace characteristic of Ukrainian art. Uniqueness of Ukrainian art lies in its synthetic nature, in organic combination of strong academic traditions and innovation. On the one hand, Ukrainian art is strongly connected with achievements of the academic school artists. On the other hand, with the art of modernism development and Ukrainian avant-garde in the first third of the 20th century, achievements of which are consonant with our turbulent times. A special feature of Ukrainian art is its idealism, expansion of content with additional meanings, which is encoded in symbolic images or structural and colour solutions. At the end of the 1980s, in Ukrainian cultural environment, there was an experience of learning and integrating the directions of postmodernism, in particular, conceptualism and trans-avant-garde. The synthesis of such diverse phenomena became a platform for the formation of original ways of Ukrainian art in the 20th – 21st centuries.