Newspaper as a Visual Symbol: The Results of the Analysis of Works of Fine Arts

The article is devoted to the study the image of a newspaper in the fine arts Newspaper is analyzed as a socio-cultural, communication and linguistic phenomenon, which is based on both semantic and visual-cultural codes. The paper provides an overview of the newspaper's representation in the foreign and domestic visual tradition. The roles and functions of a newspaper as an informational message and a semiotically complicated symbol are considered. The study showed that the nature of a newspaper as an object of fine art is dualistic — it acts both as an informational message, often declarative, propagandistic or advertising, and at the same time as a visual symbol easily read by a wide audience. The image of a newspaper in the visual arts of any region of the world is easily recognizable, it carries intercultural conceptual meanings and at the same time reflects specific ethno cultural features, becoming an important tool for the transfer of cultural norms and meanings. The study revealed differences in foreign and domestic visual traditions: in Western portrait, household and genre painting, the newspaper often acts as a sign of gender or social inequality, in domestic visual art it is presented as a symbol of equality, a means of awakening cultural and national consciousness. In Soviet painting, the demonstration of the standard actions of the heroes of newspaper materials, the translation of the principles of social and gender equivalence becomes an instrument of newspaper isomorphism. In realistic art, a newspaper acquires the properties of a cultural universality that is understandable to the mass viewer and refers him to its informational essence. In avant-garde works, she is rather symbolic, used as a metaphor in which additional connotative meanings are embedded and appealing to additional knowledge to decipher her image.