The Concept of Document in Art. Documentality, Authenticity, Truth

We continue the tradition of the journal to publish collective articles on complex concepts that are relevant to art and can be considered at the intersection of art criticism, culture studies, and aesthetics. The article analyses the problem of understanding document and documentality in screen arts, photography, theatre, and music. Individual chapters develop the theses that were the subject of a large roundtable discussion held at the State Institute for Art Studies on March 12, 2025. Nikolai Izvolov focuses on the concept of frame in cinema and the influence of this element of screen art poetics on the perception of a work. Natalia Mokrushina examines the use of the ‘look into the camera’ technique as a marker of authenticity in early non-fiction cinema based on several films from the Lumière brothers collection (1896). Alexandra Yurgeneva analyses informational documentary photography and shows the techniques of its modern aesthetics. Violetta Evallyo focuses on A. Zvyagintsev’s film Elena (2011), in particular, the photographs of the characters inside the frame. The purpose of the analysis was to understand the role of such visual accents in the film space and their ability to clarify the characters’ nature. Elena Petrushanskaya does research on ways to understand documentality in the musical field, referring to a wide range of examples from symphonic classics, opera history, and musical folklore. Konstantin Vilkov reflects on the phenomenon of document in theatre, analysing verbatim and other principles of working with documentality in performing arts. Ekaterina Salnikova makes a number of generalizations, emphasizing the variability and subjectivity of perception of documentality, the transformation of a document and its meanings in the context of a work. The authors come to the conclusions about the multilevel nature of the concept of document in art which can be a theme, a source material, a texture of a work, as well as a philosophic concept, an artistic illusion, and a profitable media brand.