Mimesis, Construction, Deconstruction: Universal Creative Methods of Art

The reasons underlying the historical development of art are one of the most complex and debatable subjects of research in various fields of scientific knowledge. The hypothesis is put forward and substantiated that each universal creative method of creating artistic reality is a representation of human/artist’s perceptions of the world order. The change of these perceptions determines the change of creative methods dominating in art – mimesis (in the classical period), construction (in modernism) and deconstruction (in postmodernism). The author proceeds from the fact that the image of the world existing in the social imaginary and in the artist’s consciousness determines the way of human action (activity). The results of this activity (works of art), in turn, influence the image of the world: support it, correct it, modernize it. Special attention is paid to the perceptions of the nature of relations/connections that in one way or another connect all elements of the universe, including man. It is these relations that are reproduced by the human/artist in the production of social and artistic reality. Thus, the mimetic method of classical art is a representation of that image of the world dominated by the idea of order in its various manifestations. Construction, which became the dominant method in modernist art, is a way of acting in a world balancing on the edge of order and chaos. The predominant creative method of postmodernist art practices, deconstruction, is an artistic representation of ideas about the chaotic world-rhizome. The successive establishment of these creative methods as the dominants of art indicates a linear development of artistic creativity. However, the cumulative and dialectical nature of the build-up of aesthetic experience, as well as the simultaneous existence of all three methods in the contemporary art world, point to the non-linearity and complexity of the dynamics of art.