DECONSTRUCTION OF THE MONUMENTAL. FROM MONUMENT-SYMBOL TO POSTMONUMENT-SIMULACRUM

The article considers a monument as a form of monumental art and as a cultural form. A monument is a priori a symbol because it embodies those highest values that belong to the transcendental world in the space of everyday life. In the second half of the 20th – 21st century, radical transformations occur in public consciousness and culture. Those changes pose the researcher with the question: are simulative forms of a monument possible? Behind that question lies not so much an artistic-aesthetic dilemma, but rather an issue of a philosophical and cultural-anthropological nature, related to the change in human attitudes towards the transcendent and the sacred. In the article, the author gives a comparative analysis of the categories of “symbol” and “simulacrum” in monumentalism, the analysis shows the differences and similarities of such cultural phenomena. A thesis is put forward and justified that during the historical development of the monument as a cultural form, a postmonument emerges at the turn of the 20th to 21st centuries a post-monument emerges as a deconstruction of a monument-symbol, which after reassembly turns into a postsymbol (monumental simulacrum).