EKPHRASIS IN MUSEUM CATALOGUES: A STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL ASPECT

The article examines the peculiarities of the functioning of ekphrasis in the museum catalogue as a type of non-literary discourse. The specificity of museum ekphrasis is considered from the perspective of its polycode nature, which involves the interaction of iconic and verbal components within the structure of the museum catalogue. The aim of the research is to determine the structural and functional features of museum ekphrasis, as well as to identify the specifics of its realization in the process of representing works of visual art. The research material comprises the museum catalogues The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings, The National Gallery: Masterpieces of Painting and The Illustrated Story of Art: The Great Art Movements and the Paintings that Inspired Them. The analysis is based on paintings united by the biblical subject of the Annunciation, which made it possible to identify the specific features of the representation of one of the key subjects of Western European art. The methods applied in the study include observation, linguistic analysis and synthesis, the method of generalization, and the descriptive method. The study revealed differences between literary and non-literary ekphrasis, in particular, the functional orientation of the museum commentary, which does not merely describe the visual image but ensures its additional interpretation through the presentation of the historical and cultural context, the symbolic meaning of the details, and the artistic features of the work of art. It was established that the structure of museum ekphrasis includes an informational component and an interpretative commentary, which ensure the identification and interpretation of the art object. It was found that the use of colour-related vocabulary in museum ekphrasis is not an obligatory element of description and is employed in cases when colour performs an additional informational or interpretative function. The obtained results confirm the specificity of museum ekphrasis functioning, determined by its polycode nature and the interaction of iconic and verbal components.