Stoyan S. Symbolism as a phenomenon of European fine art: cultural context.

The dynamics of cultural and historical transformation of symbolism in European art has been investigated. Fine art according to the author's conception is one of the symbolic forms of culture and is a visually - shaped system of spatial organization of work of art. It consists of the following image types and their kinds as symbolic type (symbolically-conditional, symbolically-signed, symbolically-allegorical, symbolically-realistic), realistic type (realistically-idealized, realistically-allegorical, realistically-sensible, realistically-academic) and mixed type (pre-modern, modern, postmodern). The symbolism on the level of fine art is a tendency of domination the symbolic image at different stages of European culture and characterized by a sensual imaginative visualization of symbolic meanings of consciousness. One of the methodological foundations of research is the theory of socio-culture dynamics of P. Sorokin. In accordance with it three main types of visual image simultaneously coexist during different periods of human culture. This nonlinear process implies that even during the prevalence of realistic, symbolic or mixed type, others do not disappear from the cultural area, being at the periphery and continuing to exist. In periods of orientation cultural processes in the rational course dominates a realistic type, during the irrational, transcendental orientations predominates symbolic type and in cultural "borderlands" precedes the mixed type of visual image.