The leading types of proto-forms of sports and artistic events (navmakhii, gladiatorial fights, knightly tournaments, fencing and ball-playing tournaments, marches, passing troops, shooting, horseback riding) in the field of visual culture have been identified.
It is proved that some signs of sports and art collaboration can be traced in the culture from the time of Antiquity to the beginning of the XX century. Based on the actual material of military sports parades, All-Union parades of sportsmen, the Spartakiad of the peoples of the USSR, World festivals of youth and students and the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, it is shown that sports and artistic events stand out as a morphological unit in the twentieth century in the USSR.
It is defined that sports and artistic events as an element of festive culture, depending on the mass and regional direction, reveal respect for sports traditions and ideals, as well as in a symbolic form present the historical and cultural component of the city and country.
It was found that the visual and sound design in sports and artistic events is carried out through symbolic sign systems (color drama, construction of artistic background, lighting design and musical explication). Such elements of the semantic component of sports and artistic events become a tool for translating the ideological foundations of authors-producers into the international audience.
Sports and artistic events are characterized as a holistic cultural system, the forms of transmission of the cultural code of which is the representation of sports rituals, ceremonies and cultural values of the city or country. Thus, the cultural value of the ritual part depends on the scale of actions and their local level, which represent sports traditions and mythological stories as a retrospective of the cultural past of the country and the reference model.In the course of the research it was found that the dominant component in the ritual part is present in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic, European, Asian Games, Universiade, and secondary - in mass musical and gymnastic performances "Ariran", in the opening of stadiums "Donbass Arena", Arena Lviv, NSC Olimpiysky, 75th anniversary of FC Shakhtar and EURO 2012 pre-match ceremonies.It is determined that the artistic part in action through the mythological, historical worldview and cultural heritage, depending on regional and ethnic features, stage represents the historical and cultural past and present of sports and artistic events.
The specifics of the components of the subject of sports and artistic events are determined.They are realized in three cultural and artistic modes: stage explication by the ideological moderator of the institutions of power; involved participants of the action as characters and the spectator as a tool for introducing sports and artistic events into world culture.
The ideological moderator (artistic and production group) acts as the developer of the artistic idea and directs the communicative message to the viewer's consumption. The image of power in the sports and artistic events of totalitarian countries is presented in personified and manipulative way, in democratic countries - implicitly, where there is an appeal to national dignity and the formation of a positive image in the international arena.
It is proved that the subject-character in the socio-cultural dimensions are historical, mythological and allegorical heroes who become participants in the stage action. Artistic interpretation of a historical figure depends on the construction of the image itself (a sign of a certain historical time, life path and result of activity), as well as on its representation on the stage (man-past, man-present; hero as a product of the artist).The stage show of mythological characters (chthonic creatures, ancestors, gods and cultural heroes) provides a basis to talk about the actualization of the myth and its embodiment in the modern field of culture in various symbolic and meaningful modifications.
