The relevance of the study is due to the need to investigate the morphological changes that have occurred in the pictorial sphere of China, identifying its two main components: the traditional canonical system of fine arts and its non-canonical system with the latest morphological formations. The emphasis in the study is on the modern period of morphological transformations in the pictorial sphere of China, because this period seems to be the most dynamic.
The object of the study is the morphology of the pictorial sphere of modern China.
The subject of the study is the context, principles, typology of the transformation of the pictorial sphere of modern China.
The chronological boundaries of the study are determined by its purpose and objectives, outlined by the end of the 20th - the first quarter of the 21st century, but the analysis of the morphology of the traditional-canonical system of Chinese fine arts required an appeal to history and a range of sources from different periods of its development.
The purpose of the study is to determine the context, principles and typology of morphological transformations of the pictorial sphere of modern China.
The first chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the state of scientific research on the topic, forms a source base for scientific research, defines the research methodology, briefly describes its conceptual apparatus and concept. The analysis of scientific literature on the selected problem indicates that in modern art criticism discourse, despite the presence of a certain number of arrays of multi-faceted professional literature, the contexts, principles and typology of transformations of the pictorial sphere of modern China require comprehensive research.
The second chapter of the dissertation establishes that in the period from the Qin Dynasty to the reign of the "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms" (907-960) the morphology of the traditional type of the pictorial sphere of China as a metasystem (gohua) took place, which already had a subspecies and genre division. During this period, the first signs of canonization in the genres of gohua and the isolation of certain pictorial techniques in the formation of forms also appeared.
The reign of the Mongol dynasty of the Yuan state (1271-1368) and the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) became the context in which the completion of the canonization of the morphology of the traditional type of the pictorial sphere of China took place and the first signs of imbalance of gohua under the influence of the pictorial techniques of the states of Central Asia and Western missionary work appeared.
The attempt, on the one hand, to stabilize this extensive morphological system, and, on the other hand, to give a new impetus to its development through stylistic and technological individualization, led during the period of the Chinese Renaissance (the late Ming Dynasty and the reign of the Qing Dynasty) to a return to artistic tradition and reinterpreted canons of depiction, taking into account the individual style and the artist's own view of reality. Tolerance for authorial techniques and personal themes in the visual arts of medieval China allowed artists with traditional-canonical thinking to create within the framework of guohua for many years in a row.
The third chapter establishes that after the socio-cultural and economic reforms of the 1980s, a situation was created in China when the country joined the globalized world. This circumstance significantly influenced the change in the principled basis of the existence of both the national culture and the pictorial sphere of our country. The speed and interdisciplinary nature of socio-cultural and artistic processes became the basis for the formation of non-canonical plastic thinking in the professional environment of artists from the last quarter of the twentieth century. The action of such principles as hybridization, conceptualization, situationality, attractiveness, convergence, dissipativity, attractiveness, randomness and transgressiveness was not only not local, but also contributed to a dynamic change in the general archetectonics of the morphology of the pictorial sphere of modern China: from hierarchical to network.
It was found that these processes influenced not only the formation of the non-canonical morphology of the pictorial sphere of China, but also contributed to the dynamic transformation of the traditional-canonical sphere, in which the principles of guohua and xianghua. At the same time, not only artistic processes are radically transformed, the boundary between art and everyday life is destroyed, but the social status of the artist also changes.
The network structuring of the non-canonical system of the modern pictorial sphere of China requires finding new criteria for such typology or updating existing ones.
