Plastic Techniques and Shape Forming: Synthesis in the Soviet Monumental Art of the 1960s–1980s
Authors:   Ural State University of Architecture and Arts, Sharapov I.A. 
Published: June 2022

The article identifies the constant composition of shape forming. The theoretical concept establishes the context of monumental art production. The subject of the study is the specificity of plastic techniques that determine the structure of the visual in monumental art in terms of the process and results. The relevance of the research lies in expanding the topology of the definition of a technique in the context of monumental art. A technique is assigned a normative definition of support and technical nature in relation to artistic practice. In the context of the monumental, a technique instrumentalizes synthesis, for which reason it has an ontological value in the interrelation of a technique and shape forming in art and architecture. The research is conducted on the example of the Soviet monumental art. The purpose of the article is to highlight the objectivity of the aspects and factors that define shape forming in monumental art. The factors and techniques determined in the course of the study create “nodes”, the connection and generative interaction of which outline the specifics of the monumental. The research methodology includes factor analysis that reveals essential aspects of plastic techniques in the theory and practice of the Soviet monumental art. The conducted analysis allows making conclusions about the specifics of the form which is conditioned by complex interrelations and the synthesis of the selected constants, techniques, and factors; about the ontological nature of plastic techniques; and about the complexity of systematic interaction, which is conceptually equated with an ornament, at the procedural and productive levels of the multiplicity of factors/ techniques. Synthesis is a core concept in monumental art. Its composition is hidden in the multidimensionality of the rational and the technical, the subjective and the creative, which are expressed in plastic techniques. The conceptual significance of techniques is implicitly confirmed by the statements of experts, theorists, and participants in the artistic process. The implicitness of a technique is associated with the integration of a scheme into the structure of an image/space. The plasticity of techniques paradoxically incorporates a complex of conditions of the architectural context, micro and macroscale, and cultural encodings of artistic traditions. In the context of the study, the fundamental constants of production are highlighted (e.g. context, form, abstraction, conventionality, spatiality, pauses, color, shape forming, and ornament), which are the conditions for the productive synthesis of the monumental. A technique is instrumentally involved in the processes and results of creating a form/space, depends on the specifics of materials, and is immersive. As a result, with its own plastic systematics, it strengthens the artistic image and implements the ornament concept in a space. The structural principle of the article is a sequence of constants outlining the conceptual expansion of plastic techniques.