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PresentationsIntervisuality of scholarly formulas: from the iconography of the “theorists” of the late soviet “severe style” to the calligraphic autograph in a contemporary production of the opera IdiotCandidate of Art History, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor. Associate Professor, Department of Digital Economy and Management, Dubna State University; Academic Director, Center for Iconographic and Visual Studies (CIVIS), Foundation for the Promotion of Science, Education and Art “New Art Studies”, St Petersburg Rokossovskogo Blvd., 24-11 Moscow, Rogovm@hotmail.com This study examines the interaction between artistic and scientific representations of the formula in the visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The investigation spans from the iconography of physicist-scholars in paintings of the late "severe style" to the interpretation of Prince Myshkin's calligraphy in a contemporary scenic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot." The focus lies on the phenomenon of intervisuality—visual intertextuality as applied to scientific formulas. In the 1960s, artists of the "severe style" in Soviet-era art turned to the image of the scholar. The study traces the development of compositional motifs stemming from Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky's painting "Mental Arithmetic in a Village School of S.A. Rachinsky" (1895, State Tretyakov Gallery). Three paintings bearing the same title "Theorists" are examined: Khaim Avrutis (1962, Novosibirsk State Art Museum); Mikhail Kanayan (1964, State Tretyakov Gallery); and Eduard Kozlov and Galina Smirnova (1965, Novosibirsk State Art Museum). Avrutis reworked Bogdanov-Belsky's composition, replacing schoolchildren with young scholars from Novosibirsk's Akademgorodok, while preserving the motif of contemplation; the board expressively sparkles with formulas, and his composition remains dynamic. Kozlov and Smirnova employ restrained modeling and a cold palette evoking the futuristic aesthetic of "people in white." Kanayan, who visited the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna for his composition, conveys philosophical contemplation; the "intellectual duel" of his figures (with Feynman diagrams on the board) reflects postmodern irony in the "quiet Biedermeier" atmosphere of a warm interior. The progression from a genre scene on popular education to a new iconography of intellectual action demonstrates how the modern scientific symbol (formula, diagram) becomes an element of artistic language, articulating a visual statement about knowledge itself. The phenomenon of intervisuality and cultural appropriation of the scientific formula extends to contemporary stagecraft in productions of "The Idiot." In Dostoevsky's novel, the calligraphically executed autograph of Abbot Paphnutius, reproduced by Myshkin, reveals the protagonist's character; this episode has been studied in postmodern terms as a "scene of writing" in the language of Derrida . In Mieczyslaw Weinberg's homonymous opera (directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, 2024), the protagonist "carefully renders formulas, which can be considered symbols of the constant search for correct solutions" , depicting Newton's law of universal gravitation and Einstein's gravitational field. The calligraphic tradition and the image of the formula interweave into a unified symbolic register.
These examples vividly demonstrate the phenomenon of formula intervisuality in contemporary culture and illustrate the enduring possibilities of the cultural appropriation of artistic and scientific imagery that emerged in the epochs of modernism and nascent postmodernism, continuing to function in our current post-postmodern discourse.
References Rogov, M.A. "Theorists." An Etude on the Iconography of Late "Severe Style" // Art Museum, vol. 4, no. 34 (2018). Novikova, E.G. "Painterly Ekphrasis in Dostoevsky's Novel 'The Idiot.' Part 1. The Visual and the Verbal in Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot'" // Tomsk State University Bulletin. Philology, vol. 9, no. 25 (2013): 91-92. Bulanov, S. "Bogdan Volkov on the Image of Prince Myshkin in Weinberg's Opera 'The Idiot'" // Music Life, vol. 9 (2024): 27.
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