Abstract: The essay is devoted to the reconstruction of the philosophy of art of Novalis, one of the prominent German Romantics, who presents it in his writings in a fragmentary way. Research of this type appears in scholarly literature for the first time; it utilizes a complex philosophical-aesthetic method of analysis of texts of the German thinker. Novalis appreciates art as one of the highest achievements of humanity, which elevates the human being from ordinary life to spiritual heights. Art is a free expression of the artists' Ego. Art is simultaneously a “self-contemplating and a self-creating nature.” The creative principles of nature are transformed within the spiritual world of the artist and express themselves in art. The secrets of nature are revealed to the artist. The artists sees something great in the least significant things. The beautiful is the object of art and this creates kinship between all types of art. Artists (including painters) do not imitate the external world but they create by means of their internal world. All types of art gravitate towards mutual harmony and foreshadow a synthesis of the arts of sorts. Novalis positions poetry above all other arts. This is because according to him poetry establishes heavenly wisdom on earth, elevates the human being over everyday life, and serves as the foundation for all other arts. Philosophy is internally linked to poetry and serves as its theory. The philosopher must be a poet. The poet lives a special, contemplative life and is a wise and prophetic person. Novalis imagines the future Romantic age as fabulous, magical, poetic, ironic, alogical. “Intelligent chaos” will play a specific role in it. All earthly will be elevated to the heavenly. Novalis considers the novel as one of the principal forms of Romatic poetry and presents its chief characteristics.

Abstract: Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich, well known Romantic painters, were not only notable masters of the brush but also theorticians of art. The present essay is devoted to an analysis of their theories. Its novelty consists in the fact that it analyzes for the first time the theoretical views that are expressed in the texts of both artists.
Runge’s charactertistic feature is a pantheistic experience of God. According to him, it must be expressed in art. He proposes his own dialectic of being, which essentially consists of development, struggle, and mutual annihilation of opposite elements at the moment of achieving perfection. It is precisely this dialectic that, according to him, forms the foundation of art, where he sees an opposition between feeling and reason. Runge pays special attention to the notion of the “spirit of art,” which appears on the basis of the feeling of mutual connection between the human being and the universe, as well as of the artist’s foresentiment of God. In its foundation, art is symbolic and therefore close to religion. The spirit of art manifests itself in what one can call the music, poetry, or symbolism of a work of art.
In art, Friedrich sees the spiritual foundation of the world. He distinguishes between skill and “spirituality” in it. According to him, one can master the skill, but one inherits spirituality from birth, and few artists possess it. As a Romantic landscape artist, he opposed illusionism in painting. He considered the creative element in art, which is born in the artist’s inner world, as pivotal. Feeling plays the principal role in art. For this reason Friedrich foregrounds the uncon-scious, although he is convinced that reason and skill must actively participate in the creative process as well. Friedrich preferred winter, foggy, and crepuscular landscapes, which expressed Romantic moods well.

Abstract: Wackenroder is a Romantic author of a metaphysical-religious orientation. For him, the creator of art and its most adequate perceiving subject is God. As for art, he sees it as most tightly connected to religion, for both help the human being to rise from the earthly hassle to the heavenly sphere. The art of all times and nations contains a common essence – the beautiful – which is expressed in a variety of ways. Therefore the human being is capable of learning how to see beauty in any art medium. Wackenroder speaks of two symbolic languages that help the human being grasp heavenly matters: the language of nature and the language of art. Creativity is based on inspiration, which is a divine gift. In creating their art artists must begin with nature and present it in a transformed way. The process of creativity begins in the inner world of the artist, when he or she constructs a future painting in its completeness. The contemplation of a work of art is like prayer. Therefore perception of art requires specific training. Before contact with art, the recipient must initiate in him or herself the ability to perceive the beautiful and sublime. The grasping of a true work of art is inexhaustible. Every act of contemplating an artwork reveals to our soul something new. The process of perception of art is enthusiastic in nature; Wackenroder presents it as a confession of our spirit. In his musical aesthetics the place of honor belongs to the spiritual content of music. In painting Wackenroder most highly esteems the pacifying art of Rafael, the allegorical art of Michelangelo, and the cognitive art of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Abstract: The essay is devoted to an analysis of aesthetic views of one of the most distinguished German Romantics, which came through with particular fullness in his fiction. Hoffmann’s aesthetic views focus around his understanding of art. He is convinced that art has an anagagogical nature. It elevates the human being from everyday life to the sphere of the divine and thereby ennobles everyday life itself. Art draws the artist away from the world and manifests to the world his prophetic gift, which is often perceived as “poetic madness.” The fantastic in art, as well as the terrible and the frightening, does not contradict artistic truth. The elements of the terrible give philosophical significance to the work of art and please the recipient. Art is cognitive to a high degree, because nature itself reveals its secrets to the artist and allows him to intuit the “truth of nature.” Hoffmann is convinced about the ontological status of art. It must “be something, and not mean it.”
Artistic creativity takes place fully within the inner world of the artist as he aspires for his ideal. Hoffmann allows for a certain degree of vagueness in a concrete work of art, whose purpose is additional aesthetic effort on the part of the recipient, who must be internally ready for communication with art. Creative activity is based on imagination and reason. It is based on natural foundations and is inspired by the illuminating effect of divine energy. Hoffmann considers music as the highest form of art and the ideal for all the arts. According to Hoffmann, music is the truly Romantic form of art. He sees the meaning of music in its foundation in nature, its aspiration for the heavens, the fact that it includes the world of the spirits in its orbit, and that it incites a longing for the unattainable in the listener. Hoffmann paid much attention to irony as one of the features of Romantic art.

Abstract: The subject of the study is the aesthetics of early Friedrich Schlegel. In his aesthetics, Schlegel continues the traditions of German classical philosophy, focusing special attention on the principles of the beautiful and sublime in art. Schlegel considers beauty, like morality, to be inherently inherent in a person who, along with the moral, has an "aesthetic imperative". As a "transcendental factor", beauty is based on disinterested pleasure and represents an ideal that ancient Greek art approached at one time, and the aspiration for which modern art lacks so much. The highest beauty is organic ("vegetative") like nature; two main "elements" make up the essence of beauty: "phenomenon" and "good". The beautiful in its broad sense also encompasses the sublime. Schlegel pays special attention to the ugly as an aesthetic category opposed to the beautiful and sublime, and gives an outline of the future theory of the ugly. He connects the ugly with the animal nature of man and shows that it is based on the disgusting, painful, monstrous, "beggarly chaos" of being, manifesting an absolute denial.   The central aesthetic principles – the beautiful and the sublime – are opposed by two types of the ugly: the own ugly and the "sublimely ugly". Schelling considers art to be one of the main components of culture as a humanitarian factor and sees three types of culture: natural, organically growing on the basis of mythology (reached a high level in Antiquity), artificial, created on the basis of reason according to aesthetic laws (New European) and aesthetic, which means a special emphasis in culture on aesthetic essence, on artistry. Schlegel is convinced that further positive development of culture and art is possible only under the guidance of the "correct" aesthetic theory, the beginnings of which he learns from his contemporaries.

Abstract: This research is dedicated to examination of a specific role of landscape in symbolism. Based on comprehensive analysis of the works of symbolists and artists of their circle – Segantini, Böcklin, Gauguin, Nesterov, Čiurlionis, the author attempts to determine the characteristic features of using the images of nature in the overall system of pictorial artistic-aesthetic expression. Special attention is paid to the problem of inscription of human figures into landscape, as in doing so many symbolists and artists of their circle were bringing the landscape to life, forming a special creative space. Landscape of symbolists is viewed as a peculiar animated space that carries a mediating role between the visually palpable images and indescribable pleroma of metaphysical being. Such approach to symbolism is considered innovative. In the course of this research, it is demonstrated that special artistic space as a carrier of symbolic meanings or a spirit of symbolism in painting emerges in each painters a set of artistic means of expression characteristic only to their works. At the same time, some symbolists view the unreachable in external forms of visible nature by focusing attention of the opposition of earth and sky, life and death, human and divine beginning, reality and its mythological grounds. Some symbolists create the world of practically abstract and musically accented color forms and graphic solutions. While others paint landscape imbued with tranquility, tenderness and picturesque hymns of the Creator. In general, symbolic landscape leans towards a fairly vivid philosophical aspect.

Abstract: This article is dedicated to examination of the main creative motifs of the artists of Symbolism: eternal femininity, living landscape, mythological and religious images in their not uncommon intersection in a single artwork and expressed by fine artistic means. The goal is set to demonstrate how such pointers as Maurice Denis, Odelon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Franz von Stuck and Mikhail Vrubel, using the means of artistic reflection of the listed thematic lines, were able to create the unique symbolic images. Special attention is given to the symbolist specificity of creative expression, embrace of the metaphysical bases of the depicted. Such approach allowed determining the exquisite harmony of landscape and female images (Denis); initiation of the mystical and unknown in lilac-purple twilight demonic spirituality of the night landscape and artistic expression of the demonic itself (Vrubel); demonstration that being charmed by the mystical, embrace of the abstract origin of landscape lead the work with a religious theme to the expression of mystical elements of being (Redon); while combination of classicist clarity of the image with symbolist mystery and abstract picturesqueness creates a myth itself as an increment of the profound sacral nonverbal knowledge (Moreau).

Abstract: The subject of this research is the examination of the spirit of surrealism as an ontological characteristic of this direction in art. Under this notion the author means an expression of metaphysical essence of a particular art direction. On the example of the creative work of a well-known surrealist Joan Miró, an attempt is made to reveal the ontological characteristics of the spirit of surrealism. It is demonstrated that by using typical for the creative method oà Miróspecificities of art expression, which are based on paradoxical and aggressive-expressive transformations and metamorphoses of the objects of visual reality and stylization for children paintings, a famous surrealist creates in his works a special other being atmosphere. Scientific novelty consists in the following: the entire list of Joan Miró’s major works illustrates that they lead a recipient to submersion into dramatic or even tragic spaces of otherness that are filled with a spirit of catastrophism and apocalypticism, including his eschatological understanding, which is considered by the author as a spirit of surrealism.