The Melody of Form and Space: Music as a Source of Inspiration
Abstract
The article is devoted to the artistic legacy
of Bashkir sculptor Ruslan Nigmatullin, one
of the leading masters of contemporary visual
arts in the republic. The relatedness of artistic
expressive means of music with those in the
plastic arts, their expressive elements become
more apparent in the comparison of music and
abstract art in the process of generation of the
artistic image. The authors examine the artist’s
oeuvres in the context of the particularity of
sculpture as a peculiar art which requires from the viewer the knowledge of the laws of artistic
form-generation and an understanding of their
language, based on such elements as mass and
space. The article presents an analysis of the
artist’s works made of stone, metal or wood,
while the artist himself sees their source as
being connected with music. During the course
of his entire artistic path Ruslan Nigmatullin
has created sculptures in different directions:
realism, decorative plastic and abstract art. The
master’s art works, according to the authors of
the article, are all unified by an inner figurative
idea: when looking at the sculptor’s works it
is possible to observe their inherent qualities:
contemplation, abstraction and pure sound
— natural, ethnic and sometimes purely songrelated,
enhancing their relatedness to music.
The artist considers one of the sources of his
inspiration to be the historical Asian melodies,
which share common roots with the ethnic
music of the Bashkirs, Kazakhs and Tuvans. The
authors provide an analogy between the folk
songs of these peoples and their instrumental
tunes, the latter being marked with a concise,
measured rhythmic structure, and the artist’s
works, his ability to create new forms,
frequently just as abstract as the melodies with
which it is associated.