To Invent Or Copy: Ethnic And Spatial Images Of The Pre-Photographical Epoch

The article focuses on theoretical aspects of an analysis of visual culture and the national and ethnic imagination throughout the latter part of the 18th century and the first 30years of the 19th century. Social conventions of demonstration and vision are revealed through works of art were issued by mass artistic production, such as paintings, medals, tapestries, snuffboxes, caricatures, cheap prints, theatre decorations, optical toys and glazed tableware, and sculptured symbols. At that time, the achievement of these conventions was linked to the cultural elite’s desire to determine the boundaries of the Russian nation and to distinguish it from the other tribes and people of the Russian Empire. The author also scrutinizes the cognitive abilities of the image and its abilities to shape of national consciousness