The Melody of Form and Space: Music as a Source of Inspiration

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.