Visual Theology

The “Indrik” publishing house published the monograph “Sacred Topics of Russian Cities” by Sergey Avanesov, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Visual Theology.

The book explores the traditional Russian city from the point of view of visual semiotics. Urban space is analyzed as a sign system through which fundamental values and meanings are translated. With this approach, the historical city is perceived as a visual text and at the same time as a sacred work of art (icon). The author defines four organizational models according to which the semiotic environment of an Eastern Christian (including Russian) city is formed. To clarify the algorithm for the implementation of the historical and cultural organizational model, the author presents and uses the concept of cultural and semiotic transfer. The book analyzes in detail the transfer of the idea of Jerusalem into the space of the Russian urban environment, shows the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspects of the transfer of Jerusalem topics to Russian ground. The author reveals the city-forming role of key semantic dominants in the formation of domestic urban space as a visual allusion to the basic sacred prototype.

The book is intended for specialists in the field of urbanistics, hierotopy, visual semiotics, cultural studies, theory of architecture and urban planning.