Chinese plants images in the painting of Meissen porcelain products

The article attempts to consider Chinese plant images in the painting of German porcelain products of the XVIII century as an area of interaction between Chinese and European artistic cultures. The subject of the study is the paintings of works of German and Chinese porcelain, which are considered as a "text" that includes not only plot-formal meanings, but also hidden structural and semantic formations. Using the example of plant images in the painting of Meissen porcelain of the XVIII century, the forms of reading and interpretation of the artistic features of Chinese porcelain by Western European masters are revealed and analyzed. The systematization and comparison of the elements of the artistic language identified in the considered works of art are carried out, the specifics of perception and interpretation by European masters of the language of Chinese art are established. Special attention is paid to the semantic meaning of the texts of works of art. By means of a comparative method, the paintings of Chinese and Meissen porcelain objects are compared, on the basis of the iconological method, the meaning of the porcelain works in the context of the culture that gave rise to them is determined. Thanks to the semiotic-hermeneutic method, the works of Chinese and European porcelain of the XVIII century were studied as texts, elements of the artistic languages of the East and West were established and characterized. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that it reconstructs the process of translation and the mechanisms of loss of symbolic meaning of decoration in Meissen chinoiserie porcelain products in the context of reception and interpretation of the artistic language of Chinese porcelain by Meissen masters of the XVIII century on the example of plant plots. A special contribution of the author to the consideration of the topic is the consideration of the painting of porcelain art objects as texts, the analysis of which is used to study the artistic language of Chinese and European art of the XVIII centuries, as well as the peculiarities of the communication process between them. The main conclusions of the study are the following: original works of Chinese porcelain containing plant images are distinguished by the depth and richness of Chinese cultural connotations. The Meissen masters, copying Chinese products, did not so much expound the original cultural meanings embedded by Chinese masters, as they interpreted Chinese images in the context and from the standpoint of European culture, endowing them with local content, connotations and symbols.