Ontology of expressive forms in culture

The paper investigates the problem of ontology of expressive forms in art and culture, which organize a human existence. The author determines their cultural significance, justifies the ratio of expressive forms and content in terms of the historical-cultural evolution moments (classicism, the German Romantics, "the theory of empathy", the concept of Benedetto Croce, Losev, Bakhtin); interprets the value category "expression" with the form and content in art; give the substantial analysis of expressive forms in culture through the dialectic of the categories of "vitality" and "intentionality", "open" and "closed" forms. Expressive forms of culture are defined as the state of the event, the achievement of identity between subject and object of culture and art, the artist's conception and its implementation, which serve as a boundary between the world of art and the world of reality and "make" artwork socio-cultural thing. The article contains a conclusion that expressive forms are mechanisms for formation of a specific artistic content (by artistic convention). The essence of expressive forms can be found in the dialectic of subjective and objective expressive form. For expressive forms the author recognize not only externalization of meaning, but the dynamics of the formation of meaning and expression through correlation with the "other".