The main dichotomies of manifestation of the concept "painting"

This article is devoted to pointing out the key features (characteristics) of the concept “painting” through the dichotomizing approach. We have used different statements of writers, philosophers and some other scientists and artists as the textual material for the analysis. During the statement analysis the following fundamental characteristics of the investigated concept have been found out: pictorial vs verbal, figurative vs conceptual, rational vs emotional/ irrational vs transcendental, objective / real vs subjective / fictional, universal vs national. Our analysis was based on the main theory of oppositions by N.A. Trubetskoy. Thus qualitative, quantitative features of the oppositions and the relations between their members have been studied. In the article we did not touch upon the thorough investigation of the national component of the concept “painting” as we consider it to be an independent part of a more extensive research work.