Artistic Convention

Artistic convention is the principle by which art does not copy reality literally but transforms it, reproducing life in a transformed, generalized, 'implausible' form that nonetheless expresses the truth about the world. Convention is an 'agreement' between the artist and the recipient about how to perceive the fictional world. One distinguishes primary convention (inherent in the very nature of art as figurative reflection) and secondary convention (the conscious violation of lifelikeness — the fantastic, grotesque, allegory, hyperbole, myth, symbol). Conventional forms allow the essence of phenomena to be expressed more deeply and sharply and free the creative imagination. High convention is characteristic of the drama-fairy-play, the parable, the dystopia, and chimeric prose. For example, Lesia Ukrainka's drama-fairy-play The Forest Song is built on the conventional joining of the real and the fantastic worlds; satire uses conventional-fantastic images. Artistic convention is a fundamental property of art that makes it not a copy but a special, creative cognition and transformation of reality.