Abstract: The article examines the work of the Soviet artist Pavel Leonov, one of the most famous naive artists of the 20th century, in the context of the nostalgic perception of his works by today’s audience. The nostalgic perception of Leonov's works is associated not only with the plots and themes (i.e. idealized, utopian Soviet reality), but also with the author's artistic method itself, based on the idea of invention and construction. This "constructivist" approach of Leonov correlates with the widespread DIY practices in Soviet culture, which today are also part of nostalgic imagery. A similar nostalgic effect characterizes a number of other artistic projects in contemporary Russian art. In order to study Leonov’s artworks, it is proposed to consider naive art, to which they are usually attributed, as a discursive phenomenon, rather than as an artistic style or movement, and to study individual artistic phenomena not through the identification of their "naivety", but by focusing on a specific artistic strategy as a manifestation of the historical and cultural context. Such an approach is effective, since the diversity of stylistic features of the works of various naive artists makes it difficult to single out naive art as a proper stylistic phenomenon. The formation of the discourse of the "naive" in art and culture has a long history traced back to the aesthetics of Romanticism, which allows us to confidently point out the ideological and axiological nature of this discourse in Soviet and post-Soviet art criticism, and how it was constructed, inheriting romantic ideas about naivety as simplicity and naturalness. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identification of "construction" as an important principle of Pavel Leonov’s artistic strategy and as the driving force behind the nostalgic effect of his works, noted by contemporary viewers.

Abstract: The subject of this research is the philosophical theory of affect developed by Gilles Deleuze that found its reflection in the works of modern philosophers and theoreticians of culture. The article covers the genesis of Deleuzian interpretation of the affect emerged on the basis of Baruch Spinoza’s concept, as well examines the specificity of affect as a collective preindividual emotion, dynamic intensity representing the ability to influence and be influenced. Nonpsychological and nonvisual nature are determined as the key characteristics of affective event. The research combines the historical-philosophical approach in interpretation of the texts of G. Deleuze, B. Massumi, T.Brennan, and other philosopher and theoreticians of culture engages in this problematic, as well as Deleuzian immanentistic approach to aesthetics and philosophy of art and culture. It is proven that Deleuzian problematic of affect, which is insufficiently studied within Russian literature, requires unfolding on the materials of art; this is substantiated by the fact that namely the situation of the encounter with art allows not only conceptualizing affect as the influence and enduring influence, but also trace its dynamics (as an inseparable aspects of existence and functioning of the affect). Diversified, resonant and tangible nature of the affect, in turn, suggests the tools for comprehending the changeability, fluctuation and dynamicity of the modern sociocultural processes.

Abstract: This article makes an attempt to comprehensively understand the notions and methods of the aesthetic theory of Gilles Deleuze presented in the works “Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation”, “What is Philosophy?”, “Cinema”, and others. The subject of this research is the conceptual foundations of Deleuze’s aesthetics that previously were not sufficiently covered in the scientific literature. Deleuzian philosophy of transcendental empiricism suggests an original theoretical approach to examination of art, aesthetic experience and sensation; the author of the article recites its prospect and innovativeness. According to this approach, art is not viewed in light of its special ontological or axiological status; on the contrary, the central becomes the study of its function – as production pf a special regime of space, and the place of origination of sense. The distinctness of Deleuzian aesthetics is revealed through the notion of sensation, which manifests as the core of criticism of the concept of the work and the traditional subject-objects scheme in application to art. Sensation is interpreted as a complicated composite construct that includes the space of aesthetical, as well as non-artistic corporeity and specific type of perceptive subjectivity. This allows expanding and reconceptualizing the notion of aesthetic comprehension, as well as develop the new productive methods of discourse on the nonfigurative and contemporary art.