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: 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.

Abstract: In her research Volodina suggests to develop a conceptual framework that would allow to see artwork and the process of artwork perception in a new light. The subject of the research is paintings by Alexander Arefjev and artists from his circle. Instead of just giving a descriptive characteristic of their paintings, the author tries to use their artwork to think of specific features of the artistic space and subjective perception thereof. Vododina pays special attention to such artistic features as flatness and density of plans which analysis allows to expand the framework of the philosophical definition of 'surface'. The author appeals to the conceptual framework offered by Gilles Deleuze, in particular, she uses his definition of the haptic vision as well as other terms to study a special type of vision demonstrated by the artwork of Ariefjev's circle. The result of the research is the author's description of special physics typical for that kind of space, and conceptualisation of a dynamic, non-identical to itself nomadic subjectivity created in the process of feeling. Thus, it is fair to say that art neither reproduces nor depicts the known but creates conditions for the appearance of something ontologically new in each sensation. Within the framework of this approach, art is viewed extensively as the sphere of extrasubjective affectivity which allows to define mechanics of the meaning-creating process and fulfil the potential of art as an instrument of philosophical immanence.