Russian Avant-Garde Painting of the Silver Age: Methodological Foundations of Research

Introduction. Avant-garde painting of the beginning of the 20th century is rich in new directions, trends, new aesthetic concepts of avant-garde artists. For a deeper study of the characteristics of avant-garde painting there is a need to expand the conceptual and methodological apparatus of aesthetics. We consider in this article the methodological foundations of the study of Russian avant-garde painting of the beginning of the 20th century, systematize those methods that are most effective in the philosophical-aesthetic and the art-critical analysis of visual art. Methodology and sources . Based on well-known principles in the methodology of science, the article focuses on the specificity of art criticism methods, which together with philosophical and aesthetic create a unified methodological basis for considering avant-garde painting. Results and discussion . The emergence of the avant-garde is primarily related to a departure from the classical tradition in art and the formation of new methods and means of artistic expression. Avant-garde art sought to create its own author’s «philosophy of art», to bring it to the general public, but like all philosophies, it remained an elitist and subjectivistic understanding of the world by individual artists. As a result of the understanding of existing aesthetic and art-historical methods of painting analysis, the article describes a complex system that includes a list of methods combining aesthetic and art-historical approaches to the study of works of avant-garde painting: historical-biographical method; method of comparative analysis; formal-stylistic method; method of criticism and connoisseurship; iconographic and iconological methods; structural-semiotic and semiotic-hermeneutic methods. This list can be continued, it is far from being exhausted by the mentioned methods, but in our study we define it as sufficient and necessary to achieve the stated goals. Conclusion . The methodological bases of the study of Russian avant-garde painting from the beginning of the 20th century allow us to systematize a rather fragmented material concerning the study of fine art in the Silver Age, linking together philosophical-aesthetic and art-historical approaches.