The main difference between humanitarian knowledge is the practical impossibility of constructing a final logical system. In the work "Truth and Method" H.-G. Gadamer [4] says that the object of the humanities itself has no clear boundaries. For example, the concept of "art" is arbitrary, and what is called art today could not have been considered it in the "classical" period. Having raised the problem of the "death of art", Hegel [5] proved that artistic activity and attitude to cultural heritage are directly dependent on what is commonly called and considered art in a particular era. Obvious contradictions in this matter forced one of the greatest art historians of the twentieth century, E. Gombrich, to write in the introduction to his "History of Art": "There is really nothing that is called art. There are artists" [7, p. 9].

Of course, it would be good to start the path to studying art by answering the question, what is art? But such a formulation of the problem would be completely abstract. The main trouble of art history today lies precisely in the complete divergence of opinions about what can and cannot be called art. Therefore, we would like to approach this question differently and ask: for whom are works of art created? The answer will be unequivocal: absolutely everything and always art is created for a person. Thus, in dealing with this question, we will adhere to a point of view that could be called anthropological or existential.

In "The Loss of the Middle" H. Sedlmayr writes: "... As the essence of man is the same at all times, so the essence of art is the same at all times, although its manifestations can be varied" [11, p. 204]. It is the person who is at the center of any work. And from this anthropological essence of art comes the only possible way for its comprehension. Moreover, this approach to art is able to combine all its types, genres and forms. With regard to the visual arts, it can be noted that painting and sculpture depict a person, his inner world; the world around us in all its diversity of forms; architecture rises above man and lets him in, elevating us or belittling us, guiding us or disorienting us; arts and crafts are intended for our use and so on...

Here it can be argued that everything in culture is created by man and for man. But not everything that is created by human hands and for its use is worthy of being called art. A work of art can also have a certain utilitarian purpose, just as a device can perfectly perform its function, but it is not considered a work of art.

As E. Panofsky wrote, "a poem or canvas on a historical theme in a certain sense is a means of communication; The pantheon or candelabra of the Milan Cathedral in a certain sense are devices, and the tombstones of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici by Michelangelo in a certain sense belong to both types at the same time" [16, p. 23]. However, he continues, "I am compelled to admit the proviso 'in a certain sense' because there is a difference: in the case of 'mere means of communication' or 'mere adaptation', the intention is clearly focused on the idea of work, namely, on the transmission of meaning or the performance of a function. In the case of a work of art, interest in the idea is balanced by interest in form or even supplanted by it" [16, p. 23].

We think that the fundamental point in deciding whether to consider a particular "man-made object" as a work of art will be the special and even sacred meaning of the existence of this object originally laid down by its creator, which can only be revealed through aesthetic perception. In addition, the process of communicating with a work of art has a characteristic feature that distinguishes it from a non-artistic message. It lies in the fact that the semantics of a work of art in the process of its birth is "condensed" by the artist's efforts to organize his art form, since he must express his "message" through artistic means. That is, in contrast to an ordinary utilitarian object, in a work of art there must be some message originally laid down by its creator and intended for the recipient, which can be discovered and understood through aesthetic contemplation of the art form. That is why allegories and symbols are so often present in art.

Having investigated the specifics of the structure of artistic and everyday speech, U. Eco concludes that "a work of art is a fundamentally ambiguous message, a plurality of signifiers that coexist in one signified" [26, p. 6]. It is the special organization of the form of a work of art that provokes the fact that it is not easy to understand, and therefore not easy to evaluate.

Using the example of such dissimilar works of art as the ancient Oriental relief depicting the good spirit of Sheda, the paintings of Titian and Rubens, the Dutch still life and the "jars" of Warhol, we can show that without a special study of the message contained in them, comprehended by aesthetic perception, it is impossible to understand the specifics of their artistic structure.

At first glance, a Dutch still life seems to be a thorough depiction of objects of human life. For a long time it was believed that it deserved the title of "work of art" solely due to the harmonious composition and technical skill of the pictorial performance. In the case of contemporary art - for example, Warhol's jar - the technical side may be deliberately mediocre or completely absent (if the ready-made jar bought in the store is placed in the exhibition as ready-made). Contemporary art, therefore, is often accused of the fact that some of its works are not worthy of being called artistic and cannot be considered as such out of context.

"If we consider a tin can or a water tap as a work of artistic creation, since the artist isolated these objects from their "usual context" and thereby gave them a new meaning," writes, for example, M. Lifshitz, "then it is quite clear that the scale of conventionality in this work is much wider than in any other object ever known under the name of painting or sculpture. After all, it's all about the act of allocation, which should be known to the initiated. The substance of the tin can, as well as its appearance, has not changed at all. In other words, it is the "context" that has been negated and thus raised to a degree that plays a major role here. Something must be known to the participants in the conspiracy, because outside of this psychological convention, one jar exhibited by the artist cannot be distinguished from another standing on the store shelf "[14, p. 169]. That is, the jar will remain, but not as a work of art, and this fact, according to the researcher, fundamentally distinguishes it from the classical work of art, which is art in itself.

At first it seems that it is impossible to argue with the arguments of M. Lifshitz. And really, who would think of saying that a can is a work of art? Moreover, even if Warhol had painted the jar in order to change its "substance" (and we remember that he did), its existence as a work of art, equal, for example, Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538), may still seem doubtful to many. But at the same time, we are sure that the very shape of the jar and the design of its design are the result of the work of some unknown artist, who undoubtedly tried to make it as attractive as possible in a certain sense. At the same time, for all the self-sufficiency of the "Venus of Urbino" as an easel work of the High Renaissance, we should not forget that it was conceived as a cassone decoration. Therefore, the question of the boundaries of art will always inevitably lead us to the conclusion that, say, some icon of a provincial, for example, a Pskov master of the XV century, for many reasons cannot be considered a work of art - especially if it is removed from the museum's exposition and transferred to the temple, where the question of its artistic merits becomes meaningless.

Thus, the conclusion suggests itself that in many respects the solution to the question of whether to consider a particular "man-made object" as a work of art or not depends on the intention of a particular recipient and the requests with which art is approached in a given cultural and historical environment. In his "The Source of Artistic Creation" [23], Heidegger shows that for a cleaning lady, a painting of the great Van Gogh is just a surface on which dust accumulates. Indeed, until we are "ready" to meet, the work of art will not appear in front of us. "We all," recalls Panofsky, "witnessed how spoons and fetishes of African tribes migrated from ethnographic museums to art exhibitions" [16, p. 24].

Therefore, if we do not limit the concept of "art" to a very rigid framework, then in most cases we are talking about art when we look at a certain object from a certain angle. At the same time, the "belittling" of contemporary art in comparison with the classical or ancient heritage, which is based on the fact that the works of individual artistic trends of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are not only incomprehensible, but cannot even exist as works of art out of context, also does not correspond to the true state of affairs in this situation. We are sure that, for example, "Bacchanalia" (1615) by P. Rubens, the Assyrian "Sheda" (IX century BC) in themselves also do not exist as works of art and cannot have an explanation outside the context, on a par with "Helmerode IV" by L. Feininger (1915) or Warhol's "jar".

To see in the "Bacchanalia" of Rubens a great work of painting, without understanding the content of which it may seem to the modern viewer a shameless image of disgustingly obese bodies, it is necessary to have an idea of many things at once. It is necessary to know the ancient myth, to imagine the history of the composition of its iconography and the transformation of iconography from ancient Greek to ancient Roman culture. To understand the vicissitudes of the development of Renaissance art, when the conditions for turning to the pagan Bacchus and its mysteries are again formed. Finally, you need to have an idea of how all this finds its place in the Catholic culture of Flanders in the seventeenth century. Such a work is written for an "enlightened" viewer, and for an unprepared viewer it remains incomprehensible. It was able to cause rejection in a contemporary of Rubens. Without prior commentary, you will not be able to arouse the desire to admire the skill of composition, the richness of color and the refined glazes of the Flemish genius. The same can be said about the Assyrian "Sheda", whose five legs can confuse anyone, and about the "jar", and about many other works of art of any time, style and direction.

Some epochs, however, create the conditions for the appearance of works of art created with such a careful reproduction of "ordinary" reality that it itself begins to seem false in comparison. At first glance, it seems that they do not require any knowledge of history and culture from the recipient. This applies, first of all, to the Dutch still life of the XVII century. It seems that anyone can freeze with admiration caused by the skill of the artist, who managed to put together a harmonious composition of household items of the Dutch burghers.

But it has long been known that the artist did not limit himself in this genre exclusively to the theme of "breakfast"1. As Y.N. Zvezdina writes [10], interest in the "hidden meaning" of paintings of this genre appears among foreign scientists only in the 1930s, thanks to E. Panofsky. In Russian historiography, the researcher notes, the art of Holland of the XVII century for a long time and almost without exception was considered as a triumph of the realistic school, reflecting the modest tastes of progressive burghers. But more careful researchers have shown that this is a delusion. Indeed, at first glance, it may seem that de Heda's "Breakfasts" were created only to arouse appetite with their masterful depiction of juicy hams, browned buns and the glitter of spiral swirls of lemon peel. But already the compositions of Jan Davids de Hema, where, along with cut flowers, clocks, skulls, crucifixes are depicted, cannot but arouse suspicion of the presence of some special meaning of the image. They clearly indicate that "... Painters aspired not only to the virtuoso transfer of the real properties of objects, but also to the embodiment of allegory, expressed with the help of a strict organization of still life objects in the pictorial space" [10, pp. 4-5].

It is clear that it is very difficult to discover the true meaning of such a work if the context is lost. In this case, the researcher needs to rely on collections of emblems used by Dutch artists. But it is also obvious that without understanding its hidden meaning, we cannot claim to have found in it the work of art that the artist intended to create.

Nevertheless, comparing the Dutch still life with Warhol's "jar", it is impossible not to agree with B.R. Wipper that the former will be distinguished by a higher quality of the painting itself. The Dutchman still life objects are placed in a special mysterious environment, the smallest details are spelled out, they were especially good at captivating the viewer with the flickering of mother-of-pearl, reflections in water droplets, the transparency of the peel of fruits and berries, the shine of petals, the shine of metals and glass, and Warhol depicts the jar as simply and casually as it looks on a well-lit store counter. Just do not forget that Dutch still lifes, fascinated by the beauty of the real world, should lead the viewer to the idea of the frailty of all things and eternal values, but if you imagine a "jar" written with the same love, then Warhol's idea, which brought it to life as a work dedicated to the problems of consumer society, will completely lose its meaning. Thus, outside of cultural, historical, iconographic, etc. contexts, many works of art are equally incomprehensible. We would like to add that the history of art knows many sad examples when misunderstood works of art were simply destroyed as ugly, indecent or simply useless. In this regard, the problem of misunderstanding of an individual work is relevant not only for a particular period, but for the entire art as a whole. And this is not only a particular problem of the science of art, but one of the most important philosophical problems of our time.

But if the science of art is ready to go beyond the limits of near-artistic problems, and art history is able to set itself the task of rapprochement with the essence of artistic creativity, then you can try to find ways to understand art. We are sure that to relieve tension in the issue of confrontation between modern and "classical" art would help to correctly define the tasks facing art history, and build their hierarchy relative to each other. Back in the 50s of the previous century, this still relevant question was raised by H. Sedlmayer in his book "Art and Truth" [12].

In the science of art, the German scientist identifies three research tasks: "the study of the essence of art, the study of a separate work of art and the study of the history of art, the ultimate goal of which is the general history of art" [12, p. 10]. Further, he divides the science of art into two complementary directions. The first, inherently applied, is the history of art, the purpose of which is to collect the maximum amount of information regarding the circumstances of the creation of a particular work. Another science, art history, sets itself the task of studying the work of art itself by the method of consistent structural interpretation. The positive results of both sciences, Sedlmayr believes, will open the way to the main goal: the general history of art, which should be based on thoroughly studied individual works. Sedlmayr calls the limitation of the science of art to the study of exclusively near-artistic circumstances of the appearance of a particular work of art the requirement of "false" accuracy in science, which, first of all, must correspond to its subject. A necessary condition for its successful development should be the focus of art criticism on the work of art itself, which is not enough to see exclusively through the prism of the problems of the evolution of the art form.

To get closer to their goal - the study of art, in each case the two sciences combine their efforts. Both sciences – art history and art history – are in a state of development. But if the first already has traditionally established approaches and methods that allow you to successfully continue the search and interpret historical facts, then the second science, Sedlmayr writes, is in its infancy. Its methods are just emerging. And we have to admit that after many years separating us from this publication2, not much has changed in the science of art.

The history of contemporary art has an optimal amount of factual materials. Biographies of artists of the twentieth century have been thoroughly studied. The life of, for example, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol or James Rosenquist can be traced literally by day. The artists themselves, or their friends, acquaintances, secretaries ... They can tell in detail under what circumstances a particular work was created. But all this variety of documents in no way helps to get closer to a true understanding of the artist's work, and even more so to penetrate into the artistic structure of a single work of art. Most often, in biographically oriented excursions, such a task is not even set, which can lead to an unconditionally false conclusion made, in particular, by the researcher of Van Gogh's work, E. Murina, who argues that "the exclusivity of Van Gogh lies precisely in the fact that his historical significance exceeds the real weight of the pictorial impact left by him ..." [15, p. 5]. This statement, made by an art historian, can only be justified by the fact that in the 1970s Soviet art history took its first steps in the study of modernism, acquaintance with which was limited to the collections of the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage and poor, often black-and-white reproductions of foreign collections. The latter, indeed, could cause the delusion that Van Gogh's personality is greater than his art. In Russian literature, the artist's life was interpreted as a purposeful struggle against bourgeois society. It was this circumstance, exaggerated and emphasized in Soviet studies devoted to Van Gogh or W. Blake, that was often the only justification for a researcher who wanted to write about foreign art.

The construction of a method for studying works of art on the delusion inherited from the aesthetics of romanticism about the identity of a genius with his work is also detrimental to art history. On closer examination, it turns out that there are no direct, all explanatory parallels between the vicissitudes of the life and creative path of an artistic personality, and if they are, then the connection between them looks exactly as described by E. Faure: "A poem is the only sign by which you can recognize a poet, and it will help to understand his actions much better than these actions help to understand the poem and its creator. Anyone who knew Cervantes might not know Don Quixote, but anyone who knows Don Quixote knows Cervantes" [21, p. 110]. The search for answers to the riddles provided by creativity in the biography of the master of art gives the same unsatisfactory results as the methodology built on the a priori acceptance of the identity of the theory of the artist and his works. The study of artistic theories, in particular, the manifestos of symbolism, futurism, dadaism, etc., does not clarify much in the understanding of a single work of any direction of contemporary art. Back in 1914, this was noted by G. Tasteven: "The big mistake of modern criticism is that it began to criticize futurism through the prism of his theory, completely or almost completely disregarding his work" [20, p. 23]. Thus, a careful study of the laws of simultaneous contrast of complementary colors, set forth in P. Signac's book "From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism" [18] cannot fully explain what is the charm of his enlightened and monumental in its artistic structure "The Sandy Seashore in Saint-Briac" (1890). And in the study of classical art, science can get false results if it trustingly builds the foundation of its conclusions on the theory of the artist. As an example, we can cite the book by Y. Zolotov about N. Poussin [13], which still remains the most complete study of the work of the great French artist in Russian language.

In the chapter "Principles and Method", the author of the monograph says that many of the ideas that were previously attributed to the artist are very indirectly related to him. It is known that Poussin became famous not only as one of the most talented masters of the XVII century, but also as a theorist of classicism, the basis of whose artistic theory was traditionally erected to the doctrine of "modes". As a rule, the analysis of Poussin's works is based on which mode or mode - "Doric", severe or "Ionic", lyrical - a particular work belongs to. Zolotov clarifies in his monograph that "the extensive digression in a letter dated November 24, 1647, still incorrectly called" Poussin's doctrine of modes "is a series of excerpts from the treatise of J. S. Zolotov. Tsarlino on the theory of music" [13, p. 211]. Thus, the researcher concludes, many of the ideas previously attributed to Poussin himself were actually borrowed by him from outside sources, according to Zolotov, in order to be able to justify his work to the customer, who was pleased to receive not just a beautiful, but a work related to ancient culture. The researcher argues that in the analysis of Poussin's work, one should not rely too much on the clearly formulated and therefore very convenient "teaching" of the artist, but "... the only criterion for the truth of any message, any version is the very art of Poussin" [13, p. 206].

The study of the circumstances surrounding the creation of a work of art, Sedlmayr considers a useful tool for the study of art, which, if necessary, can be dispensed with. Science, which puts in the first place the facts of the artist's life, his creative theories, etc., the scientist even calls "fictitious". He notes that it could only "with the help of documents to date the works, localize them, establish historical figures as authors, reconstruct the objective form of the works" [12, p. 67], having developed strict and accurate methods for all this. But such a science turns out to be completely dependent on accidentally preserved facts and materials and is doomed to remain fragmentary.

German art critic H. Belting in his book "The End of Art History?" [27] comes to the conclusion that modern art criticism was divided into two opposing camps of apologists for "classical" and "modern" art. In this situation, the researcher argues that the source of the main problem of "contemporary art" is not art, but a weak scientific apparatus.

We can find the roots of this problem at the very beginning of the science of art. Representation of J. Vasari, who lived in the era of the crisis of the culture of the Renaissance, about Antiquity as the only example of true art was finalized by I. Winckelmann, who discovered ancient Greek art for Europeans, and by the middle of the XIX century received a philosophical justification in Hegel's "Aesthetics", who guessed in his culture the signs of the loss of the classical model, which led him to the conclusion about the crisis of modern art. Picking up this idea, the modernists, carried away by the search and introduction of new forms into the degenerate art of the academies, eventually proclaimed his death, which divided first artists, and then art history into two directions or camps. Deploring the decline and degeneration of the great art of the past, the representatives of the first camp agree with their opponents, who glorify modernism, that "classical" art has irretrievably perished. But upon closer examination, it turned out that such a consistency of opinions in solving the question of the "death of art" is based on serious problems in the methodological approach to the study of art in both.

Having mourned after Hegel the loss of high art and great style, the representatives of the first camp of art critics were not able to see the high achievements of art outside the classical forms. Any deviation from the ancient ideal was understood by them as barbarism and degradation. Being, in fact, formalists, they, fearing to go beyond positivist ideas about scientific accuracy, got bogged down among the "basic concepts" of Welflin. Commendable in itself, careful concentration on the study of sources, all facts and circumstances, as well as the peculiarities of the handwriting of a particular master of art allows such researchers not to rise above the limited limits of formal analysis of works. Modernist art, the material of which, instead of noble marble or ebony, is often ordinary garbage, whose forms are neither noble, nor harmonious, nor complete, and the idea is often offensive to the morality of the layman, can lead a researcher using a formal-stylistic approach to the conclusion about the decline of art.

Due to the seeming absence of an alternative to the universal formal method, apologists for modernism from the second camp of art critics find themselves dependent on revolutionary theories of the avant-garde, opposing their work both to the entire artistic heritage and to each other. In fact, we can state the absence of any serious scientific apparatus for describing modernist art. All this, as we have seen, leads both camps to complete agreement on the question of the "posthumous" existence of contemporary art.

The obvious drawback of these theories is the lack of focus on the interest of the work of art itself. Therefore, the main goal of our work is to shift the emphasis from the "decline" of art to the limitations of modern methods of its study.

As we remember, one of the most important reasons for the crisis that occurred in art, Hegel called the loss of a person's ability to directly experience a work of art. The philosopher found a direct connection between this fact and the emergence of scientific reflection of art.

Freud, although not all of his arguments about art are indisputable, in his essay on Michelangelo's statue of Moses (1515)3, noted that without understanding he could not get the pleasure that is expected from great art. In his work, Freud subjects Michelangelo's sculpture to careful analysis. He wants to "feel again those affects of the artist, the special state of his psyche, what stimulated him to a creative act and is reproduced in us" [22, p. 556]. Such a study, Freud believes, can explain how sculpture affects him as a spectator. The scientist felt the need to "reveal the meaning and content of what is depicted in a work of art, that is, to interpret it" [22, p. 556]. Thus, Freud poses the question not simply of understanding a work of art (which in itself would be as abstract as the desire to know what a work of art is "in itself"), but in understanding he sees a way of penetrating the way of thinking of Michelangelo, who expressed himself by creating a great work of art. So, already in the first half of the XIX century, Hegel came to the conclusion that the evolution of the spiritual development of mankind reached a stage when reflection became the main need of culture. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, Freud discovered that the psychological image of the artist finds its expression in a work of art.

A great discovery of humanitarian knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century was that in the process of working on his work, an artist or poet voluntarily or involuntarily, intentionally or unconsciously translates a certain message into a specific language of art. Moreover, the content of this message reflects not only the individuality of the artist himself, but also the "spirit" of his time, his culture. Thus, the study and understanding of art becomes the most important tool in humanity's comprehension of itself, its evolution. It turned out that it is works of art - often the only remnants of dead civilizations - that express the quintessence of lost cultures. Therefore, by the beginning of the twentieth century, completely new tasks appeared before art history. Previously, the art historian was only required to carefully study the circumstances of the birth of a work of art, describe its plot, and clarify the meaning of all symbols and allegories. Now the most important goal is to search for the depth of meaning that distinguishes a particular work from many of its counterparts in plot and artistic style, the search for that special inner meaning that makes up the unique individuality of its author.

In the 60s of the twentieth century, one of the greatest philosophers of this time, H.-G. Gadamer [4] concluded that today the task of understanding from the private needs of an individual has become the main task of the humanities. He explains this by the fact that by the beginning of the twentieth century, representatives of the historical, philosophical and other humanities, including psychology, literary criticism and art history, felt the urgent need to find new ways to develop their field of knowledge, which, first of all, was associated with the task of overcoming positivism, which had shown its limitations and inconsistency. An acute methodological crisis, especially noticeable after the tragic events of the First World War, provoked a cascade of discoveries in the natural sciences and humanities. Symptomatic in this respect, Gadamer calls the philosophy of V. Dilthey, whose greatest discovery was the comprehension and theoretical justification of the irreconcilability of the very core of these areas of knowledge, when the methodology of the natural "sciences of nature" is based on "explanation", and the sciences of "spirit" on "understanding".

The question of the crisis of science in the context of the search for new methods of systematic cognition of the world and man becomes the subject of research in the work of E. Husserl in 1938 "The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology" [8]. The reason for the crisis in the humanities, according to Husserl, was that, unlike mathematics, physics and other natural sciences, the claim to the accuracy of which could not be shaken even by Einstein's discoveries, philosophy, psychology and other human sciences in their methodology focus on creating an absolute and final "style of theorizing", the slightest doubt in which immediately destroys the entire system.

In this regard, Husserl raises the question of the need to create a different philosophical system capable of opposing itself to "physicalism". The theory and methodology of the humanities finds new perspectives in the rethinking and development of hermeneutics. This ancient applied discipline will become the basis of one of the most important areas of modern philosophical thought. The theoretical basis for the construction of "hermeneutic philosophy" was the works of the outstanding philosopher of the XX century Martin Heidegger. In his 1927 book "Being and Time" [24], Heidegger developed the doctrine of hermeneutics by W. Dilthey and the Earl of York in line with the phenomenology of E. Husserl, the main provisions of which were set forth in the work of 1900-1901 "Logical Investigations" [8], devoted to a critical analysis of the theory of scientific knowledge. Understanding in Heidegger's philosophy appears not only as a way of knowing, but as a way of being. Thus, in the twentieth century, hermeneutics was transformed from an auxiliary discipline of interpretation of religious texts into a universal philosophy of understanding.

As we have seen, in art history, the task of understanding, which has become one of the main themes of philosophy of the twentieth century, was posed simultaneously with other areas of humanitarian knowledge. Moreover, it should be noted that the need to recreate the meaning or content, as if translucent through the forms used by the artist, arises not only when we are dealing with a monument of the past. The complexity of the language of a work of art can be equally due to the fact that it has already been lost: the culture that gave rise to it has dried up, and the fact that the work has a futuristic character, that is, it is turned to the future. In addition, it has long been observed that the best works of art have a more complex language than mediocre ones. This quality of art was also noted by Freud, when in the description of Michelangelo's "Moses" he says that works of art "are admirable, you feel defeated in front of them and at the same time you do not know what their attractive power is" [22, pp. 555-556]. At the same time, Freud admits (and it is necessary to appreciate his courage) that where he fails to understand, he is "almost incapable of experiencing pleasure" [22, p. 555]. And it's really hard to accept something that isn't clear, it's not close. It is a rare case when a person is able, like S. Shchukin, buying revolutionary cubist paintings by Picasso, to humbly say: "Probably he is right, not me!"4. But it is the ability to see semantic value in a work of art and thus see another person in it, in our culture becomes the main guarantee and measure of its value. And without recognition of its value, without referring to it as a source of beauty, harmony, the embodiment of religious views, morality or the philosophical quintessence of human spiritual needs, a work of art can exist only as an inert and even useless material object.

Having finished his work and recognizing its results as satisfactory, the artist is freed from the energy that excites his creative activity. The further fate of his creation can be very different: it can survive millennia and still remain in obscurity under a thick layer of soil, the work can be physically destroyed, but in any case, it only exists as a revered monument of art when this fact is recognized by the human community. The situation described by Heidegger, when a Van Gogh painting is perceived by a museum cleaner only as a surface on which dust can collect, allows us to draw the most important conclusion. The task of understanding is set not by the work of art itself, but only by the viewer and only at the moment when he refers to a certain object as a potential work of art. And therefore, when the science of art was tasked with understanding a separate work of art, there was a need for the emergence of a special method, in the development of which hermeneutics was also involved.

In his preface to the book by O. Beneš [2], V.N. Grashchenkov concludes that the emergence of the hermeneutic school in art history was a kind of result of the ideas that were laid down by Max Dvořák. His name, the scientist believes, is associated with a turning point in the development of the science of art. In contrast to the formalistic "basic concepts" of G. Welflin and the immanent "artistic will" of A. Riegl, Dvořák put forward a new concept that considered the historical evolution of art as a reflection of the spiritual life of society. It is important that the works of V. Dilthey, devoted to the historical and philosophical analysis of the spiritual life and worldview of the people of the Renaissance and the Reformation, played a decisive role in the development of his theory, which was already fully defined in Dvořák's work "Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Sculpture and Painting", published in 1918. Grashchenkov notes that "in that period of the almost undivided dominance of formalistic methodology, the presentation of the history of art as a history of ideas, the analysis of artistic monuments from the point of view of reflecting the ideological environment in them opened up new and broad prospects for science" [2, p. 8]. M. Dvořák, the researcher concludes, deduces the science of art from the vicious circle of cyclic alternations of "linear" and "pictorial", "tectonic" and "atectonic", "tactile" and "optical" styles: "Instead of the Welflin antithesis of the Renaissance-Baroque, which retained its obvious connection with classical aesthetics, Dvořák, relying on the ideas of Riegl, develops a more organic and vital concept of the historical evolution of European art from late antiquity to modern times." [2, p. 8-9]. It should be added that one of its most important results was a fundamentally new ideological and aesthetic assessment of medieval art.

The inclusion of hermeneutics in the methodology of art history research received the most complete theoretical justification and development in iconology: a new method, the founder of which is considered to be the German art historian A. Warburg.

In his article, the Italian historian K. Ginzburg [6] was able to trace the evolution of the scientific ideas of A. Warburg, who overcame the boundaries of the formal method and opened new frontiers for art history. The researcher concluded that the new discoveries in the culture of Antiquity made by F. Nietzsche and the respect that Warburg had for M. Dvořák were of great importance in changing Warburg's attitude to art.

Still under the influence of the ideas of A. Hildebrand, expressed in his work "The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts" (1893), Warburg in his thesis devoted to Sandro Botticelli, focused on such a narrow and seemingly purely formal problem as the depiction by artists of the Florentine Quattrocento of the movement of bodies, hair and robes. In his research, he showed that for this, the Italians invariably turned to ancient samples. Warburg's further immersion in this topic allowed him to see in the imitation of antiquity not just a solution to certain formal problems, but to see in it the symptoms of a shift in the emotional attitudes of the whole society. K. Ginzburg notes that a deeper understanding of the meaning of ancient borrowings, which were resorted to by Renaissance artists, led Warburg to change his own view of antiquity: "This bidirectional deepening of the original formulation of the question was clearly manifested in the article "Dürer and Italian Antiquity" (1905; twelve years after the first work on Botticelli). Here, the use of "enhanced facial expressions" of ancient samples is first considered as an appeal to the "formulas of pathos" (Patosformlen)", "purely ancient formulas of enhanced physical or mental expressiveness, which the Renaissance style resorts to when trying to imagine life in motion" [6, pp. 54-55]. Thus, starting with purely formal signs of borrowing from ancient art of artistic techniques for depicting movement, Warburg comes to the deep attitudes of the Renaissance civilization. At the same time, Ginzburg is sure that Warburg's interests are not limited to purely art criticism topics, and the method is not limited to iconological analysis: "The problems that most worried Warburg were the function of visual creativity in the life of society <and> the mobile relations that exist between pictorial expression and colloquial speech. All other topics that are considered characteristic of his research, interest in the content of images, attention to the remnants of the ancient tradition - all this was not so much a goal in the proper sense of the word as a means to achieve the above goals" [6, pp. 57-58]. It is with this that Ginzburg associates the interest of Warburg, who studies the significance that ancient art had in the eyes of the Florentine society of the Quattrocento era, to very diverse and sometimes even unexpected sources. He writes that "Warburg used extremely diverse - at first glance, even heterogeneous - documentation. Will; letters from merchants; "love emblems"; arras; famous and little-known paintings..." [6, p. 56] All this, says Ginzburg, including works of art, for Warburg became documents with the help of which "a distinct voice of a person can reach us" [6, p. 56]. Through his efforts, the Italian historian writes, "Warburg sought to reconstruct the connection between figurative constructions and practical needs, tastes, and the way of thinking of a certain society - namely, the Florentine society of the second half of the XV century" [6, p. 56]. That is, the study of the evolution of European culture, impossible without understanding the spiritual needs of an individual, was the main interest of Warburg. As K. G. Geise correctly noted, Ginzburg writes, "Warburg's research had a twofold purpose: on the one hand, it was necessary to consider the work of art in the light of historical evidence of any type and level in order to clarify the genesis and meaning of the work of art.to such; On the other hand, the work of art itself (and any image in general) was subject to interpretation as a special kind of documentary source for a broader historical reconstruction" [6, p. 68].

In his article "Abi Warburg's Theory of Social Memory", A. Vasiliev also comes to the conclusion that art iconology was to a certain extent a by-product of the theory of "social memory" created by him. Studying culture, A. Warburg considered its history as "the process of gradual growth of the rational principle, overcoming the primary fear of man before the world around him" [3, p. 24]. A reflection of this process was Warburg's symbolic forms, the study of which will form the basis of future iconology. A. Vasiliev argues that in the theory of A. Warburg "the symbol is designed to create a metaphorical distance of prudence (Sophrosyne), the space between the subject and the object" [3, p. 25]. In his interpretation, symbolic forms are created by man in an effort to master the frightening chaos of the world. Vasiliev says that iconology was originally born from sociology and psychoanalysis, but for all the closeness of A. Warburg's theory to C.G. Jung's theory of archetypes, the German art critic did not know the Swiss psychologist. Thus, we can once again be convinced that the processes taking place in the art history of the first half of the twentieth century were only part of the global movement of European humanitarian thought. And the further development of iconology through the efforts of E. Panofsky and his associates, who created a whole school, followed the path of rapprochement with hermeneutics.

Most researchers agree that the emergence of E. Panofsky's iconology was due, in particular, to the controversy with Wölfflin's theory, which claimed to describe works of fine art based on the data of "pure" vision. K. Ginzburg writes that in his 1932 article "On the Problem of Description and Interpretation of Content in Works of Fine Art", Panofsky demonstrated that even the simplest description of the picture includes elements of content and elements of form in an indissoluble unity. In this work, Panofsky proved the impossibility of a "purely formal" description.

The art historian, Panofsky said, subjects his "material" to rational archaeological analysis, at times as scrupulously precise, comprehensive and complex as any physical or astronomical study. The specificity of humanitarian research lies in the fact that at this moment the humanities are inevitably involved in the thought process, synthetic and subjective in nature, because the scientist will have to speculatively reproduce the actions and creations of man. And it is obvious, Panofsky adds, "that a person engaged in the history of philosophy or sculpture pays all his attention to books or statues, not because they exist materially, but because they have meaning" [16, p. 25].

Panofsky outlined the essence of his method in the article "Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art" [17]. There he examines in detail the method of analysis of works of art, starting with a clear distinction between iconography and iconology. The root "graph" in the word iconography, the researcher writes, denotes something descriptive, and the root "log" - in iconology, formed from "logos", already has to do with interpretation, interpretation.

Based on the tradition of hermeneutic interpretation of literary texts, including "Ars Grammatica" by Dionysius of Thrace, Panofsky creates a methodology for analyzing the content of a work of art. His iconology sees in the image three levels of content that make up the "object of interpretation". The primary or natural plot is also divided by Panofsky into two levels. The initial level can be called actual. For example, thirteen men sit at a table. Here the plot is comprehended by the natural and applicable to us in ordinary life identification of forms. The second is expressive, which at the same everyday level is comprehended by identification in the image of mutual relations (events), perceiving their expressive qualities. In our example, these can be: mournful poses, surprised gestures, etc. This is followed by a "secondary or conditional plot". To comprehend it, the researcher needs to have extensive and specific knowledge, for example, that the male figure depicted in the center of the picture with a halo, to which all the others are addressed, is Christ. At this level of understanding, Panofsky continues, artistic motifs and their combinations (compositions) acquire meaning as themes and concepts. In our case, the composition is defined as a gospel story depicting the Last Supper. Motifs perceived as carriers of secondary or conditional meanings can be called images, and their combination is called stories or allegories. The identification of allegories is still a task of iconography.

At the next level of understanding, where iconography can no longer penetrate and where the field of iconology begins, the object of interpretation becomes more complex, subjective meanings. This is the inner meaning and content. As Panofsky writes, the figure consciously represented by the artist as Christ may have an unintentional character in its expression. To comprehend it, the art historian needs to find out all those latent principles in which the general point of view of the nation, era, class, religious and philosophical beliefs expressed by one person and concentrated in this work is manifested. From this it follows, Panofsky continues, "that iconology is rather a synthetic than an analytical method of interpretation" [17, pp. 49-50].

Thus, interpretation initially presupposes several possible levels of understanding in the visual image of the work, which are directly dependent on the cultural horizon of the perceiver. It is clear that any person, looking at the picture, compares the image with his usual visual impressions. In the same way, almost everyone can distinguish an emotional mood in the image, which Panofsky called an "expressive" plot. A Christian or simply an educated person is able to recognize in it an illustration of the New Testament.

The object of professional iconological interpretation will be everything additional, that is, new and personal, which a particular artist will bring to the official iconography of the Gospel history. After all, if we compare the images of the "Last Supper" by Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Ivanov and Salvador Dali, then the obvious differences between these works will be not only in the peculiarities of individual artistic handwriting, but also in the emotional and personal presentation of the plot, behind which an individual reading and expression of the theme of betrayal and sacrifice can be hidden, to which each artist (often unconsciously) can add new content. And if the formal history of art is able to trace only how the artistic style in the transmission of this plot is transformed century after century, then only iconology can find out what else, besides the usual religious significance, the artist put into this theme from himself.

If we seek to understand the Last Supper "as a document reflecting the personality of Leonardo, which became a monument of the culture of the High Renaissance in Italy, or some special religious attitude," Panofsky writes, "we approach the work of art as a manifestation of something else that expresses itself in an innumerable variety of other manifestations, and interpret its compositional and iconographic features as more concrete evidence of this "something else" [17, p. 47-48]. The same iconological level of content, previously inaccessible to science, simply because it has never yet confronted it as an object of interest. These are "symbolic values", which, according to Panofsky, are often unknown to the artist himself and can even be strikingly different from what he wanted to express consciously. Therefore, Panofsky concludes, the iconological interpretation, which at a certain level of research plunges into the spheres of philosophy and psychology of creativity, must also take into account the personality of the interpreter himself.

There is no viewer with a "pure" consciousness. We all bring to the work what philosophers have called "additional aesthetic value," and what is only a particular manifestation of the psychological problem of perception. Hermeneutical understanding is possible, Gadamer writes, if the interpreter constantly makes an appropriate effort to let the text itself speak, that is, "a hermeneutically educated consciousness must be receptive to the otherness of the text from the very beginning" [4, p. 321]. The art historian, Panofsky argues, differs from the "naïve" viewer precisely in that he approaches the situation consciously. Going beyond the limits of descriptive iconography, he must be very careful and constantly check his conclusions with historical facts, consistently immersing himself in the material, and then careful observation of the structure of the work of art will save the researcher from false conclusions. Further, Panofsky gives clear and lengthy recommendations on how to combine the "horizon" of the researcher with the "horizon" of the author of the work, but at the same time the scientist does not equate the artist's intentions with the result of his work. Thus, a carefully and rigorously executed iconological study, capable of making incomparably deeper progress in the comprehension of its subject, imposes a greater responsibility on the scientist than on his predecessor, the researcher of artistic forms.

A carefully prepared method of comprehending a single work of art, Panofsky hopes, can serve as a wonderful tool in the fight against abstract theories of style and other compromised concepts imposed on the history of art. At the same time, the scientist says, in the humanities "the very selection of material for observation and examination is to some extent predetermined either by theory or by a general historical concept" [16, p. 18] Such a situation provokes the emergence of a methodological paradox, which Panofsky characterizes with the concept of "organic situation", to overcome which he adapts the methodology of the hermeneutic circle. Thus, "each discovery of new historical facts and each new interpretation of already known ones will either "fit" into the prevailing general concept, strengthening and enriching it, or entail minor and sometimes fundamental shifts, thus giving new illumination to everything that was previously known" [16, pp. 20-21]. Today, Panofsky believes, the historical concept should follow the facts (analyzed and understood works of art), the study of which, in turn, should be preceded by their separation from the general set of existing cultural monuments, which requires a coherent theory of art. Theory and history of art should develop in parallel, Panofsky believes. It may seem, he writes, that "to correct the interpretation of an individual work of art by the 'history of style,' which in turn can only be constructed from the interpretations of individual works, is a task that may seem like a vicious circle. In fact, this is a circle, but not vicious, but methodical..."[17, p. 69].

In many respects, the ideas for the transformation of the science of art, expressed by the German art critic H. Sedlmayr in his 1958 work "Art and Truth" [12], are consonant with Panofsky. The history of art, updated with the help of the method of structural interpretation of works of art developed by him, should replace the previous theoretical constructions of art history: the history of style and the history of spirit. They, Sedlmayr testifies, do not study the works themselves, but out of a false desire for accuracy - only their dead forms, or replace the history of art with the history of philosophy and religion. Traditional modes of consideration, he writes, do not take into account the rank and value of the work of art, which determine the artistic value and encompass the artistic achievement. All these stories are the history of style and could have been written with the involvement of other creatures of culture.

Based on Dilthey's theoretical constructions, Sedlmayr speaks of a "recreating" interpretation of works of fine art, comparable to the performance of a piece of music. In our case, the researcher writes, the interpreter recreates the work, like the performer of a musical work, only he transfers the artistic image into the words: "... Hence those innumerable difficulties and misunderstandings that make the interpretation of fine art such a dangerous enterprise" [12, p. 136]. The scientist is sure that a material object "has generally artistic properties only when it is an ("artistic thing"). – A.M.) is considered with an "aesthetic" attitude, and with well-defined artistic properties only when it is considered with a well-defined aesthetic attitude" [12, pp. 77-78].Thus, the subject of research (a work of art) must first of all be recreated from the artistic thing that is ahead of us. It is also important to take into account, Sedlmayr writes, that "it is not the process of occurrence that is subject to recreation, but only its product, the work itself" [12, p. 136].

Sedlmayr's method is based on his vision of a work of art as a stable structure: "Individual "parts", "layers" and "features" distinguishable in the composition of a work of art are not only in relation to interpenetration, but they are connected with each other by a certain order" [12, p. 142]. Sedlmayr, following Dilthey, calls the organizing principle of a work of art "structure". There is an order in which the parts of a work of art are correlated with each other and interpenetrate each other.

Sedlmayr demonstrates the work of his method on the example of the famous painting by J. Vermeer "The Glorification of Painting". At the heart of his structural analysis is the idea of several levels of the content of the work, which goes back to the hermeneutic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. First, Sedlmayr explores the formal features of the picture, with the help of traditional methods of formal analysis, he describes its composition and extracts the first - "literal" meaning. A deeper immersion in the theme reveals to Sedlmayr the second "allegorical meaning of the image". In the end, the researcher comes to the conclusion that the structure of the "Glorification of Painting" has three levels of content: "The first meaning of the image is "literal", "realistic" (Vermeer writes a model), the second is allegorical and time-conditioned (the art of painting is the glory of Holland), the third is spiritual and timeless" [12, p. 197]. But, according to the researcher, there are works of painting, on the example of which one can make sure that the tradition of interpreting religious texts that arose in the third century, according to its four meanings, had a direct impact on artists. You can recall Bruegel's painting "The Blind". It must be understood on the basis of four meanings: "... Literally, this is a "genre scene", allegorically - an example of a "perverse world", and in place of that, probably, an allusion to the religious and political events of that time (heretics); anagogically it is a prototype of the Last Judgment (the fall of the blind) and tropologically, i.e. in relation to an individual soul, the blind are ourselves, each of us" [12, pp. 197-198].

We can see that, in contrast to the universal and therefore abstract formal analysis, the method proposed by Sedlmayer is each time adjusted according to the individual structural structure of a particular work of art. But at the same time, says the researcher, "it would be pointless to demand, for example, that the interpretation of a work of art would be carried out according to the same principles of accuracy that were developed in the reconstruction of the material composition of works or in the process of criticizing sources" [12, p. 10]. But Sedlmayr also fully agrees with Panofsky that the results achieved should be verifiable and validated using traditional methods of science.

The whole science of art, Sedlmayr writes, cannot be limited to only one of its constituent parts, but must combine and combine both, "... For in the latter case, a single science of art would split into many sciences organized according to the principle of religious communities, and none of them could rationally refute the other" [12, p. 101]. Sedlmayr also sees the need to involve the results of the natural sciences and other humanities in art history research. Ultimately, he concludes that the method of interpretation should not be opposed to the historical, because the main criterion for determining the truth of an interpretation is whether it is possible to put the analyzed work in its rightful place in the historical artistic process. Sedlmayr sees the future of the science of art in the ongoing process of structural interpretation of individual works of art, the consequence of which will be the creation of new and the use of existing theoretical constructions, "extending into unknown distances", but used temporarily and having hypothetical significance.

As a result, we can assert that the related methods of studying a work of art proposed by Panofsky and Sedlmayer go back to classical exegesis. Without pronouncing the word "iconology", Sedlmayr also develops a method of multi-level "structural" reading of a work of art, the roots of which can also be found in the tradition of Christian exegesis. On the basis of the hermeneutic circle - a special way of understanding, in which the part is understood through the whole, and the whole through its parts, they propose to build an updated historical theory of art. In order to include their methodology in the analysis of a work of art, its structure was understood by both scientists as a structure in which there is a direct relationship between form and content. The specificity of their individual approach lies in the fact that Panofsky's vision of the history of art is approaching cultural studies, while Sedlmayr retains the traditional history of art.

At the same time, the extension of the hermeneutic method to the material of fine art is evidence in favor of the fact that it continues to occupy a significant position in modern culture. If we trace the historical development of hermeneutics as a method of interpretation from antiquity to the present, it becomes obvious that the most significant objects of culture fall into the field of interpretation in each new era. The subject of hermeneutic interpretation in the ancient era was myths, in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation - the Holy Scriptures, and, starting from the Enlightenment, the methodology of hermeneutics acquiring scientific status began to be transported to the field of the humanities, primarily literature and art. In particular, V. Dilthey noted the existence of a direct relationship between the phases of development that a particular culture undergoes and the importance that it attaches to hermeneutics. "The fate of this science," he writes, "was strange. It receives attention only during the great historical movements, when the understanding of a single historical existence becomes an urgent matter of science, and subsequently it is again immersed in the shadows. So it was at that time when the interpretation of the sacred books of Christianity became a vital question for Protestantism" [9, p. 255].

And if the founder of iconology, Warburg, did not set himself the task of interpreting a single work of art, but studied its peripheral details without thinking about artistic value, then Panofsky and Sedlmayr saw in the understanding of a work of art the foundation for creating an updated construction of art history. After all, it was iconology that for the first time in the history of art dared not only to record the fact of the appearance, for example, of a Gothic cathedral, and express its attitude towards it, but to pose and even try to answer the most important question: "why" did the Romanesque cathedral give way to the Gothic? An important advantage of the new method was that, in contrast to the formal history of style, iconological analysis is aimed at highlighting differences in the purely artistic value of a work of art. The advantage of their method was that it was able, working equally successfully with both a mediocre work and a masterpiece, to see a fundamental difference between them. Panofsky notes: "When we compare and compare a "masterpiece" with a multitude of "lesser" works of art, with which, as it turned out in the course of research, it can be somehow compared and connected, then the originality of the idea, the superiority of technique and composition, as well as all the features that make up its "greatness", will become obvious by themselves - and not in spite of, but precisely because of the fact that that a whole group of materials was subjected to the same method of analysis and interpretation" [16, pp. 38-39]. Following Warburg, Sedlmayr and Panofsky complete the formation of iconology. From the method of studying culture, they turn it into a method of art history. They hope to use it to get closer to the true history of art.

Thus, it can be concluded that the introduction of the hermeneutic method into art history by the efforts of E. Panofsky and H. Sedlmayr was due to their common goal: to bring out of the crisis and outline further ways of developing the history of art, the foundation of which should be the focus of researchers' attention on a single work of art, which meant its intellectual reconstruction in an act of careful and scientific interpretation. But, creating their method mainly on the material of art dating back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Panofsky and Sedlmayr relied on the traditions of "classical" hermeneutics, aimed at finding the final and only true meaning. And although in the introduction to his examples of structural interpretation, Sedlmayr says that his choice was based solely on the grounds that he was most advanced in understanding them, it is obvious that it is no accident that the scientist attracted works with a particularly rich and complex structure. The main principle of iconological and structural interpretation is their focus on the study of such works of art, where there is a certain set of "classical" levels of meaning. We know that Panofsky's iconology has never spread into the field of contemporary art. In turn, Sedlmayr, having studied certain areas of modernism (but not individual works of modernism), found in it symptoms of the destruction of the structure of the "gesamtkunstwerk", which was for the scientist direct evidence of the decline of art. Both researchers focused their methodology on the works of art of the era of the "great styles" of the past and did not see the prospects for its development in the study of contemporary art.

In his article "The Boundaries of Iconology and the Problem of the Unity of the Art Historical Method" [19], M. Sokolov notes that some genres or even epochs of art fall out of the sphere of attention of the German art critic. For Panofsky, he writes, works of art existed within the boundaries of two polar types: the work-message and the work-expression of feelings. Where there was no "communication" - for example, in the field of landscape or still life of the nineteenth century, there was no place for iconological analysis. Indeed, on closer examination, it turns out that the successful work of the methods proposed by Panofsky and Sedlmayer was ensured by the special structure of the analyzed object. They subjected to hermeneutic research those works of art in which the possibility of a sequential immersion in new levels of understanding was originally laid.

But not all epochs of art were aimed at creating works whose plot was based on a stable iconographic image or the structure of which allowed the extraction of four "canonical" levels of meaning. Showing the work of his method on the example of the painting "The Glorification of Painting" by Vermeer, Sedlmayr noted that in reading the content of this picture he finds only three levels, while in Bruegel's "The Blind" all four are present. In making his conclusion, he did not specifically stipulate the fact that the art of the Dutch master was closely connected with the evangelical tradition of the parable, the narrative of which implied that divine revelation was hidden behind the everyday plot.

Panofsky recommended that researchers, when applying his method, constantly check their conclusions, consistently descending from the visual primary plot to the deep levels of the content of the work of art. So the researcher could not fear for the accuracy of his conclusions. In the same cases, Panofsky writes, "when we have to deal with works of art in which the whole sphere of the secondary, or conditional, plot is practically absent, and a direct transition from motives to meaning, content is carried out, as can be observed in European landscape, still life and genre painting, not to mention "non-objective" art" [17, pp. 49-50], the researcher is deprived of the opportunity to observe how the artist, bypassing the boundaries of the iconographic plot, brought his own content to the composition. Therefore, it is so important that the work of art, for the study of which iconological analysis can be used, has a special structure: "The spinning machine can probably be considered the most impressive embodiment of a functional idea, and "abstract" painting is the most impressive manifestation of pure form, but both carry a minimum of content" [17, p. 24]. However, Sokolov rightly notes, the apologists of iconology have never insisted that their method is something once and for all established and finally formulated. The author of the article believes that "it would be more useful not just to state the limitations of iconology, but to try to understand what causes this limitation and what prevents us from extending the general principles of iconological analysis to the work as a whole and the history of art as a whole" [19, p. 240].

Every day new books about art are published in the world. But it can be stated that most authors do not pretend to be something more than Vasari's life-descriptive style, stating that such and such an artist wrote such and such a work and, in his opinion, surpassed his predecessor (in the case of modernist art, in the novelty of style). Revolving around and around the artist's personality, his innovation and the path to well-deserved success, studies of contemporary art often miss the most important thing - a work of art. Unfortunately, so far the bold attempts to "instill" iconology in the analysis of contemporary art – V. Hofmann's book "Fundamentals of Contemporary Art" [25], or the works of the Russian researcher Batrakova [1] – do not look unambiguously convincing. Firstly, few authors dare to focus on a selected work of modern art as scrupulously as Sedlmayr suggested, and secondly, the method of classical iconology cannot work on things of the twentieth century as successfully as on the works of the old masters. But we hope that with appropriate refinement, it is the hermeneutically oriented ways of studying works of contemporary art that will help to remove the opposition between modern and classical art that has a destructive effect on art history.

Notes

1. "Breakfast" is a common name for Dutch still lifes depicting a set table.
2. Sedelmayr's book was published in Hamburg in 1958.
3. Michelangelo's "Moses" is a 1914 article by Sigmund Freud.
4. Cit. by: Fetisov I.V. Western European painting of the late XIX – early XX century. Moscow, 1998, p. 5.

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