A concept of nature in the modern animalistic art of Russia: An environmental aspect of the genre

The study deals with the concept of nature in modern local wildlife art from the perspective of environmental thinking. It is significant in both cultural and artistic aspects. Modern wildlife art has become a vehicle for pressing issues in nature studies and has demonstrated a variety of artistic solutions, creative manners, and approaches, from traditional realistic variants to stylistic interpretations in the spirit of previous epochs. The study reports that the passage of time has caused changes in the historically established genre structure; its boundaries have become vague and the very structure of an artistic image has become polysemic. Nowadays, local art criticism does not cover this issue adequately. Meanwhile, modern wildlife art represents a bright example of the thematic and stylistic variety of artistic techniques and has a fresh look at the world of animals in its entirety, which refers to a new perception of nature, human attitude to it and supplements the picture of the development of the entire local arts. Against this background, the study of current wildlife issues is quite relevant. The historical and artistic methods allow us to evaluate the originality of animalism, its different sides, in particular genre, species and stylistic diversity, as a characteristic and an iconic phenomenon of modern art, reflecting the concept of "nature" in its ecological perspective. The significance of wildlife art is stressed in moral respect. It is wildlife art, which is closest to nature that organically reflects the picture of the modern world with its current environmental issues and dire ecological situation. The wildlife art of the end of the 19th Century to the beginning of the 21st Century is characterised by the exploration of new vital issues of its time. Therefore, the material given in the article is important for art criticism since it enriches it with a unique perspective of study and in a wider cultural meaning, and, thus, forms a modern philosophical picture of human-nature-animals interrelations. © 2020 Portnova.