360° illustration in contemporary visual culture

The object of the article: the works of contemporary artists working with the 360° format and creating the so-called. "spherical illustrations" or 360° illustrations, controlled panoramic images. Works were selected as material, reflecting the types of strategies for the work of artists with this medium, demonstrating the connection between the artist's intention and the formal, structural solution of the work. Subject of the article: the specifics of 360° illustration, its expressive possibilities, as well as the strategies of artists who turn to this format as an instrument of aesthetic impact on the viewer in the context of the modern communication society. The study is devoted to the actively developing phenomenon of 360° illustration, which is currently becoming increasingly popular among artists and delineates new aesthetic horizons for illustration as an art form. The main goal of the study is to identify the specifics of the phenomenon of spherical illustration in modern visual culture, the contextualization of 360° illustration in the field of modern visual culture. The author made the following conclusions: the 360° illustration is the ultimate version of the structure of the classical pictorial image with a direct perspective, which at the same time carries out a “Copernican revolution” in terms of the viewer’s attitude to the artistic image (from a passive recipient, he turns into active interpreter and co-author of the artist), thus, on the one hand, illustrators get to expand the repertoire of their own expressive means (partly borrowing the techniques of screen arts), and, on the other hand, the viewer gets the opportunity to be "inside" the image and experience it as a subjective aesthetic experience.