Image of a popular Russian performer of classical music in a modern caricature

The article is devoted to the cultural understanding of the existence of the caricature genre in the field of classical art. The subject of the study were caricatures of popular performers of classical music. We used descriptive, historical and comparative, structural and functional methodological approaches. Based on the analysis of the main typological features of the caricatures of classical performing musicians, the author identifies the features inherent in this subgenre and concludes that the parallel existence of mass and elite consciousness in the modern socio-cultural situation leads, on the one hand, to improving the aesthetic status and softening connotative semantic components of the caricature, on the other hand, to the democratization of classical art and its reorientation towards fashion trends and the tastes of the crowd. At the same time, the article postulates the typical typological features of caricatures of modern classical music performers (lack of a politicized focus, gentle character of the image, presence of attributes of classical musical art) and in the context of postmodern determined the dependence of their popularity on the created image that is progressing in brand status.