The article continues the dialogue between the philologist and the theorist of fine arts, started in one of the previous issues of the journal. At this time the main topic was the naturalism in various forms of art and in the methods of the study of art. The authors agree that the discrepancy between research methods and the specifics of the subject testifies to the crisis of modern art history. Descriptive art history has outlived its usefulness, and cultural studies, despite some eclectic methodology and abstraction of the research language, can come closer to the complex phenomena of traditional and modern artistic practice.