Birth of Artistic Integrity

by Sintzov.Ye.V.
"Fan" Publishing House
Kazan, 1995, 228 pp.

Reviewed by Bulat M. Galeyev

The book is devoted to the analysis of the potential of an artist's creative thought not fully realized in the final artwork.

The author's goal is to prove the most active role of the potentialities in creating artistic integrity, the latter dynamic, changeable, chaos-like nature. Another thesis is included which incorporates the abovementioned: the unrealized potential that permanently stimulate the so called "selfmotion" of artist's thought /"unbalanced identity" (term by Hegel) and "causa sui" idea.

The principle of complimentarity by Bor was used to solve such complex problems as reconstruction of the not fully-expressed, not fully-realized aura of artist's thought. The author found out two models of artistic thinking process he recreates based upon the completed artwork. The first model is very similar to that one recreated by means of the approach used by art critics - the one featuring essayistic style, that means following to all "windings" of artist's thought. Another one was based on strict principles of dissipative structures theory (more widely known as synergetics). The main concepts used for creating second model are "bifurcation nodes", "fluctuation", "chaos", "attractor" and so on. These main concepts used for creating second model are "bifurcation nodes", "fluctuation", "chaos", "attractor" and so on. The interaction between these models helps to solve several important aesthetic problems: interaction between part and whole, between content and form (and vice versa) and between mentality of the author and that of the recipient.

The main aspect common to all the problems is the idea of indistinct, diffused boundaries between realized potentialities and unrealized ones. Within these limits the thought of an artist is inclined to return to initial integrity. This initial integrity is very similar to prehistoric, prelogical thinking.

The author believes the interface between these boundaries is controlled by the artist and describes three methods of control over the mental processes. The first way can be called "ousting". It features deliberate self-limitiation of possible directions of thinking. In this case, the unrealized potentialities violate (upset) the continuality of realized ones (inherent in the creative thought of Gogol, Stravinsky, Michelangelo). The second way can be called "conjugating" or "accumulating". Its basic feature is in the revelation common potentials of heterogenous cultural layers or levels (as in Chekhov, Scriabin, Donatello). Thus the source of development of potentialities for an artist of the first type is mainly the development of his own potentialities. The artist of the second type is stimulated by common cultural potentialities. The third type is the fusion of both the abovementioned which provides the possibility of emancipation of the creative potentialities of recepient. This is achieved by means of suggestive transmition of ways of artistic thinking from an artist to a recipient (Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Kafka, Proust, Rublev). The transmition is based on creating "figurative model of way of thinking" (Sergei Bulgakov).

The main object of all these theoretical investigations is to provide the instruments for reviving the mental processes which take place in an artwork's process of creation. The author succeeded in recreating extraordinary, original semantic patterns which create integrity of fragment, work, cycle, and even a creative work of an artist as a whole. The book is devoted almost entirely to the analysis of artworks which provides supporting evidence for the truth of these theoretical ideas.