Composition of a Series of Artist's Works as an Emergent System

Abstract

The article examines the problem of holistic imagery resulting from the body of an artist’s works of various years. This perspective provides a deeper insight into his world view and creative method. The artist’s intention is best conveyed in the totality of his work revealing the true semantic load, the ultimate sense of his art. Only then one can be sure to understand the real message of his work. In the present article "a series" of works denotes the entire artistic career, which gives an opportunity to retrace the development of the core message, with all challenges and the final output characteristic of the artist’s personality. That way a series is can reveal the elusive sense of the figurative world perception much more pronounced in the whole oeuvre than in a single work. In cinematographic terms, paintings of various years make a kind of "montage sequence", echoing or contradicting one another and thus creating a holistic view of the artist's creative spirit. Quite often such a series brings out latent semantic layers untraceable in any single work, which is suggestive of the inmost semantic depth of the unrepresented or of an "extra-sense".
The outlined approach is based on the evaluation of the famous Russian
artist Geliy Korzhev. The article deals with three main stages of his work.
During the Soviet period he earned all kinds of awards and the reputation of
one of the leading painters of the socialist realism. The second period, that of
metanoia, was marked by the notorious controversial series figuring grotesque
fabled beings — “tiurliks”. At the third stage Korzhev turned to biblical subjects.
Taken as a whole, the work of Geliy Korzhev is a striking example of
commitment to the truth of life and creativity which required utmost spiritual
effort. Its evaluation makes clear that considering a series of works offers quite
a different understanding of the whole artist's oeuvre and of his every work as
well