Artistic composition as an integral system

Abstract

The article examines the holistic approach to structuring an artistic composition. It shows the general patterns inherent in imaginative thinking. An artistic image is in most cases an integral formation with multiple dynamic interrelationships. These elements are typically analyzed in isolation, which leads to a distortion of the basic artistic meaning.
However, academic and artistic research lays special emphasis on our brain’s striving for a comprehensive perception of the entire structure of the object. To illustrate this point, the author quotes several major scholars who consider thinking and perception from the standpoint of integrity, arguing that our mind picks out integral figurative patterns. In this regard, the article refers to some provisions of G. Kelly’s theory, namely, that our thinking tends to present all known relationships between phenomena as a holistic plexus of interdependent entities. Similar ideas based on the nature of cognition were expressed by K.G. Jung, A.N. Losev and many others.
The article states the necessity to consider a phenomenon in relation to other phenomena bearing in mind that the methodology of our artistic analysis of phenomena based on the idea of a separate thing is essentially not accurate enough.
The author comes to the conclusion that artistic integrity is a set of nonidentical elements (possibly opposite) and relations between them, which, organized compactly, release additional energy of the super-meaning, i.e. a meaning exceeding the simple sum of individual meanings of a systemic artistic image