Alexey Philippov
Kuban State University, Russia
Painting of Alexey Parshkov (born in 1947) is well known both in Kuban region and outside. But his original theory of composition has not yet been discussed. In the aspect of elementary artistic shapes the theory is revealed in certain graphic schemes used by the author. Such schemes could be the basis of abstract geometric art, or ornaments, or models of the spatial relations, or could be used as an instrument of organisation of visual experience and visualisation of concepts. Such schematism is based on a toroidal structure which is, according to Parshkov, an expression of the geometry of the space and is intepreted by analogy with field and energy processes.
The fundamental structure is considered by the artist to be an expression of the universal law and is associated with archaic mythical and poetical mentality. Manifestations of this structure could be discovered in different cultures, religions, in art of different periods and in different scientific theories. In order to integrate his world view Parshkov relies on the motifs of philosophy of the Far East but interpreted in accordance with the neoplatonic search for the One. Accordingly, his natural philosophy has a poetical character, it becomes a code of the universal metaphor and a theory of composition comes to be the poetics of the universal.
The origins of such poetics and parallels to it could be found both in early Russian modernism and in some art trends of the late Soviet period. Among them there are also ideas of structuralism and semiotics and Gestalt theory. A starting point for such poetics are theories of Vladimir Favorsky, Pavel Florensky, as well as Russian icon painting seen through the prism of their view. In the context of the epoch the theory of Alexey Parshkov could be compared with other attempts to universalise artistic experience, such as “cup-cupola-space” of Vladimir Sterligov or “hieratures” of Michail Schwarzman.