Old Tiflis vs Soviet Tbilisi: The origins and ways of Parajanov’s creativity
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2025-5(1)-148-161
Yuri Mechitov
Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Tbilisi, Georgia
ORCID: 0009-0007-3984-6782
ABSTRACT
This article examines the cultural, biographical, and personal foundations of Sergei Parajanov's creative work, one of the most distinctive artists of the post-Soviet era. Particular attention is given to the influence of Tbilisi's multiethnic environment, Armenian family traditions, and the region’s visual culture on the formation of Parajanov’s aesthetic and worldview. The author considers Parajanov a figure whose artistic strategy, heritage, and radical innovation are organically combined. The article also focuses on the director’s traits, including his experiences of imprisonment, personal loss, and a deep sense of otherness, all of which are reflected in the visual and conceptual structure of his works. An original concept is introduced – to Parajanovize – to describe a specific artistic model of behavior characterized by provocation, irony, transgression, and deliberate norm violation. Parajanov’s collages and installations are analyzed as autonomous forms of his visual language, where existential intensity and iconographic richness become tools of self-expression. His numerous unfinished projects are discussed as an element of the tragic dimension of his creative biography.
KEYWORDS: Sergei Parajanov, Old Tiflis, Parajanov’s childhood, Parajanov-genius, Parajanov’s cultural environment.
Information about the author
Yuri M. Mechitov
Professor
Tbilisi State Academy of Arts
22 Griboedov St., Tbilisi, 0108, Georgia
ORCID: 0009-0007-3984-6782
e–mail: [email protected]
For citation:
Mechitov, Yu. M. (2025). Old Tiflis vs Soviet Tbilisi: the origins and ways of Parajanov’s creativity. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 5(1), 148–161. https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2025-5(1)-148-161
