Within the span of only four years, two books on the same subject and with almost identical titles were published on two sides of Europe: Hans Prinzhorn's Artistry of the Mentally Ill (Berlin, 1922) and Pavel Ivanovich Karpov's Creativity of the Mentally Ill (Moscow, 1926). Whereas the first book was recognized as one of the key steps in the “discovery” of the psychotic art and its eventual mainstreaming, the second one quickly fell into obscurity. Its author perished in Stalinist purges of the 1930s, together with a number of his colleagues from the Russian Academy of Artistic Science (RAKhN, 1921-1931), in which he served as the head of the Commission for the Creativity of Mentally Ill. This article is the first in-depth study of Karpov's book and his theory of creativity, which he based on his extensive collection of the works of his patients (which was also lost in the purges). The article argues that his approach to psychotic art is completely independent from Prinzhorn's. Instead, it places this book in the context of the specific form of Kunstwissenschaft that was practiced in RAKhN, suggesting that this placement is of primary importance for understanding Karpov's methods and aims. More specifically, the article argues that in his research on the creativity of the mentally ill, Karpov engages in a productive dialogue with the philosopher and prominent RAKhN member Gustav Shpet's work on epistemology from the same period. The result is an original contribution to the clinical literature on art of the mentally ill patients.

在仅仅四年的时间里，两本关于同一主题和几乎相同标题的书在欧洲的两侧出版：汉斯·普林佐恩的《精神病人的艺术》（柏林，1922 年）和帕维尔·伊万诺维奇·卡尔波夫的《精神病人的创造力》（莫斯科，1926 年）。虽然第一本书被认为是“发现”精神病艺术及其最终成为主流的关键步骤之一，但第二本书很快就变得默默无闻。它的作者在 1930 年代的斯大林主义清洗中丧生，与他的一些来自俄罗斯艺术科学院 (RAKhN, 1921-1931) 的同事一起，他担任精神病患者创造力委员会的负责人。这篇文章是对卡尔波夫的书和他的创造力理论的第一次深入研究，他基于他对病人作品的广泛收集（这些作品也在清洗中丢失了）。这篇文章认为，他对精神病艺术的态度完全独立于普林佐恩的。相反，它将本书置于Kunswissenschaft的特定形式的背景下这在 RAKhN 中进行了实践，表明这个位置对于理解 Karpov 的方法和目标至关重要。更具体地说，这篇文章认为，在他对精神病患者创造力的研究中，卡尔波夫与哲学家和著名的 RAKhN 成员古斯塔夫什佩特在同一时期的认识论工作进行了富有成效的对话。结果是对精神病患者艺术临床文献的原创性贡献。