I like this theory by agrippa on this board World Economy Changes and Future Predictions | Current News
He seems correct that all the stuff on the right is just recycled imagery from the left.
The only other thing I find unusual is the the amount of foliage on the trees. The original shows almost bare trees, which I’d think is the normal state of trees in such a scene. Still, it’s probably more of a sign of a careless artist than a crazy person.
Much of that quoted post was also on MetaFilter earlier - link (second reply to the FPP). The author then changed his mind when he realised that the first image he’d seen had a problem with the scan. A more accurate - though small - copy of the image is here.
I don’t think he has a visual agnosia (the not being able to recognise one visual field thing) because I think the painting would look a lot more obviously “wrong”. He can still recognise the right side of smaller items, for example. If he couldn’t “see” the right side of the picture, he would probably just miss it off completely, or he’d end up with a very strange looking copy of the right side, rather than a copy of the left again.
Maybe this professor is the same guy who came up with “14 k of g in a f p d”
The insanity is in people trying to figure out what’s wrong with a painting that’s been plagiarized.
Anyway, I quite like the theory that the painting depicts the interior of one of those snow globe things. The resemblance occurred to me straight away - the grey area at the extreme lower left could be the edge of the base seen through the glass, and if you look at this version of the picture you can see a similarly curved feature in the lower right-hand corner too.
If it is a snow globe, I’m not sure what that says about the artist’s supposed mental disorder. Feaure of sudden violent earth tremors?
This is another piece by the same artist:
http://www.museum.ru/primitiv/imagee.asp?pic=KO_0001
He’s called A. Kuplin but I’ve not been able to find any biographical data, apart from the fact he’s a loony and was in a mental hospital in Moscow. 
Anyway, this painting is a copy of this one:
http://www.artsstudio.com/reproductions/paintings/aiv_9thwave1.JPG
So I’m still liking the “fear of drowning” idea!
Does “complete and utter lack of artistic ability” count as a mental disorder?
If you remove the objects from the scene, it looks a bit like a mons veneris. There’s that cleft near where the skiers are, and that patch of vegetation could be pubic hair. So maybe that’s what his phobia is.
What Una said. This is intellectual masturbation by a hack academic’s pulling stuff out of his ass analysis of a hack painter.
Repetition of sets of three?
I agree with Manduck. Without all the objects, you have a vague female form, all in a deathly white, which would suggest death. Having painted a dead woman, the painter covered it up with a houses and tiny people.
On second thought, none of this leads anywhere. 
He is anal, teleologically obsessive compulsive, superstitious and indistinct, this is is a view of all… representive, nearly all. Je is afraid of legs.
Interesting how nobody is any of the houses and / or the shape of the drivers’ hats…?
Honestly, I’m an English major–I look between the lines for a living–and I can’t see anything about this painting. It’s flat and repetitive, yeah, but that just means it’s bad. Doesn’t necessarily mean the artist is crazy.
Worth saying again that anything that’s faithfully reproduced from the original cannot be evidence of the copier’s “insanity.”
…and buttocks.
This picture is corpus expletive. He wasexpurgating
I seem to have solved the puzzle. The answer isn’t what anyone was expecting:
The artist is sane. The professor is nuts.
Can you be nuts if you don’t exist? It’s no great surprise to learn that the Russian LiveJournaller through whom this professor supposedly communicates with the world now says that the prof. has become fed up with all the questions and refuses to talk about it any more.
At least one part of this painting is entirely reasonable - the sets of three horses. The Troika is a traditional Russian setup for a sleigh-drawing horse team.
Heh. I was about to post the same thing. The couple standing next to it could represent conception. The sleighs departing, maybe Birth. To triplets. The whole hill empty looks like a woman’s breast. The whips, maybe rape to the woman.
I could go on and on but won’t. (Your’e welcome!) 
When will we get the answer?