Tuesday 6 October 2015

The Palaeolithic artist: part 27

Altamira auroch / Picasso bull morph
John Hooker, 2015, Public Domain
Forgive me for the simple morph on the right. I was not sure if such a thing would even display properly in the blog, so I only spent a few minutes constructing it with only enough control points to get some movement in a just a few areas leaving the rest as a cross-dissolve. I can do much better!

I am sure that Spanish bullfighting was not the only thing to influence Picasso with his many depictions of bulls. This bull at Altamira might well have been one of them. He had said, "After Altamira, all is decadence". The movement you see here was the sort of movement that a Palaeolithic spectator would have seen when walking by a rock where a natural swelling in the rock,  would give movement or a different perspective to the painting where part of it would be carefully aligned to the rock feature. They would also utilize cracks in the rock for similar effects.
"Non-objective art draws its contents essentially from “inside.” This “inside” cannot correspond to consciousness, since consciousness contains images of objects as they are generally seen, and whose appearance must therefore necessarily conform to general expectations. Picasso’s object, however, appears different from what is generally expected— so different that it no longer seems to refer to any object of outer experience at all. Taken chronologically, his works show a growing tendency to withdraw from the empirical objects, and an increase in those elements which do not correspond to any outer experience but come from an “inside” situated behind consciousness— or at least behind that consciousness which, like a universal organ of perception set over and above the five senses, is orientated towards the outer world. Behind consciousness there lies not the absolute void but the unconscious psyche, which affects consciousness from behind and from inside, just as much as the outer world affects it from in front and from outside. Hence those pictorial elements which do not correspond to any “outside” must originate from “inside.”"

Jung, C. G. Picasso in: Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 15: Spirit in Man, Art, And Literature: Vol. 15 (p. 136). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. [First published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, CLIII : 2 (Nov. 13, 1932); reprinted in Wirklichkeit der Seele (Zurich, 1934). Previously translated by Alda F. Oertly for the Papers of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York City (1940); another translation, by Ivo Jarosy, appeared in Nimbus (London), II : 2 (autumn, 1953). Both versions have been consulted in the present translation. [The Kunsthaus, Zurich, held an exhibition of 460 works by Picasso from Sept. 11 to Oct. 30, 1932.— EDITORS.]

In a very long letter of  27th February, 1953, quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, writes to his psychiatrist, friend and collaborator C. G. Jung:  (I include only a small portion of his two column chart equating "Quantum Physics" and "Psychology of the Individuation process and the unconscious in general". I have also rearranged the opposing columns to follow one after the other in this single excerpt)

"Quantum Physics
One of the means used to back up the theory is an abstract mathematical sign (ψ/ ?), and also complex figures (functions) as a function of space (or of even more variability) and of time.

Psychology of the Individuation process and the unconscious in general
The aid and means of backing up the theory is the concept of the unconscious. It must not be forgotten that the "unconscious" is our symbolic sign for the potential occurrences in the conscious, not unlike that (ψ/ )" [Not my italics]

On the 7th March, 1953, Jung replies and includes: "Your compilation of physical and psychological statements is most interesting and illuminating. I should just like to add:

Quantum Physics
The smallest mass particle consists of corpuscle and wave.

Psychology of the Individuation process and the unconscious in general
The archetype (as structure element of the unconscious) consists of static form on one hand and dynamics on the other."

This will be continued tomorrow.

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