The Wandering of a Philosopher

In history we can look at different art forms that are representational of a society during a period in time. From the primitive cave drawings of ancient ages to the super realism of the 20th we can observe how art has communicated aspects of a culture and what affect they had. In this paper I explore this idea of art as a non-verbal form of communication. I will explore its role within a society; both as a form of communication and expression, by looking at propaganda, protest art and as a unifying factor in society. With these elements I will show that art has a purpose in society as a powerful medium for expressing and communicating personal beliefs, identity and ideals.
      The first and foremost question to ask prior to this paper is one of necessity: what is art? Art in itself is a difficult phenomenon to define. Because of the ambiguity of this question it is important to look at it before continuing. Art is difficult to define because of the blurry boundaries that constitute what is art and what is not. For example a parent might convey a drawing made by their child or an art project as art, which to others may just be seen as a drawing or an art project and would not categorize them in the realm of art. In this sense we might see how some might arise from trying to have a consistent definition for the word art. Haselberger, a twentieth century anthropologist, defines art in its purely aesthetic characteristic. “Works of art,” he says,” can be identified in objects produced with the intention that they be aesthetically pleasing, not, pragmatically functional.” (Layton. 4) But even with this definition of art. it still seem that the ambiguity of the term has not yet been resolved. If a piece of art consists merely in its function of being aesthetically pleasing to the eye then we go back to the earlier problem of the child’s drawing. Aristotle exemplifies a different notion of the arts, as Layton explains. “He [Aristotle] pointed out that while poets make use of metre to order their words. a historian or a natural philosopher might choose to write his work according to metre. but although giving it a harmonious form this would not necessarily turn his work into poetry.” (Layton. 5) With this in mind art is no longer categorized by the form it takes, whether it is in the form of a or a painting or a sculpture. the “beautiful form” is no longer considered sufficient in order to describe what art is. For Aristotle art becomes how it is ordered, how the meaning of a “beautiful form” is communicated. He says. “the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphors. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others: and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilar.” (Poetics. Ch 22) Now art is defined by the method through which it communicates its meaning. Thus with this definition in mind, the child’s drawing or project is no longer defined as art, it no longer survives in the realm next to master pieces in a museum, for it has no artistic perception, it has no metaphorical elements. Art now becomes a metaphorical method to communicate.

            That that we have a definition of art, the following must be asked. How is art created? Where does it originate? How is a meaning communicated in art? By what qualities is the artist able to create pleasure out of the aesthetic? and finally, as pointed by Aristotle. not everyone can create art which raises the question, how does the artist become an artist? These are important questions to ask, even if they deal in the realm of psychoanalytic, they represent a space between the definition of art and thesis. The answers to those questions represent the origin of art in the artist, the motivations and implications that come with the artist. This, as a result, will help clarify the role of art as a communicative/expressive tool for belief, ideas and identity. Also on a more basic term, because art is a non-verbal representational medium, it must always be interpreted and therefore lies in the psycho-analytic field. 

            Herbert Read, author of Art and Society, writes, “The theories of Freud, it is true, have not met universal acceptance, but though they may still require criticism … there are no longer any serious grounds for questioning their relevance. The general principles have already been already applied with great profit to fields as anthropology and mythology.” (Read. 83) There are two factors that present themselves in artistic conditions:

            1) The will of the individual, the will to create art for himself and for his art to be accepted by community. 

            2) The will of community or consumer, the will that accepts or rejects the creation on the bases of its usual cultural activity. 

The consumer accepts the creation on the foundation that it is appealing in its functionality or its pleasurable sensation. This opens the discourse for two psychoanalytic explorations. The first being the analysis of the creator’s mind, of the artist and the second being the exploration of the consumer’s mind. In order to comprehend the communicating factor of art, it is necessary to involve this analysis. to look at how the art is formed as a mode of communication and why/how it is received by the consumer. 

            The psycho-analytic interpretation of Freud starts manly with his theory of the Oedipus complex. When an individual is born he is first conscious of the mother. The child is conscious of whose womb he emerged out of and on whom he/she is dependent of. The mother thus represents a notion of security and stability. These experiences and attachments with the mother are libidinal in their nature, meaning that the child is driven by sex and hunger. as Read writes “the satisfaction of appetite, the creation of pleasure.” (read. 84) But soon after the child becomes aware of his surrounding world, that which is the external to the mother, to her breast and to her warmth he must adapt. When this happens he adapts anyway he can in order to survive in this outer element. When he becomes aware of the outer world, the child creates the image of an enemy to anyone who may threaten this bond between him/her and the mother. This first object of hate is the father, who creates a conflict of interest between the child and the mother. This conflict between the child and the father (and later on all of his surroundings) is what Freud refers to as the Oedipus complex, which creates results that may persist in the unconscious into adult life and creates a tension between what Freud calls the ego and the Id. To resolve the Oedipus complex the child has two possibilities according to Freud. The child may redirect the libidinal energy, that sexual drive was originally directed towards the mother, towards that which the mother had the most interest, that is his own body. This solution gives rise to a state of self love, and creating stability around it leads to homo-sexuality according to Freud. Usually this state is repressed and then the child focuses on the object which the mother’s interest was shared with, the father.  He thus imitates the father and tries to obtain an object on which he is able to direct his libidinal energy towards (a wife. a partner. girlfriend etc..). “Those who fail to adapt” Read summarizes “remain fixed at some intermediate stage and are therefore regarded by the normal majority as peculiar, or, to use the psychological term, psychotic.” (Read. 85) In simpler terms, those who fail to adapt to this “normality” lie in self deception, hallucination and madness.

            According to his text, the artist is always, somewhat, to be considered as psychotic. Although it may not be as objectively observable as the psychotic, he finds way to disguise and compensate for his psychosis. The artist is a disguised psychotic because, in a sense, he lives in a fantasy. a reality that is his own. But he is able to disguise it because he has found a way back from the fantasy and into reality - art. Freud exclaims “He [The artist] is one who is urged by instinctive needs which are too clamorous; he longs to attain to honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these gratifications.” (Freud. pg 314) These means that the artist lacks are physical strength and/ or personal charm, but because he does not have them he creates a reality of his own, a fantasy. He thus turns his entire world, his interests, and his libido towards the fabrication of this fantasy life from which might lead to neurosis. The artist’s way back into reality or normality is through his art, he is able to elaborate his day-dream his unconscious fantasy, to mold his thoughts and ideas into art, and he is able to externalize his fantasies outside of his mind. But he does not do so in just any manner, the true artist, according to Freud. is able to elaborate and mold his fantasy in way that are first of all faithful to his subjective but also in a manner that is pleasurable to the other, to the ones that live in the normality of the world. He is capable of universalizing his mental life. In order to do such a task the artist is has an admirable ability of repression, one so great that it is what opens up the possibility to be a true artist and not fall under complete neurosis.

            The artist though his bounded by the consumer’s view of his creation. The middle world of fantasy is closed off by the normal man, the man who lives within reality or normality, and according to Freud, “every hungry soul looks to it for comfort and consolation.” But this is difficult even for the true artist, the non-artist has a limited gratification that he can obtain from the creation of the creator. Their grim repression does not allow for such an opening of fantasy and therefore can never fully enjoy completely the piece of art that they are presented with. But the artist nonetheless needs their approval, their acceptance in order to disguise his psychosis. When the artist is able to objectify his fantasy into reality in a manner that is faithful and order he has then opened up a door for the others (the consumers) a “way back to comfort and consolation of their unconscious source of pleasure.” (Freud. pg 315) And by so the artist results in gaining appreciation and gratitude from the others, and thus is able to obtain all the desire that he was denied of before: honor, power, richness, and the love of women.

            The work of art itself is not presented in the previous analysis. In order to explain further how a work of art is related to politics, religion, moral and social idealism we look at Freud’s analysis of the mind. The mind is composed of three parts, the Id. the ego and the super ego. The id is “the obscure inaccessible part of our personality; the little we know about it we have learnt from the study of dream-work and the formation of the neurotic symptom, and most that is of a negative character, and can only be described as all that the ego is not.” (Freud. New introductory Lectures. pg 98) The id is the part of our unconscious which is driven by pure sexual or libidinal desire. As seen earlier, it is the predominant factor of a child’s life, for it is that which gives rise to that need for pleasure of satisfaction of hunger in the child. Its behavior is based on what Freud refers to as “the pleasure principle.” which is a psycho-analytic concept that describes the nature of desiring pleasure and avoiding pain. The id has no values, no morals, no good or evil, it just seeks pleasure. Pleasure in Freud’s view is unchanging and fixed, there Id does not change his pleasures, they remain as they are, meaning sexual and hunger. The ego is the part of our psyche which acts according to the Id’s desires in realistic ways, by following the reality principle. It is the part of the psyche which has been directly modified by the influence of the outside world. In relation to the id the ego is that which dethrones the pleasure principle and its chaotic effects and replaces it with the reality principle. By doing so the ego is able to achieve greater and longer security and success. The super-ego is best put as the conscience. it represents moral-restriction and tries to reach the “higher” things of human life.

            By relating what has been previously said about the artist-consumer relationship and the mental parts of the psyche we can now arrive at a determinate view on how art becomes influenced by culture and society. The origin of the painting comes from the impersonal and fixed pleasure principle of the Id. It becomes like a motivational factor for the artist, and “at the other hand of the process of the elaboration and sublimation these elementary intuitions which the work of art represents are clothed in ideologies of the super-ego.” (Read. 92) The super-ego thus preserves past traditions of the people and their race, but which at the same time slowly yields to the influences of the present and new development. The ego becomes that factor which orders everything, it gives a form that combines harmony and structure which combines the amorphous factor of the Id and the moral, cultural and political ideologies that are communicated through the super-ego.

            It is because the artist is able to give a visible, articulated form to the invisible phantasms that he has acquired a power to move us, the consumers, in such a deep manner. But according to Read, “In certain ages society has made the artist an exponent of the moral and ideal emanations of the super-ego, and art has thus become the handmaid of religion or morality or social ideology.” (Read. pg 95) This is why according to Read art is so closely related to religion and social idealism. Society has created an identity for the artist, one that could plead for the cause of morals and ideals by his extraordinary ability to exert and give form to the emanations of the super-ego. Art thus becomes the way to communicate moralities, religious beliefs and social ideology.

            The artist within psycho-analysis thus becomes the medium to a fantasy reality. He, who lives within his fantasy because he is not able to act by both the reality and pleasure principle, creates his work of art in order to communicate and express himself. He deals with the Oedipus complex, with this psycho-tension that is present in him, with art as a mode of relief. He is able to communicate this unconscious mental tension that we all deal with by giving it form with the ego and thus communicate pleasure and relief in the viewer. But also as stated above, the artist is seen, for his extraordinary gift, as a person who is able to communicate and plead for the moralities and ideals that our institutions and cultures creates. And by the nature of the super-ego (from which those moralities and ideologies rise) traditions are preserved and yield to present and new developments. This nature of the super-ego, that of preservation and fixability, along with the pleasure principle of the Id is what makes visual art a very influential form of non-verbal communication. By relating itself to the pleasure principle, our moralities and what we think is right, good and somewhat rational, it is able to communicate ideas at higher level than many other forms of communication. It thus becomes able to communicate ideas and beliefs in a deep, emotional way.

            With this we are now able to understand better how visual art is able to communicate ideas is such a fashion that is both powerful and emotional but at the same time ordered and articulated way. One of the best examples of visual art being a powerful mode of communication in history is the growth of the Nazi party, mainly its growth by the use of propaganda. The Nazy party is indeed very famous for its propaganda. Part of their propaganda plan was focused on the visual aspect of the method, with such they created many influential posters and comics such as Vica defie L’Oncle Sam (Vica defeats Uncle Sam), which illustrated a French Nazi party member. Vica, battling against the allied forces who were portrayed as evil. The way the party used visual propaganda deeply affected their acquisition of power and their ability to control the public. The message they were able to communicate through the use of art was deeply influential and effective, but what is more incredible is the art itself that was used and how it was used. The Nazi poster has many components which are in themselves powerful and influential in communicating a message.

            The first of those was their use of colors. The Nazi poster was many colored with red tones and black lines to portray their message. Both are very powerful colors that represent power, stability, Excitement and energetic. Black was often used to depict and outline the picture of the individual in the picture, in psychology black is a color of “authority and power, Stability and strength. It is also the color associated with intelligence.” (precisionintermedia.com) The use of color also relates to the way the poise of the German was portrayed in the poster. The individual is almost always strong, has a very straight and powerful poise, very healthy and is always pictured in some way or another freeing himself from the oppression of the enemy through the Nazi party. Almost all of the Nazi posters had a red toned attributed to it around the figure portrayed. Hitler has a great understand of how powerful this color was to attract the eyes of the viewer. Red is “often where the eye looks first. Red is the color of energy. It’s associated with movement and excitement. People surrounded by red find their heart beating a little faster and often report feeling a bit out of breath. It’s absolute the wrong color for a baby’s room but perfect to get people excited.” (precisionintermedia.com) On the other hand the poster of the enemy, especially the Jew, is always projected in a dark  toned, hiding, stereotypical and with animal like features that represent them as subhuman that are chaotic and should be affiliated with.

            It is easy using psycho-analytic to see how the German Nazi party rose to power so quickly. Post World War 1 Germany was a devastated country with many problems at its foundation. The artist’s ability to articulate and structure the Id’s pleasure principle was definitely at play in the making of this poster.  Most important is the notion of the super-ego at play within the artist’s psyche; its ability to formulate and represent art as warped around an ideology or morality, in their turn as Freud expresses “perpetuate the past tradition of the race and the people, and which yields but slowly to the influence of the present and to new developments.” (Freud. New Introductory Lectures. pg 100) Because the artist is seen as a person who is able to communicate and plead for moralities and ideals, he thus becomes able to formulate and articulate the super-ego (the conscience created by cultural values) in a way that projects traditions and values that have a deep emotional influences. The values that were transmitted and communicated by the means of the visual art were those of strength and stability which were both desired at a time of crisis for the country and its people. Along with the use of specific colors and themes the Nazi visual propaganda was a deeply influential part of the rising to power in both a physical and mental way.

            This paper explored the ways in which the artist is able to communicate in a deep powerful way, in essence, in a way that can be considered more powerful and efficient than most other forms of communications from the very fact that it deals with the unconscious. The artist being able to interpret and give form to his unconscious there has a tool at his hand that becomes very powerful if used correctly. He is able to appeal emotionally to the viewer through sense perception, which gives it a higher meaning and creates a greater connection.  As seen with the influence of visual art used by the Nazi party, the ability of the artist and the art itself to communicate values, ideas and moralities is quite impressive and powerful. Art thus becomes powerful enough that it is able to create social changes and affect political campaign to an extensive amount.

Works Cited

Aristotle. “The Internet Classics Archive | Poetics by Aristotle.“ The Internet Classics Archive: 441 Searchable Works of Classical Literature. Trans. S. H. Butcher. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.html>.

Freud, Sigmund. “Introductory Lecture on Psycho-analysis.“ Introductory Lecture on Psycho-analysis. Trans. Joan Riviere. 98+. Print.

Layton, Robert. The Anthropology of Art. New York: Columbia UP, 1981. Print.

Precision Intermedia. “Psychology Of Color.“ Precision Intermedia a Northern California MultiMedia Marketing Agency. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://www.precisionintermedia.com/color.html>.

Read, Herbert. Art and Society. New York: Schocken, 1966. Print.

Reason TV. “The Power of Nazi Propaganda.“ YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Reason TV, 02 Dec. 2010. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af44Slin7lg>.