The Case Studies and Research Questions

The research problem of this dissertation—the unconscious in relation to the painting process—is a challenging, interesting, and yet little-studied subject. Unconscious phenomena were approached on both the theoretical and the empirical level. I employed different methods and ideas to stimulate and elicit unconscious thinking while perform-ing artwork analyses of paintperform-ings by Salvador Dalí, Jackson Pollock, as well as a painting by myself, for which the process of painting was videorecorded. I addressed the unconscious through the theories of Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–

1924), as well as through the information gained from data that I

pro-duced during the experimental painting process—discoveries I have interpreted as evidence of unconscious phenomena.

For psychological distinctions not addressed by Jung, the theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) are used to forward this inquiry into the unconscious mind. Freud’s work concerning the structure of the human mind is still highly influential although his theories have been aggres-sively challenged in recent years. Vernon Hyde Minor (2001, 202) proposed that Freud remains controversial because he wrote so power-fully about the human mind and about human behavior and motiva-tions. My research does not focus on Freud’s theories, since his work is largely involved in locating the sources of pathological symptoms or errors, and such an inquiry is not relevant to this research. Instead, in this study it is mainly Jung’s theories that inform the discussion.

Many artists have affirmed the importance of the unconscious—

Edward Munch (1863–1944), Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), Paul Klee (1879–1940), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Joan Miró (1893–

1983), for example. Yet art historians tend to focus in particular on identifying connections between the unconscious and artworks by surrealist Salvador Dalí and abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.

I chose Dalí and Pollock as research cases because they are well-known artists, both of whom explicitly embraced theories of the unconscious as sources of their work. Therefore, there is a great deal of information in the literature to facilitate this research. Both artists asserted that the unconscious played an immense role in their creative processes. The painting techniques of these two artists were specifically influenced by the theories of Freud and Jung. Dalí, especially, claimed Freudian theories as a shared iconographic property, and throughout is oeuvre, there are explicit allusions to Freud’s theories. Therefore, this study links artworks by Dalí and Pollock to the Freudian and Jungian theories of the unconscious that were current in their day.

These two artists also present a valuable contrast, since their styles, technically speaking, can be seen as opposites—tightly rendered repre-sentational art versus freely gestural abstract art. While their

produc-tive periods were contemporaneous, Pollock’s was short and intense, in contrast to Dalí’s, who painted over many decades. Because of their similarities as well as their differences, Dalí and Pollock together formed a foundation that proved to be productive for the inquiry into the unconscious.

Early studies barely considered Jackson Pollock’s involvement with Jungian theories. Only in 1960 did Bryan Robertson note that Pollock was in Jungian analysis. In any case, prior to the 1970s, most art critics were painters or poets, not scholars from university art history depart-ments, who would have been more likely to delve into the Jungian connection. Elizabeth Langhorne’s dissertation on Pollock and Jung was written in 1977; however, a personal history is rarely of inter-est to Jungians (Rubin 1999, 220–28). Interinter-estingly, B. H. Friedman (1972, 77) maintained that the ideal critic of Pollock’s work would be another painter. I believe that a more expansive interpretation of an artwork can be achieved through the combined input of both theore-ticians and artists.

Jeremy Lewison (1999, 10, 18) thought that much of what has been written about Pollock is based on made-up myths about Pollock’s personal life, and he maintained that, with regard to the role of the unconscious, Pollock’s paintings are open to multiple interpretations.

An example of a Jungian interpretation of Pollock’s work is Aniela Jaffe’s “Symbolism in the Visual Arts” (Jaffe 1964), which discussed archetypes extensively. Matthew L. Rohn (1987) discussed Pollock’s paintings through the lens of Gestalt psychology, which is similar to Rudolf Arnheim’s (1904–2007) approach. Richard P. Taylor’s (2002) article “Order in Pollock’s Chaos” called forth computer analysis to identify the fractal patterns in Pollock’s paintings.

There have been arguments about the level to which Pollock was aware of Freudian and Jungian theories. William Rubin (1999, 235–

54) believed that Pollock was familiar with the works of both psy-chologists. However, Rubin wrote that Pollock’s understanding of psychology and his painting process was unique and intuitive, and it

is unlikely issued from reading Jung’s books. Additionally, Pollock’s painting process was direct and intense, which is similar to Zen art and Allan Kaprow (1999, 89) wrote in 1958 that investigation into the Zen element of Pollock’s personality would form an interesting study. Kaprow explained that Pollock was familiar with Asian art and with Buddhist teachings as well. Therefore, in this study, Asian views and Pollock’s techniques are studied together.

The art-historical literature on Dalí is, for the most part, biographi-cal and sociologibiographi-cal—not psychologibiographi-cal. Dawn Ades, Jennifer Mundy, Fleur Cowles, and James T. Soby are some of the authors who have written about Dalí. A friend of the artist, Isabelle Collin Dufresne, later to become famous as Ultra Violet, one of Andy Warhol’s “super-models,” said to moderator Dawn Ades (2005, 213) at “The Dalí Renaissance: An International Symposium” in 2005 that Dalí’s library contained quite a few of Jung’s works. Ades believed that it would be interesting to consider Dalí’s religious period in relation to Jung. Thus, it seems appropriate to interpret Dalí’s artwork in association with Jungian ideas, as I do in this study.

It is fascinating to consider that during the time when psychologi-cal theories of unconscious phenomena were being developed, artists were contemporaneously interpreting the unconscious in their work.

This study aims to discover how the artists in the three case studies approached or elicited the unconscious content. My focus is to under-stand how the artists themselves perceived the unconscious, as well as to consider their methods and painting processes in relation to it. Through this inquiry, it is possible to learn more about the role of the uncon-scious in artistic activity (Syrjälä and Numminen 1988, 15–19; Uusitalo 1995, 70–78). Additionally, I seek to expand knowledge of creative prac-tices that artists and art educators can employ to elicit the unconscious content. Attempts to clarify the role of the unconscious in the painting process are structured by the following three research questions.

First: How can interpretation of the artworks of Salvador Dalí and Jackson Pollock be enhanced through application of Freud’s and

Jung’s theories of the unconscious (see chapter 2)? Because Dalí, who worked representationally, and Pollock, who worked abstractly, are dis-tinctly different types of artists, perhaps, through study of them both, a more comprehensive understanding of the role of the unconscious in the artistic process can be attained and a greater variety of practices to elicit the unconscious during the art-making process can be discovered.

The second question asks: How can the theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Charles Peirce, in combination with greater under-standing of the painting methods of Dalí and Pollock, improve the author’s own painting process (see chapter 6)? In addition, psychoana-lyst and artist Marion Milner’s innovative approaches for reaching the unconscious inner mind were incorporated into the author’s art-mak-ing activity. Based on these theories and techniques, different methods were selected to stimulate the unconscious mind during the author’s painting process. This study interprets the differences between Dalí’s and Pollock’s methods for activating the unconscious. The author’s artistic production incorporated these diverse intuitive approaches.

The third question is: How can knowledge of the unconscious be deepened by interpreting the author’s painting process (see chapter 7)? A technique called the verbal protocol method was employed dur-ing a paintdur-ing session to reveal the author’s inner thoughts. In this method, the author, while engaged in the act of painting, speaks aloud the stream of consciousness that accompanies and guides the art-making activity. This thinking-aloud technique allows a person to cre-ate more solutions while struggling with emergent artistic problems.

Perhaps, among the spontaneous utterances made during the act of painting, it is possible to discover hidden stories or other information that illuminates the practitioner’s actions. The Artwork Interpretation Model was tested during the interpretation phase, and it was found that greater understanding could be attained through these verbal protocol narratives. Such narratives can reveal more about the paint-ing than the completed artwork alone can convey.