A Painting as Mandala

A stunning element in Pollock’s painting is the dark hole. To me this opening in the middle of the canvas seems extremely fragile. Perhaps Pollock’s unconscious mind was trying to say that life is fragile or maybe even depressing. A composition can express the artist’s mental structure. If a painting has no balance and peculiar broken lines are all over the painting, this might be a sign that the unconscious is too powerful. However, according to Jungian archetypes, this centerpiece, or magic circle, in the middle could be an attempt at self-curing and healing (see Jung 1968, 199–201).

Jung (1959, 294) wrote that the protective circle, a mandala, is a traditional antidote for chaotic states of mind. Therefore, a person with a troubled or chaotic mind is fascinated by forms of a circular shape.

For such a painter, a mandala is a painting of the self—a self-portrait.

Earlier in his career Pollock was insulted by criticisms that his paint-ings were chaotic. Perhaps with this painting, Pollock decided to prove to his audience that he was able to paint less “chaotic” paintings. This could be a one explanation as to why Pollock created this painting.

However, there are additional meanings ascribed to mandalas, which might assist artists in comprehending this image. Mandalas are based on the squaring of the circle. The center is felt as the self.

The self in Indian expression is a combined soul. It is surrounded by everything that belongs to the personality. The self consists of the totality of the psyche including consciousness and both the personal and the collective unconscious (Jung 1980, 357; 1983, 237, 242). In unconscious images, it symbolizes a means of protecting the center of the personality from outside. A mandala is an expression of yourself and of the wholeness of your personality. It is a symbol of the self—a center and a road to one’s inner self. A mandala is a secret mes-sage on the state of the self. As concerns that which is harmonious within the individual and existence, it does not allow the possibility of cheating. Around 1918–20, Jung recognized the healing effects of mandalas. A mandala was used to generate self-healing in the indi-viduation process, which has a spiritual perspective, since a religious attitude is natural to a human being (Jung 1983, 20, 236–40; 2001, 213–19; 2009, 206).

In Western culture, the mandala was adapted by Jung as a way to bring consciousness into a concrete form that could be read. In this approach, the unconscious is thought to express itself in the formal patterns of a mandala. In a Jungian sense, individual mandalas are not based on any traditions but are a person’s free creations of fantasy.

Such a mandala can be a product of a dream or an active imagina-tion. There are different kinds of mandalas—circular, spherical, or egg-shaped formations, flowers, the sun and stars, crosses, spiral-egg-shaped snakes, castles, cities, courtyards, eyes, etc. (Jung 1980, 360–61). Jung described the beneficial and magic influence of pictures as follows:

When they look at them they feel that their unconscious is expressed.

The objective form works back on them and they become enchanted.

. . . The suggestive influence of the picture reacts on the psychological system of the patient and induces the same effect which he put into

the picture. That is the reason for idols, for the magic use of sacred images, of icons. They cast their magic into our system and put us right, . . . into them. . . . the icon will speak to you. Take a Lamaic mandala which has a Buddha in the center, or a Shiva, and . . . you can put yourself into it, it answers and comes into you. It has a magic effect (Jung 1968, 203).

A mandala is also used for ritual purposes, to aid concentration by narrowing down the psychic field of vision and restricting it to a cen-ter. In a mandala, three circles are usually painted black or dark blue;

these are meant to shut out the outside and hold the inside together.

Inside the circle are four basic colors, red, green, white, and yellow, and then comes the center as an object or goal of contemplation (Jung 1980, 355–56).

In this context, it is worth noting that a Pueblo Indian colored sand painting consists of a mandala with four gates. Also mandalas are the Navajo Indian sand paintings, which Pollock was familiar with. In the sand paintings, the center is a sweat-house for a patient to sweat-cure.

In the middle of the sweat-house is a painted magic circle contain-ing healcontain-ing water in a bowl. The water symbolizes the entrance to the underworld. The healing process imagery is clearly similar to the symbolism that is in the collective unconscious (Villasenor 1966, 5–8;

Jung 1980, 380).

The word mandala is an Indian term; it means “circle” in Sanskrit.

The mandalas are drawn in religious rituals. In the East, the mandala is found as the ground plan of the floors of temples and as images in the temples, or it is drawn for the day of certain religious festi-vals. Lamaic literature gives instructions on how a mandala has to be painted. In the center of a mandala is the God, or the symbol of divine energy, the meaning of which is protection of the center (Jung 1968, 200–201; 1980, 355–58).

Moreover, Jung (2009, 220) testified, “For at least thirteen years I kept quiet about the results of these methods in order to avoid any

suggestion. I wanted to assure myself that these things—mandalas especially—really are produced spontaneously and were not suggested to the patient by my own fantasy.”