Abstract
Any creative expression in its most general meaning adheres both to illusion and to reality. The recurrent controversy about the place of realism in art is a sign of the existing confusion about the fundamental criterion of a general theory of art, since both the process of illusion and the attempt at exact representation of the idea of nature are indispensable components of any creative act. The artificial separation is usually supported by those who follow the traditional aesthetic notion that art is primarily invention and not a faithful perceptual and conceptual representation of reality.
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References
Gilson, E. Painting and Reality. Bollingen Series XXXV, 1957, Chapter 8.
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There is no need to emphasize that a great deal of modern and particularly abstract “art” is ofthat kind of pretentious falsification of someone else’s idea of reality. The crowding multitude of these pseudo-artists offer a deceitful imitation where the stolen expressive form covers an uninventive, empty mind hopelessly devoid of imagination. Such pseudo-artists are displaying a banal reproduction of a symbol lacking in meaning because it did not originate in creative labour. Their trivial uncreative imitation may unfortunately remain undetected since the only criterion of arbitration about such fraudulence is the pseudo-artists’ private realization of the presence or absence of a state of mind determining their expression.
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This term resembles in some way Gombrich’s “neutral naturalism” yet it does not fully fit interpretation. This and related arguments are ably discussed by R. Wohlheim in “Art and Illusion,” The Brit. Jour, of Aesthetics, Vol. 3, 1963, pp. 15-38.
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Writings of Freud mainly concerned with art: Leonardo da Vinci, The Moses of Michelangelo, A Mythological Parallel to a Visual Obsession, The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming, The Antithetical Sense of Primal words, The Theme of the Three Caskets, The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales, Some Character-Types met with in Psychoanalytic Work, A Childhood Recollection from Goethes Dichtung und Wahrheit, The Uncanny, Dostoevsky and Parricide, Totem and Taboo, Civilization and Its Discontent. Most of this material is collected in S. Freud. On Creativity and the Unconscious. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958.
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Generally speaking there is no exception to the fact that in order for a mental act to be truly creative it should be accompanied by cognitive as well as emotional organization. A pre-cognitive mental function, lacking the control of conscious process, it not creative because its expressiveness is accidental. And similarly an emotion left without the control of cognitive functions, can generate an expression of genuine feeling, but lacks the quality of a creative act. So that the duality of cognitively mastered emotions is a basic condition in which intentionality results in the act of creation. Such a duality of functions, and a basic prerequisite for creation, has been illustrated in the discussion about the function of the comic.
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Some variables of this kind are subjects of experimental investigation such as for example the perfect pitch or varied intensity of synesthesia.
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Ayer, A.J. Language, Truth and Logic, New York: Dover Public, 1954, pp. 170–71.
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Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 460-487.
Cf. Michaud, G. Op. cit., pp. 23-55.
Some similarity with Winkler, W. Psychologie der modernen Kunst. Tübingen, Alma Mater Verl., 1949.
Cf. Kutch, E. Musikpsychologie. Berlin: M. Hesse, 1931; Cf. Moos, P. Die Philosophie der Musik. Stuttgart, 1922.
Cf. Gleizes, A. and Metzinger, J. Du Cubisme. Paris: E. Figuière, 1912; Sabartes, J. Picasso. London: W. H. Allen, 1949; Schneider, D. The Psychoanalyst and the Artist. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Go., 1950; Zervos, G. Pablo Picasso. Paris: Edition Cahiers d’Art, 2 vol., 1942.
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Cf. Hartmann, H. and Kris, E. “The Genetic approach in Child Psychoanalysis,” in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. New York, I., 1945, pp. 11–30.
Cf. Bartlett, F. G. “Types of Imagination.” Journal of Philosophical Studies, II, 1928, pp. 78–85.
Many assume that the childhood period is one of a deep and genuine poetical experience. Two critical assumptions may be made here. First, the quality of mental state classified as poetical results from a conscious confrontation of the categorical reality with an expanded image of it, which is an act of symbolization—and such a complex mental quality is not likely to materialize during childhood. Secondly, the adult mind infers the poetic quality of things and events from its own mature contemplative disposition, assuming that the same state of mind has existed in his early childhood. Although it is undeniable that early fantasy and early imagination are prevalent constituents of the child’s reality, it is dubious whether a child’s mind can appreciate them either in their separation or in their union in a symbolic act. The idea that a child has a poetical view of life is a mistaken inference arising on the one hand from the memory of uniquely fresh and genuine experiences, and on the other hand from the experience in maturity of the absence of emotional immediacy once strongly felt—a combination which is in retrospect viewed as a poetical experience which disappeared forever with our childhood. This notion is grossly sentimental, since it exaggerates the early cognitive and emotional experiences, and minimizes the quality of the highly complex integrative processes of conscious organization, entirely neglecting the fact that only these, the secondary ones, are imaginative in the true sense of the word, and creative in the real sense of a unique expressive act.
Cf. Alschuler, B., and Weiss, E. Painting and Personality: A Study of Young Children, Chicago, 1947.
Cf. Kate, G. “Memory viewed as Imagination,” Jour, of Gener. Psychol.,XVII, 1937, pp. 113–24.
Cf. Freud, S. The Unconscious, pp. 230-32.
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© 1968 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Havelka, J. (1968). The Theory of Modes I: The Structure of Creative Intention and its Relation to Various Aspects of Mental Economy. In: The Nature of the Creative Process in Art. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9512-6_9
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