Psychoanalytical Notes on Modern Art

The reaction to modern art is very like the reaction to psychoanalysis. Freud was surprised and angry at the general rejection of psychoanalysis, but he thought the hostility would gradually subside. Freud was as good a prophet as many, but he erred in this regard. The hostility toward psychoanalysis has, to say the least, not abated, nor the hostility toward modern art. Why, we ask ourselves, would people like to reject these two great forces of the twentieth century?

Both psychoanalysis and modern art stir the depths of the personality. But more than that, they tell us the dark truth about ourselves and the human situation in the chaotic twentieth century. Both psychoanalysis and modern art are also, down to the very core of their being, insistent. They are out to persuade. They have a program and their tone is revolutionary—or at least so it was in the beginning. As modern art has grown more and more aware of its cultural message, it has, like modern music, had to rely more and more on psychological interpretation. Like modern music, modern art—and their brother-in-arms, psychoanalysis—cry out for interpretation.

Desirable though it is, an attempt at a psychoanalytical interpretation of modern art has many strikes against it, first, because psychoanalysis itself has obviously failed to be generally accepted and, second and even more important, because it has also very obviously failed in all its attempts to interpret and explain any art, especially modern art. Freudian orthodoxy and its anal threat against art—its threat to reduce art to a libidinous act of defecation—not only has missed the point, but has rightly aroused disgust. We do not need to emphasize that, in our view, neither art nor what makes art—namely, creativity—has anything to do with excretion. But on what, then, can we hang our hats? From what point can we proceed in our discussion of modern art, which is, as we have said, so badly in need of interpretation? Naturally, we are hesitant about saying