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On its publication in 1952, Ernst Kris's Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art was universally seen as having opened new territory in the study of art, moving beyond formulaic psychobiographical studies of artists to study form, style, artistic invention, and the communicative aspect of art. Most early reviews were adulatory, including the astute, acerbic review by David Rapaport (1954).
Some of the book's fourteen essays had been written and published in the thirties and grew out of Freud's conviction of the usefulness of applying analytic attitudes and insights to the phenomena of culture. Kris was convinced, in addition, that psychoanalysis had something to learn from art, artists, and the study of creativity. He added, though, that his book was not a systematic presentation of the psychoanalytic psychology of art—the time had not yet come for such a volume. Despite the vast range of his observations he leaves room for—and indeed he repeatedly invites—further exploration of the subject.
Though Kris's book is still considered an interdisciplinary classic, it is not a book for the layperson, and that unfortunately may include the average art historian. Too much knowledge and unconflicted familiarity with psychoanalytic observations is assumed. But it is a book without peer, then or now, with regard to art and psychoanalysis. Its numerous flashes of brilliant hypothesizing are based on a combination of clinical work and scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. The book is never simple, and its author never sacrifices the complexity of his subject for a less nuanced idea or set of hypotheses. Unfortunately, the writing is sometimes thick with a variety of observations which, though cogent, distract the reader from the main points. But Kris's scholarly gifts and exceptional ability to attend to details and find their deeper meanings more than make up for this flaw. The master of each subject he tackles, he generously cites