Vote of Thanks for Professor Gombrich's Ernest Jones Lecture

I would like to introduce my comments on Professor Gombrich's lecture by referring to a paper of his entitled 'Meditations on a Hobby Horse or the Roots of Artistic Form'.1 There he discusses, in terms of the hobby horse, the real nature of images, and the misunderstanding about them in theories of art. He insists that before they come to be looked upon as referring to something else they exist in their own right; in fact that substitution precedes portrayal and creation precedes communication. This contention forms the basis of his argument that art is not primarily communication but primarily creation. He goes on to make a link, on the one hand, with the dummy that biologists use in their experiments with animals, and, on the other, with the child's cuddly toy (which Dr. Winnicott2 has called the transitional object). Both these are substitutes; I find that Professor Gombrich's way of describing both the history of art and the history of civilization as the finding or creating of substitutes, sheds much light on psycho-analytic theories of art. In his lecture to-day he has made several references to the unmasking of symbols, but only implicit reference to the creating of symbols. It seems to me that a strong case could be made out (which Professor Gombrich almost made) for seeing the basic function of a work or art, not as communication (though it can serve as that), not as reparation (though it can stand for that), not as giving reassurance that there is a sphere in which conflict can be solved (though it does do that); but as having to do essentially with the very basis of our interest in anything beyond the primary objects of instincts. In fact, it not only uses symbols, it creates symbols. By means of its subtle fusion of form and content, feeling and idea, it reveals the familiar in the unfamiliar, and so brings about that extension and transference of interest which Ernest Jones describes as the basis of civilization.