Plcasso and the Unconscious

When we examine a painter's work psychoanalytically we attempt to reach an understanding of its significance. What does the painting mean? It is necessary to understand what is happening in a painting before there can be any question of how well it is done. The marks and colors on canvas have a symbolic significance in addition to their obvious meaning. To recognize symbols only where there is nothing else is to have far too small a vocabulary. Picasso is not more or less symbolic than other painters. The objects of a most emphatic realism are also symbols. The House Across the Railroad Track of Edward Hopper is the maternal 'house where I was born' which the artist will seek in later paintings; the railroad track is the dangerous father-symbol which cuts between the painter and the object of his desire. Because an artist expresses unconscious desires which change slowly, if at all, it is not surprising that once the symbolism has become clear, we find endless variations on a single theme. It is Picasso's distinction not to be more symbolic but to say more things, shifting his position as he follows his subject, so that his work becomes a psychic quest.

The various periods and phases through which Picasso passes, apparently random and disconnected, acquire a logical and inescapable sequence. Picasso progresses: he is engaged in constant exploration, in breaking new ground. He seeks to regain the source of his emotion and thus he moves backward toward his infancy, delving into the relationship of the child to the mother; this regression provides an escape from the feeling of guilt in the presence of the father; first in childhood and then in infancy he finds both the primal emotion and the means to express it without danger. If we admit that guilt limits expression, that the artist is engaged in seeking emotions guarded by incest taboos, we are given almost parenthetically