Artist, Artwork, and Audience: An Empirical Foundation for Psychoanalytic Aesthetics

The key premises of psychoanalytic aesthetics receive much support from diverse scientific inquiries. This includes experiments specifically designed to test hypotheses about creativity, pictorial symbolism, and viewer responsivity, as well as much empirical research conducted apart from art. The interaction among artist, artwork, and audience may be conceptualized as follows: Creativity is associated with distinct personality traits and psychodynamic processes; artists do express and represent private meanings, both unconscious and conscious, in the content and form of their art. Artistic intention does not fully constrain the interpretation of a work, as art incorporates both private and public systems of meaning. Different viewers will discern, distort, or project meanings into art, depending on cultural resonance, semantic knowledge, enduring traits, and temporary states. Psychoanalytic theory, proceeding in tandem with scientific investigation, has developed an increasingly solid foundation for legitimate and potent engagement with the

field of art history. Traditionally, psychoanalysis has been dismissed on the basis of two claims: It rests on dubious premises and it is riddled with conservative biases. Yet empiricism responsibly sorts fact from fiction and minimizes bias. Psychoanalysis, reframed accordingly, cannot be disqualified conscientiously from the field of art history.