Even though Freud conceded the futility of searching for the roots of talent and creativity, he provided two alternative models for studying the work of visual artists from a psychoanalytic perspective in his short studies, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (1910)” and “The Moses of Michelangelo (1914).”
The Leonardo essay, one of Freud's favorites, has been regularly dismissed by art historians and psychoanalysts alike on grounds ranging from scholarly errors to countertransference distortions. It nonetheless stands as an example of psychoanalytic biography establishing fundamental observations about the artist and his motivations. Too readily dismissed, it has tended to be read by analytic candidates only for its insights on narcissism and homosexuality; and by art historians as an example of a clinician out of his depth in the exalted world of scholarship and forced thereby to focus on the artist's pathology as explanation.
For decades, several notions have obstructed interdisciplinary work in psychoanalysis and the visual arts. The first- that psychoanalysts, and psychoanalytically oriented researchers, are primarily interested in the pathology behind the art— is implied by the label pathography, which Freud unfortunately attached to his Leonardo essay. Freud clearly described what he set out to accomplish in his essay: “using the data of a person's life history .. and the subject's reported reactions .. [the researcher] endeavors to establish a dynamic basis for his nature on the strength of his reactions and to disclose the original motive forces of his mind, as well as their later transformations and developments. If this is successful, the behavior of a personality in the course of his life is explained in terms of the combined operation of constitution and fate, of internal forces and external powers.”
Fortunately the misleading label, pathography, has now been abandoned by most writers in the field and the recent speculative efforts of analysts studying artists have been more broadly modeled after Freud's larger goal of “disclosing motive forces” of artists, especially as later theoretical developments unfolded in psychoanalysis.
The second common belief inhibiting clear thought in applied analysis was the idea that artists are fundamentally disturbed and that the primary motivation for creative work is pathology. This popular 18th- and 19th-century convention reached its apogee when the epileptic Vincent Van Gogh was labeled the prototypical mad artist first by critics and then by erstwhile friends like Gauguin. The link of madness to creative genius haunts the critical and applied analytic literature in the visual arts and unsurprisingly has resulted in more books and papers on Vincent by analysts than on any other artist.
Since the 50s, art historians and psychoanalysts alike in the United States have been discouraged from exploring the field by the erudite shafts of Meyer Schapiro, whose long essay attacking the Leonardo study (1956) was accepted as authoritative. An eloquent art historian and popular teacher at Columbia University,
Schapiro regularly discredited the psychoanalytic approach to art in his methodology class while at the same time incorporating some psychodynamic insights of his own into writings on Cezanne and Van Gogh.
Kurt Eissler's book-length response to Schapiro's work on Leonardo , contained a reasoned defense of applied analysis but did not overcome the resistance of analysts and art historians. Few American analysts attempted the psychological studies of artists after this, and those who did were generally dismissed by art historians.
Ernst Kris was the exception whose work was universally acceptable because his insights were backed by training and eminence in both art history and psychoanalysis. He had been part of the group of central European art historians, which included E. H. Gombrich, Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind, and Rudolf Wittkower, whose work was published by the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. These scholars, trained in the tradition of classical education, were responsible for the iconographic approach to art objects and laid the groundwork for psychological and specifically psychoanalytic investigations of visual art.
Greater receptivity to interdisciplinary work in American art history has been most recently evident in the publication of an increasing number of psychoanalytically oriented books and articles. The latter have appeared in such mainstream art history journals such Art Journal, Art Bulletin, Source: Notes in the History of Art, Art History, as well as in psychoanalytic journals such as American Imago, Psychoanalytic Review, and the series The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.
Psychoanalysts have become more careful about placing their interpretations and conclusions in an historical context by devoting time to scholarly research so that their psychological conclusions rest upon well-founded facts. Art historians have been attempting to stay on firm ground while avoiding the quicksand of wild analysis or rigid adherence to single explanations based upon conscious intentions or socio-historical events.
Various categories of interest are beginning to be discernible with Gilbert Rose (1980, The Power of Form, 1987, Trauma and Mastery in Life and Art) and John Gedo, (1983/1989, Portrait of the Artist) leading the way in theoretical books and articles. Most other efforts have taken the form of psychobiographical studies of a single artist, usually exploring iconographic and stylistic questions about work whose meaning has been enigmatic or insufficiently
explained. Some works examine entire stylistic developments, linking them to the artist's conflicts and defenses or character: Albert Lubin, (1972), Robert Liebert (1982), Jerome Oremland (1989), Mary Matthews Gedo (1980), Laurie Wilson (1980). Two important studies deal with other aspects of interdisciplinary focus: Jack Spector's (1972) The Aesthetics of Freud: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Art and Peter Gay's (1976) Art and Act. Additionally, several aestheticians have explored philosophical issues from a psychoanalytic perspective; Richard Wollheim , Richard Kuhns (1983), and Ellen Handler Spitz (1985). Art critic Donald Kuspit's (1988) Louise Bourgeois) introduces psychoanalytic sensibility and thought to the arena of contemporary art criticism.
In 1985, an annual symposium on art and psychoanalysis was begun at New York University in coordination with the first volume of Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art, an interdisciplinary publication edited by the art historian, Mary Matthews Gedo.
The symposia and publication include art historians and psychoanalysts sharing podium and page to encourage an exchange of ideas and comparison of methods. The three published volumes contain sections on aesthetics and art theory, self-portraiture, painting in nineteenth century France, Renaissance topics, proto surrealism and surrealism, the position of the artist in the modern world, and a book review section. The last includes lively rejoinders from both art historians and psychoanalysts.
The subjects of the symposia have included Surrealism: Its Uses and Abuses of Psychoanalysis; Picasso: The Psychology of a Minotaur: Methods and Insights; Van Gogh and Gauguin: Reality and Legend; Matisse: Sanity and Sensuality. Renaissance art and Psychoanalysis will be the topic for the 1991 symposium. In 1987, New York University also initiated the Kris Lectures to coincide with the APA midwinter meeting. Art historians, Robert Rosenblum and Leo Steinberg have spoken on Picasso and Michelangelo, and Donald Kuspit has lectured on Matisse.
In June 1989, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Sigmund Freud Center sponsored a four-day conference on Psychoanalysis and Visual Art. Papers included case studies on Gauguin, Seurat, Giacometti, Caravaggio, and Alberti, as well as theoretical presentations on Abstract Art and Emotional Experience and the Psychological Effect of Artistic Form.
The annual conferences of the national associations representing the two fields have been increasingly open to papers, panels, and seminars on visual art and psychoanalysis.
The midwinter meetings of the APA have long included occasional papers on artists. When the late Robert Liebert initiated a discussion group in 1980, he invited art historians and analysts and focused on his own particular interests: Michelangelo and Leonardo. The groups continued for several years, and after a brief hiatus, this effort was revived by John Gedo, who has cochaired with Mary M. Gedo the interdisciplinary seminars at the APA meetings in each of the last two years. The topics have included “Recent Discoveries on Gauguin,” “Problems of Confidentiality in Work with the Living Artist,” and “Van Gogh's Impersonations.” Kandinsky was the subject of the 1989 seminar.
In this year of celebrating the 50th anniversary of Freud's death, there have been numerous conferences around the country which have frequently included one or more papers on art and psychoanalysis. A book on Sigmund Freud's collection of antique art has recently been published in conjunction with a travelling exhibition of the major works from that collection Sigmund Freud and Art . In October, 1990, a conference will be held at the New School in New York on Image, Word, and Self: Recent Receptions of Freud on Both Sides of the Atlantic.
After a nearly total silence about the interdisciplinary focus lasting for decades, the College Art Association, the National Association of Artists and Art Historians, have, in each of the last three years, included one or more psychoanalytically oriented panels and papers. In the past five years, Columbia University has held symposia in honor of Raphael and Donatello and on each occasion Laurie Schneider, art historian and analyst, presented a psychobiographical paper. The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. held a one day conference on art and psychoanalysis in 1987.
Future subjects for this column will include art and mental illness, studies on creativity, and European scholarship.