Concrete insight: art, the unconscious and transformative spontaneity
DSpace at University of Victoria
View Archive Info| Field | Value | |
| Creator |
Nutting, Catherine M.
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| Date |
2007-08-30T18:54:13Z
2007-08-30T18:54:13Z 2007 2007-08-30T18:54:13Z |
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| Identifier |
http://hdl.handle.net/1828/214
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| Description |
My thesis draws connections among Herbert Read’s aesthetics, his anarchism, and Carl Jung’s aesthetic theory. I discuss Jung’s concept of individuation and its importance in his theory of the creative process of life. He distinguished between personalistic and archetypal art, and argued that the latter embodies primordial symbols that are inherently meaningful. Archetypal art, he believed, symbolizes unconscious knowledge, which can promote self-awareness and impact on society, if an individual is able to discern its relevance and integrate this into an ethical lifestyle. Jung emphasized the importance of rational discernment and ethical choices along with free creativity. I show how Read used these Jungian concepts to explain aspects of his aesthetic and political emphasis on freedom. According to Read, art creates reality and as such it is both personally transformative and socially activist: he believed that aesthetics are a mechanism of the natural world, and that art is a unique type of cognition that manifests new forms. Art communicates new versions of reality because perception is holistic, allowing people to perceive both the essence inherent in forms and the relationships among them. Further, I consider Read’s belief that cognition and society are both organic, and should be allowed to evolve naturally. Therefore, according to Read, society must be anarchist so that creative freedom and aesthetic consciousness can be adequately supported. Finally, I conclude by highlighting the pivotal role of creative freedom in Jung’s and Read’s theories of personal and social change. I illustrate that Jung and Read concurred that the unique individual is the site of transformation, living out the organically creative nature of life.
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| Language |
English
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| Rights |
Available to the World Wide Web
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| Subject |
Carl Jung
Herbert Read Jungian Aesthetics English Modernism Art Theory Anarchism Jungian Psychology Psychology Modern Art Theory Jungian Unconscious Creativity Spontaneity Transformation Art Education Pacifism Pacifist Anarchism Archetype David Thistlewood Paul Gibbard Herbert Read and Carl Jung Art and Psychology Psychology and Art Art Anarchism and Art UVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences |
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| Title |
Concrete insight: art, the unconscious and transformative spontaneity
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| Type |
Thesis
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| Contributor |
Antliff, Allan
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