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coming attractions (or not)
Mar. 9th, 2010 05:12 pmI have resisted actually posting any of my effusions for the past eight or ten days because I feel I should actually research some of the questions I usually list as "not having access to the information at four in the morning, I...."
Item: in terms of art and architecture, what did C. G. Jung know and when did he know it? I have written before that the dominant style of the Red Book seems to be a confluence of medieval illumination loosely interpreted and Swiss variations on Symbolist and Decadent painting and printmaking. Jung presumably was trained in calligraphy, and certainly knew or specifically learned enough about basic principles of architecture to construct a tower that wouldn't fall down on his head, for which he produced reasonably competent bits of stonecarving.
I was approaching all this via the technical bits of Michelle P. Brown's The Lindisfarne Gospels, about the sheer plod of the scribe mapping out the page dimensions and such before producing the marvels of text and illustration that show the influence of Coptic carpets and other aspects of the Christian ecumene of the day. Redolent of archetypes the Lindisfarne Gospels may be (or not, depending on your perspective), but they are also feats of artistic engineering.
To what extent is the Red Book likewise? I was pondering the nature of the meanders and examples of horror vacui in twentieth century folk and outsider art, cases in which prior technical training is not usually a factor (though exemplars rigorously copied sometimes are, just as with the exemplars from which the Lindisfarne scribes began to map out the parameters of a comparable book).
I started thinking about all this because the normal approach to anything remotely Jungian is to talk about the unconscious and its mysterious ways. Its ways are indeed mysterious (and I've written recently about looking forward to Eagleman's book updating the question), but discussions of the importance of defending against the self's defensive or inflational claims that "this is art!" are disingenuous. It may indeed be a spontaneously conceived fantasy, but the Red Book bears little resemblance to the average piece of drawing produced in the course of a session of therapy. And I have been pondering why.
But until I get round to looking at the less hagiographic biographies of Jung to see what he knew in the way of general education (where the knowledge and skills imparted were presumably quite impressive), I shall simply be blathering.
I also have some posts that will depend on honing my narrative skills if the tales are to be even remotely worth reading. I have been re-reading bits of The Solitudes to remind me of how it ought to be done, although I can't presume to do it a tenth as skillfully.
Item: in terms of art and architecture, what did C. G. Jung know and when did he know it? I have written before that the dominant style of the Red Book seems to be a confluence of medieval illumination loosely interpreted and Swiss variations on Symbolist and Decadent painting and printmaking. Jung presumably was trained in calligraphy, and certainly knew or specifically learned enough about basic principles of architecture to construct a tower that wouldn't fall down on his head, for which he produced reasonably competent bits of stonecarving.
I was approaching all this via the technical bits of Michelle P. Brown's The Lindisfarne Gospels, about the sheer plod of the scribe mapping out the page dimensions and such before producing the marvels of text and illustration that show the influence of Coptic carpets and other aspects of the Christian ecumene of the day. Redolent of archetypes the Lindisfarne Gospels may be (or not, depending on your perspective), but they are also feats of artistic engineering.
To what extent is the Red Book likewise? I was pondering the nature of the meanders and examples of horror vacui in twentieth century folk and outsider art, cases in which prior technical training is not usually a factor (though exemplars rigorously copied sometimes are, just as with the exemplars from which the Lindisfarne scribes began to map out the parameters of a comparable book).
I started thinking about all this because the normal approach to anything remotely Jungian is to talk about the unconscious and its mysterious ways. Its ways are indeed mysterious (and I've written recently about looking forward to Eagleman's book updating the question), but discussions of the importance of defending against the self's defensive or inflational claims that "this is art!" are disingenuous. It may indeed be a spontaneously conceived fantasy, but the Red Book bears little resemblance to the average piece of drawing produced in the course of a session of therapy. And I have been pondering why.
But until I get round to looking at the less hagiographic biographies of Jung to see what he knew in the way of general education (where the knowledge and skills imparted were presumably quite impressive), I shall simply be blathering.
I also have some posts that will depend on honing my narrative skills if the tales are to be even remotely worth reading. I have been re-reading bits of The Solitudes to remind me of how it ought to be done, although I can't presume to do it a tenth as skillfully.
