Weird Studies/Jung on Art

11 Mar 2022 - 17 Jun 2023

Jung as "making the world safe for esotericism", that is, finding ways to talk about it which don't sound idiotic.

A pretty fair dissection of the differences between science and art: science looks for the general, art is always singular. That is pretty fair to science. I'm still of the opinion that one should not be afraid of reductionism.

Works of art as autonomous wholes. OK. To the extent that anything is an autonomous whole, why should an artwork not be one. Recalls Sloterdijk's description of Rilke's poem in You Must Change Your Life, which is about an artwork being not only agentic but godlike, commanding and demanding something from the viewer.

Fantasy – bringing about something from the past that has been lost (as opposed to SF's future orientation)

Jung as "modernomancer". Like necromancy is aimed at death (or death's power over us), Jung aims to defeat or tame modernity, using it against itself. "Use modernity to create a space of non-modernity". An unlawful techne. A modernomacner does not succumb to modernity or act as its priest (like Freud). Jung used modernity for awakening, not for traditional Enlightenment (rationality).

[on walk] on the nature of archetypes, the difference between art that "gleams" with this sort of higher power and more "artisanal" art that has (only) mundane purpose.

Art that is of the time and art that is from the depths, the latter is supposed to be superior. Not so sure, I remember Otto Piene at MIT emphasizing that he and his art was of a specific time and that was part of the point.

To work with the archetypes you have to treat them as entities (agents). As Jung calls it "an autonomous complex". A luminous parasite that takes over the artist. Kind of Lovecraftian.

Conversation eventually found its way to Wagner and his idea of a Gesamkunstwerk,
but detoured with a discussion of auteur theory, which seemed off. Movies are gesamkunstwerk because of the overwhelmingness of the medium, not because of the control of a single auteur. (note: what the hell do I know compared to the actual artists discussing this)
, and the relations between Wagner's work and his virulent anti-semitism. PF is a Wagnerite but of course appalled and embarassed by Wagner's politics, which is fine (in fact my mother, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, was a huge Wagner fan). He complains that the "reduction" of Wagner's art to politics is crass.

I really did not like this. It seems absurd to think that someone with such strong and emotional opinions about Jews would keep those feelings separate from his work. How is that even possible? Maybe if you really think of the artwork as an independent being conjured out of "the imaginal", then it doesn't inherit the emotions or moral failings of the author?

Or is this just a variant of the constant tedious arguments about who or what deserves to be canceled. In that case I'm probably on the same side as the hosts, I'm happy to let people view and admire the artworks of horrible human beings. But you still have to acknowledge the horrible aspects, that's definitely a necessary part of the reception of an artwork.

The imaginal is a force like the Alps, part of reality, and thus real art is not mere culture (human) but also a tapping-into of these cosmic forces.

The artwork will make use of the nasty parts of the human as well as the good. t's not so much that the artwork is noble while the creator is vile; it's that the artwork points to a realm outside the moral. outside the historical. You can't say no to art because of its moral content.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it. — D H Lawrence, quoted in The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote | by Simon Leys | The New York Review of Books

Grump grump another person who thinks explaining something is to diminish it. This attitude is extremely common, especially in the WS-sphere but it drives me nuts.

Some stuff about how a work of art transcends the mere psychological and physical processes of the author. I find that ho-hum, but then:

But a work of art is not transmitted or derived - it is a creative reorganization of those very conditions to which a causalistic psychology must always reduce it. The plant is not a mere product of the soil; it is a living, self-contained process which in essence has nothing to do with the character of the soil. In the same way, the meaning and individual quality of a work of art inhere within it and not in its extrinsic determinants. One might almost describe it as a living being that uses man only as a nutrient medium, employing his capacities according to its own laws and shaping itself to the fulfilment of its own creative purpose. (emph added)

They come as it were fully arrayed into the world, as Pallas Athene sprang from the head of Zeus. These works positively force themselves upon the author; his hand is seized, his pen writes things that his mind contemplates with amazement. ... He can only obey the apparently alien impulse within him and follow where it leads, sensing that his work is greater than himself, and wields a power which is not his and which he cannot command. Here the artist is not identical with the process of creation; he is aware that he subordinate to his work or stands outside it, as though he were - a second person; or as though a person other than himself had fallen within the magic circle of an alien will.

We would do well, therefore, to think of the creative process as a living thing implanted in the human psyche. In the language of analytical psychology this living thing is an autonomous complex. It is a split-off portion of the psyche, which leads a life of its own outside the hierarchy of consciousness. Depending on its energy charge, it may appear either as a mere disturbance of conscious activities or as a supraordinate authority which can harness the ego to its purpose

Part 2