Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst of the post-modern era, studied the science of the mind, and more specifically—the subconscious. He defined what we know today as the Id, ego and Superego and how we subconsciously influence our behavior and which of the three “mindsets” we’re in, constantly. His theories have influenced many people of the era, who began exploring and trying to understand their minds and reflect what goes on in them almost too realistically. For example, artist James Pollack’s works look like he randomly splashed paint upon the canvas with no real purpose. However, his “paintings” were really just his inner frustrations splashed on a canvas. He suffered from mental problems and used his art as a sort of “self-therapy”. In his “Guardian’s of the Secret”, he has a mess of green pastel and other colors that are sort of in a tangled jumble, almost like Pollack is expressing how he has so many “secrets” that are so ugly and tangled that the “guardian” is having difficulty holding them back. Freud also influenced Andy Warhol, who took ordinary artifacts and events and gave them new meaning, sort of like what our mind does. In his work, “Green Burning Car”, he repeats the same image of a burning car six times, so as to make the horrific image seem less impactful and ordinary. This is what our minds do. Sometimes when we see so much horror, like soldier’s do in war, it becomes to envelope not only our alert mind, but the subconscious as well, and as a result appears in our dreams. Freud wrote about how soldier’s who experienced such horrific images sometimes relived those moments in their minds as a source of almost comfort—it has become their reality and taken root in their subconscious mind. Warhol tried to reflect the horrific images of death and hell, to relate the reality of what we not only experience, but what we think about.
-Team Waka
Lillie Moffett, Lauren Wakabayashi, Sooji Hong, Nicole Lussier
No comments:
Post a Comment