Post Modern Synthesis

Sigmund Freud was one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century because he painted the raw emotions he believed were concealed within the human subconscious. Surrounded by the aftermath of World War One, he went on to create psychoanalytical works of his time period. Freud created the idea of the brain having three personality compartments: the id, ego and super ego. Id is the personality compartment that reacts purely based on instinct. Ego is the personality compartment that’s conscious and aware of society’s expectations and surrounding. Super ego is the personality compartment that contains one’s morals. Jackson Pollack then took the foundation that Freud created into the post modern era. Pollack dealt with alcoholism most of his life and he understood a struggle. He invented a movement that became known as abstract impressionism. To most it looked like a combination of splattered paint, but his drip style conveyed the underlying misunderstanding and difference perspectives many situations have. Pollack was a materialistic man that condoned a lavish lifestyle. He was wealthy most of his life and directed his wealth to his art. Wealth and struggles led to his demise. Pollack died in a alcohol related car accident at the age of forty four. Andy Warhol, also influenced by Sigmund Freud, was a controversial artist channeled his observations about society into his art. Warhol created a type of art called pop art. This art was based on how Warhol perceived emotions and day to day pictures, often in repetition. This was controversial because the way his art conveyed society’s expectations and acceptances of one another wasn’t always popular. These three artists: Sigmund Freud, Jackson Pollack, and Andy Warhol all believed in the multiple personalities of society and how the cognitively analytical stand point can influence art. Each artist believed in the idea that Freud created: the brain has three personality compartments: the id, ego and super ego. Amber Austin Dylan Mulcahy Jenny Zhan James Jin Caleb Ong

Wylie Period 1 Team 5

Art, in its purest form, is primitive expression. Sigmund Freud believed that art, in its purest form, is expression of the subconscious, and of the three categories of human thought: id, ego, and super-ego. Freud's theory helped shed light upon the mysterious territory that is the mind. His impact reached famous painters such as Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. Warhol painted well known figures such as Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. His paintings often depicted fame and wealth, two lusts for which the Id category of the human mind longs for. The use of bright colors allowed Warhol to recreate familiar faces while creating true art, and this is how he was able to add his own meaning to his work. Jackson Pollock's paintings utilized a technique that did not depict familiar images. Rather, his work yielded scrambles of color and curvy streaks of paint. The paintings are of impulsive expression, showing the inner machinations of this artist's mind and visually replicating his subconscious. Freud's influence over these two artists is massive, and allowed them to effectively express themselves. 

Teem Destinee

Evelyn Ashleigh, Nick Hudson, Anne Kitchens, Bennett Kopperud 

Postmodern Era Synthesis Question #2 ash.p3.t8

Victoria Carlos

Taci Chin Robinson

Grace Giberson

Joshua Roquemore

Katie Whitworth

Period 3

Team 8

Postmodern Era Synthesis Question #2

Just as Freud influences the writings of James Joyce, Freud influenced the paintings of Pollock and Warhol. Why were these artists so profoundly influenced by Freud, and how did it affect their meaning/message?

         Postmodern art emerged as a contradiction to that of the recent-past, with artists such as Pollock and Warhol emerging as successful artists during their lifetimes. Postmodern art delves into the unconscious mind’s operation. Where modern artworks, such as Picasso, stuck to a certain structures, like cubism, to portray a social ideology. The modern artworks strived to reach a more personal and internal message.

         Freud introduced the idea of the Id, Ego, and Superego as the three components of the mind, which compose the human personality. The Id is the ever-present personality that is entirely unconscious responding only to primitive stimulus; the Ego is the shared personality and the conscious perception of the world, and the superego which contains morals.

         Warhol was a famed pop, popular culture, artist; he often used everyday images as well as repetition in his artwork. His work could be thought of trying to reflect the ego, in the way it takes images and mutes their importance to protect the Id and Superego. Warhol who survived an attempted murder said, “The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything”.

         Pollock was an artist of another movement called abstract expressionism, a movement from easel painting, to raw canvas floor painting with a mixture of techniques and mediums. Abstract expressionism was a highly personal and spontaneous form of art that in Pollock’s work can be seen by the marks of rapid movements.

         What Freud, Warhol, and Pollock have in common are their works being centered on and displaying aspects of human personality.  

Wyl.P6.T4 Post-Modern Synthesis

Sigmund Freud was considered a great neurological researcher of his time, especially due to his work on the unconscious aspects of the brain. However, he influenced not only other psychiatrists, but also future artists from the Post-Modern era. Freud’s beliefs were instrumental in the development of artistic works by Andy Warhol and Reginald Pollack. Freud was a firm believer that true art utilized the unconscious for its creation. This belief was expressed by Andy Warhol because he attempted to use the unconscious in his pop art. For example, in the famous painting titled, Campbell’s Soup, he paints a simple object exactly as it would be seen in real life. Yet this simplicity helps to express the simplicity of human nature. Humans are constantly suppressing the urge to feed and indulge themselves. Warhol uses Freud’s philosophy to help mimic ordinary values; humans must eat like all other animals. Freud also helped influence Reginald Pollack because Pollack enjoyed creating works based on deep metaphorical themes that every man theoretically harbors in the unconscious. For example, in his painting, Peace March, Pollack suggests that, while outwardly men may appear to desire conflict and combat, they actually only seek peace. Pollack served in World War II and encountered many of the traumatic experiences Freud sought to understand. Art would have provided a coping method for Pollack’s troubled unconscious. In the end, Freud helped Warhol and Pollack to better share their unconscious with the world and influence the unconscious of others. Works Cited "Artsz.org." Freud and Art. 10 Oct. 2009. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. . "Reginald Pollack." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Apr. 2012. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. . "The Warhol:." The Warhol. 2012. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. . Team 4: Cody Dunn, Stephen Hwang, Carlton Lew, Tyler Wong, Rin Sone

Wylie. Period 5. Team 5. Post-Modern Synthesis Question

Lorena Huang Liu

Diana Huang

Rachel Yeo

Sigmund Freud proposed the idea that the human mind can be categorized into three different places: Id, super-ego, and ego. According to him, the id is the impulsive part of the mind that only worries about “pleasure” without worrying about much else, such as the consequences that these actions might arise. The super-ego is the moral part of the mind, it always chooses the situation in which the individual does the right thing, despite any other circumstances. Finally, the ego is an attempted balance between the id and the super-ego. This last one, the ego, is according to Freud the type of psyche present in most of the minds of the people around the world. However, there are always some exceptions which make human’s judgment very extreme and not practical. Both id and super-ego are extremely impractical. The hedonistic approach of an id psyche means that this person will only be acting for a self-interest that looks for pleasure and for fun. For obvious reasons, this would end up in failure. At the same time, the super-ego approach is not plausible. In John Gardner’s novel Grendel, there is a certain soldier that lives by super-ego. He follows Grendel in an attempt to be a hero and destroy him, but since he cannot, he is tortured by the fact that he is not killed. Grendel spares this man’s life on purpose to mock him, because he knows that the warrior would rather die fighting than live as a coward. Artists and authors have been profoundly influenced by Freud because the id, ego, and super-ego theory analyzes the way that characters make decisions and develops their particularities. Due to this theory, readers are better able to understand the rationalizations of the characters in a particular work.

Postmodern Era Synthesis Ash.P4.T5

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, greatly influenced postmodern artists, Pollack and Warhol. Freud believed that truth is elicited through reason, and that reason itself “elevates humanity far above other creatures.” Religion is not compatible with Freud’s scientific and logical reasoning; he wrote a book that referencing to spirituality, named The Future of an Illusion. He developed a theory that people acted out of unconscious, innate instincts that could not be escaped. These irrational actions are often based in the concept of sexuality.
However, in the postmodern era, reality was seen as subjective. An individual’s perception of reality differed from others’ due to different experiences, exposures, opinions, etc. As a reaction to the modern era, people strayed from the logical and scientific mindset - similar to Freud’s - to one that was more illogically inclined, focusing more on the differing perspectives that society presented its many issues with.
Andy Warhol, an American-born artist of the postmodern era, was an integral leader in the pop art movement. His block print paintings revealed how profoundly Freud had influenced his art: as a direct reaction to Freud’s theories of reason and science, Warhol diverges into the zeitgeist of the postmodern era by forcing onlookers to observe an artistic idea with many perspectives, as contrasting colors change from block to block across the painting. Warhol’s paintings that repeated images but altered the colors portrayed messages of how the importance lies on ideas and personal perception, rather than the objective observation of the recognizable and repeated subject of the painting. In a way, the repetition of such images draws the attention away from the image, and brings it to the use of colors and how that evokes emotion and a deeper understanding - one that is personal and specific to each person.
In addition to Warhol, Jackson Pollock, an influential leader of abstract painting in the postmodern era, revealed the shift of sensibility from Freud’s age. Pollock used a range of darker colors in his most famous drip paintings. The mood created by the cool colors and formless layers of paint “dripped” onto the canvas reveals the kind of undefined and nonuniform state of mind and the intertwining personal perceptions of ideas that all come from one “reality” that is presented on the canvas of life. Such abstract portrayals of the shift from organized reasoning stand in stark contrast to the modern era ideals, creating a message of the newfound intricacies of personal interpretation of the relative reality of individuals.

post-modern synthesis Wyl.p5.t3

Sigmund’s Freud’s influence in the humanities extended to the paintings of Pollack and Warhol. Developer of ID, ego and superego, Freud’s research and monumental conclusions of the human mind were critical to the understanding of Pollack’s drip painting and irrational life style as well as Warhol’s infatuation with Hollywood.  Freud’s development of psychoanalysis gave new understanding of the unconscious mind and how one project the feelings of gratification and irrationally driven behaviors. Much of Pollack’s drip paintings and his abstract art was a representation of his bottle up mind filled with anxiety during the times of Modernism. Much of his need for instant gratification was assuaged by alcohol, which gradually led to his addiction. Pollack’s decision to undergo psychotherapy to mediate his needs, show that he acknowledged an unfathomable connection to his unconscious mind and how he portrayed that to art. Andy Warhol was influenced greatly by the hype of celebrities and Hollywood. His highly recognized painting of Marilyn Monroe embodies both his obsession with glam and riches of fame but also his own interpretation of Hollywood through the use of various color schemes and hues. He brought attention to everyday items like the Campbell soup cans and added his own twist and interpretation about them through his use of vibrant colors. Warhol, through his obsession, could seem like an artist simply swept up in his time of fads, but Freud’s research on the subconscious mind shows his overarching influence in Warhol’s depiction’s of his own world. 


Paulina Alvarez, Emily Teraoka, Angela Oh, Karen Cao