I know that you wanted to be added to the regular art ping list, but I thought I'd ping you here too in case you wanted to be added to this list as well.
And just in case anyone is just catching this series for the first time, the previous posts are:
class 7: American Modernism: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1440373/posts
class 6: Surrealism: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1427099/posts
class 5: Cubism: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1427099/posts
class 4: Expressionism: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1424087/posts
class 3: Cezanne and van Gogh; http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1419876/posts
class 2: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism; http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1414727/posts
class 1: Realism: Manet and Homer; http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1410117/posts
You have approached this from something of a historical perspective, citing Jung and other explorers of the "collective unconscious." To that extent, I AGREE with you -- but with a twist.
Most of these works are examples of the collective unconscious . . . but it's yours (and mine), not theirs. Human beings desperately want order, and reason, and explanation, and pattern. Otherwise we despair.
We see the random patterns or the minimal lines and we wish to impose order and explanation on them. Those who are in the field, so to speak, develop elaborate explanations to bring order out of chaos and meaning out of meaninglessness. But the artist is not creating the order or the explanation -- the viewer is. So if there's an artist here, it's the viewer or the professor, not the person who put the paint on the canvas. The closest analogy is perhaps Dr. Rorschach's ink blots -- where the blot is just a blot and the interpretation placed on it by the patient is indicative of his state of mind, not the state of mind of Dr. Rorschach . . .
I have heard art critics explain that this IS art . . . that the artist is providing a valuable service in giving the viewer something to exercise HIS interpretive talents on. But of course what that means in the final analysis is that the artist is NOT interpreting, explaining, or really creating art in any traditional sense. Therefore he is not doing his job.
I wonder if the high rate of tragic deaths and suicides among these painters had anything to do with the realization that their efforts were only a half a creature, so to speak?
I have only briefly checked one of your links, but it's enough to know your post is wonderful and is going absorb a lot of my reading today.
Thank you for thinking of us and keep me on that list of yours!
I don't know if you've ever read neurologist Oliver Sacks's book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, but the title story seems applicable here.
Sacks was called in to consult on a very learned professor of music whose wife was concerned about his having developed somewhat bizarre quirks. In conversing with the professor's wife, he commented on the professor's paintings which were displayed on the walls. The earlier paintings were representational, but became progressively more and more abstract, until finally the last ones were mere blobs and splashes of paint. The professor's wife responded to Sacks's guarded criticism of the later paintings with the same defense that is given of Pollock et al. . . . "Oh, you don't understand! He has freed himself from the trammels of representationalism and is expressing pure art!"
Unfortunately, the poor man was suffering from a tumor or degenerative process of the visual centers of his brain . . . he could no longer comprehend what he saw, even common household objects like a glove (or his wife's head). Fortunately, he was still a brilliant musician and music "integrated" his deficiencies and enabled him to function. Sacks had the wit to realize this and recommended that the professor live entirely for his music . . . which he did until he died.
Thank you for posting links to your previous classes. I've got them bookmarked now. I regard them as valuable reference summaries.
Haven't had a chance to read the post yet, but will comment when I do.
I think that everyone is very pleased at your sudden reappearance!
By all means ping me. And thanks.