By Samuel Abelow
Edited by Johannes Böckmann
Photograph of S.A. in the studio with works in progress, including a metamorphosis of the Pygmalion theme. United States, Winter 2021.
Introduction & Art Historical Foundation
Opening Question and Statement
Why is there so much nudity in art?
Art is a phenomenon that is very difficult to describe. It’s beyond mere creative undertakings and involves a sort of response and catalyst towards the transformation of society (see previous articles: Mapping ORIGINS IV and V). Art motivates the modern personality[1], stimulating a process of re-incorporating the feminine.
In fact, art is the main way by which society expresses and encounters it’s own feminine side and nature. This, in primitive cultures, is as a direct expression of the maternal unconscious[2]. And, in so-called “modern” culture is a compensation for a lack against nature. The woman’s tendency[3] is to value being, life itself, as an aesthetic, mysterious, and social existence. This description, when compared to men’s tendency to adhere to goal-orientated intellectually rigid, structural pursuits, is a clue towards understanding the forces which drive art production, viewing and collecting.
Again: Art, especially painting, has always been an expression of the feminine side of personality which is synonymous with the unconscious, for both men and women[4]. In primitive man, the imagery and colors stem directly from the unconscious and maternal level and thus draw from the instinctual which developed early in human ontogenesis and therefore has an affinity with animals, sensual deities, fertility figures and natural pigments.
Especially in (so-called) civilized, modern man, the expression of the feminine has to be an attempt to recognize a value that has been lost in the process of masculinized civilization. The development of civilization causes a disregard for feminine values, pushing those contents into the unconscious. Art searches these depths, oftentimes personifies all that is feminine in the form of woman, with an instinctive need to re-discover what is trapped in her seductiveness, grandeur or fatal effects on man. The vitality of the feminine, which masculinized culture diminishes, is drawn out by the compulsions and longings of the artist for beautiful and truthful art. In this situation, the artist functions as a mediator between the collective shadow and lost soul (the feminine — i.e. the shadow feminine!) and civilized society.
In Western art, a progression whereby the desires and passions of the body, connection to nature, and aesthetic ideas, push back against the status quo and gradually bring forth increased perception of what the dynamism is behind all loves, beauties and delights — fashionable, social or natural — is instinctively carried out by artist-heroes.
Masculine and feminine sides of Person, Persona and Personhood — the totality of Personality — play out their societal dynamic in art continually. The masculine emphasizes structural pursuits, tends to be intellectually rigid and goal-orientated (heroic “Becoming”). While the feminine side emphasizes the mysteries of dreams, romance, fashionability, beautification, as well as play (“Being”). Art is an attempt to reconcile the feminine with an over-dominant masculine. This process is marked by confusion, difficulty and immensely powerful individual contributions.
Introduction
In this series of essays, standout moments in the history of European art and culture will be brought to the forefront with analysis and commentary. All of this is in the hopes of a culminating sense, a broader and clearer understanding of the collective processes at the core of the nude in art.
This should generate provocative inquiries into the aesthetic value of nude painting, especially that which tends towards pornography and licentiousness. While momentarily out of vogue — during the Covid pandemic — it is still only on the cusp of becoming cliché in our times. The overarching history of how this might come to pass — the nude painting finally being ‘tired out’, retired, or made irrelevant — can only be understood by going back to its origins.
Preliminary drawing; a study for the Pygmalion metamorphosis.
By reviewing cultural history with careful analysis, the tensions between the animal drives and human consciousness will come into view. Unresolved tensions between vitality & bodily needs on the one hand, and morality & structure on the other — that is, the animal and human — are the impetus behind art. Contemporary trends, when seen in context, may take on clarified meaning. It may be about time to do something new rather than just repeating the stereotype of the artist-hero of the past. Artists can now overcome making art from tension and instead take the opportunity to make art from a point of clarified wholeness — which would be consistent with a society that has integrated its history.
Throughout this series of essays, it will be argued that promiscuity, including sex work and hookup culture, is more often detrimental than beneficial on a psychological and spiritual level to both men & women.
Art Talk
Art isn’t just about canvases and labeling movements — even though that’s what people like to do; it is really about a tension in the personality, interpersonally and in society at large that seeks expression and can be analyzed fruitfully.
When speaking about “art”, there is a wide and open field of disparate material — thousands, if not millions of canvases, labyrinths of various movements and “important” figures, which call for attention, each pertaining to their own ideology, each to their own narrative. Despite the fact that Grand Narratives went out of style in the academy decades ago, there is a resurgence of interest in the psychology of C.G. Jung, which emphasizes exactly that.
Art expresses the basic dichotomy of human nature — the animal and the spirit. The animal is lesser than the child, and close to the uroboric mother; the spirit is connected to the sage, and surpasses the archetypal father (culture). One without the other causes a lacking, a deprivation of either vitality (the animal-child) or of reason-conscience (the sage-culture) [see Mapping ORIGINS I].
So, with that approach in mind — condensing the past in the hopes of a summarized meaning -- there can be a comprehensive understanding which generates and sparks new ideas from a vast history. That is, history as it seems to be.
Last words of introduction
This series of essays will utilize the psychological model of C.G. Jung, while making unique contributions regarding the scope of history, religion and art. The below quote is a guiding post for the entire series.
“The erotic instinct is something questionable, and will always be so whatever a future set of laws may have to say on the matter. It belongs, on the one hand, to the original animal nature of man, which will exist as long as man has an animal body. On the other hand, it is connected with the highest forms of the spirit. But it blooms only when the spirit and instinct are in true harmony. If one or the other aspect is missing, then an injury occurs, or at least there is a one-sided lack of balance which easily slips into the pathological. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.” [5]
[5] Quote attributed to Carl Jung, in The Psychology of the Unconscious
As this series progresses, an overview of human creativity, with special emphasis on the nude, will be completed. This will help clarify our present relationship to the animal instincts and civilized spirituality, which are ever-much in need of harmony.
Footnotes
1: Personality how people act, how they think and what makes them, them.
2: In the model of analytical psychology, the school of C.G. Jung, the realm of instincts are defined as “maternal”. The experience of the mother as the most basic and essential of all relationships influences the images which regulate and define the animal side of man.
3: Women will typically align their identity with the feminine aspects of personality and persona, in conjunction with men, and culture.
4: Consciousness itself, which emerges from the unconscious, is characterized by solar-masculine symbolism in both women and men, archetypally speaking. While, generally speaking, the woman’s consciousness retains a lunar-feminine quality, and therefore has a more natural relationship to the unconscious. Man’s solar ego (masculine consciousness) tends to be in greater tension with the unconscious, which is why his development is much more difficult.