119. On the Relationship Between the Activity of the Unconscious and Artistic Creativity and Artistic Perception. Editorial introduction

Summary

Attention is drawn in the article to the wide recognition of the relationship existing between artistic creativity and unconscious mental activity. However, within the framework of idealistically oriented aesthetics this relationship is given an oversimplified interpretation - without genuine insight into the nature of the unconscious and, in the final analysis, pseudoscientifically.

An attempt is made to unravel the category of the artistic image as a distinctive form of a generalized reflection of reality - a generalization couched in a specific language that is not equivalent to the rational, formalized language of science. The peculiarity of this language is manifested in that "art does not require its works to be recognized as reality" (V. I. Lenin). At the same time - and it is in this that the irremovable dialectic perception lies - recognition of the fidelity of an artistic work as the basis of its aesthetic value is one of the major principles of the Marxist understanding of the theory of art.

Such treatment calls for a clear discrimination between the concepts of "truth of science" and "truth of art"; the psychological processes must also be accounted for, on the basis of which the artist arrives at a unique - and, as a rule, unformalizable - vision of the world embodied in the artistic images created by him. This problem is analyzed and the conclusion drawn that the process of artistic creativity is inseparably linked with unconscious mental activity, on the basis of which there emerges a knowledge that is unattainable through the accumulation of rational, logically argumented, verbalized and hence conscious experience alone.

In this connection, artistic creativity - as well as artistic perception - emerges as determined, primarily, by the activity of the unconscious, and - in this sense - rooted in the 'irrational'.

Creative activity often develops without the artist and spectator being aware of the motive forces of this activity, that is of the grounds for the solutions arrived at by the artist or of the artistic judgments made by the spectator. Yet these forces enable the artist to reflect in his works relations determined in such a sophisticated way as to elude grasping through other media. This makes for the basic strength of art, (its 'indispensability') accounting for its invariable presence in all human cultures.

The second part of the article deals with the role of the heterogeneity of the artist's unconscious psychological sets in the shaping of his aesthetic images; in this connection reference is made to the materials of a discussion at the symposia on the problem of the relationship between art and psychoanalysis held recently in France - (Entretiens sur L'art et la Psychanalyse. Paris, La Haye, 1968). It has been ascertained that the unconscious does not manifest itself directly in the artist's work but as a factor invariably involved in the 'supercomplex' system of conscious and unconscious psychological sets characterizing the artist's personality.

The article concludes with a discussion of the role of the activity of the unconscious in the aesthetic judgment of elementary spatial structures (ornament, colour mosaic, architecture of 'plotless' geometric forms, etc.); the papers comprising section VI are described in brief.

Литература

1. Бальзак, Об искусстве, M. -Л., 1941, с. 528.

2. Ленин В. И., Полн. собр. соч., т. 29, М., 1963, с. 53.

3. Леонтьева Э. В., Искусство и реальность, Л., 1972.

4. Фадеев А. А., За тридцать лет, М., 1957. с. 661.

5. Berlyne, D. G., Measures of Aesthetic Preference. In: Psychology and the visual arts. Fd.: James Hogg, London. 1970.

6. Entretiens sur L'art et la Psychanalyse. Sous la direction de A. Berge, A. Clancier. P. Bicoeur, L. H. Rubinstein, Paris, 1968.

7. Frоhlich, Aesthetic Paradoxes of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, BJA, 1966, vol. 6. № 1, p.p. 17-25.

8. Reed, H., The Forms of Things Unknown. Cleveland - N. Y.. 1960; The Redemption of the Robot, N. Y., 1966.