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My first thesis involves two opposing principles, which are a permanent condition of artistic creation and have a bearing on every artistic experience.
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Although art is fundamentally everywhere and always the same, nevertheless two main human inclinations, diametrically opposed to each other, appear in its many and varied expressions. One aims at the direct creation of universal beauty, the other at the aesthetic expression of oneself, in other words, of that which one thinks and experiences. The first aims at representing reality objectively, the second subjectively.
For the artist the search for a unified expression through the balance of two opposites has been, and always will be, a continual struggle.
In his silk-screen series Jazz, Matisse describes a "technical" solution of this kind in an accompanying remark titled "Mes courbes ne sont pas folles": The vertical is in my mind, it helps me give my lines precise direction, and even in my hastily sketched drawings, not a single line, as for instance a branch in a landscape, emerges without a consciousness of the relationship to the vertical.-My curves are not mad.6
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Another approach to the two principles is conveyed by the Apollonian/ Dionysian dichotomy. This pair of terms introduced by Schelling refers to the lucid, conscious will directed towards form and order that characterizes the essence of the god Apollo in contrast to the frenzied, unconscious and unclear, creative impulse embodied by Dionysus. In man we find by nature a blind, unrestrained, productive impulse, which stands opposed to a level-headed, restrained [...] and therefore actually negating impulse in the same subject. [...] To be both intoxicated and sober not at different moments but at one and the same time, this is the secret of true poetry.7
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What underlies this universal structure of artistic creation? Nietzsche describes the two principles as drives, Schelling as forces or impulses, and Mondrian as human inclinations. But the three authors obviously agree on their significance as elemental, constitutionally conditioned opposites of all human endeavor. The call for their union thus transcends the framework of artistic production and applies to human behavior in general.
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The concept of the "psychic apparatus"9 developed by Freud in the thirties comprises three psychic instances with distinct functions: The power of the id expresses the true purpose of the individual organism's life. This consists in the satisfaction of its innate needs. No such purpose as that of keeping itself alive or of protecting itself from dangers by means of anxiety can be attributed to the id. This is the task of the ego, whose business is also to discover the most favorable and least perilous method of obtaining satisfaction, taking the external world into account. The superego may bring fresh needs to the fore, but its main function remains the limitation of satisfactions.10
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At first sight, it seems obvious that the power of the id lies in the inclination towards the expression of oneself, in the by nature [...] blind, unrestrained productive impulse of the Dionysian, and that the inclination towards the creation of universal beauty, the Apollonian principle of a level-headed, restrained [...] and therefore actually negating impulse is the expression of the superego. However, on their own, neither the id nor the superego are capable of any expression at all. Only through the ego can the impulses of the id or the demands of the superego be expressed and formed; the latter are never "pure" or unadulterated but always appear in connection and competition with the attendant claims and demands of the ego.
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The infant's first experiences of life do not distinguish between the inner and outer world, between the ego and the non-ego, but only between the sensations of pleasure or "un"-pleasure. The mother (or other parent person), whose caring intervention eases the tension of the infant's needs, is not experienced as a separate, self-contained being but rather blends with the infant's "mono-reality." For the infant, the essential and exclusive contents of reality consist of the repetitive experience of its needs being gratified "as if by themselves." These experiences form the basis of the archaic feeling of omnipotence which becomes one of the first constituents of its psyche.11
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Only gradually does the infant learn to associate the fluctuations in its sensation of well-being with the arrival of its mother and to experience her as something separate from itself. She then becomes a larger than life, omnipotent figure. However, child and mother are not always clearly separate and distinct; the infant's self-perception alternates between the two poles of this symbiotic dual unity. The child may "represent" this unity by following the example of the mother and trying to experience itself as a unified whole. The mother then becomes part of itself and in its fantasy, the infant adopts her size and power. Or the dual unity may take shape in the mother so that the child feels it is absorbed in her size and power. A rudimentary form of both poles has thus established itself in the child, between which the experiences and feelings of the self oscillate, namely a) the feeling of its own greatness and omnipotence, which forms the basis of the grandiose self and which seeks expression and display, and b) the archaic, omnipotent parent figure, the basis of later idealized structures, which compel the child to live up to this figure in order to become part of its greatness and power.
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Further development of this core self is defined by the growing child's relationship to its immediate environment. The child experiences itself-in the sense of being mirrored-through the eyes of its parents. Both their positive and their gradual, reality-oriented corrective reactions to its behavior are internalized and, in the best of circumstances, enable the child to transform its archaic fantasies of greatness and omnipotence, step by step, into a healthy self-confidence, into reality-based ambitions and into exhibitionist pleasure in its own activities, that is, in their display. The idealized parent figures are also viewed more and more realistically and the ideas associated with them internalized to form the foundations of the ideals that guide the growing child.
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In the course of this two-fold process, out of the core self there emerge the decisive psychic "contents" or configurations towards which our self-love is directed, that is, the two essential components or "poles" of the self: a) the exhibitionist pole of the self (the grandiose self), comprising the sensation and conviction of one's own uniqueness with the related ideas, experiences and pleasure in their display, and b) the idealized pole of the self (the idealized structures), comprising one's own guiding ideals and the success of one's efforts to live up to them in intent and deed. From now on these two poles form the inner core of the individual and coincide with the deepest, most intimate perception of the self. They form the basis of the inner experience, which leads us to say "that is me."12
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But even in the case of optimal development in childhood, the corresponding narcissistic equilibrium is not necessarily established once and for all; adults also need ongoing means of mirroring their own behavior and confirming their own worth.
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conclusion: every work of art thrives on the tension between the demands of exhibitionist aspirations and the requirements of the idealized structures for which it is a vehicle. The elementary challenge of artistic work consists of uniting these two principles into a homogeneous gestalt.
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ge·stalt or Ge·stalt (gə-shtält', -shtôlt', -stält', -stôlt') n.
A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.
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Since people experience their guiding ideals as objective and independently valid values, a number of individuals can espouse the same ideals. Common ideals unite those who hold them into a community and thus form the foundations of every culture. To a certain extent they represent the social and integrating aspect of our psychic structure. In contrast, the personal experience of subjective aspirations and ambitions enables individuals to experience themselves as the center of their own initiative and activity, to set themselves off against their co-human beings and also to have an effect on them.
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Every society is based on a set of conventions and maxims that regulate the behavior of its individual members with a view to the fulfillment of collective goals. These conventions and laws structure the behavior of all the members of a society, so that the behavior of others is more or less comprehensible and predictable, and can also be influenced within the framework of the given order and the individual's possibilities. These conventions form the prerequisite of all social communication and mutual cooperation. However, they can fulfill their function only when they are binding for everyone, that is, when they are obeyed. To this end, they are idealized and, if ignored, sanctions are imposed, ranging from ridicule or contempt to official punishment.
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Not only fashions, etiquette, customs and laws, ethical and aesthetic principles, morals and "good taste," but also a society's knowledge and technology-these all are subject to an order. In most cases, the orders of a society are legitimated by both rational and irrational values and argumentation. They are distinguished from each other not only by their function but also by the emotional value they have for the individual and for society.Every individual takes a more or less conscious stand on the diversity of existing conventions and maxims.
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To this end, the individual classifies them according to the importance s/he assigns to them. Some will be jettisoned, others pragmatically employed, still others internalized and appropriated as one's own. But society not only confronts the individual with laws and conventions, it also offers, within the social framework, many means of gratifying instinctual drives and exhibitionist aspirations and ambitions. Here the individual must again choose which of these to appropriate. The double choice thus made not only determines the space people assign to their instinctual drives and exhibitionist aspirations, and the particular form they will take; it also determines the way in which people see themselves as individual and social beings. We know from our own experience how difficult it is to make this selection coherent and compatible with the idealized and exhibitionist poles of our self as well as with our social environment.
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Most social conventions are older than the individuals whose behavior they regulate. They are already there as we grow up. They define us not only from without but also from within because in the long course of childhood, during which time we are dependent on our parents, we have largely internalized the basic principle of all social convention: "always act in conformity with society." For that very reason social conventions bear the mark of the individual as well. Their reality rests on the awareness and the behavior of single individuals and acquires its collective shape only through them.
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Due to the conventions formed in the course of its history, every artistic genre possesses a language conditioned by its respective medium. This means artists encounter a predetermined structure, which they use and whose development they thereby influence. Even if artists later find what they regard as their own idiom, they have merely redefined a few of the rules and are expressing themselves in a variant of the general language. Every new artistic idiom is comprehensible and thus viable only to the extent that it follows laws whose coherence and inner logic can serve as the basis for new conventions.
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These rules, like those of every social convention, are both functionally and ideally determined. They not only fulfill the function of communication-the artist's utterance, that is, the fulfillment of his exhibitionist aspirations-but also embody separate rational and irrational values. They thereby allow the artist to relate his utterances to these values and thus, simultaneously, to satisfy idealized demands with his exhibition.
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Every artistic idiom shares one essential aspect with speech. Speech unites sound and meaning. This unity between the sensual and the spiritual is the creative achievement of all human language, for it allows the spiritual to enter a sensual dimension, and thus provides the medial prerequisite of the artistic experience in which the spiritual acquires a sensual shape and becomes one with it.
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Artists thereby obey their own inner standards of beauty-the aesthetic equivalent of the idealized pole of the self. This justifies their exhibition, 'enhances' it as it were, and unites the aspirations of the two poles of the self into a homogeneous form. The genuinely creative artist then succeeds in charting new territory in the fields of beauty, of ideas and subject matters worthy of idealization, and also of socially accepted individual demands and freedoms. Since message and form are inseparable in art, the artist always creates new linguistic structures that are themselves the message. The Medium Is the Message: Reduced to its actual truth content, namely "the medium is a message," McLuhan's aphorism finds compelling confirmation in works of art.
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