Exactly 10 year ago was my First exhibition in the Hague. I exhibited my plaster works that deal with the inner and outer conflict of being a mother and an artist. Two forces pulling and pushing me in opposite directions.
Now, 10 years later with the kids almost all out of the house and rethinking/reliving/reinventing my roles and functions, I am writing a thesis that will contribute to my graduating as an analytical psychotherapist. when I saw this picture appear in my photomemories this morning, it struck me that the thesis deals with more or less the same issues as the sculpture 10 years ago.
In the thesis I will discuss the theories of one of Freud's closest colleagues, the Austrian psychoanalyst/philosopher Otto Rank (1884-1939). He studied the psyche of the artist and wrote extensively about the role personality development, in the form of therapy or analysis, was going to play for the conflicted artist and what that could mean for the art, the artist and society.
He is not an easy read, to say the least, but it is definitely worth trying to grasp his vision on the conflicts of the artist and the outcome of 'consciousness' in art. As case study I will look at the some of the works of Louise Bourgeois who was in Freudian analysis for 34 years and hold them under a Rankian lens.
If all this ends well I will be so wise and intelligent and never again have a conflict between art and life.:))) Amen
