The sultan's elephant

The sultan's elephant was a show created by the Royal-de-luxe theatre company commisioned to mark the centenary of Jules Verne's death. It involved a large moving mechanical elephant and a marrionette of a girl, the show toured France and Britain

"Turning the place over" Richard wilson

Anonymous

Slinkachu

Davis Shrigley

Bodies in Urban Spaces

Bodies in Urban Space-Willi Dorner

Practical applications

Hopefully I have highlighted the fundamental nature of creative and expressive activity, and shown how many believe it to be essential to the development of a healthy balanced mind. I originally wasn't sure how this could begin to translate into work but I started looking at where people come into contact with creativity outside of the gallery context. This led me to look at site specific, creative interventions. I think that as these works are typically within public spaces, they have the potential to be experienced by a broader cross section of society and so would perhaps be best when attempting to assess the impact of creative experiences in a more universal sense.

Examples of art therapy

 "Moonstruck Maidens" 18th Century Engraving (Anonymous)

"Allegorical Symbolic Work" Hermann Heinrich Mebes (19th century)

"Self Portrait of a Megalomaniac, Naked, among Woman, Ejecting Worlds" Early 20th century (Anonymous)

"G" mandala, watercolour 1888 (Anonymous) . These works were all produced by patients at various institutions around europe between the 18th and early 20th century, they show striking similarities and in some cases even identical symbolism to much earlier alchemical drawings of which the patients could have had no knowledge. Phenomena such as this has lent support to Jung's theory of a collective conscious from where these symbols appear.

Group Analytic Art Therapy

The first area I will look at within the art therapy model is group therapy, the psychology and dynamics within distinct groups of people has always been at the forefront of psychological research and thought, and this is no different within the field of art therapy. The reason for this is surmised in this quote from W.R Bion’s seminal work on group dynamics “Experiences in Groups”

“No individual, however isolated in time and space, should be regarded as outside a group or lacking in manifestations of group psychology. Nevertheless, the existence of group behaviour is, as I say, clearly more easy to demonstrate, and even observe, if the group is brought together and I think it is this increased ease of observation and demonstration......which amounts in the end to the idea that the group is more than the sum of its parts”  (Bion, 1961)

As a result of this and similar works on group psychology, art therapy often takes place within groups, usually following the Foulkesian model, as in the Henderson Hospital Therapeutic Community (established 1954) which is perhaps the most well known of these institutions.

Broadly speaking, the model consists of a variety of differently structured groups, each focused on different outcomes.

Open Arts Groups- Focused on “free creation” in which both staff and patients are encouraged to use a variety of media to create works without being focused on a final outcome, the purpose of this being to allow the patients to benefit solely from the expressive act without an emphasis on interpretation.

Community Art Groups-Focused more on a planned piece of work with time set aside for the analysis and interpretation of work produced

Small Group Analytical Art Therapy-Smaller groups to provide a focus on the individual allowing more scope for individual interpretation

The purpose of these exercises has two aspects, firstly, that the creative and expressive act has an intrinsic therapeutic value to both the patient and the broader sense, the individual-“I do not use the term “art therapy”, because art IS therapy” (Laurence Bradbury), and secondly, that by allowing the unconscious the freedom to express itself through art, some insight can be gained into the specific mental state of the individual, from this, the value of creative and expressive acts within the psychotherapeutic model is clearly evident.

"The lobotomy kid" - excerpt from "Naked Lunch"

Excerpt from Adam Curtis Documentary

interview with R.D Laing

Creative and expressive activity within a wider social context

While the value of creative and expressive activities is perhaps self evident within the art world, this can be criticised as perhaps representing a closed and particularly class tied world composed mainly of middle and upper-middle class individuals with at least some level of higher education. To broaden the scope of the case for the intrinsic value of these activities I will be looking at their application among other groups within society, more specifically, the use (and success) of art therapy.

                From the pioneering work of the Barlinnie Special Unit under Alex Stephen, to similar projects among psychiatric patients and work with children, there is a wealth of examples of the success of these practices in a variety of social settings. I feel that this highlights the fundamental nature of creative activity with particular regard to personal and social development.
                Starting with psychiatry, I would like to first look at the resurgence of  earlier more radical aproaches to therapy that appeared in the 60s, (most noteably the works of R.D Laing and Wilhelm Reich) and why these approaches were sidelined in favour of chemical treatments.

Victor Grippo

Grippo often uses the latent energy within organic objects in his work. In these pieces, the electricity generated by potatoes is used to power electronic devices or to act upon other forms. The above piece-"the potato gilds the potato"  the energy from a group of potatoes is passed through a gold electrolyte solution containing another potato, the effect this has is to gild it. In this work, Grippo is exploring the alchemical potential of everyday objects- "though constrained within perspex vitrines, this act alludes to a life-force that transcends physical constraints."

"The Ancient of Days" William Blake

The works of William Blake often contained alchemical themes such as the unification of male and female, the images of the elements and of geometry and that body and soul are inseperable with one acting on the other.  "A spirit and vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing: they are organised and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce" William Blake

Alchemy and creativity

The relevance of the alchemy in artistic practice centres round the transformative power of expression and creation. Alchemists placed a high value on this process as they saw this transformative process as analogous to the processes of transmuting matter into other purer or “higher” forms. To this end, much of alchemical thought has been devoted to describing the substance that they believed could transform the lowest to the highest, the lapis philosophorum or philosophers’ stone. In psycho-therapeutic terms this became equated with the spirit or soul and the transformative affect it can have on the mind as a whole.

Within this framework, creative acts are seen to have the potential to aid in the development and nurturing of a more secure and balanced mind. This Alchemical and analytic-psychological critique of the value of the creative act is I think the foundation of a more holistic view of the interaction between physical and meta-physical, between quantity and quality, and the effect or value of this interaction.

The influence of this branch of thought is perhaps most evident in the art and literature of Romanticism.

"About a third of my cases are not suffering from any clearly definable neurosis, but from the general senselessness and aimlessness of our times. I should not object if this were called the general neurosis of our age."     Carl Jung

Excerpt of interview with Marie-Louise Von Franz

“Mountain of the Adepts. (Michelspacher, Cabala 1654) The process of psychological development is analogous to the alchemical stages in the transformation of base metals into gold-the philosophers’ stone-here represented as “a temple of the wise” buried in the earth. The phoenix, symbol of the renewed personality, straddles the sun and the moon (the opposites as masculine and feminine). The zodiac in the background symbolises the duration of the process; the four elements indicate wholeness. The blindfolded man represents the stumbling search for truth; the right way is shown by the investigator prepared to follow his natural instincts”       (Marie-Louise Von Franz)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Relevance of Alchemical Symbolism

Jungian psychology has long held that the balancing of the conscious mind (individuation) is of the highest value in terms of mental wellbeing. He believed that the symbols produced by the unconscious mind (particularly in dreams but also in the teachings of esoteric mystic traditions) can provide a “road map” of this process. 

                Alchemical symbols and writings were of particular use (as opposed to the symbolism of living religious traditions) for several reasons.  Firstly, the dreams, visions, hallucinations etc generated from religious traditions (particularly monotheistic traditions) tend to be “vetted” and to a certain extent rationalised or purged of the aspects and details that did not fit the paradigm, this happens on a small scale within ourselves for example, in re-telling a dream people tend to re-order events to bring them into line with conscious perceptions of time, losing aspects of the dream in the process. However within religious traditions, entire experiences were censored or deleted by the church, as a result of this, the symbols and images within these traditions do not represent the full spectrum of the unconscious. In alchemy however, the practitioners were under the impression that they were studying the then unknown field of matter. They observed material phenomena and recorded their observations without a pre-existing framework of interpretation. The result of this was that they (unknowingly) projected unconscious images and symbols into their work. This could be said to have been done in a naive, unprogrammatic way and remained completely uncorrected. This results in a wealth of numinous symbols and images mirroring the processes of the unconscious mind.

                As the alchemists were primarily motivated by the attempts to turn base or “vulgar” metals into gold, their pursuit became quickly analogous to the attempts of the mind to develop itself (through the actions of consciousness) into a higher and more balanced state. As a result much of the symbols within alchemical tradition relate specifically to this psychotherapeutic process. It is this link that I intend to explore.