4. Discuss how visual artists and/or filmmakers interpret psychoanalytic theories such as the monstrous-feminine or the uncanny within their practices. Discuss these contexts in relation to three artists, and to your art making process. Please choose at least 3 artworks.
The idea of the uncanny was first discussed during 1906 by Ernst Jentsch in his essay of “On the Psychology of the Uncanny”, and was further explored by Sigmund Freud’s essay, ”The Uncanny”, in 1919. In Freud’s essay, this psychological phenomenon is further explained through aesthetic investigation. Since his publication, the essays have brought considerable influence on many visual artworks, especially surrealist works. In Freud’s essay, he had mention “…the word (uncanny)
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Born in 1910, Tanning is well known as an American surrealist painter. Her earlier works are mainly inspired by childhood fantasies and nightmares. In her earlier painting, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik portrays a setting of a corridor in a hotel lobby. With a decaying sunflower rested in the middle of the corridor, a girl with her hair on end and a remarkably life-like doll is placed in front of the first door. The doll status as a toy is revealed by her hairline and the regularly moulded contours of her torso. In pointing out a particular characteristic of uncertainty, E. Jentsch suggested that sensation of uncanny “namely, doubt as to whether an apparently living being is animate and, conversely, doubt as to whether a lifeless object may not in fact be animate.” , linking how the sensation of uncanny is arouse when a life-less object is ingeniously life-like. Also, with the doll wearing identical clothing with the girl, the two figures has a impression of looking similar to another, hence bringing up the criteria of how uncanny that arises from double of a living person. The sensation of uncanny is provoked because“…a person may identity himself with another and so become unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the other’s self for his own.” “From an early stage, Tanning’s work utilizes the visual imagery found in the gothic novels she read in her youth, particularly the motif of the haunted house with its potential for both …show more content…
In discussing these points in the context of three artworks, we can see that the uncanny, “… in its aesthetic dimension, a representation of mental state of projection that precisely elides the boundaries of the real and the unreal in order to provoke a disturbing ambiguity, a slippage between waking and dreaming.” All three of these paintings have a common trait of a dreamlike presence, and it is because of these unsure presences it gave the painting a complete sense of uncanny. Uncanny in visual arts have produced powerful emotion for their audience, capturing strangeness in
Language has a large part in both essays and like mentioned in this paper before, Jentsch based his beliefs of the uncanny on the German definition while Freud took a much broader scope across other languages such as Greek, English, Spanish, Arabic, and etc. This posed a question as to where the boundary between uncanny and fear in consideration of language, where unheimlich gets lost in translation. Through other languages, Freud finds that many languages do not have something that is directly unheimlich but rather correlates to “evil,” “sinister,” and “daemonic,” (Freud 2 & 3). A quick conclusion might be that the uncanny is culturally-bound, or to be more specific, what each individual finds uncanny is determined by what their country and
* Explain ways in which the artist has become the subject of the work. What issues does this raise about the, role of the artist, Subject
The ups and downs of the 1920’s and the fight for women's right to vote have changed America overtime. Following the United State’s victory in World War 1 but the good times didn’t last long. The early 1930’s the United States experienced disasters. One example is rebellion and suffrage. Women were happy of the ratification of the nineteenth amendment.
In The Uncanny, Freud discusses the different definitions and claims that various theorists have made regarding the feeling of uncanny. He defines the different factors that provoke the uncanny in humans and demonstrates how these factors elicit that strange and seemingly inexplicable feeling. Similarly, in Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, adopts the various factors that cause the uncanny to alter Scottie’s identity and beliefs. Ultimately, when Scottie is transformed from a rational being to a psychotic obsessive, it serves to indicate the severity of Scottie’s mental instability and his detachment from reality.
In John Berger’s essay “Ways of Seeing,” he shares his view on how he feels art is seen. Mr. Berger explores how the views of people are original and how art is seen very differently. By comparing certain photographs, he goes on to let his Audience, which is represented as the academic, witness for themselves how art may come across as something specific and it can mean something completely different depending on who is studying the art. The author goes into details of why images were first used, how we used to analyze art vs how we do today, and the rarity of arts. He is able to effectively pass on his message by using the strategies of Rhetoric, which include Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.
PSYC 1301 – Intro to Psychology SOC 1301 – Intro to Sociology ART 1301 – Art Appreciation
Sigmund Freud’s essay The Uncanny focuses on the parallelism between that which is “frightening” and that which is “familiar” (825). Freud asserts that the uncanny is one of several ways that our unconscious and repressed memories speak to us. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Lucy Westerna personifies the uncanny through her transformation into an undead, and her subsequent death that follows this transformation. Before she dies and transforms, Lucy is being cared for by Dr. Seward and Dr. Van Helsing, and after her death they notice a change in her complexion and beauty which is to be unexpected. Dr. Seward notes that upon visiting her grave and opening her coffin, “she was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever” (200). Lucys conversion from a familiar and friendly face into an undead relates to Freuds idea of the uncanny, as he argues that uncanniness arises out of that which is familiar but remains in the frightening class of thoughts or emotions. Lucy’s transformation into an undead, and the response this provokes in her husband, Albert, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing parallels Freuds idea that in order for something to be uncanny, it has to at one point be familiar.
Freud’s concept of the “uncanny” is a highly influential and valued in psychoanalysis and literature. As Freud explains, it reveals much about his understanding of human beings as being essentially determined by their fears and unconscious desires. His interpretation of uncanny can be analyzed in two ways: linguistic and actual. In the beginning, he starts with the term “uncanny”, which is taken from German word “unheimlich”, literally meaning “un-home-like” – something unfamiliar and unknown, never experienced before. The problem is that the definition of the word and the linguistic peculiarities take half of the whole reading, so we get to the point after the second half.
When a person experiences chills or goose bumps as a reaction to something strange or unusual, they are being affected by a sense of uncanniness. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud endeavored to explain this feeling of uncanniness in his essay entitled “The Uncanny”. Freud’s theory focuses around two different causes for this reaction. Freud attributes the feeling of uncanniness to repressed infantile complexes that have been revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs that have been surmounted seem once more to be confirmed. The first point of his theory that Freud discusses in the essay is the repression of infantile complexes that cause an uncanny experience.
•A summary of the artists' personal philosophies of art (if they can be found in published sources), and the prevailing trends and schools of thought in the art world at the time and in the place the artist was working. For instance, discuss what was taking place in the artist's city, country, and/or church that may have provoked a reaction from the artist or the greater society. Include any information that might help the reader understand the artist's point of view or why the artist made his or her choices in this work of art.
The term "grotesque" in art and literature, commonly refers to the juxtaposition of extreme contrasts such as horror and humor, or beauty and monstrosity, or desire and revulsion. One function of this juxtaposition of the rational and the irrational is to subdue or normalize the unknown, and thereby control it. The simultaneity of mutually exclusive emotional states, and the discomfort it might cause, inspires a Freudian analytic critical approach because of its focus on controlling repressed desires through therapeutic rationality. There are volumes of Freudian art criticism, which typically begin by calling attention to manifestations, in some work of art, of the darkest desires of the id. Perhaps in no field
Sigmund Freud’s says that the uncanny “undoubtedly belongs to all that is terrible- to all that arouses dread and creeping horror, it is equally certain, too, that the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to coincide with whatever excites dread.”(Freud), he also says that what makes something specifically uncanny is that it is opposite of what is familiar. . Certain components of the short stories “The Lottery”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, highlight Freud’s definition of the uncanny. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Freud’s definition of the uncanny appears continuously throughout the story, especially when the woman believes that she is the figure lurking behind the wallpaper. Also, in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, Freud’s definition of the uncanny occurs within the mysterious plot and how the end revealed that the “winner” of the lottery had to be beaten to death with citizens of the city throwing stones at them. Lastly, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is connected to Freud’s definition of the uncanny since the story gives the reader a false sense of security, which makes the reader feel the horror and unfamiliarity that it brings
While the woods of “Ulalume” seem to be haunted, they are full of quotidian characteristics—leaves, lakes, stars, and the moon. What does make the woods “uncanny”, however, is the narrator’s lack of knowledge at the time that he was indeed in a place that he admits, “once we had journeyed down here” (Hollander 245). This adds unfamiliarity to a familiar place. The woods are unrecognizable to the speaker because he has repressed the memory of his Ulalume. Further, Freud states that the “Uncanny” is “in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression” (“The Uncanny 13). Thus, the narrator is not recognizing the woods because of the repression of his trauma.
The main character of Get Out is an African American male named Chris Washington. From Chris’s perspective, we see the narrative unfold and many uncanny events occurring that he experiences throughout the film. Chris is visiting and meeting his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage’s parents for the first time. Rose’s parents are a neurosurgeon and hypnotherapist. Everyone attempts to make Chris feel welcome, after acknowledging the fact that Rose never told them he was African American. Get Out connects a castration anxiety to racism when Rose’s family meets Chris, not knowing that he is black.
An artist 's psyche can 't be placated by the ordinary or carried on by business as usual; it is parched to search out the human condition and to look profound into individuals ' characters.