Carl Jung on Modern Art and the Artist.

Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961

To Walter Mertens

Dear Walter, 24 November 1932

I am entirely in agreement with the spirit of your essay on Picasso.

I am only against artists getting away with it like the theologians, about whom one may not say anything critical.

I don’t see why artists should not have exactly the same human psychology as everybody else.

The claim to be the infallible mouthpiece of God is as odious to me in art as in theology.

From the artistic standpoint I can well appreciate the achievements of modern art, but from the standpoint of the psychologist I have to say what the nature of these achievements is.

In my article in the N.Z.Z. I expressly pointed out that I wasn’t talking of art but of psychology.

Yet psychology seems to be as hateful to artists as it is to theologians, and as I say I find this extremely repugnant.

Moreover, art fails entirely in its educative purpose if people don’t see that it depicts the sickness of our time.

That is why this art is neither enjoyable nor elevating, but as you rightly say a “scream.”

But a scream is always just that-a noise and not music.

Hence I shall hold unswervingly to the view that modem art is much more correct judged from the psychological rather than from the artistic standpoint.

“Kunst” [art] comes from “Konnen” [ability, skill]: “stammering” is not skill but only a miserable attempt to speak.

Naturally I don’t want to discourage modem art; it must continue its attempts and I wish it luck.

The creative spirit cannot be discouraged anyway, otherwise it would not be creative.

So nothing untoward has happened.

With best greetings,

Yours, CARL ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 107-108.

Your dream is really the stuff artists work with.

C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950

To Dr. S.

Dear Colleague, 27 March 1937

As I was reading your dream the thought suddenly struck me that it had almost a literary ring.

Have you never thought of using this material for a two-tiered novel, one tier being played out in three dimensions, the other in four?

Your dream is really the stuff artists work with.

In this respect the dream is so excellent that I would conjecture that your descriptive powers are equal to the task in the world of consciousness as well.

Action as we know can take place only in the third dimension, and the fourth dimension is that which actually wants to grow into our conscious three-dimensional world.

This realization is man’s task par excellence.

All culture is an extension of consciousness, and just as modern physics can no longer do without four-dimensional thinking, so our psychological view of the world will have to concern itself with these problems.

With best regards,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 232

Why Can’t We Paint Like the Romantics?

Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950 (Vol 1)

To Arnold Kubler

Dear Herr Kubler, 10 April 1942

I have been mulling over your question about the Romantics art but have come to the conclusion that, fully occupied as I am with my own work at present, I could hardly muster the necessary patience to expatiate on such a contemplative theme as “Why Can’t We Paint Like the Romantics Any More?” with the contemplativeness this requires.

For that is what we lack at the present time-contemplativeness.

If one is sitting on a volcano and can be contemplative to boot, this is a superhuman heroism which is itself a contradiction in terms.

Nowadays it’s no longer any use appealing to any certainties.

Deep down we know that everything is tottering.

When the earth quakes, there are only abrupt and disjointed fragments, but no closely woven and harmonious flower carpet.

A Romantic ideal in our time would be like a figment from a feverish dream.

Therefore it is much better for modern art to paint the thousand-hued debris of the shattered crockery than to try to spread a deceptive quietness over the bottomless
disquiet.

The grotesque, the ugly, the distorted, the revolting perfectly fit our time, and if a new certainty does not start up somewhere, art will continue to express disquiet and inhumanity.

That is all I have to say on this question. It is abrupt and disjointed, like what we are talking about.

Yours truly,

C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Page 316]

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