Carl Jung: I have no relation whatever to modern art unless I understand a picture.
To Ceri Richards
Dear Sir, 21 May 1958
Mrs. F. has kindly brought me your picture, for which I owe you many thanks.
It came as a great surprise to me.
I must confess, however, that I have no relation whatever to modern art unless I understand a picture.
This is occasionally the case and is also the case with your picture.
Purely aesthetically I appreciate the delicacy of the colours.
The background (wood) points to matter and thus to the medium in which the round thing is to be found and with which it contrasts.
The round thing is one of many.
It is astonishingly filled with compressed corruption, abomination, and explosiveness.
It is pure black substance, which the old alchemists called nigredo, that is: blackness, and understood as night, chaos, evil and the essence of corruption, yet the prima materia of gold, sun, and eternal incorruptibility.
I understand your picture as a confession of the secret of our time.
Many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 440.
