Carl Jung on Dali’s Genius.
To Frances G. Wickes
Dear Mrs. Wickes, 14 December 1956
I am sorry to hear that you have been laid up for a long time.
Age is indeed a pleasure with a double face.
The decreasing of physical forces is a problem one is not quite adjusted to, and one only painfully learns to settle down to an ever-increasing restriction.
I got the picture you sent me and I thank you very much for it.
It is indeed very interesting and not at all orthodox, since the figure of the Anthropos is rising from the water and the earth and denotes its corporeality by the definitely fleshly aspect of the upper part of the body.
It is also noteworthy that the head is cut off by the frame.
Thus the emphasis is on the body.
It is, though, quite understandable as the spiritus Mercurialis, the Anthropos of the alchemists.
This spirit adds the chthonic reality of the creation to a purely spiritual conception in a way that would shake the very foundations of our medieval Christianity if people only would think about what they do.
The picture could have been painted by someone who knew about the secret developments in our unconscious mind in the last 1000 years.
Dali’s genius translates the spiritual background of the concrete symbol of transmutation into visibility.
This also explains the somewhat shocking and unorthodox representation of Christ as the blond Hero Thank you very much for sending me this tell-tale picture.
It is quite on the line.
Hoping your condition, whatever it is, will improve and that you will enjoy better health in the coming New Year, I remain,
Yours cordially,
C.G. Jung
P.S. I a m reasonably well and I complain only of the increasing unreliability of my memory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 338-341
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.
