After Sigmund Freud(1856-1939)'s Depth Psychology, psychologists who advanced Psychoanalysis with Carl Gustav Jung(1875-1961), Freud's best pupil, showed common studies on unconsciousness. This paper will study Gaston Bachelard(1884-1962), a scientist...
After Sigmund Freud(1856-1939)'s Depth Psychology, psychologists who advanced Psychoanalysis with Carl Gustav Jung(1875-1961), Freud's best pupil, showed common studies on unconsciousness. This paper will study Gaston Bachelard(1884-1962), a scientist, philosopher and critic who studied images and imagination in the stream of the theories.
It may stimulate lively academic debate to study Bachelard by relating his theories to painting which he didn't consider very important. However, his study has affected many critics literarily and his theory of imagination and four elements(fire, water, air and earth) can be explained by relating many paintings which we have experienced. So, I will study the images of paintings relating his theory with the expectation and hope.
The first chapter of the paper studies Freud and Jung who affected Bachelard's aesthetics of imagination and how psychological aesthetics has developed. There was negative opinions about Freud and Jung's theories in their early days, but Bachelard adopted their concepts and the idea of unconsciousness, and talked about Jung's idea of archetype. This paper will tell his life briefly and consider how he became to study physical images opposed to science, though he was a scientist.
The second chapter studies the characteristics of four elements, fire, water, air and earth, which Bachelard said. As for fire, strongness and warmness of fire, the image of a newly bone firebird, extinction related to the bird, the image of life and death, man's fire compared to woman's fire, fire as the object of social taboo, fire of life, sexual fire, and complex water and fire were described. As fire represented various images, water did so. There were various images of water such as clear water, lovely water, fresh water, heavy and dead water, the image of Ophelia's water, feminine water as mother's milk, pure water, purifying water, furious water of anger, etc.
The images of Air were sublimation and movement. The dynamic characteristics of air were symbolized by the image of flying, light image and natural image without rationalization. In the boundary of death, there was the image of a fall. As for the air freedom, there was opinion on Nietzsche. The last element, earth, was symbolized by dream of will and dream of rest. Earth, as the object of rest, was a cave, but a labyrinth had mobility and became the image of suffering. In the house of daydream, people could feel consolation and motherhood.
The third chapter relates the characteristics of four elements to paintings, after selecting paintings for each element. Franciso Goya, Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt were selected as painters of fire. The image of death was interpreted in Goya and Munch's paintings. Sexual fire and semen as life, the symbol of fire, were interpreted in Klimt's paintings. As the painter of water, Claude Monet was studied with his transparent water, the characteristics of water showing up nature. The painter of air was Marc Chagall. In his painting which he showed his hidden imagination, there were air dream showing the feeling of satisfaction and happiness about love. As the painters of earth, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and their painful meeting was studied. In their painting, I studied the desire for space, as the rest for each of them.
In conclusion, the study focuses the psychological features which can show substantial imagination, not visual features, which are expressed in paintings. It can be showed that there are ways to induce various images in the internal interpretation, not only to be showed.