The Psychology of Art

“Human Is Made in the Image of God!” I used to correct people indignantly when they quoted the biblical statement. But on one occasion as I was going through a book of art, I came across the picture of Michael Angelo’s statue of David. It was as if I was bewitched. I saw nothing else, heard nothing else, thought about nothing else and remained seized in the clutches of aesthetic bliss. “Man is made in the image of god” I involuntarily gasped. Such was the stupefying power, strength, dignity and majesty of the male beauty, perfect and unparalleled, embraced by divinity.

What induces artists to set forth for stupendous and magnificent enterprises? What goes into the process of the creation of such master pieces? The study unravels certain complex and amusing functions of the human mind.

Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung noted that Psychology as a science of the processes of the psyche can be linked to aesthetics. A person’s predisposition to artistic creation can be categorized into the following hierarchy: capable, gifted, talented and genius. Artistic capability can create artistic values of social interest. An artistically gifted person creates works that have lasting value for a given society over a considerable period in its development. Talent produces artistic values of intransient national and sometimes universal human relevance. A genius creates the highest human values relevant for all times.

American psychologist Guilford listed six capabilities of artistic creativity. They are fluent thinking, analogies and juxtapositions, expressiveness, ability to switch from one class of objects to another, adaptation flexibility or originality and ability to lend desired outline to artistic form.

Artists are gifted with a sharp perception of life, ability to select objects for attention, ability to fix these impressions in memory and include them in the rich system of associations and links prompted by creative imagination.

Psychological Mechanisms of Artistic Creation

The first and foremost of these mechanisms is an innate sensitivity to surrounding phenomena and an ability to keep them in memory. The material retrieved from memory coupled with imaginations creates a work of art. Imagination is the rearrangement of perceptions and impressions.

Then comes the need for internal release, the confessional urges of the artist. Any work of art is primarily a vent to the inner feelings, thoughts and opinions of the artist.

An artistic creation is processed at three levels of the mind- the subconscious, unconscious and super conscious. The subconscious produces a vast number of variants for the solution of a problem, together with images and mental associations between phenomena. The intuitive aesthetic sense, a sense of harmony and beauty makes one select the most beautiful solutions and images from this vast number. This selected idea then rises to the conscious where it is checked out logically, clarified and processed by reason after which it goes to the super conscious where it is deepened and given a final theoretical or conceptual shape. Logic is the main criterion for what passes from conscious to super conscious.

This process resembles that of Natural selection. Nature produces many mutation variants of a given organism where upon natural selection identifies the more viable variants. The best adapted specimens survive, passing on their qualities to new generations through genes. The subconscious too produces a multitude of mutation variants of ideas and images. First the aesthetic sense then the rigorous logic selects ideas and images from that multitude. Only the most beautiful, harmonious, coherent, logically convincing and valid of them survive i.e. go on for further processing in the artists mind. The transition from one stage to another leads to tremendous creative increment. The process does not end here. The results found in the conscious and super conscious return to the subconscious and give rise to new ideas with much greater harmony and coherence.

Sigmund Freud propounded another theory of subconscious sexual element in artistic creation. The artist sublimates sexual energy in art. It is a kind of neurosis. In creative act the artist expels from consciousness socially unrealizable needs and thus resolves the conflict of real life.

The significance of subconscious is noted long back by ancient Greek philosophers (Plato especially). They treated this phenomenon as an ecstatic, god-inspired, Bacchic State etc… Homer considers it a light from above. Pinder calls a poet a prophet of the muses.

Though only secondary to subconscious the conscious element too is significant. It helps the artist analyze and asses his work critically and draws conclusions that would lead to further artist growth. It is particularly important in large scale works. Small scale works are done on a stroke of inspiration. A large scale work needs profound and serious pondering.

Tolstoy wrote about his “War and Peace” “You cannot imagine the difficulty for me of the preliminary work of deeply ploughing the field in which I am forced to sow. To think over and over what may happen to all the future people in my work, a very large one and to think over millions of possible combinations and select 1/1,000,000^th of them is terribly difficult.”

However it is inspiration that is the major driving force in creative process. Inspiration generates tremendous creative energy. It is not for nothing that Pegasus, the winged horse has been since ancient times the poetic symbol of inspiration.