A Thought on Art

Direct self-expression is never art. We cannot assert that the artist is really an artist because of strong emotionality or above-average sensitivity. The artist is an artist because of his special ability to recognize shapes intuitively, these being symbolic of his feelings. He intuitively recognizes in things a reference, they become for him a means to say the unutterable to express the unknowable. All art is in this sense symbolic art.

We cannot consciously form new symbols. Jung pointed out it is not possible to create a living symbol from known conscious connections. They then acquire no "charge" and contain nothing more than has consciously been put into them. The whole personality must resonate with it if we wish to be able to call as a symbol "living" and not merely the intellect which does not extend beyond signs.

Failure to introduce new symbols into art are not rare. They derive too much from the intellectual sphere, the primitive element was not included in them, this being just what is familiar to all people, from the collective unconsciousness.

Done! At the end of the journal I found a list of Art supplies I needed to get for class. I also found "Notes on Artistic Self-Expression" with a detailed list of different disorders, ironically Austism to Schizophrenia.


The next journal I am picking up is dated 1981 to 1986. My children's earliest years.