Jung's “Multicolored Arabesques”: Their Renderings and Intentions in the Pictorial Vocabulary of The Red Book

Abstract

Paintings say more than what they seemingly show. Jung's pictorial vocabulary as a painter and illustrator is not gratuitous and deserves close study. At first Jung tried various styles, naïve or academic. Then he developed “multicolored arabesques” quite extensively, obviously enjoying drawing and painting virtuoso variations on the theme. These beautiful artistic forms can possibly be analyzed as pictorial representations of the unconscious, of the archetypes and their ever-flowing energies. For such vivid subjects that are impossible to describe or portray in either words or images, Jung, in his precious Red Book, has achieved a creation, by pencil and brush, of a superb array of “good-enough” renderings in images of their psychological reality.