Artistic Sublimation Research Articles

Clay in Art Therapy: A Case Report of a Sexually Abused Child

Contemporary art therapy has focused little on the healing potential of using clay with children that have experienced sexual abuse. In this case report, I provide a brief introduction of a 12-year-old male followed by a discussion of his clay sculptures made in group art therapy sessions over a two-week period during an inpatient psychiatric stay. The tactile and sensorimotor activity of working with clay provided trauma informed benefits such as focusing on the present-moment experience, safely developing somatic awareness, and cultivating self-regulator capacity. Additionally, the client’s life-like clay objects permitted him the opportunity to create personalized imagery that symbolized his unconscious processes and life experiences and was a key step toward successful transference and artistic sublimation.

Meditations on an Expanded, Narrative Inquiry Methodology Combining Clinical Dynamic Understanding and Biography

As a meditation on a method of narrative inquiry, this paper describes an ongoing project which integrates a narrative, portrait-based approach to clinical storytelling with a clinically-focused dialogical process. Expanding upon previous narrative work completed by Michael O’Loughlin and colleagues, this research is a single-case, longitudinal, qualitative exploratory study of an individual who has struggled with psychosis, been exposed to the psychiatric care system, and transmuted their life history through artistic sublimation. In addition to producing a biographical portrait, the purpose of this study’s expanded methodology is to invite a reflective, dialogical process that allows for autobiographical engagement, verification and co-construction of the emerging life story, and deepening conversations about the complexities of human struggle. It is my hope that, through a version of dialogical exchange and narrative practice in the tradition of Michael White, this research provides a way in which clinicians and researchers can facilitate curative, biographical spaces for those with painful lived experience and inherited trauma. By receiving, tracking, and validating human thought and experience, this work aims to combine the portraiture of rendering a life with an in-depth exploration of the complexities of and intersectionality between subjectivity, severe psychiatric distress, creativity, counter-storying, and narrative healing.

Research on the localization of lotus patterns from the perspective of the philosophy of design

Art design is a visual form and spiritual bearer of culture that ensures universal language for communication between civilizations of the world. Competitiveness of the nation is not only a reflection of its economic power, but what is more important, recognition of its culture. Chinese patterns were used throughout the development of Chinese nation and imparted with spiritual connotations, forming a unique Chinese “culture of ornaments”, which is also an artistic sublimation of Chinese national culture. Lotus pattern is one of the earliest traditional ornaments that emerged in China. Throughout its entire history, it turned into a visual symbol that represents commemoration and aesthetic value of the Chinese traditional culture, having a distinct shape and meaning. This article analyzes the peculiarities of localization of the Ancient Chinese lotus pattern, as well as the question of “folk aesthetics” as the major driving force for the consistent development of the means of creating such images. The author examines the main determinants of the Chinese philosophy of design, highlighting such key factors as the artistic consciousness of the Chinese people, “botanical principle” in visual art, aesthetic perception of symmetry and balance in the image, as well as the peculiarities of historical milestones in the development of Chinese floral ornament. The author summarizes the considered aspects with regards to integration of the traditional and modern design.

Stvaralaštvo i psihološki mehanizmi odbrane ličnosti

The study examines the relationship between good and bad psychological defense mechanisms on the one hand and artistic creation on the other. Any creator (artist or scientist) has recourse above all to the good psychological personality defense mechanisms, such as compensation, regression in the service of the Self or sublimation. Even when one regresses to bad defense mechanisms, like any other human being, the latter fail to prevent the process of creation as such. The sublimation of the premorbid structure of the personality remains for each creator, artist or scientist a question of life and death. Our analysis also demonstrates that the rebus of the relationship between compensation, overcompensation or the highest artistic sublimation remains a fundamental question to address the bottom of the secret of all human creation.

Adorno and Marcuse: Artistic Sublimation versus Ideological Sublimation

Adorno and Marcuse: Artistic Sublimation versus Ideological Sublimation

Studija filma kroz prizmu psihoanalitičkog i analitičkog shvatanja umjetnosti i stvaralaštva

The field of our interest is psychology of art, that is, the united structural and functional aspects which deal with both the artist and the process of creating artwork, as well as with the very process of the reception of art and the process of its perception. Using the postulates of psychoanalytic and analytic theory, we present a case study - a film, through the prism of Freud and Jung. Psychoanalytic film theory (Freud) analyses the phenomenon of film with the emphasis on the personal and individual aspects of the creator, while analytic psychology (Jung) accentuates the archetypal approach to universality where the artwork is considered as a unique entity with the elements and patterns that can be found in other creative products. Comparing psychoanalytic and analytic approaches in interpreting art and film, a survey of basic terms is given in an attempt to determine, explain and interpret psychological process of the artist and artistic creation. Sublimation, catharsis and regression on the one side, to artistic sublimation, projective identification and reparation, including the concepts such autonomous complex, collective and personal unconscious. These are all the conceptual instruments used by theorists both in psychology and in art in order to better understand the process of creativity, art production and its reception.

What’s the Big Idea? On Emily Brady’s Sublime

This review essay of Emily Brady’s book The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature (2013) first gives background on the sublime and offers an overview of Brady’s study. It then addresses four main topics: the possibility of the sublime in art (artistic sublimity); the way “adherent” or dependent sublimity, which is partly intellectual or conceptual, can help resolve a debate with “scientific cognitivism” regarding the aesthetic appreciation of nature; the relationship of Brady’s project to environmental ethics; and the role of culture in a theory of the sublime.

Untouchables: women's bodies in Wanda Jakubowska's concentration camp films

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on Wanda Jakubowska's films of the concentration camps, which feature female protagonists: Ostatni etap/The Last Stage (1948), Spotkania w mroku/Meetings in the Dark (1960) and Zaproszenie/Invitation (1985). Jakubowska's work is analysed in the context of the field of material culture (i.e. preserving the area and artefacts of the former Auschwitz camp). The paper reinterprets Jakubowska's production and her images of women as a unique endeavour of feminisation in Polish post-war cinema, continued in the 1960s and 1980s. A comparison of the different versions of the screenplay of The Last Stage and the flashback devices of the later films allows us to reinterpret Jakubowska's films as memory work. The stories, with their wide time intervals, recurring flashbacks and traumatic images of Auschwitz–Birkenau are Jakubowska's contribution to the cinema treated as a time machine of memory, with women appearing as a medium of memory. The artistic sublimation of the images of women's bodies, dead and living, was Jakubowska's answer to the disgust and contempt from which Birkenau was born. The paper argues that Jakubowska tried – with her cinematographic means of expression – to guarantee their integrity, violated during the Holocaust.

Postmodernity in Contemporary Chinese Poetry: Taking YU Jian’s Poetry as an Example

Postmodernism has given great influence to the literary creation and criticism of contemporary Chinese literature. Although postmodern poetic writing appears even earlier than postmodern novels, postmodern poetic criticism has not gotten enough attention. As a matter of fact, YU Jian, as one of the most important representatives of contemporary Chinese poetry, has created many postmodern poems which deconstruct traditional poetry with constructional purpose. Contemporary poets like YU reject metaphorization and symbolization and at the same time look for an original way of expression without metaphors and symbols so as to highlight vigorous common life not with artistic sublimation but with aestheticization of common life.

The Sublime, Ugliness and Contemporary Art: A Kantian Perspective

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to explain the distinction between Kant’s notions of the sublime and ugliness, and to answer an important question that has been left unnoticed in contemporary studies, namely why it is the case that even though both sublime and ugliness are contrapurposive for the power of judgment, occasioning the feeling of displeasure, yet that after all we should feel pleasure in the former, while not in the latter. Second, to apply my interpretation of the sublime and ugliness to contemporary art, and to resolve certain issues that have been raised in accounting for the possibility of artistic sublimity. I argue that an experience of a genuine artistic sublimity is an uncommon occurrence. I propose that the value of contemporary art can be best explained by referring to Kant’s notion of ugliness and his theory of aesthetic ideas.

“A Holy Warfare against the Age”: Essays and Tales of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine

The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine offers a case study of cross-influence and collaboration between a tightly knit group of editors and contributors. Its contents manifest a non-doctrinal, secular, and art-catholic approach to religion and faith in the power of intellectual inquiry and art to effect social transformation. The contributors’ progressive aspirations for education are particularly apparent in Godfrey Lushington’s essay on “Oxford University” and William Fulford’s proto-feminist “Woman, Her Duties, Education, and Position.” By contrast, several of the magazine’s tales, among them R. W. Dixon’s “The Rivals,” Edward Burne-Jones’s “A Story of the North,” and William Morris’s “The Story of the Unknown Church,” memorialize artistic sublimation and the notion of redemption through loss. An exception is William Fulford’s “Found, Yet Lost,” the sole tale told from a woman’s perspective, which offers sarcastic commentary on established religion and the class system. Although it failed to reach a popular audience, the magazine served a significant purpose in concentrating the intellect of a group of strikingly gifted young men.

The Abject "Somatic Symptom" and Artistic Sublimation in Women’s Art

The Abject "Somatic Symptom" and Artistic Sublimation in Women’s Art

A Case for Kantian Artistic Sublimity: A Response to Abaci

A Case for Kantian Artistic Sublimity: A Response to Abaci

Kant's Justified Dismissal of Artistic Sublimity

One curious point in Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment is that, although the general exposition of Kant's aesthetic theory appears to be constructed on structurally parallel accounts of two basic aesthetic predicates, the beautiful and the sublime, in their possible applications to two basic sources of objects of aesthetic experience, nature and art, Kant almost entirely dismisses one of the combinations that would be expected from his dual treatment of aesthetics, namely artistic sublimity.1 It is a fairly common contention among the readers of the Critique that Kant, because of his morally oriented ambitions in aesthetics and the moral significance he attaches to nature rather than art, prioritizes nature over art and takes nature as the field of pure, paradigm cases in his analytics of the beautiful and of the sublime. However, the mentioned dismissal is still curious, since Kant devotes a considerable portion of the book, from §43 to §55, to account for art's place in his aesthetic theory and the application of judgments of beauty to works of art. What makes the absence of any account of artistic sublimity even more curious is that Kant never explicitly rules out its possibility. On the contrary, he seems to acknowledge that works of art can also be called sublime by giving examples from architecture and various genres of literature.

Adelbert von Chamisso e o narcisismo primário

Adelbert von Chamisso foi um escritor e poeta de língua alemã, nascido em família aristocrática francesa emigrada para a Alemanha em 1792. Este artigo, examinando o conto "L'étrange histoire de Peter Schlemihl", primeiro trabalho publicado por Chamisso, aponta os aspectos autobiográficos dessa obra que antecipa a vida de seu autor até na exatidão das minúcias. O artigo mostra como a sublimação artística permitiu que o escritor encontrasse para si mesmo um caminho pelo trabalho científico e pela criação literária, e indica que essa espécie de "aceitação intelectual" do recalcado poderia ser vista como equivalente a um resultado de tratamento psicanalítico.

Kant on Fine Art: Artistic Sublimity Shaped By Beauty

L'A. commente un article de Guyer sur la conception esthetique de Kant («Kant's Conception of Fine Art»), ou il rappelle la distinction etablie entre le beau et le sublime

Kant on Fine Art: Artistic Sublimity Shaped by Beauty

L'A. commente un article de Guyer sur la conception esthetique de Kant («Kant's Conception of Fine Art»), ou il rappelle la distinction etablie entre le beau et le sublime

Approaching Artistic Sublimation in Low-Functioning Individuals

The treatment of low-functioning individuals in an adaptive art therapy program was conducted using the “art as therapy” approach. Both the theoretical formulations of Edith Kramer and Viktor Lowenfeld were used to devise practical strategies that addressed the clients intellectual and emotional handicaps. Emphasis upon the pursuit of both aesthetic and therapeutic goals is illustrated in a case treatment study that involved a severely retarded client with Down's syndrome. The author's contention is that in exceptional instances, these clients are capable of approaching artistic sublimation, and deriving the quoted benefits from such a process.

The Rebirth of a Woman: A Psychoanalytic Study of Artistic Expression and Sublimation

The Rebirth of a Woman: A Psychoanalytic Study of Artistic Expression and Sublimation