# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

# data[].attributes.headline
2022 Crit A,B,C,D task-template for students 

# data[].attributes.subject
2022 Crit A,B,C,D task-template for students 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10.VA Part1 CritA  Facing Your Fears Unit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

# data[].attributes.headline
Need to add Kunvecheada and Amy Ung and Morakod

# data[].attributes.subject
Need to add Kunvecheada and Amy Ung and Morakod

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dreams & Nightmares is a collection of art with an "out of this world" perspective. From the dark and twisted to the beautiful and misguided. This collection is a group of contrasted images living in the same modern and misunderstood world through the raw and uncensored emotions of the artist's.

This user gallery has been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dreams & Nightmares - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dreams & Nightmares is a collection of art with an "out of this world" perspective. From the dark and twisted to the beautiful and misguided. This collection is a group of contrasted images living in the same modern and misunderstood world through the raw and uncensored emotions of the artist's.

# data[].attributes.headline
3D Collage: think about the viewer and the angle they will view your work as

# data[].attributes.subject
3D Collage: think about the viewer and the angle they will view your work as

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dustin Yellin is a contemporary artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He uses multiple layers of glass, each covered in detailed imagery, to create a single intricate, three-dimensional collag

# data[].attributes.headline
Colour Associations and what it reminds people of

# data[].attributes.subject
Colour Associations and what it reminds people of

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We've posted some other infographics covering the use of colour and the psychology behind it. However this infographic by Carey Jolliffe goes into the meaning of colours a lot more. As any designer will know, colour can have a huge effect on whatever you're creating - whether it be an app or a poster.

# data[].attributes.headline
Colours around the world and what they mean in that culture

# data[].attributes.subject
Colours around the world and what they mean in that culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Svart symboliserar Hälsa och Välstånd, eller står Svart för Död och Sjukdom?

Färger är ett intressant ämne, De påverkar vår sömn, de aktiverar våra sinnen och de har väldigt stor betydelse i religiösa sammanhang. Här nedan är en infographic som visar oss betydelsen av färgerna i olika kulturer och olika Religioner.

Det är fascinerande att se vilka skillnader som råder, t.ex. Så förknippar vi i västvärlden färgen Svart med negativa känslor och situationer, medan de i Japan förknippar Svart med Hälsa och Välstånd.

Andra intressanta skillnader är:

Västvärlden ser färgen Grön som en symbol för Avundsjuka och Girighet, medan de i Mellanöstern förknippar Grön med Styrka och Hopp.

Kristna och Judar kopplar samman färgen Gul med negativa saker så som Sjukdommar, Svaghet och Korruption. Buddhister förknippar Gul med Frihet och Stabilitet.

I Indien förknippas färgen Blå med Styrka och Atletisk Skicklighet, i Västvärlden är det en symbol för Depression och Lugn.

Vad betyder olika färger i olika kulturer och religioner?

Allt från personlig utveckling till sköna sneakers är intressant! Kvalitetstid för mig är en kall, ljus, amerikansk öl i solen på en uteservering, gärna "i goda vänners lag" om man nu skall slänga in något klyschigt också.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Vad betyder olika färger i olika kulturer?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Färger är ett intressant ämne, De påverkar vår sömn, de aktiverar våra sinnen och de har väldigt stor betydelse i religiösa sammanhang. Här nedan är en infographic som visar oss betydelsen av färgerna i olika kulturer och olika Religioner. Det är fascinerande att se vilka skillnader som råder, t.ex.

# data[].attributes.headline
Good task to teach emotion associated with colour and feeling 

# data[].attributes.subject
Good task to teach emotion associated with colour and feeling 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational: Starry Night Printable Book & Art (Van Gogh Study)

# data[].attributes.body
It shows some sort of fear expression within each art work. Each artwork includes different brush works technique that associates well with what they're afraid off. Each of them also includes very vibrant colors and thick visible and long brushstroke lines. This is called expersionism

# data[].attributes.body
*Use the rue of thirds *have an odd number of objects/figures in the composition ie 3,5,7
*Vary the space between things in the painting
*Objects/figures should either be placed well apart or overlapping. If things are "kissing/touching" it often appears like an amateur composition.
*Is there variety? Opposite colours? curved line to offset straight lines? Vary the size of objects/figures.
*Make sure you consider the tone of the painting. Its either going to be 2/3 moderately dark with 1/3 light and a little bit more light elsewhere or the opposite. (2/3 light and 1/3 dark).

# data[].attributes.headline
My Padlet-How life events changed an Artist

# data[].attributes.subject
My Padlet-How life events changed an Artist

# data[].attributes.body
Think about these strategies when sketching your compositions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
So you've learnt about the important fundamentals of art - composition, color, anatomy, light, perspective, pencil drawing techniques and so on. But how do you put these together and manipulate them to create a memorable, moving image?

3dtotal Publishing's latest book, Beyond Art Fundamentals, aims to help you do just that as a collection of talented artists offer you in-depth guidance on conveying mood, emotion, and storytelling in your work. Here are 10 helpful tips to get you started!

01. Utilize lighting

Platige Image artist Kamil Murzyn says: "Lighting is a very important factor in creating any mood and directing a story. I usually select a natural lighting condition which has some general rules, such as daylight, overcast light, or sunset; I then shift them to better fit the story and feeling I want to create.

"For a suspense-themed illustration, it's a natural choice to pick lighting conditions that allow for high contrasts, so I choose a simple night sky with strong moonlight. Night and gloom always create a feeling of danger and horror."

02. Use real life

"Use your own experience when depicting emotions," says artist Damien Mammoliti. "When was the last time you experienced despair? How did it make you feel? If you could personify and create a character based on that emotion, how would it look? Asking yourself these questions can help you to create a narrative for illustration."

03. Introduce symbolism and motifs

"Thinking on the theme of "envy," I come up with the idea of a "hot" yellow-orange snake in the girl's hands," says freelance 2D artist Maria Poliakova. "Envy is a strong, sizzling, toxic feeling, and the warm colored snake creates a strong contrast against the character's cold, green skin. The yellow snake also complements the girl's yellow eyes and scaly body."

04. Prepare with words as well as images

"A mind map is a graphical diagram of related thoughts and words about a subject," explains concept artist Emi Chen. "It includes a branching-out of ideas from a central starting point. In this case, I want the illustration to revolve around the concept of "mystery," so I create a mind map with the focus on this word and what comes to mind. From there, I keep exploring various themes and subjects that relate to the word. I try to exhaust all possibilities, exploring everything that I can until I am sure there are absolutely no more related ideas left."

05. Keep the story in mind

"Story is the overall idea or concept of the piece," says digital artist Andy Walsh. "Sometimes you make art that's just pretty and you'll notice it doesn't get much attention. But throw in a little backstory or some elements that make us go deeper into the scene or character, and your audience will not just appreciate the piece but delight in it. Really think about elements that make your audience curious as to what's going on and invite them in to explore. What's in the box? Who's around the corner? What story happened to get us to this scene?"

06. Convey sensory disruption

"Fear is a very interesting emotion to depict; using some basic ideas, we can easily evoke those emotions in the viewer," says Mammoliti. "Uncomfortable feelings like hair laying on an open eye, or water filling into the mouth, demonstrate what types of sensations can be played with in an image like this. Here, I can evoke empathy by disrupting useful sensations (such as tasting or breathing) or placing things where they are most unwanted. This helps the viewer gain empathy towards the subject matter, heightening their experience of the emotion."

07. Use narrative that others can associate with

Illustrator Kevin Hong says: "Nostalgia is a very sentimental and wistful feeling linked with personal experiences, and although it's a universally shared emotion, what triggers it can be very different for each person. That said, there are certain narratives that I think everyone can relate to. Moments of idling, waiting, or of childhood especially. With this in mind, I create several digital sketches trying to illustrate these moments."

08. Consider your composition carefully

"I like to think about composition and the different viewpoints I can show my scene from, almost like having a movie camera in my mind and traveling around a scene trying to find the most interesting still shot to recreate," reveals illustrator Scott Murphy. "For this illustration, I consider which angle and composition will help to showcase the goddess and the surrounding crowd and set the mood accurately. Finding the right vantage point can help with the emotion or story you are trying to portray."

09. Play with colors to find the right mood

"When plotting out ideas for colors, I often like to test different ideas using some typical color combinations; complementary, analogous, and achromatic combinations being some of my favorites," Mammoliti says. "Complementary means what it sounds like: opposites on the color wheel match well together and will often create a great contrast for paintings. Analogous colors are colors that sit next to one another on the color wheel; these types of combinations will offer balance. Achromatic is the lack of saturation on those colors you've chosen, which can be used to make a more emotional scene. This image will have a slightly desaturated complementary palette to help reflect the feeling of despair."

10. Make sure you enjoy it!

"The key to making interesting work is to make art that you find interesting," says Hong. "Indulge in what you enjoy creating, and try not to sabotage that by making work that "conforms" to an industry or a field. If you make work that you really enjoy and work hard at perfecting your craft, then you will find clients who will commission you for being you."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 ways to convey emotion in your artwork

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
So you've learnt about the important fundamentals of art - composition, color, anatomy, light, perspective, pencil drawing techniques and so on. But how do you put these together and manipulate them to create a memorable, moving image?

# data[].attributes.body
What is it about?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Girl in Red goes to the origins of a legendary emoji with Munch

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Grimes takes the plunge down Bruegel’s darkest dreams

# data[].attributes.headline
This Youtube Channel has lots of great biographical art video's

# data[].attributes.subject
This Youtube Channel has lots of great biographical art video's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Several Circles is comprised of two loved up art professionals (and their cat, Jimmy) living and working in New York. Here, we tell the stories of extraordin...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is Expressionism? Art Movements & Styles

# data[].attributes.headline
MYP - Analysis and ways of looking at art

# data[].attributes.subject
MYP - Analysis and ways of looking at art

# data[].attributes.body
Develop your Knowledge & Understanding of art

# data[].attributes.body
Art as therapy and Facing her Fears

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Louise Bourgeois – 'I Transform Hate Into Love' | TateShots

# data[].attributes.headline
The impact of death and war on Kathe Kollwitz

# data[].attributes.subject
The impact of death and war on Kathe Kollwitz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Educational Film: The First World War - Käthe Kollwitz

# data[].attributes.body
Narrative// An amazing Illustrator that is perfect inspiration for creating story telling/narrative in his and your compositions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
So PineNut is the name given on his Behance gallery for a Japanese artist and illustrator based in Tokyo.

Beyond that I have little background information. The images on his Behance gallery are often dark, both in emotional tone and subject; and, unfortunately, in the sense that some of the photographs of the work appear to be underexposed. I have not taken the liberty of enhancing any of them.

Several of the projects show works in progress and the impressions being pulled on a series of stone lithographs, in which the artist has lavished lots of textural details. There are also color pieces and sculptural ceramics.

His Behance gallery does not offer a link to another website or blog. I came across this Weibo site, and have no idea if it is officially related or not (use at your own risk).

Categories: Gallery and Museum Art, Illustration, Prints and Printmaking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lines and Colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics, concept art and other visual arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
So PineNut is the name given on his Behance gallery for a Japanese artist and illustrator based in Tokyo. Beyond that I have little background information. The images on his Behance gallery are often dark, both in emotional tone and subject; and, unfortunately, in the sense that some of the photographs of the work appear to be underexposed.

# data[].attributes.headline
A 10 minute video about Hstorical context and visual analysis example

# data[].attributes.subject
A 10 minute video about Hstorical context and visual analysis example

# data[].attributes.body
Goya's Third of May painting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Art historical analysis (painting), a basic introduction using Goya's Third of May, 1808

# data[].attributes.headline
A short video example of just Visual Analysis of this artwork.

# data[].attributes.subject
A short video example of just Visual Analysis of this artwork.

# data[].attributes.body
Goyas' Third of May 1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How to look at and write about art. Format for discussing the elements of composition: line, texture, space, color and shape. How to look at art in an art museum.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Emil Nolde- Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Emil Nolde born Emil Hansen 7 August 1867 13 April 1956 was a GermanDanish painter and printmaker He was one of the first Expressionists a member of D

# data[].attributes.headline
German Expressionists-all dealt with inner emotions in their work

# data[].attributes.subject
German Expressionists-all dealt with inner emotions in their work

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
MoMA | German Expressionism Themes: Portraits

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
MoMA | German Expressionism Themes: Portraits

# data[].attributes.headline
Famous Artists that use their work as therapy

# data[].attributes.subject
Famous Artists that use their work as therapy

# data[].attributes.body
Good at capturing a feeling of fear and discomfort in his work

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wyatt Mills, First Impressions, 36x28, Oil and spraypaint on canvas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Important Art by Francis Bacon

The below artworks are the most important by Francis Bacon - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist.

Crucifixion (1933)

Artwork description & Analysis: Crucifixion is the work that first launched Bacon into the public eye, long before the much greater successes of the post-war years. The painting may have been inspired by Rembrandt's Slaughtered Ox (c.1638), but also by Picasso's Surrealist style(perhaps sensing this latter connection, Herbert Read, in his book Art Now, illustrated Crucifixion adjacent to a Picasso Bather). The translucent whiteness painted over the bodily frame in Crucifixion adds a ghostly touch to an already unsettling composition,introducing Bacon's obsession with pain and fear. Exhibited at a time when the horrors of the First World War were still remembered, Crucifixion spoke of how brutality had changed the world forever. At the time of writing the picture is owned by Damien Hirst, an artist who has acknowledged a large debt to Bacon.

- Murderme collection, London

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944)

Artwork description & Analysis: Three Studies launched Bacon's reputation in the mid 1940s and shows the importance of biomorphic Surrealism in forging his early style. Bacon may have originally intended to incorporate the figures in a crucifixion, but his reference to the base of such a composition suggests that he imagined them as part of a predella, the scenes at the bottom of a traditional altarpiece. The twisted bodies are all the more frightening for their vaguely familiar human-like forms, which appear to stretch out toward the viewer in pain and supplication. The perspective lines in the background create a shallow space,alluding to captivity and torture. The figures are based upon the Furies, goddesses of revenge from Greek mythology that play an important role in the Oresteia, a three-part tragedy by Aeschylus. Bacon may have been drawn to the play's themes of guilt and obsession. The piece profoundly influenced images of the body in post-war British art.

Oil on board - Tate Gallery, London

Painting (1946)

Artwork description & Analysis: The layered images of this enigmatic painting blend into each other, giving it a dreamlike (or nightmarish)quality. From the top, the outstretched wings of a bird skeleton seem to be perched upon a hanging carcass, the latter motif influenced, like Bacon's Crucifixion from 1933, by Rembrandt. In the foreground, a well-dressed man under an umbrella sits in a circular enclosure which might be decorated with more bones and another carcass. The strange, collage-like composition of this work reveals Bacon's method. "The one like a butcher's shop, it came to me as an accident," he once said of the picture. "I was attempting to make a bird alighting on a field. And it may have been bound up in some way with the three forms that had gone before, but suddenly the lines that I'd drawn suggested something totally different, and out of this suggestion rose the picture. I had no intention to do this picture; I never thought of it in that way. It was like one continuous accident mounting on top of another."

Oil and pastel on linen - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)

Artwork description & Analysis: Although the figure in this picture derives from a 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velazquez, Bacon avoided viewing the original painting,preferring to work from reproductions. Once again, he deploys a cage-like frame that surrounds the pope, but also introduces vertical brushing across the surface of the painting, an element he described as a curtain, relating the figure to a precious object requiring a protected space.However, the linear strokes are destructive to the image, and seem more like the bars of a jail cell. The lines almost seem to vibrate, and complementary shades of purple and yellow add to the tension of the composition. About his famous scream,Bacon says, "I didn't do it in the way that I wanted to.... I wanted to make the mouth, with its beauty of its color and everything, look like one of the sunsets or something of Monet."

Oil on canvas - Des Moines Art Center, Iowa

From Our Sponsor. Article Continues Below

Two Figures (1953)

Artwork description & Analysis: Due to its homosexual overtones, the inaugural exhibition of Two Figures caused an uproar. Drawn from studies of anatomical drawings and Eadweard Muybridge's motion photography, Two Figures is as much an exploration of the body in action as it is a representation of the physical act of love.The two figures entwined in bed are covered by Bacon's"curtain" of striated lines, which both obstructs the view and enhances the movement of the figures. Instead of evoking the romance of a nighttime rendezvous, the dark colors of the painting allude to a more sinister encounter.

Oil on canvas - Private collection, London

Portrait of George Dyer Crouching (1966)

Artwork description & Analysis: Bacon was in his 60s when he met the young George Dyer.Their relationship, although romantic, always had the sense of a father-son dynamic. Dyer was constantly in need of attention and reassurance, and the naked embryonic form kneeling precariously on a ledge expresses his vulnerability.The circular sofa, however, surrounds him in a protective embrace. Uncharacteristically, the coloring is light and subdued, although the red and green highlights hint at an inner struggle. Dyer suffered from a lifelong addiction to drugs and alcohol, which is alluded to by the painted figure looking downward into a central abyss.

Oil on canvas - Private collection

Like The Art Story on Facebook

Related Art and Artists

The Old Guitarist (1903)

Artist: Pablo Picasso

Artwork description & Analysis: The Old Guitarist is characteristic of the somber melancholy of Picasso's Blue Period, and it was produced at the same time as a series of other pictures devoted to themes of destitution, old age, and blindness. The picture conveys something of Picasso's concern with the miserable conditions he witnessed while coming of age in Spain, and it is no doubt influenced by the religious painting he grew up with, and perhaps specifically by El Greco. But the picture is also typical of the wider Symbolist movement of the period. In later years Picasso dismissed his Blue Period works as "nothing but sentiment"; critics have often agreed with him, even though many of these pictures are iconic, and of course, unbelievably expensive.

Oil on canvas - Art Institute of Chicago

Carcass of Beef (1925)

Artist: Chaim Soutine

Artwork description & Analysis: Here, Soutine cunningly portrayed the beef split open, as if bearing its soul to the viewer. Soutine's repeated use of animal carcasses as the subject matter for still life paintings likely stems from his complex relationship with food and his adoration of the work of Rembrandt. During his repeated visits to the Louvre, Soutine pondered the old master's Slaughtered Ox, which bears a strong resemblance to Carcas of Beef(1655). Unlike Rembrandt, Soutine isolated the subject and employed an unusual method in the creation of this still life. After hanging the side of beef bought at a Parisian slaughterhouse in his studio, he had his assistant fetch a bucket of fresh cow's blood every few days and, while painting this work, Soutine would repeatedly pour blood over the carcass to ensure it maintained the bright color of freshly cut beef. Meanwhile, his assistant fanned away flies and neighbors complained to the police about the smell, even causing health inspectors to almost cart the beef away. Luckily his assistant intervened, as Soutine was far too engrossed in painting, and the artist was allowed to finish what is largely regarded as his masterpiece. The very visceral image of Soutine pouring blood over the carcass, as well as rapidly applying layer after layer of liquid paint to the canvas, recalls the later action painting of the mid-twentieth century. A direct link to this painting can be found in the work of Francis Bacon, which reflects the dark, emotional turmoil of Soutine as well as the use of anthropomorphized beef to reveal the artist's psyche.

Oil on canvas - The Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Bathers by a River (1917)

Artist: Henri Matisse

Artwork description & Analysis: Matisse regarded this picture as one of the most important in his career, and it is certainly one of his most puzzling. He worked on it at intervals over eight years, and it passed through a variety of transformations. The painting evolved out of a commission from Matisse's Russian patron, Sergei Shchuckin, for two decorative panels on the subjects of dance and music, and, initially, the scheme for the picture resembled the idyllic scenes he had previously depicted in paintings such as Joy of Life (1905-06). However, his transformations gradually turned it into more of a confrontation with Cubism, and it is for this reason that the picture has been the subject of intense scrutiny. Although Matisse rejected Cubism, he certainly felt challenged by it, and this picture - along with many he painted from 1913 to 1917 - seems to be influenced by the style, since it is very unlike his previous, more decorative work. It is far more concerned with faithful representation of the structure of the human figure, and its position in space. The painting might be compared to The Backs series (1909-31), which also preoccupied Matisse the years he was working on Bathers, since both address the problem of depicting a three-dimensional figure against a flat background.

Oil on canvas - Art Institute of Chicago

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Francis Bacon Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The below artworks are the most important by Francis Bacon - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist. Crucifixion (1933) Artwork description & Analysis: Crucifixion is the work that first launched Bacon into the public eye, long before the much greater successes of the post-war years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Many Surrealist artists, especially in the 1930s, began arranging objects in combinations that challenged reason and summoned subconscious and poetic associations. The most easily obtained materials were found objects, or items cheaply purchased at flea markets. The mundane, mostly mass-produced objects found new resonances when arranged in unprecedented and provocative configurations. Surrealist leader André Breton believed that this new form of sculpture, called assemblage, had the power to puncture the thin veneer of reality, and tap into the subconscious mind. As Breton proclaimed: "To aid the systematic derangement of all the senses....it is my opinion that we must not hesitate to bewilder sensation..." ¹

To explore more, click on each artwork thumbnail, then click again on the larger image that appears in the box above.

André Breton, "Surrealist Situation of the Object" in Manifestoes of Surrealism. Translated from the French by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 263

Questions & Activities

Make a Shadow Box Assemblage
Look at these four Joseph Cornell box assemblages from MoMA's collection. How would you characterize the kinds of objects he used to create his shadowboxes? Everyday? Unusual? Personal?

Find a shoe box or other container that will serve as the support for your shadowbox assemblage. Gather a variety of objects-they may be items with great personal meaning or other items you found or collected. Assemble them in a variety of ways to come up with a composition you like. If you choose, embellish your box with paint, collage, or decorations.

Do the individual objects take on new meanings in this new arrangement? Taken as a whole, what story does your shadowbox tell? Give your assemblage a title and write a brief (50-100 words) label about your work. You may want to explain the meanings of particular elements and discuss why you chose your title, etc.

Exhibit your box assemblage for the world to see! Take a photo and share it on Flickr by tagging it "MoMA Learning Shadowbox." Check out this page or the Flickr photo set to see other examples!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
MoMA | Surrealist Objects and Assemblage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many Surrealist artists, especially in the 1930s, began arranging objects in combinations that challenged reason and summoned subconscious and poetic associations. The most easily obtained materials were found objects, or items cheaply purchased at flea markets. The mundane, mostly mass-produced objects found new resonances when arranged in unprecedented and provocative configurations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This website is dedicated to fears and phobias. It contains a large list of phobias and teaches how to cope with and ultimately cure your fear. You can also learn more about phobia symptoms and what fear is. Support my work by sharing this phobia list.

Not sure if you have an anxiety disorder? Take the anxiety test.

Top 100 Phobia List

These are the top 100 phobias in the world, with the most common ones listed from the top. You can click on each phobia to learn about causes, symptoms and treatments.

1. Arachnophobia - The fear of spiders affects women four times more (48% women and 12% men).

2. Ophidiophobia - The fear of snakes. Phobics avoid certain cities because they have more snakes.

3. Acrophobia - The fear of heights. Five percent of the general population suffer from this phobia.

4. Agoraphobia - The fear of open or crowded spaces. People with this fear often wont leave home.

5. Cynophobia - The fear of dogs. This includes everything from small Poodles to large Great Danes.

6. Astraphobia - The fear of thunder/lightning AKA Brontophobia, Tonitrophobia, Ceraunophobia.

7. Claustrophobia - The fear of small spaces like elevators, small rooms and other enclosed spaces.

8. Aerophobia - The fear of flying. 25 million Americans share a fear of flying.

9. Trypophobia - The fear of holes is an unusual but pretty common phobia.

10. Carcinophobia - The fear of cancer. People with this develop extreme diets.

11. Thanatophobia - The fear of death. Even talking about death can be hard.

12. Glossophobia - The fear of public speaking. Not being able to do speeches.

13. Monophobia - The fear of being alone. Even while eating and/or sleeping.

14. Atychiphobia - The fear of failure. It is the single greatest barrier to success.

15. Ornithophobia - The fear of birds. Individuals suffering from this may only fear certain species.

16. Alektorophobia - The fear of chickens. You may have this phobia if chickens make you panic.

17. Aphenphosmphobia - The fear of intimacy. Fear of being touched and love.

18. Trypanophobia - The fear of needles. I used to fear needles (that and death).

19. Anthropophobia - The fear of people. Being afraid of people in all situations.

20. Aquaphobia - The fear of water. Being afraid of water or being near water.

21. Autophobia - The fear of abandonment and being abandoned by someone.

22. Hemophobia - The fear of blood. Even the sight of blood can cause fainting.

23. Gamophobia - The fear of commitment or sticking with someone to the end.

24. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - The fear of long words. Believe it or not, it's real.

25. Vehophobia - The fear of driving. This phobia affects personal and work life.

26. Basiphobia - The fear of falling. Some may even refuse to walk or stand up.

27. Achievemephobia - The fear of success. The opposite to the fear of failure.

28. Theophobia - The fear of God causes an irrational fear of God or religion.

29. Ailurophobia - The fear of cats. This phobia is also known as Gatophobia.

30. Metathesiophobia - The fear of change. Sometimes change is a good thing.

31. Globophobia - The fear of balloons. They should be fun, but not for phobics.

32. Nyctophobia - The fear of darkness. Being afraid of the dark or the night is common for kids.

33. Androphobia - The fear of men. Usually seen in younger females, but it can also affect adults.

34. Philophobia - The fear of love. Being scared of falling in love or emotions.

35. Triskaidekaphobia - The fear of the number 13 or the bad luck that follows.

36. Emetophobia - The fear of vomiting and the fear of loss of your self control.

37. Gephyrophobia - The fear of bridges and crossing even the smallest bridge.

38. Entomophobia - The fear of bugs and insects, also related to Acarophobia.

39. Lepidopterophobia - The fear of butterflies and often most winged insects.

40. Panophobia - The fear of everything or fear that terrible things will happen.

41. Podophobia - The fear of feet. Some people fear touching or looking at feet, even their own.

42. Paraskevidekatriaphobia - The fear of Friday the 13th. About 8% of Americans have this phobia.

43. Somniphobia - The fear of sleep. Being terrified of what might happen right after you fall asleep.

44. Apiphobia - The fear of bees. Many people fear being stung by angry bees.

45. Koumpounophobia - The fear of buttons. Clothes with buttons are avoided.

46. Anatidaephobia - The fear of ducks. Somewhere, a duck is watching you.

47. Pyrophobia - The fear of fire. A natural/primal fear that can be debilitating.

48. Ranidaphobia - The fear of frogs. Often caused by episodes from childhood.

49. Galeophobia - The fear of sharks in the ocean or even in swimming pools.

50. Athazagoraphobia - The fear of being forgotten or not remembering things.

51. Katsaridaphobia - The fear of cockroaches. This can easily lead to an excessive cleaning disorder.

52. Pediophobia - The fear of dolls. This phobia could well be Chucky-induced.

53. Ichthyophobia - The fear of fish. Includes small, large, dead and living fish.

54. Achondroplasiaphobia - The fear of little people. As they look differently.

55. Mottephobia - The fear of moths. These insects are only beautiful to some.

56. Zoophobia - The fear of animals. Applies to both vile and harmless animals.

57. Bananaphobia - The fear of bananas. If you have this phobia, they are scary.

58. Sidonglobophobia - The fear of cotton balls or plastic foams. Oh that sound.

59. Scelerophobia - The fear of crime involves being afraid of burglars, attackers or crime in general.

60. Cibophobia - The fear of food. The phobia may come from a bad episode while eating, like choking.

61. Phasmophobia - The fear of ghosts. AKA Spectrophobia. Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!

62. Equinophobia - The fear of horses. Animal phobias are pretty common, especially for women.

63. Catoptrophobia - The fear of mirrors. Being afraid of what you might see.

64. Agliophobia - The fear of pain. Being afraid something painful will happen.

65. Tokophobia - The fear of pregnancy involves giving birth or having children.

66. Telephonophobia - The fear of talking on the phone. Phobics prefer texting.

67. Pogonophobia - The fear of beards or being scared of/around bearded men.

68. Omphalophobia - The fear of belly buttons. Touching and looking at navels.

69. Pseudodysphagia - The fear of choking often after a bad eating experience.

70. Bathophobia - The fear of depths can be anything associated with depth (lakes, tunnels, caves).

71. Cacomorphobia - The fear of fat people. Induced by the media. Affects some anorexics/bulimics.

72. Gerascophobia - The fear of getting old. Aging is the most natural thing, yet many of us fear it.

73. Nosocomephobia - The fear of hospitals. Let's face it, no one likes hospitals.

74. Ligyrophobia - The fear of loud noises. More than the instinctive noise fear.

75. Didaskaleinophobia - The fear of school. This phobia affects kids mostly.

76. Technophobia - The fear of technology is often induced by culture/religion.

77. Chronophobia - The fear of the future. A persistent fear of what is to come.

78. Spheksophobia - The fear of wasps. You panic and fear getting stung by it.

79. Ergophobia - The fear of work. Often due to social or performance anxiety.

80. Coulrophobia - The fear of clowns. Some people find clowns funny, coulrophobics certainly don't.

81. Allodoxaphobia - The fear of opinions. Being afraid of hearing what others are thinking of you.

82. Photophobia - The fear of light caused by something medical or traumatic.

83. Disposophobia - The fear of getting rid of stuff triggers extreme hoarding.

84. Numerophobia - The fear of numbers and the mere thought of calculations.

85. Ombrophobia - The fear of rain. Many fear the rain due to stormy weather.

86. Coasterphobia - The fear of roller coasters. Ever seen Final Destination 3?

87. Thalassophobia - The fear of the ocean. Water, waves and unknown spaces.

88. Scoleciphobia - The fear of worms. Often because of unhygienic conditions.

89. Kinemortophobia - The fear of zombies. Being afraid that zombies attack and turn you into them.

90. Myrmecophobia - The fear of ants. Not as common as Arachnophobia, but may feel just as intense.

91. Taphophobia - The fear of being buried alive by mistake and waking up in a coffin underground.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Phobia List - The Ultimate List of Phobias and Fears

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This website is dedicated to fears and phobias. It contains a large list of phobias and teaches how to cope with and ultimately cure your fear. You can also learn more about phobia symptoms and what fear is. Support my work by sharing this phobia list. Not sure if you have an anxiety disorder?

# data[].attributes.body
"I transform hate into love"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said." (Louise Bourgeois)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1IPtQdq CHECK OUT MY MAIN CHANNEL- http://bit.ly/1Q7kPWb Al lot of people are scared of the most craziest things. So here we have the top 10 list of most common phobias. FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA INSTAGRAM- http://instagram.com/landonproductions FACEBOOK- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Landonproduction/268626033166262?ref=hl TWITTER- https://twitter.com/LandonYoutube VIDEO EDITED BY: Cassie Macinnis: http://twitter.com/c_isforcassie

# data[].attributes.headline
A good task to do to introduce students to the idea of expressionism and line use

# data[].attributes.subject
A good task to do to introduce students to the idea of expressionism and line use

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Craftsy is your online resource for all creative makers, where you can find everything you need - from basic instruction to advanced techniques.

# data[].attributes.headline
Unconventional painting techniques to trial 

# data[].attributes.subject
Unconventional painting techniques to trial 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article outlines unusual painting and drawing techniques that are useful for creating exciting sketchbook pages, grounds, textural layers and adding tone and colour to an artwork. While mastery of traditional painting techniques can be all that is needed in a high school art project, sometimes combining traditional methods with wild and inventive approaches is advantageous!

Dip paper directly into paint / ink

Splashing liquid paint or dye onto a surface is one of the most unpredictable and exciting means of applying colour. Take turns at the classroom sink, dipping whole sheets of paper into watered down acrylic, splashing and flicking water across your work: holding paper, canvas or other painting surfaces in the air and letting the paint run down. Once an appealing wash of colour has been achieved, placed the artwork flat to dry, so the paint or ink pools and dries in naturally occuring swirls.

Paint using drips

Gravity can be a superb painting tool. Working with thicker, yet still runny paint (the consistency of house paint is ideal) long splashes and drips of paint can be controlled through tipping and altering the direction of a canvas, or through flicking paint wildly at a work in the style of Jackson Pollock (photographed by Hans Namuth) below.

There was complete silence ... Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint brush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realised the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint onto the canvas - Hans Namuth.

Using only gravity and a rotating canvas (and sometimes string as a guide) Canadian artist Amy Shackleton creates vibrant, complex scenes that are formed entirely from drips of paint squeezed from a bottle :

Paint with your body

Students should never be afraid of mess. Embracing the physical act of painting (removing the boundary between the maker and the artwork) allows you to 'become one' with an artwork. Get rid of your school uniform and dress yourself in old painting clothes. Spread a big plastic sheet in the corner of your art room (or go outside) and apply paint using your hands your feet or any part of your body that you dare! (Note: wash yourself thoroughly afterwards so as not to enrage head teachers or senior management)!
Painting with hair by Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen: Painting with feet by Kazuo Shiraga:
Draw using utensils tied to a stick

Just as removing the boundary between the maker and the creation can result in exciting outcomes, so too can exaggerating the gap between the artist and the work. Here we see exciting, gestural drawings by Year 10 students from Bolton School (Girls' Division):

Smear paint with a rag

Most students will wipe paint off their work at some point - usually when fearing they have made an error. Michael Shapcott does this with a magical beauty: using a rag to spread paint across his canvas until the right intensity is achieved. Beginning with a detailed graphite under-drawing, he applies oil and acrylic paint over the top and then wipes most of it away. Watching him work is entrancing:

Apply paint with card

An alternative to applying paint with a palette knife is to use the flat edge of a piece of cardboard. This is a cheaper and much more accessible strategy for a high school art student. Able to be cut, bent or folded as required, card is a great material for applying flat areas of colour to a work.
An example of painting with card by artist Mike Bernard:
Paint with a roller

Most students have used a roller to apply printing ink; fewer experiment with using a roller as tool to apply colour to their paintings. Although acrylic paint doesn't roll out as well as printing ink (it doesn't spread easily and covers surfaces in an irregular, unpredictable fashion) it is nonetheless a great way of achieving layers of flat tone in an artwork.
An example of painting a sketchbook page background with a roller by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer:
Squash blobs of paint flat with a piece of paper

A less controllable method of achieving areas of flat tone in a work is to press paper in blobs of paint and use these to transfer paint from one area to another (see example at 0.17 in this video by artist Michelle Brown):

Paint with a sponge

Sponges of all kinds make excellent painting accessories. Whether you use specialist artist sponges, cleaning sponges or naturally occurring sea sponges (able to be purchased from most art shops), sponges can be used to apply beautiful textural mark-making to a painting.

Flick paint-covered string

Construction workers flick taught string covered with chalk to mark straight lines in buildings. A similar principle can be used to create painted lines, using string laden with paint.
Examples of painting with string by artist Sophie Munns:
Paint with a mop

Sometimes a mere change of scale can be enough to invigorate and inspire a student. While most students do not have access to enormous brushes like those used by contemporary painter Fabienne Verdier, there are plenty of other substitutes that might make do: old kitchen mops, brooms, branches off trees, large house paint brushes...

Make a drawing machine

Drawing machines come in many shapes and forms. While most high school Art students do not have the time to create complex, automated drawing devices (such as the ones illustrated below), the concept of mechanical application can be used to inspire creative output on a smaller scale.
A drawing machine by Eske Rex: A drawing machine by Joseph Griffiths:
Paint using unconventional mediums

Although care needs to be taken when using materials that are not purpose built for art-making (especially when posting artwork to another country for assessment), avoiding sticky mediums that do not dry cleanly, or those which decay / rot over time, there are plenty of exciting, unusual products that can be used, which are found outside of the art supplies cupboard. Dye from walnut skins, stains from coffee cups, brightly coloured food dyes, splashes of shellac (varnish) and so on, can create wonderful outcomes.
Painting with M&Ms by Nikau Hindin:
Sprinkle watercolours with alcohol or salt

Artists have long known that certain chemicals resist wet paint and can be used to create textural surface patterns. Sprinkle semi-wet washes of watercolour with alcohol, salt, dishwashing soap or bleach etc, and the result will be an organic, intricate pattern.
Example of salt sprinkled onto watercolours by Sarah Knight:
Press foodwrap into watercolours

As with the technique above, pressing crinkled plastic foodwrap (such as Gladwrap) into wet watercolours results in intriguing patterns once the plastic is peeled off when dry.
Example by artist John Burge:
Use gel medium to create digital transfers

Although students should be careful not to rely on digital transfers at the expense of their own observational drawing, there are times when the integration of digital elements in traditional paintings can have spectacular outcomes. The following video by Chrystal Hethcote shows a simple image transfer technique using gel medium, which could be useful for applying a digital image to a traditional painting surface:

Spray paint through holes to create texture or patterns

Painting students often forget that stencils offer exciting possibilities. Items with gaps or holes can act as a stencil through which paint can be sprayed or flicked, creating repeating patterns, textures or irregular marks. Any number of found objects (leaves, branches, feathers, lace, mesh, fabric) or purposefully created items (card templates or paper with holes cut or ripped through it) can be suitable. It is not necessary to purchase large cans of industrial spray paint for this (indeed these can be hard to wield and tend to fill a classroom with paint fumes); rather use small, empty spray bottles from craft shops and fill these with watered down acrylic in appropriate colours.
Application of spray paint through lace by Tara Nelson: Card stencils by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer: Intricate paper stencils by Kris Trappeniers:
Apply ink directly to objects and print them

There are many natural forms (i.e. leaves, fish, mushrooms, eroding sticks) and manmade materials (i.e. corrugated cardboard) which can act as printable objects themselves. While objects should only be used if they support your theme or subject, this can be an exciting method for introducing textural elements to painted artworks.
Gyotaku fish prints by Barry Singer: Mushroom spore print by Lynn Corsi Bland: Corrugated cardboard relief print by Christina Leung: Print from a rotated termite eaten stick by Christina Leung:
Make items to print from

If you are unable to find suitable items to print, make some. From drizzling hot glue to layering strips of cardboard, there are endless ways to create abstract pattern making that can provide interesting mark-making within (or under) a painting. Remember not to make random patterns for the sake of it: select shapes and forms that support the ideas explored within your work.
A hot glue print by Terri Stegmiller: Printed pattern by Susan Mathews:
Take rubbings / use frottage to add texture

A 'rubbing' is the act of laying a piece of paper over a textured item and rubbing a pencil or crayon (or some other medium) over the top to make an impression of that texture on the paper. The frottage art technique simply involves taking a rubbing one step further, and using it to create an artwork that no longer directly mimics the original form. Although it can be difficult to add frottage to paintings (unless as pencil under-drawings), using frottage can quickly result in interesting and varied drawings.
Frottage art by Kumi Yamashita: Frottage art by Max Ernst:
Paint with any other random thing you can find

When it comes to painting utensils and tools, you are limited only by your imagination. Kids' toys can be driven through paint; old shoes can be used to create footprints; fly swats can whack gridded patterns across a piece of paper.

Although it is not always necessary to apply paint in wild and unexpected ways, there are times when this can breathe fresh air into your project!
This is the third article in a series aimed at encouraging inventive use of media for high school Painting / Fine Art students. You may also be interested in reading Part 1: How to make your Art Project Exciting and Part 2: Painting on Grounds. If you found this helpful, please share it with your followers using the social media buttons below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Beyond the Brush: Inventive Use of Media for Painting Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article outlines unusual painting and drawing techniques that are useful for creating exciting sketchbook pages, grounds, textural layers and adding tone and colour to an artwork. While mastery of traditional painting techniques can be all that is needed in a high school art project, sometimes combining traditional methods with wild and inventive approaches is advantageous!

# data[].attributes.headline
An interesting way to show expressionism through a students eyes

# data[].attributes.subject
An interesting way to show expressionism through a students eyes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Myp Art - Identity (personal and collective)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Half the page depicts one's outer self - what people see. The other half is a portrait of one's inner self. From www.emerlyearts.blogspot.ie

# data[].attributes.headline
Ben Schonzeit- Four Seasons and Black Paintings

# data[].attributes.subject
Ben Schonzeit- Four Seasons and Black Paintings

# data[].attributes.body
Excellent examples of composition and narrative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
First done after the death of his parents, the black series chronicle the inevitable traumas and joys of ordinary life. ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Art Project Ideas: A Guide to Subject Matter Selection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sep 19, 2015 - How to come up with an inspiring, original topic for your high school Art project (GCSE, IGCSE and A Level Art ideas from an experienced teacher and coursework assessor).

# data[].attributes.headline
Great Youtube videos for aryclic paint and collage

# data[].attributes.subject
Great Youtube videos for aryclic paint and collage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Second video in my "Acrylics 101" series. We'll see if it goes beyond this.

# data[].attributes.headline
a great video Using the elements to making an abstract like painting in a variety of mediums

# data[].attributes.subject
a great video Using the elements to making an abstract like painting in a variety of mediums

# data[].attributes.body
Expressionist artists

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art Ed PRO: Discover Expressionist Techniques in Drawing and Painting

# data[].attributes.headline
What do your dreams symbolise? Symbols... 

# data[].attributes.subject
What do your dreams symbolise? Symbols... 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Your Online Source For Dream Interpretations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dream Moods is a free online guide to help you interpret the meanings to your dreams. Check out our 6000+ word dream dictionary, fascinating discussion forums, and other dreaming topics.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

2170 x 5420 x 1800 mm | 85.5 x 213.4 x 70.9 in

Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution

Image: Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2012

Solo Exhibition - 2012
Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom

Group Exhibition - 2007
Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria

Solo Exhibition - 2003
The Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Group Exhibition - 1997
Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

Group Exhibition - 1992
Saatchi Collection, London, United Kingdom

'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' has become embedded in popular culture as one of the most iconic images of contemporary art. Conceived by Hirst in 1989 whilst at Goldsmiths, the ' Natural History ' work consists of a thirteen-foot tiger shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde, weighing a total of 23 tons. The shark is contained within a steel and glass vitrine three times longer than high and divided into three cubes.

According to the artist, the title was, "just a statement that I had used to describe the idea of death to myself". Thought of prior to the sculpture, it was taken from Hirst's student thesis on Hyperreality and the work of Robert Longo and Umberto Eco. Hirst recalls liking the title's poetic clumsiness because of the way it expressed, "something that wasn't there, or was there".[1]

The sculpture, which successfully pushed the boundaries of contemporary art, generated colossal press attention when exhibited at The Saatchi Gallery's ' YBA 1' at Boundary Road in London (1991). Explaining "I didn't just want a lightbox, or a painting of a shark" Hirst's intention was to force the viewer out of their element by introducing into a gallery setting, a shark that was "real enough to frighten you".[2] By isolating the shark from its natural habitat, with the formaldehyde providing an illusion of life, the work explores our greatest fears, and the difficulty involved in adequately trying to express them. As Hirst states: "You try and avoid [death], but it's such a big thing that you can't. That's the frightening thing isn't it?"[3]

In 1997 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' was included in ' Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection' at the Royal Academy, London. A decade later, Hirst chose the work as the focal piece in ' Re-Object ' (Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2007) - in which Hirst, Jeff Koons and Gerhard Merz each presented an artist's statement in an exhibition exploring the influence of Marcel Duchamp.

[1] Damien Hirst and Gordon Burn, 'On the Way to Work' (Faber and Faber, 2001), 19

[2] Quoted in 'The Truth About Art' (ZCZ Films, Channel 4, 1998); , 'I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now' (Booth-Clibborn Editions; Reduced edition, 2005), 32; Damien Hirst and Gordon Burn, 'On the Way to Work' (Faber and Faber, 2001), 19

[3] Damien Hirst,'We're Here for a Good Time, not a Long Time', Interview with Alastair Sooke, The Telegraph, 2011

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 2170 x 5420 x 1800 mm | 85.5 x 213.4 x 70.9 in Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution Image: Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

# data[].attributes.body
A contemporary artist dealing with fear in his work

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When they drag me back
Into this red world with its rabbit
Glue, its skin and wounds,
Its magnificent viscosity, I’ll be
Solemn, and unscarred, as always,
Countess of innumerable darkness.
A germ, a small poof
Of silence, I move beneath
My imagined furs and stacks
Of beautiful white Warhol wigs.
Madness, perhaps, this schloss.
This wild electric damage
Like Candy Darling alive,
Though barely, on her deathbed. (Cynthia Cruz, Snowbound)

# data[].attributes.body
Some of these artworks may inspire your composition and the way you arrange symbols and figures in your artwork?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The mower cuts back fresh grass
of spring, uncovers my first
junctured childhood memories:
the April after my father’s suicide,
me five, and the grass gone to seed
around our frame house in North
Carolina; my mother practicing her
loneliness in a whiskey bottle.
By fall, we had left that house,
leaving the brown, broomstraw lawn
unbroken, but beaten flat with use
over lost boards, long-necked
bottles, abandoned toys.



Excerpt: John Lane
 

# data[].attributes.body
An artist that explores fear in her work

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Yayoi Kusama's life is a poignant testament to the healing power of art as well as a study in human resilience. Plagued by mental illness as a child, and thoroughly abused by a callous mother, the young artist persevered by using her hallucinations and personal obsessions as fodder for prolific artistic output in various disciplines. This has informed a lifelong commitment to creativity at all costs despite the artist's birth into a traditional, female-effacing Japanese culture and her career's coming of age in the male dominated New York art scene. Today, Kusama reigns as one of the most unique and famous contemporary female artists, operating from her self-imposed home in a mental hospital.

When Kusama began to see hallucinations as a child, her way of coping with the bizarre phenomena was to paint what she saw. She says that art became her way to express her mental disease. This most notably is seen in her Infinity Net paintings based on repetitive patterns and her installations in which she creates elaborate environments overrun with polka dots or tiny points of light.

In much the same fashion as Kusama uses art to process hallucinations, she also uses her work to confront personal phobias, especially a fear of sex stemming from a witnessing of her father's womanizing. This reveals itself through her "compulsion" soft sculptures and furniture pieces covered in myriad phallic forms.

Her familiarity with fighting for her life, and her compassion for others involved in causes against injustice, led Kusama to briefly associate with many subcultural movements of her time such as the hippie culture of the 1960s and the feminist movement.

For Kusama, artmaking became an essential survival mechanism. It was her sole tool for making sense of a world in which she dwelt on the periphery of normative experience, and as a result became the very thing that allowed her to assimilate successfully into society.

Most Important Art

Yayoi Kusama Artworks in Focus:

Biography

Childhood/Education

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama grew up as the youngest of four children in an affluent family. However, her childhood was less than idyllic. Her parents were the product of a loveless, arranged marriage. Her absent father, emasculated by the fact that he had to take his wife's surname as a condition of marrying into the wealthy family, spent most of his time away from home womanizing, leaving his angry wife to physically abuse and emotionally torment her youngest child. She would often send her daughter to spy on her father's sexual exploits, the mental trauma of which caused Kusama to have a permanent aversion to sex and the male body.

At the age of ten Kusama began experiencing vivid hallucinations in which flowers would speak to her and patterns in fabric would come to life and consume her. She began to draw these visions as a therapeutic outlet, providing her with solace and control over the anxiety that tormented her. When Kusama was 13 years old she was sent to work in a military factory sewing parachutes for Japan's World War II efforts. Her adolescent years were spent in the darkness of the factory listening to air-raid sirens and the sounds of army planes flying overhead. The horrors of war would have a lasting effect on her, leading Kusama to create numerous anti-war works, and to also value individual and creative freedom. Her experience at the factory also provided her with the utilitarian ability to sew, which would prove useful when she began creating her soft sculptures in the 1960s.

Early Training

Disobeying her mother, who wanted her to simply be an obedient housewife, Kusama studied art in Masumoto and Kyoto. During this time in Japan, there was a movement to reject the influences of Western culture so Kusama was forced to only study Nihonga, which consisted of creating paintings using 1000 years old traditional Japanese techniques and materials. Her artistic talent was apparent at even a young age, and Kusama's work was shown in exhibitions all over Japan.

However, the stifling conservative Japanese culture and her abusive mother proved too much for Kusama, and in 1957 she moved to the United States, settling in New York City in 1958. Before she left, Kusama's mother handed her some money and told her "to never set foot in her house again." In response, Kusama angrily destroyed hundreds of her works.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Yayoi Kusama Biography Continues

Mature Period

Once in the United States, Kusama was free to explore her artistic expression that was censored while living in Japan. "For art like mine, [Japan] was too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women. My art needed a more unlimited freedom, and a wider world." With the help of Georgia O'Keeffe, who Kusama had started a correspondence and friendship with while still in Japan, she was able to secure exhibitions and some sales, leading to interest in her work right from the start. But there was also a fascination with the foreign artist herself, and she struck up a deep relationship with fellow Minimalist artist, Donald Judd, who admired her work so much that he purchased one of her first Infinity Net paintings. The middle-aged assemblage artist, Joseph Cornell was also infatuated with Kusama, often writing her love letters and sketching her in the nude. Because of her anxieties and fear of sex, both relationships, while very close, were strictly platonic. Cornell shared her sexual aversion and Kusama once remarked that "(Cornell) hated sex. That's why we got along so well." Kusama and Cornell developed such a close bond that when he died in 1972 she began creating collages to both honor his work and cope with his passing.

During this time Kusama worked feverishly, fully embracing the hedonist, free-spirited hippie culture of the 1960s, which also included protesting war, patriarchy, and capitalist society. Combining these themes with her own intimate anxieties, she created art that was deeply personal, but also spoke to the injustices of the times. Critics didn't know what to make of this innovative art, and soon the struggling artist went from obscurity to notoriety. Her fame rivaled that of some of the most famous Pop artists, and Kusama enjoyed the attention. Judd once recalled that while at a friend's house, Kusama grabbed a pregnant cat and sucked one of its nipples in order to draw attention to herself. Yet, this unapologetic and admitted quest for fame might also be seen as an effort to boldly self-validate her existence and to claim her identity in opposition to the obstacles placed upon her by her family's early denial of her career and her battle with mental illness.

Kusama's artistic output during this 15-year period was prolific and diverse, experimenting with various mediums such as drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, fashion, writing, and installation. She would sometimes work up to 50 hours without rest. Eventually the workload coupled with a lack of financial security and Cornell's death took its toll, and in 1973 she moved back to Japan to seek treatment for her mental exhaustion and declining physical health. She began focusing on her surreal writing and avant-garde clothing line. In 1977, after being diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive neurosis, Kusama checked herself in to the Seiwa Mental Hospital and has been living and working there by choice ever since.

Late Period

When Kusama moved back to Japan in the early 1970s she was all but forgotten by the Western art world. Even in Japan she was mostly known for her violence-soaked writings. That changed in 1993 when she was invited to represent Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale. The acclaimed installation of one of her Infinity Mirror Rooms containing dotted pumpkins, coupled with the artist's performances alongside the exhibition, renewed the interest and appreciation for her work, along with the interest in the quirky artist herself. Kusama still seeks the limelight and continues to insist on being photographed with her work. Wearing her signature red wig and polka dot garments of her own making, Kusama's personality has become just as infatuating as her art.

In 2008 one of Kusama's Infinity Nets, the same one once owned by Judd, set new art auction price records for a living female artist and led to collaborations with luxury fashion retailers, like Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton. The woman, whose art once protested capitalism and materialism, now fully embraces it.

Legacy

More important than the impact her diverse work has on the art market is its influence on other artists and movements, which spans generations. Her work inspired Pop artists, like Andy Warhol, Feminist artists, like Carolee Schneemann, Performance artists, like Yoko Ono, and contemporary artists, like Damien Hirst. Her far-reaching influence can be attributed to the fact that Kusama has always been a step ahead of her time, with her art being at the forefront of major artistic movements. And yet because her art making is so personal, and both a symptom and cure for her mental illness, it doesn't fit neatly into any of these defined movements. As fellow Pop artist, Claes Oldenburg states, "(Kusama) didn't have the kind of mind that identified with movements. She just went her own way." To this day, she represents herself as a lone wolf most comfortable with being known as independently avant-garde.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Yayoi Kusama Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yayoi Kusama's life is a poignant testament to the healing power of art as well as a study in human resilience. Plagued by mental illness as a child, and thoroughly abused by a callous mother, the young artist persevered by using her hallucinations and personal obsessions as fodder for prolific artistic output in various disciplines.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The media is often criticized for showing violent and disturbing imagery. Movies, TV, video games, tabletop RPGs, comic books, and various other things have all gone through periods where they're blamed for exposing children to dark and unsettling things. But as these fine art examples prove, violent and disturbing imagery is nothing new.
(Obviously, this article contains some disturbing content.)
1. Peter Paul Rubens - Massacre of the Innocents

Painted in 1611, Massacre of the Innocents is Rubens' interpretation of Herod's order to kill every young male in Bethlehem, as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew. Featuring nude men ripping babies out of the arms of their mothers and then murdering the children in front of them, the painting is certainly not for the squeamish.

2. Théodore Géricault - Anatomical Pieces

This is but one of a series of works featuring disembodied body parts (including a painting of a pair of severed heads, equally as unsettling as this one) painted by French artist Théodore Géricault. The most disturbing part is that all the paintings were based on real model remains Géricault acquired from the Paris Morgue.

3. Andy Warhol - Big Electric Chair

Andy Warhol is most famous for his pop art pictures of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, but he also dabbled in some darker works, including his chilling piece, Big Electric Chair. The painting is based on a photograph of the former execution chamber at Sing Sing prison in New York. For more daring readers, Warhol also released artworks featuring police photos of suicides and car fatalities. Feel free to look those up on your own.

4. Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Triumph of Death

An army of skeletons attacks peasants and royalty alike in Bruegel's The Triumph of Death. Every inch of the painting presents some new horror committed by the army of death, and many easily missed details can be seen by looking at a full-sized representation of the piece. Although it's commonly mistaken as being a depiction of the Black Plague, it was actually painted over 200 years later.

5. Odilon Redon - Smiling Spider

If you're arachnophobic or just generally not a fan of small, many-legged critters, you might want to avoid some of Odilon Redon's works. This is just one of a couple of paintings displaying the emotions of a weirdly human-faced spider. Even if you're okay with spiders or downright love the little guys, this thing is still creepily unsettling.

6. William Adolphe Bouguereau - Dante and Virgil in Hell

Although it shares traits common with contemporary vampire stories, this painting by Bouguereau is 50 years older than even Stoker's Dracula, and is essentially an exact interpretation of an event described in Canto XXX of Dante's Inferno. While touring the eighth circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil look on as Capocchio, a heretical alchemist, is bitten on the neck during a fight with Gianni Schicchi, a con artist who stole a dead man's inheritance.

7. Hieronymous Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights

This is but a detailed view of just one part of Bosch's famous Garden of Earthly Delights. The original is a triptych--a single work split among three panels--and the section here is merely from the bottom-right of the right-hand panel. Like Bruegel's Triumph of Death, the numerous details in this work really benefit from a high-resolution image. (Warning for readers with slower connections: That file is nearly 100mb in size.)

8. Francisco Goya - Saturn Devouring His Son

In Greek mythology, the titan Cronus (Saturn in Roman texts), fearing that he would be overthrown by his children as he had usurped his own father, began swallowing each of them whole. (They're later purged, still alive, by Zeus.) However, in Goya's take on the tale, painted as a mural on the wall of his own house, a deranged-looking Cronus violently consumes them piece by piece instead.

9. Henry Fuseli - The Nightmare

Fuseli's most famous painting, The Nightmare, may not seem creepy in the traditional sense. The incubus, by today's standards, looks a little like a cartoonish gremlin, for example. But the dream-like, surreal quality of the piece has kept its legacy alive. Even during the artist's lifetime, the work was so popular that he created an even creepier alternate version.

10. Giovanni Boldini - Spanish Dancer at the Moulin Rouge

While Boldini is primarily known for his portraiture, he also did paint some original works. It may be hard to see what's creepy about this particular work at first. It helps to know that the title is sometimes pluralized and called Spanish Dancers at the Moulin Rouge. If that's not doing it for you, look at the hand over the dancer's shoulder at the left side of the painting and follow it right.

11. Caravaggio - Judith Beheading Holofernes

In the deuterocanonical Biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, Judith charms Holofernes with her beauty, gets him drunk, and then decapitates him, just like an episode of Game of Thrones. While the story has inspired hundreds of artists throughout history, Caravaggio's is easily one of the most gruesome interpretations.

12. Salvator Rosa - The Temptation of Saint Anthony

According to a biography of St. Anthony by Athanasius of Alexandria, Anthony was attacked and killed by demons in a cave on his trip across the Egyptian desert, only to later be revived. When he re-entered the cave, the demons turned into monstrous creatures who attempted to kill him once more. While this is a very popular subject for artists throughout history, Rosa's take, especially on the forms of the demons, is very surreal and nightmarish.

13. Francis Bacon - Painting (1946)

Described as either one of the greatest painters of the 20th century or a complete madman, depending on who you ask, Francis Bacon's work was nothing if not creepy. Painting, containing various images reminiscent of a butcher shop, was created completely by accident, according to the artist himself. Originally intended to be a chimpanzee standing in tall grass and a bird landing nearby, Bacon said that he then unintentionally painted what you see above.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
13 Disturbing Pieces of Art from History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The media is often criticized for showing violent and disturbing imagery. Movies, TV, video games, tabletop RPGs, comic books, and various other things have all gone through periods where they're blamed for exposing children to dark and unsettling things. But as these fine art examples prove, violent and disturbing imagery is nothing new.

# data[].attributes.headline
Expressionist Handout-Kathe Kollwitz and Edvard Munch info mostly.

# data[].attributes.subject
Expressionist Handout-Kathe Kollwitz and Edvard Munch info mostly.

# data[].attributes.body
This is an excellent read on Expressionism

# data[].attributes.headline
8 interesting watercolour techniques for beginners

# data[].attributes.subject
8 interesting watercolour techniques for beginners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Expose a contradiction, that is all you need."

Synopsis

Louise Bourgeois's work, which spanned most of the twentieth century, was heavily influenced by traumatic psychological events from her childhood, particularly her father's infidelity. Bourgeois's often brooding and sexually explicit subject matter and her focus on three-dimensional form were rare for women artists at the time. Beginning in the 1970s, she hosted Sunday salons in her Chelsea apartment, where students and young artists would take their work to be critiqued by Bourgeois, who could be ruthless and referred to the gatherings, with characteristically dry humor, as "Sunday, bloody Sunday". Nevertheless, this accessibility and willingness to advise younger artists was exceptional for an established artist of such standing. Her influence on other artists since the 1970s looms large, but is manifested most strongly in feminist-inspired body art and in the development of installation art.

Key Ideas

Bourgeois's artwork is renowned for its highly personal thematic content involving the unconscious, sexual desire, and the body. These themes draw on events in her childhood for which she considered making art a therapeutic or cathartic process.

Bourgeois transformed her experiences into a highly personal visual language through the use of mythological and archetypal imagery, adopting objects such as spirals, spiders, cages, medical tools, and sewn appendages to symbolize the feminine psyche, beauty, and psychological pain.

Through the use of abstract form and a wide variety of media, Bourgeois dealt with notions of universal balance, playfully juxtaposing materials conventionally considered male or female. She would, for example, use rough or hard materials most strongly associated with masculinity to sculpt soft biomorphic forms suggestive of femininity.

Most Important Art

Louise Bourgeois Artworks in Focus:

From Our Sponsor. Article Continues Below

Biography

Childhood

Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 and named after her father, Louis, who had wanted a son. During the week, her family lived in the fashionable St. Germain in an apartment above the gallery where her parents sold their tapestries. The family also had a villa and workshop in the countryside where they spent their weekends restoring antique tapestries. Throughout her childhood, Bourgeois was recruited to help in the workshop by washing, mending, sewing, and drawing. The workshop was overseen by Bourgeois's mother, Josephine, with whom she was very close. As an adolescent, Bourgeois attended the elite Lycee Fenelon in Paris. Tensions in the household, particularly the fact that her father's mistress (who was also Bourgeois's tutor) resided with the Bourgeois family, would later come to inform Bourgeois's highly autobiographical artwork.

Early Training

Bourgeois had a wide-ranging education. In the early 1930s, she studied math and philosophy at the Sorbonne, where she wrote her thesis on Blaise Pascal and Emmanuel Kant. After the death of her mother in 1932, she began studying art, enrolling in several schools and ateliers between 1934 and 1938, including the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Academie Ranson, the Academie Julian, and the Academie de la Grande-Chaumiere. Her first Paris apartment was on the rue de Seine in the same building as André Breton's Galerie Gradiva, where she became familiar with the work of the Surrealists. In 1938, she began exhibiting her work at the Salon d'Automne and opened her own gallery in a sectioned-off area of her father's tapestry showroom, exhibiting prints and paintings. Through her short career as an art dealer, she met art historian Robert Goldwater, with whom she married and relocated to New York City in 1938.

Mature Period

Upon arrival in New York, Bourgeois enrolled at the Art Students League and focused her attention on printmaking and painting, while also having three children in four years. Throughout the 1940s and '50s, Goldwater introduced Bourgeois to a plethora of New York artists, critics, and dealers, including importantly Alfred Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, who bought one of her works for the MoMA collection in 1953. In the late '40s and '50s, she had several solo shows in various New York galleries. Her husband received a Fulbright grant and they returned with their children to France for several years in the early 1950s, during which time her father died. Bourgeois began psychoanalysis in 1952, which she continued on and off until 1985. In the 1960s, Bourgeois began experimenting with latex, plaster, and rubber, and also traveled to Italy, where she worked with marble and bronze.

From Our Sponsor. Article Continues Below

Louise Bourgeois and More at Online Auctions

Late Period

Bourgeois's husband died in 1973, the same year she began teaching at various institutions in New York City, including the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Cooper Union. She also participated in several exhibits in the 1970s and '80s and began presenting performance pieces. In the 1970s, Bourgeois also became politically active as a socialist and a feminist. She joined the Fight Censorship Group, which defended the use of sexually explicit imagery in art, and made several of her own sexually explicit works related to the female body, such as Fillette (1968). Marking her prestige in the art world, Bourgeois had her first retrospective in 1982 at MoMA, which was the first given to a female artist at that institution. In 1993, Bourgeois, who became an American citizen in 1955, was chosen to represent the USA in the Venice Biennale. She died in 2010.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Louise Bourgeois Biography Continues

Legacy

Bourgeois's work helped inform the burgeoning feminist art movement and continues to influence feminist-inspired work and installation art. The first assemblages of Louise Nevelson, for example, were produced a few years after Bourgeois had been experimenting with similar environments, such as Blind Leading the Blind (1947-49) and Night Garden (1953). Bourgeois's focus on both male and female gentalia during the 1960s was an important precursor to feminist artists such as Lynda Benglis and Judy Chicago, whose works address similar interests. Bourgeois's work always centered upon the reconstruction of memory, and in her 98 years, she produced an astounding body of sculptures, drawings, books, prints, and installations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Louise Bourgeois Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Expose a contradiction, that is all you need." Louise Bourgeois's work, which spanned most of the twentieth century, was heavily influenced by traumatic psychological events from her childhood, particularly her father's infidelity. Bourgeois's often brooding and sexually explicit subject matter and her focus on three-dimensional form were rare for women artists at the time.

# data[].attributes.headline
A small list of Expressionist Artists you could choose

# data[].attributes.subject
A small list of Expressionist Artists you could choose

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Art Ed PRO: Discover Expressionist Techniques in Drawing and Painting | Art | Pinterest | Art history, History and Art lessons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art Ed PRO: Discover Expressionist Techniques in Drawing and Painting

# data[].attributes.headline
What does Expressionism look like/characteristics 

# data[].attributes.subject
What does Expressionism look like/characteristics 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art Ed PRO: Discover Expressionist Techniques in Drawing and Painting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

# data[].attributes.headline
A great example of Expressionist artworks

# data[].attributes.subject
A great example of Expressionist artworks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
John Milton, Paradise Lost:

Next came one
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off,
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge,
Where he fell flat and shamed his worshippers:
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man
And downward fish; yet had his temple high.

# data[].attributes.headline
More waterolour paint tutorials and technique ideas

# data[].attributes.subject
More waterolour paint tutorials and technique ideas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Discover Expressionist Techniques in Drawing and Painting

2 PD Hours

1 Learn about essential expressionist techniques and how to introduce them to your students

2 Explore the characteristics, formal qualities, and vocabulary of expressionism

3 Discover the best ways to incorporate expressionism into different aspects of your curriculum

Expressionism is visually and conceptually fascinating, but it can be difficult to introduce to your students. In this Learning Pack, explore a variety of approaches for introducing expressionist artists, vocabulary, media, and techniques. Gain specific ideas for lessons, critiques, assessments, and more. It's everything you need to teach the ideas of Expressionism in your classroom!

Haley Parker

AOE Graduate Instructor and PRO Facilitator

Haley is an Abstract Expressionist painter who received her MFA from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She is a former elementary art teacher and current graduate instructor at the Art of Education who loves sharing her passion through teaching art!

Discussion

Links

Created with Sketch. Streamline Your Art History Discussions with Platform Slides

Created with Sketch. 5 Easy Ways to Add More Art History to Your Curriculum

Created with Sketch. 100 Essential Words All Elementary Students Should Learn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Discover Expressionist Techniques in Drawing and Painting - The Art of Ed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
2 PD Hours 1 Learn about essential expressionist techniques and how to introduce them to your students 2 Explore the characteristics, formal qualities, and vocabulary of expressionism 3 Discover the best ways to incorporate expressionism into different aspects of your curriculum Expressionism is visually and conceptually fascinating, but it can be difficult to introduce to your students.

# data[].attributes.headline
Tips for painting in an expressionist style 

# data[].attributes.subject
Tips for painting in an expressionist style 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art Ed PRO: Discover Expressionist Techniques in Drawing and Painting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
LearningIT Blog Here you will find various types of information regarding IT, the arts and learning in the 21st century. Most of the items you find here will hopefully help generate new and creative ideas for yourselves or your students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Kate Donohue Psychotherapy Mendocino County California

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
-Frida Kahlo

I am standing in front of the bed where Frida Kahlo died, absorbing the beauty of her petite Mexican death mask, shrouded in a green and gray rebozo, touching her flamboyantly painted and glowing corset. My tears flow and a tremendous sadness I have been experiencing, while moving around Casa Azul, flood me.

I recall her statement to her young lover, Alejandro Gomez Arias after her tragic streetcar accident. ".... death dances around my bed at night." (Herrera, 2002, p. 36) I see the dance of death move around this bed of suffering, from her tragic accident, numerous operations and physical anguish, miscarriages, love affairs, and her political as well as cultural pain. The words of Octavio Paz, a Mexican writer, capture me again, ".... Mexicans have no qualms about getting close and personal with death." (Paz, 1961 p. 75). By becoming close and personal with Frida's suffering, life and death, I become close to my experience of death again. Remembering my encounters with death both literal and symbolic, I recalled my first dreams of Frida after my own series of miscarriages.

Twenty years ago, I did not understand my dreams of Frida in which we share our suffering about infertility. Curious, I went back to Frida's biography I had read ten years prior to my dreams. My unconscious had remembered Frida's suffering around her own infertility. Twenty years ago, Frida spoke to me in my dreams to comfort me and guide me back to my creative resource of painting. Inspired by Frida, I painted my pain.

Standing here in Casa Azul, now as an older woman, I find she moves me again. I traveled to Mexico in a pilgrimage to heal from a current major life disappointment. I recalled Jung's words that helped me hold this perceived failure. "The experience of the self is always a defeat of the ego" (CW, vol. 14, par. 778, p. 546).

Living so closely with pain, loss, disappointment and death, Frida' life and art embody Jung's words for me. Kahlo's dance with death is a vivid portrait of how our unwanted agonies can be our greatest teachers. Frida's paintings became the voice of her psyche.

For Frida, life and death existed simultaneously. She understood the archetype of death most intimately, as it was palpable everyday. With death as her guide, she plunged into her internal world through her art. This descent allowed her to ultimately value her life, her culture, and her inner-directed creative expression. Frida's images penetrate into this paradox of existence, the dance of life and death. Invited into her world, she seduces us to confront similar issues in our own lives. Frida has become a mesmerizing archetypal image of the wounded and triumphant feminine: the feminine whose teacher is her indigenous culture and death.

After experiencing Casa Azul, I began to write seated in her garden. In my reverie, memories and images, as well as Jung's reflections on death, cascaded through me. Vivid memories of my trip to Ghana come alive again, teaching me about death through their funeral rituals. After this trip eight years ago, I realized how much death was interwoven in my life. I was born into my family's death dance with the death of my three of grandparents during the first year of my life. My internal terrain was altered forever. Eight years ago, I felt compelled to understand my own death dance. I turned to anthropology, theology, archeology, and Jung's reflections on death to help me understand its meaning (Metcalf & Huntington, 1991, Yates, 1999). Jung reflected the Ghanaian and the Mexican as well as my own budding sense of the importance of death. "Death is psychologically as important as birth, and, like it is an integral part of life" (CW, vol. 13, par 68, p.116).

Jung knew the archetypal importance of literal and symbolic death. He saw death as sacred marriage with life. Death is a universal wedding, which gives the soul wholeness.

"In light of eternity, it is a wedding, a mysterium conjunctionis. The soul attains, as it were its missing half, it achieves wholeness."(Jung, 1961, p.314).

Delving deeper, Jung taught me how death informs life choices, especially marriage. Jung stressed the importance of confronting actual death as way of knowing the self, our values and the meaning of life. The symbolic aspect of death is equally important and speaks to us through our unconscious in dreams and imagery, highlighting the transformative aspects of symbolic death (Yates, 1999).

In my reverie that day in June, the power of Frida's art become clearer to me. Frida's art infuses Jung's ideas with a flesh and blood experience of the Archetype of Death. Frida's life and art openly confronts literal and symbolic death, pain and the shadow, all that we reject.

Frida took a stance in life that allowed her to live with her vulnerability and find strength and power by embracing what is rejected. Exploring the shadow of death was an integral part of her Mexican culture and provided a doorway to enter into the universal, the archetypal. Frida boldly painted her suffering, her relationship to death and all she was supposed to hide.

Frida's art plays with these agonies. They become teachers of the paradox of existence. As she revealed her pain, she not only liberated herself, but liberated me, as well. Frida's art gives us permission to embrace what is hard and difficult in our lives. Through her art and her psyche's voice, creativity and meaning emerge from suffering and confrontations with the shadow of death.

Many scholars of Frida's art feel she is guided by the Aztec goddess, Coatlique/Coatlicue, (pronounced kwat-lee-kweh), the Mother of the Gods,the goddess of life, death and rebirth, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes. She is the Aztec goddess of death, dismemberment, and destruction as well as life. Coatlique wears a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace made of human hearts, hands and skulls. Her feet and hands are adorned with claws and her breasts are depicted as hanging flaccid from nursing. She was created in the image of the "unknown," the mystery created by the decorations of skulls, snakes, and lacerated hands (Granziera, 2005, p. 25). Coatlique is the archetypal symbol of death like the Hindu goddess Kali (Metcalf & Huntington, 1991, and West, 1997).

With skeletons and hearts in her paintings, Frida found a way not to fear Coatlique but to embrace her, thus finding meaning beyond suffering. With the help of this cultural icon, Frida understood symbolic death culturally as well as personally. This goddess will be her most profound instructor. With the help of Coatlique holding life and death, Frida's ego can consciously contend with the unexpected appearance of the Self in her art and psyche.

Frida was challenged with many losses: her health, children, infidelity and constant physical suffering. The emergence of the self for Frida came from the loss of what the ego had embraced. Paraphrasing Jung, the ego's desires may not be our path of individuation. But through symbolic death - loss, failure or illness - the Self can emerge surprisingly and unexpectedly.

Death's presence compelled Frida to burrow into her internal world through her paintings. Little Frida wore the Mexican mask of death almost from birth. Her acknowledgment of death created a metamorphosis in her psyche, then in her art. Her confrontational paintings persuade us to explore these unknown territories in ourselves.

This piece of a beautiful 1922 poem by Frida speaks of her sorrow, perhaps due to the presence of the shadow of death following her.

"I had smiled nothing more. But clarity was in me and in the depth of my silence.
He followed me. Like my shadow, irreproachable and light.
In the night he wept a song....
He followed me.
I ended up crying, forgotten in the entrance of the Parish church
Produced by silk shawl, which soaked up my tears" (Herrera, 1991, p. 31).

These words captured my curiosity. They tell the story of her inner and outer life struggles. Lacing Frida's art with Jung's ideas gave me a deeper perspective on the archetype of death and the poignancy of her art and poetry. Now I more fully understand how Frida, the artist and poet, became an archetypal icon herself.

Frida was an immensely complex woman, but the following glimpses into her life and soul will illuminate the wisdom of her art. Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico City , to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent.

She was born and lived most of her life in Casa Azul in Coyoacan with her parents and four sisters, currently the home to the Frida Kahlo Museum . Her ancestral legacy and the family's relationship to death are depicted in "My Family". The dead and living exist together, but death seems to leave three images faceless.

Frida had vastly different relationships with her parents. Frida's Mother, Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez, was still mourning the death of a son who had died shortly after birth when Frida was conceived. Perhaps Matilde had been suffering from postpartum depression as she was unable to breast-feed baby Frida. Soon after Frida's birth, her mother became pregnant with her sister Christina. This may have deepened her mother's depression and overwhelmed her. Frida felt unloved and abandoned by her mother and was competitive with her closest sister, Christina. This family photo illustrates the tone and feel of the family for little Frida laying in the chair on the left. The evidence of the mother complex is reflected in her face and body posture.

Of mixed Spanish and Mexican heritage, Matilde was a devout Catholic and seemed stern, self involved and distracted. It seemed that Frida did not receive, as Winnicott (1965) would say, the "good enough" mothering a young soul deserves. This inadequate mothering can leave a child unable to metabolize her experiences. These archetypal energies are left raw with no personal energy to humanize them. Fortunately, Frida had her art. She also had childhood's natural connection to the archetypal realm through her imagination and art, which was paradoxically fueled by the woundings she experienced.

In "My Birth," created after her mother's death, Kahlo depicts the suffering she endured in her relationship with her mother. The baby is birthing herself, alone and unaided. On the wall is an image of the Virgin of Sorrows pierced by thorns, bleeding and weeping. This image seems to hold birth and death simultaneously. The mother wears a death's shroud and the baby emerges with a face of anguish. Frida said this is "how I imagine I was born" (West, 1997, p.383); perhaps she felt she was born from a dead mother, a child's experience of the depressed mother. (Carpenter, 2008, Herrera, 1983, 1991, and Zamora, 1990).

The collective mother gives Frida the nurturance she needs in "My nurse and I". Frida was not breast-fed and experienced a wounded motherline, a mother complex (Lowinsky, 1992). She was forced to find the Great Mother through her culture, which she embraced in her Tehuana styled Mexican clothes, and through the universal mothering energies of her goddess, Coatlique. Frida started to create in this painting, the goddess and the mother she longed for and which will be developed in her later paintings. However, this nurse looks austere and has a pre-Hispanic death mask instead of a human face. Nurturance and life are laced with death and suffering as the baby Frida does not look securely held, nor does she have the soft maternal gaze that is so important in attachment and bonding (Schore, 2003).

Her fantasy and imagination allowed her to create the images she needed to metabolize her painful experiences and to live close to the collective. She contracted polio at the age of six, and it left her left leg thinner than the right. Frida had an imaginary friend who could dance, did not limp and who would be her friend when alone in bed. Frida talks about her friend in her diary:

"I must have been six years, when I experienced intensely an imaginary friendship with a little girl more or less the same age as me...I went down in great haste into the interior of the earth where my imaginary friend was always waiting for me (Kahlo, 1995, p. 230).

As an adult, this imaginary friend was transformed into her self-portraits, her empathetic mirroring and also into the "Two Fridas" as seen above. She is alone with herself, yet accompanies herself.

In "Frida in Coyoacan," we see the younger Frida, alone, sad, yet perhaps prescient, knowing that tragedy waited to happen on the street of trolley tracks. Frida, with a knowing child's face, communicates her close delicate connection to her personal and to the collective unconscious. The universality of death emerges through her dead mother, her polio, her suffering and her culture.

Fortunately and complicatedly, she had a positive and close relationship to her Father, Wilhelm Kahl, a German Jewish photographer who immigrated toMexico and changed his name to Guillermo Kahlo. He suffered from epilepsy and was a distant father: intellectual and introverted and solitary. Guillermo adored Frida and she idealized him. Frida identified with his creativity, intellect, and physical vulnerabilities.

Evelyn Torton Beck, a feminist scholar, (2006) delved into Frida's paintings and journal as they revealed evidence of incest with her father, emotional or literal. This hypothesis about sexual wounding provides a fuller perspective on her behavior: Frida's sexual acting out in adolescence, her marriage to an older man, Diego, and her affairs after the sexual betrayal by her sister, Christina which will be explored later.

Beck uses the surreal painting of "What the Water Gave Me" as evidence of her sexual wounding. These images, many from other painting here are fragmented into torturous and dangerous positions. This torture is reflected in the poetic passage from Frida's Diary.

"Mine is a strange world

Of criminal silences

Of strangers' watchful eyes

Misreading the evil.

Darkness in the daytime...

Was it my fault?

I admit, my great guilt

As great as pain

It was an enormous exit

Which my love went through"

(Kahlo, quoted in Beck, 2006. p. 77-78)

Her poignant words and disturbing imagery depict evil in a more collective, surreal context here, as well as her ability to hold paradox in her art. These paradoxes are held in a delicate balance that foreshadows a stronger resolution in her later pieces.

Jung felt that poetry helps us move into our dark currents and leads us to the collective unconscious. Frida' artistry again embodies his words.

"(Poets) are always the first to divine the darkly moving mysterious currents and to express them, as best they can, in symbols that speak to us. They make known, like true prophets, the stirrings of the collective unconscious" (CW, vol. 6, par. 322, p.190).

Enacted incest, emotional or literal, is a soul murder to the feminine spirit and adds yet another possible death Frida experienced in her early years (Kalsched, 1996). This painting has special significance to me. When I visited the O'Gorman-designed home and studio of Frida and Diego in San Angel, I entered Frida's tiny bathroom, and saw this piece "What the Water Gave Us" above her tub. I imagined her in this tub, wrestling with this soul murder through these sexual woundings, and discovering a creative resource to grapple with her inner death through her surreal imagery. Then I imagined her painting it in this very studio.

As an adolescent, she identified with her Father, and often dressed as a male. There may have been many reasons, perhaps trying to replace the dead son and becoming the son her father might have wanted. However, the price of being the father's daughter is high (Harding, 1970). There can be alienation from the feminine source of self. Frida did not identify with her mother and felt she was stupid. The seeds for difficulties in future relationships were planted: triangulation, betrayal and infidelity. These issues did pervade her love relationships and her relationship with her sister, Christina.

Tragedy laced her life. As mentioned, she struggled with polio as a child. With the encouragement of her father and her feisty personality, she overcomes her disability. Guillermo encouraged Frida to be physically active, pursue art and education. Paradoxically, Beck theorizes it was during this period of confinement and adoration that the emotional if not actual incest began.

This was the positive aspect of being the father's daughter. Frida had the world of men opened to her and she developed a sense of androgyny, which would help her cope with her future tragedies. However, Frida may not have had a full sense of androgyny. She seemed to reject the personal feminine her mother offered, yet she found the feminine by embracing the Mexican culture through her Tehuana dress and artistic style.

There are moments that can change the course of our lives. Frida had such a life changing experience at the age of eighteen. While riding home from school, the bus she was on collided with a trolley car.

Frida sustained grave injuries which included a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot and a dislocated shoulder (Alcantara and Egnolff, 2005, Herrera, 1983, 1991, Carpenter, 2008, Grimberg, 2006, and Zamora, 1991).

A broken handrail had entered her left hip and came out through her vagina. Frida joked it was in the accident she lost her virginity. Her sexuality was linked not only to sexual wounding, but also to physical suffering from these sexual injuries from the accident. Both pervaded her relationship with Diego Rivera, her future husband. During the accident, her clothes were torn from her body, the handrail impaled her, and a painter's gold-leaf paint covered her bloody body. Many passersby called her "la bailarina, la bailarina," the dancer (Herrera, 1991, p. 34).

She spent a year in bed recovering from these injuries. Told she would never walk again, Frida was determined, and did regain her ability to walk, but spent the rest of her life in constant pain, and had thirty-five surgeries, mostly on her back and right leg and foot. Frida, a Catholic, identified with Jesus and the sacredness of his horrible death and called this accident, "her Calvary" (Herrera, 1991, p. 37).

Coatlique dismembered Frida, and after this fragmentation. Frida was reborn again, first as a "mature, sad woman" (p.37) and second as icon of the wounded and triumphant feminine, that she holds for many women today.

In Frida's words to her lover Alejandro Gomez Arias, she revealed the immensity of the accident in her life:

"... A little while ago, not much more than a few days ago, I was a child who went about in a world of colors, of hard and tangible forms. Everything was mysterious and something was hidden, guessing what it was, was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to know suddenly, as if a bolt of lightening illuminated the earth. Now I live in painful planet, transparent as ice, but it is as if I had learned everything at once in seconds. My friends, my companions become women slowly, I became old in instants and everything today is bland and lucid. I know that nothing lies behind, if there were something I would see it." (p. 37).

Near death accidents, life threatening illnesses or the death of loved ones collapse life into a liminal space in which defenses are striped and all becomes a search for meaning, purpose and a spiritual attitude.

"The self.... hits consciousness unexpectedly, like lightning, and occasionally with devastating consequences. It thrusts the ego aside and makes room for a Superordinate factor, the totality of a person..." (CW, vol. 9, par. 541, p. 304).

Again embodying Jung's words, the accident was life changing. She abandoned her hopes of pursuing a medical career and became a full time painter. This was a slow process. First, she painted her body casts and then her family created a bed-easel with a ceiling mirror over her reclining body. She stayed in her bed for the first year.

Having an essentially captive model, Frida drew and painted herself, and is best known for her self-portraits. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits. At first, her self-portraits were gifts to her boyfriend and friends. This seems to have been her way of ensuring their interest and love for her. By representing her face in a serene and impassive way, she was also attempting to deny the overwhelming feelings of helplessness and despair she felt. Just as she had done earlier, when she fell ill with polio, creating an imaginary double, she attempted to convey a sense of invulnerability, strength and transcendence over her body's limitations.

Through her artistic empathetic mirroring, she is able to start metabolizing the horror she has experienced as well as embracing her inquisitive, irreverent and intellectual spirit.

Self-taught, at first her paintings were deliberately naïve and flattened forms of Mexican folk art, which she loved. As her paintings matured, she starkly painted her pain. She created sometimes shocking images of her numerous operations, painful miscarriages and her troubled marriage to Diego Rivera, symbolically depicting her physical as well psychological wounds.

As her individuation process deepened, her art changed. Her paintings became replete with bright colors and her indigenous Mexican imagery and culture, and her self-portraits trace her cultural embrace. These thorns, in "Self-portrait with Thorns," pierce her neck as her face is surrounded by nature. There is no distance from her suffering in many of her later self-portraits. Frida experiences little deaths each day, but she is not cut off from nature. Frida is embraced by earth mother.

Frida was able to consciously hold the archetype of death without being overwhelmed by it. Her stance with death was interlaced with a Mexican cultural mythos of the Day of the Dead. In this mythos, one has close relationship with the spirit world. The spirits return to be fed when the veil is lifted between life and death on November 2 nd, the Day of the Dead (Calavera, 2005).

Frida intrigues us with her metamorphosis on her canvases. In the transformative "Broken Columns," Frida is no longer lying down as she was in life, but is upright and gazing into a reality that is beyond the personal, into the very nature of existence, an archetypal reality. Her ego consciousness can now hold her as a numinous symbol of the Self, the universal wounded and triumphant feminine. Frida stands tall and able to return to her life not in crisis, but with strength that her direct and inward gaze portrays as the objective Self (Alcantara and Egnolff, 2005, Herrera, 1983, 1991, Carpenter, 2008, Grimberg, 2006, West, 1997and Zamora, 1991).

At the age of 21, Frida fell in love with the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, who also affiliated with the Communist Party. Soul mates and lovers, theirs was a turbulent relationship. Twenty years her senior, with a demanding and successful career, Diego was repeatedly unfaithful to Frida, with one of the most hurtful encounters occurring between Diego and her beloved sister, Christina.

Jung (1925) explores how the unlived lives of an individual's parents are carried in the unconscious and later activate the choice of a marriage partner, this ongoing influence of death in our lives. . Perhaps Frida and Christina enacted the competition, triangulation and betrayal that were interwoven in their family dynamics. Frida also enacted the family secret in her marriage to Diego. Her mother was betrayed by her husband's secret adoration of his daughter. Frida was both betrayed by a family member, her sister, as well as becoming the betrayer with her numerous sexual liaisons after Christina's affair with Diego.

After she learned of the affair, Frida chopped off her hair, which Diego loved, in an act of defiance. Reflecting her sardonic humor, at the top of this painting are the words of a popular song:

"Look, I used to love you, it was because of your hair, now you're pelona (bald or shorn), I don't love you any more. " (Zamora, 1990, p. 64)

Frida said: "you have ruined my womanhood through your infidelities" (Herrera, 1991, p. 152). Frida used the imagery of her hair as a symbol of her rage, attempting to severe her attachment to Diego. Her fury is palpable in her ugly man's clothes, mutilated hair, and angry expression. Frida's femininity had been sacrificed at Diego's altar of infidelity. She begins to sever her dependent attachment to Diego and continues this severance the "Two Fridas, which we will revisit later. Frida did never entirely sever her relationship with her husband. Frida and Diego's passionate, stormy relationship survived these infidelities, her seriously dangerous miscarriages, their divorce, remarriage and her faltering health.

Frida suffered tremendously with her inability to birth a child due to her accident. In this piece, she depicts her inner horror of not being able to bear a child, another reflection of the golden and bloody relationship she has with her body. Frida suffered greatly from her infertility. Yet, a compensatory resource grew in her with her attachment and dedication to her nieces and animals.

I feel a deep kinship with these painting about her loss of mothering. These paintings reflect my suffering and also inspired me to paint my own pain. Frida has been like a patron saint of infertile woman and couples. Through her art, Frida transforms pain into beauty and truth and then penetrates into our inner loneliness, thus universally bridging our experiences to hers.

Diego and Frida's relationship was very complex. On one level, he offered an arena for the enactment of triangulation and betrayal, her early trauma, as well as recreating her bonds with an older male, first her father and then Diego. Frida had a sense of this in her remark,

"I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One in which a street car knocked me down...The other is Diego" (Zamora, 1990, p. 70).

Diego was a paradox for Frida, giving her life, death, and rebirth.

Their lives intersected in many ways even before they fell in love. Frida was a budding artist and politically active before her accident. She had a high school crush on Diego and taunted him, while he was painting this mural at her high school. She would call him fat and then run and hide to see his reaction.

After meeting him at party at which Diego shot the phonograph, Frida became attracted to his untamed and unpredictable manner, perhaps one that matched her own. Although a tiny woman, Frida's personality was large, loud, vibrant and extroverted and could match his personality and size. Frida developed a stronger compensatory style of defiance after the accident. She would hide her vulnerability and pain with a strident, loud and adventuresome persona.

Even her appearance was unconventional; she declined to remove her facial hair and was known for her unibrow, small mustache, and for her flamboyant Mexicana-styled clothes. Diego was financially generous to Frida and her family with her medical bills, her father's financial problems and her future medical bills. Even with the financial assistance, Frida's mother was unsupportive of her daughter's marriage to Diego. With deep fears for her daughter, Matilde said it was marriage between "a dove and an elephant" (Herrera, 1919, p.48).

Similar to her father, Diego was a great artistic mentor to Frida. He indirectly influenced her to leave her early European style and adapt a more Mexican colonial retablo style. Initially, she absorbed his cultural embrace along with his political idealism. As her journey of individuation matured, her culture, politics and sense of style increasingly reflected the Self.

Diego and Frida were comrades and bound by their commitment to Communism as well as art. In a sense as seen in this painting, they completed each other, finding their anima and animus in the other in their relationship.

Diego was Frida's muse and supporter artistically. In his autobiography, Rivera said that Frida's canvases

"...revealed an unusual energy of expression, precise delineation, character and true severity. They showed none of the tricks in the name of originality that usually mark the work of ambitious beginners. They have fundamental plastic honesty and an artistic personality of their own. They communicated a vital sensuality, complemented by a merciless yet sensitive power of observation. It was obvious to him that this girl was an authentic artist" (Rivera, quoted in Alcantara and Egnolff, 1999, p. 115).

He has often said she was a better painter than he was.

Frida painted her painful inner experience through realism, symbolism and surrealism always laced with her indigenous Mexican culture. She never liked these labels and said, "I paint my own reality" (Carpenter, 208, p. 79). In painting her internal reality of suffering, Frida, along with Jung and others birthed a new approach to art, later called Expressive Arts Therapy.

Frida lived a paradox. Always close to death and suffering with many losses because of her accident, she lived largely by celebrating life. With "Two Fridas," she holds the paradox of her existence: The European and the Mexico Frida. She becomes her imaginary friend and companion again and expresses the capacity to love and be loved as the two Fridas hold each other hands. Frida is painting her psychic pain, of her exposed and wounded heart. She holds the duality of existence: the observer and the observed, the conscious Frida who ego is observing and the universal Frida who source is from the objective collective unconscious. With the joined hands, she has developed a strong ego/self axis, able to consciously manifest a deeper connection to the larger Self. This was also a death and rebirth in her art: the death of the European feminine, and a rebirth as a Mexican icon. Using Jung's lens, Frida's eventual transformation from the personal into an archetypal image stems from her rebirth as Mexican feminine icon.

"Rebirth is an affirmation that must be counted among the primordial affirmations of mankind. These primordial affirmations are based on what I call the archetypes" (CW, vol. 9i, par.207, p. 203)

With the little deer, she holds the ego and archetypal imagery in a deeper way. She is animal and human, the human who observes, and the animal that is wounded. Yet the animal is still able to move. Culturally, this type of symbolism is native to Mexico. Yet Frida takes it a step further in creating her mythos. She can hold her suffering as she moves in life. Frida's powerful stance strengthens her as she struggles to live each day in pain (West, 1997).

Frida explores another duality inside herself: the tragic victim and the heroic survivor. Psychologically, she has developed the caring mother who is able to hold her pain and is hopeful. Frida painted this while her health declined. At this time, Frida was forced to wear a steel corset and was confined to bed. Holding this tension of opposites, she released her libidinal energies and through her art moved more into the archetypal realm as her pain increased. She is becoming a universal symbol of the Mexican Tehuana woman, connected to the earth while existing in the moonlight. The Tehuana garbed Frida holds the blood and golden colors of her accident in her dress now as fierce passion and regal majesty.

After Frida had her right foot amputated at the knee, she created this drawing that was discovered in her journal. In contrast to her other journal; this drawing is a complete, thoughtful piece. She depicts her greatest fear, the loss of feet and thus her independence. Frida created these feet as "Milagros," a Mexican amulet whose name means miracles. Through the miracle of her art, she can accept this loss. Frida now lived in the archetypal realm of the imagination and can learn how to fly. The writing on the feet says "Feet What Do I Need Them for I have Wings to Fly" (Kahlo, 1995, p. 274).

Frida became very depressed after this surgery and lived increasingly in the spirit world, on the dark shadow side with alcohol and drugs, and on the other side through her creativity and connection to the spirits of Mexican culture. Her archetypal imagery emerged more and more in her paintings. Seen in tears in "Without Hope," she vomits, expelling the horror of her suffering onto her easel. The earth reflects the fissures of her body, the violence done to her body and to Mexico.

This piece is a testament to her belief that art is medicine as she painted her suffering. This medicine led her to exist more and more in another objective reality.

With this earlier piece the "Two Nudes," Frida turns to art to find comfort that did not exist in her external world. She is held by the feminine, a compensatory stance countering the rejecting personal mother. Her nudes evoke the transformation of her imaginary friend who waited for her in the center of the earth. Her friend is now her brown Mexican mother culture in nature, who holds her like a child. Both nudes could be the comforter and comforted. In the collective world, she can be vulnerable and comforted as well as loved by the mother. This piece may also reflect her bisexuality, receiving comfort from women when the masculine offers little.

With "The Love Embrace," the earth and the Aztec goddesses cradle Frida. There is a union of darkness and light. She embraces the baby Diego, the passion of her life, mothering him now, while the earth mother cradles her. Frida identifies with the great mother. This is an incredible painting, bringing resolution of her personal pain with her mother, Diego, and her wounded body on an archetypal level. The emergence of the great mother flowing from her culture and her art provides the love and nurturance needed to bear the pain of her declining health.

In "Roots," Frida is alone and lying down and she is one with nature. Frida is the artist whose creative urge lives in her like a tree and nourishes her. She is the artist rooted to nature. She is a numinous image of the artist who transforms her scars into the roots of life. This is an example of Jung's belief of the transformative power of art. Frida is able to give birth not to a child but to the roots of life itself. All energies flow from a universal source of nature. This could also be the reversal of "Me and my nurse". She now nurtures the archetypal earth.

Ironically, Jung discussed the artist with the same imagery that Frida used in this painting.

"The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the man who is its vehicle. The creative urge lives and grows in him/her like a tree in the earth from which it draws its nourishment. We would do well, then, to think of the creative process as a living thing implanted in the human psyche."

(CW, vol. 15, par. 115, p. 162)

In "Moses," we see this interconnection and flow of life as Frida painted and as Jung espoused it. Frida painted this after reading Freud's Moses and Monotheism. There is an unusual complexity to this piece. Frida said that she wanted to show "...the reason these people invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear for death" (Zamora, 1990, p. 110). Frida may be imagining herself reborn into the collective. Fear and suffering propels us to create either with icons or art to comfort and soothe the fear of death and the suffering of life. Frida is birthed in the collective and welcomed, which is in striking contrast to birthing from the dead mother in "My Birth"

In these pieces, all created in the three years before her death, Frida was suffering physically. Her internal terrain changed as did her self-portraits. Frida related more to the archetype of life as depicted in nature. Her self-portraits, this empathetic mirroring and her imaginary friend were now fruit, foliage and animals, the archetypal source of life. As we can witness in this piece, "Sun and Life," Frida's paintings are full of life. On the shadow side, her paintings were said to be "over-exuberant," due to her drug addiction. However, they also reflected the intensity one can feel about life with the approach of death.

In the year of her death, Frida returned to a human form for a self-portrait. However, this was not the human Frida or even a surreal Frida. This was the archetypal Frida. She stands straight and full-bodied. She is corseted with what could the tablets of the Ten Commandments. She no longer needs her clutches, so they fall away. The sun and the moon, the peace dove and the evil eagle surround Frida. She can hold the opposites and is strong and powerful, held by her political beliefs and universal hands. Frida is ready for death.

Only a few months before her death, Diego produced her first solo show in Mexico. Frida would not leave till her art spoke in her motherland and she fought to attend. Though weak, she obeyed her doctor's orders not to leave her bed and had herself carried into the opening in her bed.

Frida died on July 13, 1954, 54 years ago, entering the collective world totally. She now lives through her art. Frida has become an archetypal symbol of the wounded yet triumphant feminine whose art become medicine. She embodied the sacred marriage of life and death through her paintings.

Long after her death, Frida, who turned 100 last year, continues to intrigue me. Twenty years ago, she invited me to her wounded table to learn from her. At this table, she confronted her pain, shadow and death and discovered meaning in her life. Unafraid of Coatlique, she danced with death and uncovered universal truths in her art. Frida's dance with death was her greatest teacher and has been mine, and perhaps now, yours.

Frida caressed life as she approached death. The voice of her psyche spoke in her final painting, "Viva al vida," "Long Live Life"!

Frida Kahlo References

Alcantara, I., & Egnolff, S. (2005). Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.Munich: Prestel Publishing Ltd.

Beck, E. T. (2006). Kahlo's World Split Open. Feminist Studies, 32(1), 55-81.

Calavera, R. Y. (2003). Dia de Muertos II. Mexico: Artes de Mexico.

Carpenter, E. (ed). (2008). Frida Kahlo. New York: D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers.

Chodorow, J. (1991). Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology: The Moving Imagination. New York: Routledge.

Dosamantes-Beaudry, I. (2001). Frida Kahlo: self-other representation and self-healing through art. The Arts Psychotherapy, 28, 5-17.

Downs, L. (2001). Border: La Linea: Narada World.

Fernandez, M. (1971). Frida Kahlo: "La mejor expresion moderna de la vida y el mundo plastico de una gran

Artista": Departmento de Actividades Cinematograficas.

Frida Kahlo. (2005). On Biography: A&E Television Networks

Goldenthal, E. (2002). Frida Soundtrack: Miramax.

Granziera, Patrizia. "From Coatlicue to Guadalupe: The Image of the Great Mother in Mexico." Studies in World Christianity 10(2): 250-273. 2005.

Grimberg, S. (2006). I Will Never Forget You: Unpublished Photographs and Letters. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC.

Harding, M.E. (1970). The Way of All Women. New York:: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Herrera, H. (1983). Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

Herrera, H. (1991). Frida Kahlo: The Paintings. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Jung, C.G. (1961). Memories, Dreams and Reflections (with Aniela Jaffe). New York: Vintage Books.

_________. (1928). "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship" in Cary, H.G. and Cary, C.F. Contributions to Analytical Psychology. New York:

_______(1971). Psychological Types, Collected Works, vol. 6. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

________. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, vol. 9.1. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

________. (1968), Alchemical Studies, Collected Works, vol. 13. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

_________. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works, vol. 14. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

________. (1966). The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, Collected Works, vol. 15. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Jimenez, V. (1997). Juan O'Gorman: Principio y fin del Camino.Mexico: Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicacion Educativa.

Kahlo, F. (1995). The Diary of Frida Kahlo, An Intimate Self-Portrait (B. C. d. Toledo & R. Pohlenz, Trans).. Mexico: Abradale.

Kahlo, F. (1995). I Painted My Own Reality. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

Kultur. Great Women Artists: Frida Kahlo: Kultur.

Kalsched, D. (1996). The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit. New York: Routledge.

Medina, O., & Gurrola, J. J. (1984). Frida: Naturaleza Viva: Veracruz.

Metcalf, P. & Huntington, R. (1991) Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press.

Paz, O. (1961), The Labyrinth of Solitude. Grove Press: New York.

Shore, A.N. (2003). Affect Dysregulations & Disorders of the Self. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Taymor, J. (2002). Frida: Mirimax.

The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. (2004). On PBS Home Video: Daylight Films.

Vogel, S. (1995). Teotihuacan: History, Art and Monuments (D. B. Castledine, Trans).. Mexico: Conaculta.

West, J. J. (1995). Frida Kahlo: Dynamic Transformations. Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Analytical Psychology. (95), 379-388.

Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities.

Yates, J. (1999). Jung on Death and Immortality. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Zamora, M. (1990). Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish (M. S. Smith, Trans). Seattle: Marquand Books, Inc.

Frida Kahlo Image List

1. The Dream, 1940

2. Frida's deathbed at Casa Azul

3. My photo of Casa Azul, the home of Frida Kahlo, 2005

4. Photo of Frida Kahlo, 1935

5. The Dream, 1940

6. My Photo of the Inner Courtyard and Garden of CASA AZUL, 2005

7. Statue of Coatlique

8. Thinking about Death, 1943

9. Girl with a Death Mask, 1938

10. Frida's self-portrait: Diego on her mind, 1943

11. My Family-Painting, 1950

12. Kahlo childhood photo, 1913

13. My birth, 1932

14. My nurse and I, 1937

15. The Two Fridas, 1939

16. Frida in Coyoacan, 1927

17. Portrait of My Father

18. What the Water Gave Us, 1938

19. My photo of "What the Water Gave Us" taken at the San Angel, Frida and Diego's second home and studio, 2005

20. Frida dressed as a male in a family photo, 1926

21. The Bus, 1929

22. The accident, 1926

23. Clip from the Frida movie, the scene "The Accident

24. Retablo, 1925

25. Photo of Frida with her painted body cast, 1950

26. Self-portrait: velvet dress, 1926

27. Self-portrait of Mexican-looking Frida, 1929

28. Self-portrait with thorns, 1940

29. Four Inhabitants of Mexico, 1938

30. Broken Columns, 1944

31. Photo of Diego and Frida-younger version, 1928

32. Frida and Christina, 1940

33. Self Portrait with Chopped Hair, 1940

34. Henry Ford Hospital, 1932

35. Frida and the Caesarian Operation, 1932

36. Older Diego and Frida, 1954

37. Diego's mural at Frida' high school, 1922

38. Self-Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947

39. Self Portrait with Braid, 1941

40. Frida and Diego on their wedding day, 1941

41. Painting of Diego and Frida, 1944

42. Self-portrait with parrot and monkey, 1940

43. Frida painting the "Two Fridas"

44. The Little Deer, 1946

45. The Tree of Hope stands Firm, 1946

46. Frida's drawing of Feet from her journal, 1953

47. Without Hope, 1945

48. Two Nudes in the Forest, 1939

49. The Love Embrace of the Universe 1949

50. Roots, 1943

51. Moses, 1945

52. Fruit and Parrot, 1951

53. Flower of life, 1953

54. Sun and life, 1954

55. Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, 1954

56. Photo of Frida at the gallery in bed, 1954

57. Photo of Frida in her coffin, July 13, 1954

58. The Wounded Table, 1945

59. Vida al vida, 1954

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Death Dances Around My Bed:" Frida Kahlo and the Archetype of Death | Kate Donohue Psychotherapy Mendocino County California

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"In this hospital death dances around my bed at night." -Frida Kahlo I am standing in front of the bed where Frida Kahlo died, absorbing the beauty of her petite Mexican death mask, shrouded in a green and gray rebozo, touching her flamboyantly painted and glowing corset.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Art has led the way in seeing mental illness not as alien or contemptible but part of the human condition - even as a positive and useful experience. Modern art has even celebrated mental suffering as a creative adventure. This psychiatric modernism started with the "madness" of Vincent van Gogh and led to work by patients being discovered as a new kind of art. Yet it has much deeper historical roots. Albrecht Durer portrayed genius as melancholic as early as the Renaissance and Romantic painters identified with the "mad".

Perhaps it is not hard to see why artists often show empathy for what society calls illness: all creativity is an irrational voyage. The idea of going outside yourself to see things afresh is probably as old as the torchlit visions of cave artists and was expressed by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato when he wrote that poetic ecstasy is the only source of divine truth. "Madness is a gift from the gods", as Plato put it.

1. Vittore Carpaccio - The Healing of the Possessed Man at the Rialto (c. 1496)

This painting of everyday life in 15th century Venice reveals how mental illness was understood and treated in the middle ages. It is sometimes called "The Healing of the Madman", but "possessed" is closer to contemporary ideas about the mind. For the man being miraculously healed by a priest amidst the human drama of the Rialto bridge has been taken over by a demon. His suffering is neither a medical nor social problem, but a religious experience.

2. Matthias Grunewald - The Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1512 - 16)

Late medieval artists were fascinated by the story of the early Christian hermit Saint Anthony the Great who was tempted by devils. For Grunewald, this becomes a truly personal and psychological terror, an image of a man whose sanity is under threat. The infinite horrible shapes of the demons are like malformed thoughts. It is a compassionate work, for this is part of the Isenheim altarpiece, painted for a hospital that treated people with disfiguring illnesses. One of the devils has the sores and grey skin that appear in other parts of the altarpiece and evoke the illnesses treated there. Does this swarming scene therefore portray the threat to mental health posed by extreme physical suffering? It influenced German expressionism and is to this day a masterpiece of the threatened mind.

3. Albrecht Durer - Melancholia (1514)

This visionary work of art is both a diagnosis and heroic celebration of what might now be seen as illness. Melancholia was known and experienced in the middle ages, a darkness of the mind resulting from an inbalance of the humours. That darkness is marked on the brooding face of Durer's spirit of melancholy. In her despond, she appears unable to continue with her great works. She is to judge by her tools a mathematician, geometer, and architect: a Renaissance genius. Durer portrays through this emblem his own inner life and intuits the mind's complexity. For Melancholy in his eyes is the badge of genius - to aspire to know and create is to slump into despair. Unhappiness is noble, for Durer. This print is arguably the beginning of modern psychology.

4. William Hogarth - The Rake in Bedlam (1733)

The insight of Durer - not to mention Shakespeare and Cervantes - that mental shadows are part of human life was lost on the founders of London's Bethlem Hospital. The notorious "Bedlam" was founded in the middle ages and may have specialised in mental illness as early as the 14th century. When Hogarth in the 18th century portrayed a young man whose career of gambling and spending had led him there, it was a place where Londoners could come and look at the "mad". Hogarth shows two "sane" women enjoying the spectacle of madness, which includes people who think they are kings and bishops. Of course, in Hogarth's view, the boundary between sanity and insanity is not that obvious at all.

5. Francisco Goya y Lucientes - The sleep of reason produces monsters (c. 1799)

Goya's depiction of a sleeping man - the artist - assailed by monsters of the night is an image of reason's frailty made at the end of the Enlightenment, the great 18th century movement that sought to change the world with encyclopaedias, scientific demonstrations and the first factories. Goya's pessimistic yet also compassionate view is that reason only ever rules part of our minds. It must share the world with nightmares. At the dawn of the modern age, this great image echoes old depictions of the Temptations of St. Anthony, whose assailants have not gone away after all.

6. Theodore Gericault - Portraits of the Insane (1822)

In the Romantic age extreme states of mind and inner suffering were the stuff of poetry and art. This mood of introspection opens new eyes on mental health in Gericault's portraits of the "insane". He painted ten of these, of which five still exist, all depicting patients of his friend Dr Etienne-Jean Georget. In this painting, there is deep respect and human sympathy for a woman whose illness seems mostly visible as deep unhappiness. Escaping from stereotypes and prejudice, Gericault portrays mental illness as a part of the human condition that he himself - as an artist whose paintings dwell on death and violence - clearly feels close to.

7. Gustave Courbet - Self-Portrait (The Desperate Man) (c. 1843 - 45)

In a moment of Romantic exhilaration Courbet portrays himself as a "madman", his face ecstatic and terrified. His desperate state of mind is not a shameful sickness but a badge of artistic pride. In a tradition that goes back to Durer's Melancholia but reached new power in the Romantic age, he equates genius and madness. This face of desperation is the face of the 19th century avant garde, risking and even courting sickness with drink and drugs. Courbet looks like a character in one of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, his mind unravelling in a way the first modern artists were fascinated by.

8. Vincent van Gogh - Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)

Vincent van Gogh was fascinated by a 19th century painting called The Madness of Hugo van der Goes. In this picture the medieval artist Hugo van der Goes - who in real life was confined to a monastery because of mental illness - broods in torment, while those around him despair of helping the afflicted man. Van Gogh wrote that he sometimes identified with this painting. Here, shortly after cutting off his own earlobe, he scrutinises himself as a man similarly afflicted. Or is he? Vincent's eyes are crystal blue, his gaze acute and penetrating. He looks at his wounded face objectively, with deep truth. He is neither "sane" nor "insane" but a fellow human being who speaks to us with courage and honesty.

9. Edvard Munch - The Scream (1893)

Madness is the modern condition in this work of art that has the clarity of a theorem. The Scream is universal. This is how life today makes us feel, says Munch. Far from a pathology afflicting individuals, the desire to scream out in pain and isolation under the wobbly sky is a sane response to an insane world. Munch takes the artistic revaluation of mental illness that started in the Romantic age to its logical conclusion: there is no Bedlam but the world itself.

10. Josef Forster - Untitled work in the Prinzhorn Collection (after 1916)

Once Munch and Van Gogh made "madness" a positive value in modern art, a key to visionary truth, it was only a matter of time before the medical profession too started to see new connections between art and the mind. Before his death in 1933, Dr Hans Prinzhorn assembled a collection of art by mentally ill patients that was the beginning of what is now known as "outsider art". This example has the eerie power of Goya. From something to be depicted by artists, "madness" has become a source of artistic originality in itself.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A short history of mental illness in art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art has led the way in seeing mental illness not as alien or contemptible but part of the human condition - even as a positive and useful experience. Modern art has even celebrated mental suffering as a creative adventure.

# data[].attributes.body
An artist that has dealt with psychological trau

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart."

Edvard Munch grew up in a household periodically beset by life-threatening illnesses and the premature deaths of his mother and sister, all of which was explained by Munch's father, a Christian fundamentalist, as acts of divine punishment. This powerful matrix of chance tragic events and their fatalistic interpretation left a lifelong impression on the young artist, and contributed decisively to his eventual preoccupation with themes of anxiety, emotional suffering, and human vulnerability.

Munch intended for his intense colors, semi-abstraction and mysterious, often open-ended themes to function as symbols of universal significance. Thus his drawings, paintings, and prints take on the quality of psychological talismans: having originated in Munch's personal experiences, they nonetheless bear the power to express, and perhaps alleviate, any viewer's own emotional or psychological condition.

The frequent preoccupation in Munch's work with sexual subject matter issues from both the artist's bohemian valuation of sex as a tool for emotional and physical liberation from social conformity as well as his contemporaries' fascination with sexual experience as a window onto the subliminal, sometimes darker facets of human psychology.

In a sense similar to his near-contemporary, Vincent van Gogh, Munch strove to record a kind of marriage between the subject as observed in the world around him and his own psychological, emotional and/or spiritual perception.

Edvard Munch was born in 1863 in a rustic farmhouse in the village of Adalsbruk, located in Loten, Norway. His father, Christian Munch, was a practicing physician, married to Laura Catherine Bjolstad. The family, including sisters Johanne Sophie, Laura Catherine Inger Marie, and brother Peter, relocated to Oslo in 1864, following Christian's appointment as medical officer at Akershus Fortress, a military area which at the time was in use as a prison. Munch's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, the same year Inger Marie was born. Within a decade, Munch's favorite sister, Sophie, just one year his senior and a gifted young artist, also died of tuberculosis. Munch's father, a fundamentalist Christian, thereafter experienced fits of depression and anger as well as quasi-spiritual visions in which he interpreted the family's illnesses as punishment of divine origin.

Edvard Munch's childhood, life, career, and various anecdotes

Read Edvard Munch's Biography

And, the artists and movements that built upon Edvard Munch's art

Read Edvard Munch's Artistic Legacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart." Edvard Munch grew up in a household periodically beset by life-threatening illnesses and the premature deaths of his mother and sister, all of which was explained by Munch's father, a Christian fundamentalist, as acts of divine punishment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Watch back: Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern talks about Louise Bourgeois in her Uniqlo Ten Minute Art Talk.

# data[].attributes.headline
Max Ernst-An artist that responds to trauma

# data[].attributes.subject
Max Ernst-An artist that responds to trauma

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Summary of Max Ernst

German-born Max Ernst was a provocateur, a shocking and innovative artist who mined his unconscious for dreamlike imagery that mocked social conventions. A soldier in World War I, Ernst emerged deeply traumatized and highly critical of western culture. These charged sentiments directly fed into his vision of the modern world as irrational, an idea that became the basis of his artwork. Ernst's artistic vision, along with his humor and verve come through strongly in his Dada and Surrealists works; Ernst was a pioneer of both movements. Spending the majority of his life in France, during WWII Ernst was categorized as an "enemy alien"; the United States government affixed the same label when Ernst arrived as a refugee. In later life, in addition to his prolific outpouring of paintings, sculpture, and works-on-paper, Ernst devoted much of his time to playing and studying chess which he revered as an art form. His work with the unconscious, his social commentary, and broad experimentation in both subject and technique remain influential.

Accomplishments

Max Ernst attacked the conventions and traditions of art, all the while possessing a thorough knowledge of European art history. He questioned the sanctity of art by creating non-representational works without clear narratives, by making sport of religious icons, and by formulating new means of creating artworks to express the modern condition.

Ernst was profoundly interested in the art of the mentally ill as a means to access primal emotion and unfettered creativity.

Ernst was one of the first artists to apply Sigmund Freud's dream theories investigate his deep psyche in order to explore the source of his own creativity. While turning inwards unto himself, Ernst was also tapping into the universal unconscious with its common dream imagery.

Interested in locating the origin of his own creativity, Ernst attempted to freely paint from his inner psyche and in an attempt to reach a pre-verbal state of being. Doing so unleashed his primal emotions and revealed his personal traumas, which then became the subject of his collages and paintings. This desire to paint from the sub-conscious, also known as automatic painting was central to his Surrealist works and would later influence the Abstract Expressionists.

Important Art by Max Ernst

Here Everything is Still Floating

This composition made from unrelated cutout photographs of fish, anatomical drawings, insects (turned over to suggest a sailing ship), and puffs of clouds and smoke cunningly arranged demonstrates Ernst's unique collage aesthetic. Through the medium, Ernst created a new world where randomness and illogic expressed the insanity of WWI and threw bourgeois sensibilities into question. The artist appropriated these images from scientific manuals, anthropological journals, and common merchandising catalogs dating from the turn-of-the-century. Ernst has managed to create a very delicate and detailed work, small in format, which seduces the viewer into close looking, and which propels the viewer to gauge the work's intentions. The title, Here Everything is Still Floating, does not appear to connect with the image in any meaningful way, except that the objects appear floating in the air. Despite the futile search for meaning, this whimsical work ultimately proves enjoyable and satisfying. The artist was to later recall that, "Collage was seen as a kind of crime, meaning one did violence to nature."

Cut-and-pasted printed paper and pencil on printed paper on cardstock - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Celebes

At center, a large round shape dominates the composition that Ernst based upon a photograph of a Sudanese bin for storing corn which the artist has refigured as an elephant-like mechanical being from the subconscious. The painting's title (sometimes known as The Elephant Celebes) comes from a childish and naughty German rhyme that starts off, "The elephant from Celebes has sticky, yellow bottom grease," a bawdy reference to those that know the original rhyme.

Ernst's painting demonstrates his indebtedness to Freudian dream theory with its odd juxtapositions of disparate objects. Despite this disparity - a headless/nude woman, the bits of machinery - the painting holds together as a finished composition. Ernst's work elicits discomfort in the not knowing of his intentions and also, in early-20 th century audiences, disgust because of its irrelevant depiction of the human form (the headless nude) which is revered within art making (since people are made in God's image). Through this work, Ernst questions which is the "real" world - that of night-time and dreams - or that of the waking state.

Oil on canvas - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom

Forest and Dove

In this work, Ernst depicts a nocturnal scene of a forest of bizarre, abstract, and threatening trees. The artist frequently rendered thick forests to recall his own feelings and memories of "enchantment and terror" about the woods near his childhood home in Germany. Within this thick grove is a child-like drawing of a bird to represent Ernst, possibly in his post-war traumatic state. Forest and Dove exemplifies Ernst's pioneering 'grattage' technique where he scraped paint across the canvas to reveal imprints of objects, a technique he developed with the Spanish surrealist Joan Miro. Grattage produced a rough texture that added another dimension to the canvas - the density of a forest was amplified. It would be a mistake to overlook Ernst's German origins with its heritage of Romanticism, and how this shaped his individual psyche. The German concept of Ahnung, or the sense of foreboding, impending catastrophe pulsates in his apocalyptic paintings. Ernst was well-versed in Wagnerian myths of the German forests as being mysterious and spellbinding; the Surrealists later adopted forests and dark enclaves as a metaphor for the human imagination.

Oil on canvas - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom

The Fireside Angel

This fantastical creature, with arms and legs extended, appears to be leaping with a garish, yet joyous, expression on its face. The figures and its appendages are oddly colored and malformed. Further, its leg seems to be spawning another being, as if a cancerous growth spreading. Fireside Angel is one of the rare works by Ernst that was inspired directly by world political events. The artist was motivated to paint the work after Franco's fascists defeated the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Ernst strove to create a painting suggestive of the ensuing chaos he feared was spreading across Europe, and emanating from his native Germany. Revisiting the benign and misleading title, it was Ernst's play to attract viewers with pleasing words, and then shock them into questioning their own beliefs by labeling monsters as angels.

Oil on canvas

Europe After the Rain II

In this other-worldly canvas, Ernst has painted an evocation of a vast apocalypse. In the midst of the ruined land, a helmeted, bird-headed figure - perhaps a soldier - threatens a female figure with his spear or ruined battle standard. It has been suggested that the figures could be large garden statuary, or perhaps semi-mythical survivors of a futuristic war. As mentioned previously, Ernst's use of the bird-human figure might be self-referential.

Seen within the context of 20 th century European history, Europe after the Rain II bears testimony to the insurmountable reign of warfare that devastated Europe at the time. This work is unparalleled in Ernst's artistic interpretation of the Spanish Civil War and the beginnings of World War II. To create the ruinous forms, the grattage technique perfectly evokes the great destruction that Europe had suffered. The span of dates attributed to the work suggests that Ernst began this piece in France and completed it in the United States while the war continued on and the fate of Europe remained unknown.

Oil on canvas - Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

Biography of Max Ernst

Childhood

Max Ernst was born into a middle-class Catholic family of nine children in Bruhl, Germany, near Cologne. Ernst first learned to paint from his father, a strict disciplinarian who was deaf, and a teacher who held an avid interest in academic art. A good deal of Ernst's work as an adult sought to undermine authority including that of his father. Other than this introduction to amateur painting at home, Ernst never received any formal training in art: thus he was responsible for his own artistic techniques. Ernst matriculated at the University of Bonn in 1914 to study philosophy but soon abandoned it, later claiming that he avoided "any studies which might degenerate into breadwinning." Instead, the artist preferred those areas of study considered "futile by his professors - predominately painting...seditious philosophers, and unorthodox poetry." At this time, Ernst became deeply interested in psychology and the art of the mentally ill. When World War I broke out Ernst was conscripted into the German army and served in an artillery division in which he directly experienced the drama and bloodshed of trench warfare - he served on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. Ernst was one of multiple artists who emerged from military service emotionally wounded and alienated from European traditions and conventional values.

Early Training

Although primarily self-taught, Ernst was influenced by the works of Vincent van Gogh and August Macke, and the canvases of Giorgio de Chirico prompted his interest in dream imagery and the fantastical. Ernst mined the experiences of his childhood and war to depict both absurd and apocalyptic scenes. A subversive tendency remained strong in Ernst throughout his career, as he literally turned the world upside down in many of his works. Returning to Germany after armistice, Ernst along with the artist-poet Jean Arp helped form the Dada group in Cologne; simultaneously he maintained close ties with the Parisian avant-garde. Ernst began creating his first collages in 1919, reworking mundane materials such as scientific manuals and illustrated catalogs from the turn-of-the-century to create new stunning, fantastical images without set narratives. This irrational image-making allowed Ernst to make the world of dreams, the subconscious, and the accidental all visual as he plumbed his own psyche for inspiration and to confront his own trauma.

Ernst edited journals while in Cologne and helped stage a Dada exhibition in a public restroom where visitors were greeted by a sweet young girl reciting obscene poetry. Also on view was a sculpture by Ernst with an axe alongside it that the public was invited to use to attack and to destroy the piece of art. This audience participatory event caused quite a scandal to bourgeois sensibilities.

Mature Period

In 1922, Ernst left his first wife behind and moved to Paris, where he would live and work until 1941 - when World War II made it impossible to remain in Europe. During these decades, Surrealism came to displace Dadaism with the publication of André Breton's "First Surrealist Manifesto"(1924), and Ernst became one of the movement's founding members. Ernst and his artist-colleagues were discovering the possibilities of autonomism and dreams; in fact, his artistic investigations were aided by hypnosis and hallucinogenics. In 1925, in order to activate the flow of imagery from his unconscious, Ernst began to experiment with frottage (pencil rubbings of such things as wood grain, fabric, or leaves), a technique he in fact developed, and decalcomania (the technique of transferring paint from one surface to another by pressing the two surfaces together). His experiments and technical innovations led to finished images, accidental patterns, and definite textures which he would then incorporate into his drawings and paintings. This emphasis on the contact between materials, as well as transforming everyday materials in order to arrive at an image that signified some sort of collective consciousness, would become central to Surrealism's concept of automatism.

Late Years and Death

By 1933, Hitler and the Nazi Party had seized control of Germany. By the fall of 1937, Hitler had accumulated approximately sixteen-thousand works of avant-garde art from Germany's national museums, and shipped six hundred and fifty works to Munich to be for his infamous exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). It appears that Ernst had at least two paintings on display in the exhibition, both of which have since disappeared, or most likely were destroyed. Ernst fled from France with the Gestapo on his heels after being interned three times as a German national. As a refugee in New York where along with such important European avant-garde artists as Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian, he electrified a generation of American artists. Ernst met Peggy Guggenheim, the flamboyant socialite, gallery owner, and patron of the arts, who was to become his third wife. Guggenheim provided Ernst entry to New York's burgeoning art scene.

Ernst's rejection of traditional painting techniques, styles, and imagery (as symbolized by the classical style of his father's work) captivated young American painters, who similarly sought to forge a fresh and unorthodox approach to painting. He had a particularly strong effect on the direction of Jackson Pollock's painting, who became interested in the collage aspects of Ernst's work, as well as his tendency to use his art as an externalization of his internal state. The younger artists were greatly interested in Ernst having captured the unconscious and the accidental in his art making, and his great Surrealist experimentation with autonomism and automatic writing. In 1942, Ernst experimented with "Oscillation" or painting by swinging a paint filled can punctured multiple times with holes over the canvas; this especially impressed Pollock.

Divorcing Guggenheim, Ernst soon relocated to Sedona, Arizona with his fourth wife, the American Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning. Ernst and Tanning ultimately moved back to France in 1953. In 1954, Ernst was awarded the main painting prize at the prestigious Venice Biennale. In 1971, to honor the artist's 80th birthday, a major retrospective toured through America and Europe. Ernst was active as an artist up until his death in Paris in 1976. He was interred at Paris's famed Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

The Legacy of Max Ernst

Max Ernst achieved a rare feat in that he established a glowing reputation and critical following in three countries simultaneously (Germany, France, and the United States) while still living. Although Ernst is an artist who is better known by art historians and academics than by the general public today, his influence in shaping the direction of mid-century American art is easily recognizable. Through his association with Peggy Guggenheim, Ernst interacted with the Abstract Expressionists directly, and via his son, Jimmy Ernst, who became a well-known German/American Abstract Expressionist painter after the war.

While based in Sedona, Ernst became attracted to Southwest Native American Navajo art as artistic inspiration. The younger Abstract Expressionists, in particular Pollock, in turn became fascinated with the art of sand painting, which are deeply tied to healing rituals and evocations of the spiritual. Ernst remains a foundational figure for those artists deeply interested in technique, psychology, and the desire to shock and confront social mores.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Max Ernst

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

Similar Art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
German-born Max Ernst was a provocateur, a shocking and innovative artist who mined his unconscious for dreamlike imagery that mocked social conventions. A soldier in World War I, Ernst emerged deeply traumatized and highly critical of western culture. These charged sentiments directly fed into his vision of the modern world as irrational, an idea that became the basis of his artwork.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is a biography I made of Frida Kahlo's life for a class assignment. Frida's life was filled with pain and suffering, caused by her relationship with the muralist Diego Rivera and by lifelong health problems. This video gives analyses of Frida's portraits in an attempt to better understand her life and her emotional state.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Life and Works of Jake & Dinos Chapman

# data[].attributes.body
An example of Facing Your Fears artwork and symbolism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Guernica: What inspired Pablo Picasso's masterpiece? BBC News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kirchner Bildnis Gerda is a painting by Ernst Ludwig which was uploaded on April 15th, 2016. The painting may be purchased as wall art, home decor, apparel, phone cases, greeting cards, and more. All products are produced on-demand and shipped worldwide within 2 - 3 business days.