Jungian Method To Create Memorable Art

Have you ever wondered why it is that some art can bring you to tears, while some is simply boring? The secret is in the power of the archetypes the artist uses, whether or not she knows she is doing it. There is nothing particularly mystical or "magical" about this, if you understand Jungian archetype. It applies to any artistic endeavor, whether it is written, painted, sculpted or whatever.

There is the famous photograph of gallery visitors pointing up at the statue of Michelangelo's "David". The caption reads, "I don't know what it is, but I know what I like!Michelangelo speaks to us through 5 centuries. Michelangelo grabs us at the subconscious level, and shakes us to our foundations!

The same can be said for "Aphrodite of Rhodes." You can find this beautiful statue by putting its name in a search engine. The artist speaks to us over a span of 2,000 years. The emotions of this anonymous artist's subconscious mind come to us through the marble. The statue was hidden at the bottom of the main harbor of the Island of Rhodes until the 20th Century, when a fisherman found it caught in his nets. And yet, the message is intact and clear to everyone in any language. Indeed, a blind person could receive the message, if they were permitted to touch the statue.

What is it that causes such intense reactions? These great artists simply activate the archetypes for man and woman.

Art need not result in a specific image! Jackson Pollock demonstrated this in his "drip" paintings. Pollock intentionally avoided recognizable imagery. And yet, I have attended an exhibition of the greatest modern artists of all time at the Boston Museum of Art, and I found that Pollock's work moved me far beyond any other. It brought me to tears! It talks to my subconscious mind in a way I cannot describe beyond these meager words.

Another piece in the same exhibition also moved me, "Under the Table" by Robert Therrien. It was a simple wooden table and chairs, but executed at something like ten times normal size. It consumed an entire room. When you walked in, you immediately walked under the table, with the chairs surrounding you. I felt like I was walking under my parents' dining room table. It made me feel as I did when I was 2 or 3 years old. That piece "constellated" the archetype of childhood.

Start your study of Jungian archetype with Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Estes is a life long Jungian analyst, who explains in explicit detail how the psychology of the subconscious mind manifests itself in a wide variety of archetypes, whether in images, stories or in life. We react with tears and laughter and other ways we might not understand at the conscious level.