Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
personality. Thus consciousness requires not only space but also balance. In
painting opposite planes must be balanced.
Individuation is organic and cyclical |58|. Besides assertion there are
many other unconscious potentials--worldly success, for example, relatedness,
play and symbolic thinking. Each of these came to Ted according to its own
timetable. Each first appeared as instinctual impulse |59|. Each took the form of
a pair of opposites. Worldly success first appeared as both grandiose fantasy and
underachievement. Play first appeared as both an inability to play games and a
tendency for destructive mischief. Each unconscious potential brought suffering.
Ted had to use analysis and judgment as he struggled to integrate each. As it was
integrated, each potential affected all the others. As I have already explained,
plastic painting is also organic and cyclical. Each new pair of opposing planes is
integrated with difficulty. Each pair requires that all the others be adjusted to it
(see Creating pictorial space).
Individuation has no endpoint; the personality continues to renew itself
because each change stimulates further change. “Wendy” discovered in her
thirties that she had the ability to write fiction. She began to write stories, then
gathered some of them together into a novel, then began a second novel, and so
on. Wendy was reclusive but the publication of her novel led to book tours and
interviews which demanded that she relate more to others. “Sam” who came from
an alienated family tended to live in his intellect. In his forties he discovered that
he could enjoy his feelings and that he loved children. He married a woman who
had a young daughter, had three more children, and began to raise them. Sam's
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