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

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
Conclusion
The parallels between Winnicott's interior space, Jung's individuation and
pictorial space are too deep to be mere analogies. An evolving personality and an
evolving plastic painting are apparently homologous systems organized according
to a common set of principles (6) |67|. A plastic painting makes tangible a
process which, in the personality, is slow and obscure: it models or symbolizes
the structure towards which individuation tends. In part, this is why it moves us
so deeply. Plastic art was first created more than 35,000 years ago. Just as we
have always used myth to represent the inner life, so we have always used plastic
art for the same purpose.
Two writers on unity
The body of the universe was created to be at unity owing to proportion;
in consequence it acquired concord, so that having once come together in
unity with itself it is indissoluble by any but its compounder ... his
purpose being, firstly, that it should be as complete a living being as
possible, a whole of complete parts
- Plato, Timaeus
The neo-Platonic view of art conceived the artist as planning his work of
art according to a preexisting system of proportion, as a 'symphonic'
composition, ruled by a 'dynamic symmetry' corresponding in space to
musical eurhythmy in time. This technique of correlated proportions was
in fact transposed from the Pythagorean concept of musical harmony: the
intervals between notes being measured by the lengths of the strings of
the lyre ... so that the chords produce comparisons or combinations of
ratios, that is, systems of proportions.
- Matila Ghyka: The Geometry of Art and Life |68|
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