- Email: [email protected]
The symbolism of style: Art as therapy
The Arts in Psychotherapy,
Vol. 20, pp. 347-348, 1993
0197-4556193 $6.00 + .OO
Copyright 0 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd.
Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
BOOK REVIEW
The Symbolism of Style: Art as Therapy R. M. Simon (London and New York: Routledge, 1992, 209 pages, $18.95 paper, $44.50 hard)
thing that can be put into words, and it does not necessarily have less integrative force if it is not put into words” (p. 124). The book, however, had to be written in words, and its theories had to be systematized in concepts, This involved the “painful work of translation,” of which Simon is quite aware. The result leaves her readers with a difficult translation task of their own. The difficulty is both terminological and methodological. She names the styles she uses with terms all her own, which the reader must translate into more familiar ones. The methodological problem is more complex. Simon’s theoretical system is based on the contrast between two basic styles. The “Archaic” style is the naive or primitive style, familiar to us from early art, both in children and in developing cultures. It is distinguished by simple, geometrical shape, symmetry, and elementary colors. Simon notes this style’s carefree boldness and spontaneity, due to its independence of outer controls. She distinguishes it from the opposite style, which she calls Traditional but is better called Naturalistic. It is the tendency toward the ~p~sentation of nature, found in most cultures including our own and, as Simon observes, more hesitant and tentative because it is dependent on its natural models. The two styles stand for the relation between the inner world with its own formative tendencies and the outer world, structures in its own way and to be coped with by the individual’s mind. In Simon’s therapeutic perspective, these two worlds are to be kept separate
Rita Simon has written one of the most captivating
books on art therapy I have ever read. She is a painter, and although 40 years as an active art therapist have absorbed much of her time and attention, she has never ceased to think and speak as a painter. At the same time, her experiences as a therapist have supplied her with a great deal of practical and theoretical knowledge of psychopathology and with an impressive array of individual case studies. These stories give to every step of her theoretical presentation a lively concreteness. Add to this a remarkably humane empathy with every person she meets and an imaginative sensitivity for what is going on in every mind she explores, and you find yourself in the company of an expert you cannot afford to miss. Simon bases her approach largely on the style of patients’ work rather than on the subject matter represented in it. “There is danger,” she says, “‘that we may pay too much attention to the subject matter and neglect the importance of the creative process itself: if we do this a drawing or painting comes to be used like a home-made Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test” (p. 37). And she insists that our understanding of the content is not diminished by the study of the patient’s style, rather it is enriched. As a painter she has a dominant respect for what the visual statement has to tell in its own language. This does not keep her from relying on verbal communication, but she also warns that therapists have come too often to mistrust any~ing that is not verbalized. “I myself have come to feel that consciousness arises during the creative activity of painting but this is not necessarily some341
348
BOOK REVIEW
in the interest of mental health. She describes “the basic distinction between inner and outer reality as the first essential of our sanity” (p. 73), and she says that “if each style is equally potent the art work will be fragmented. The images reflect a disruption of continuity in the artist’s sense of inner and outer reality” (p. 192). It must be pointed out, however, that this disruption is pathological and in need of therapy. In the undisturbed relation with the outer world there is an intimate interaction between nature outside and the mind inside. Correspondingly, in representational art there is, from the beginning, an interplay between the formative imagery of the mind and the observation of nature. The absence of this direct connection between the two styles strikes me as a basic shortcoming of Simon’s approach. She replaces the connection with references to two formal properties of style, the linear quality and what is commonly known as the painterly quality, which she calls “massive.” The Archaic style may stress linearity and thereby have an affinity with an equally strongly linear naturalistic style-the only affinity considered by Simon. Similarly, a painterly approach of the Archaic style meets an equally painterly quality in naturalism. This view of the relation between the outer and the inner worlds is made by Simon into a system of four styles, the two basic ones (the Archaic and the Traditional) and the two qualifications (the linear and the painterly). Forced into a circular and sequential diagram, this system imposes on the reader a conceptional model that I find unsettling. By no means, however, should this theoretical difficulty deter readers from seeking the benefit of this book. Whoever wonders whether the attitude of the artist and the therapist can really be reconciled will be reassured on every page. Simon’s personal experience has shown her how much organizational power the
artist can mobilize and how this power can serve him or her not only to shape the meaningful form of the work but also to organize and stabilize the artist as a person. Therefore, she realizes that “my need was less to know what I could do for patients than to know what they were doing for themselves and, incidentally, what I was doing for myself by creating art” (p. 4). In the view of the therapist, “each style is seen to symbolize a particular attitude towards reality” (p. 89). Simon endorses the commonly accepted interpretation of the painterly quality as expressing emotion and its opposite, the linear quality, as formal and perhaps intellectual. She is pa~icularly good on the key concept, the Archaic style, that is, the form of all early art, which serves the young mind to cope with the world by means of clearly defined shape. This wholesome affinity with outer reality, however, makes also for abstraction, which comes with geometrical simplicity. And this abstraction produces a stabilizing effect, which Simon calls “hypnotic.” In the arts it is exemplified by icons and other religious images, and under the proper circumstances it may therefore enhance a withdrawal to the inner life. In a broader sense, this arresting effect is a property of any organized artistic pattern. Therefore, in therapy, the stabilizing power of images is sought and needed by patients, but the paralysis of persistent form must also be overcome if the patient is to develop freely. At a time when the practice of the arts in exhibitions and criticism is reducing the art of painting to an endangered species, it is most refreshing to make the acquaintance of a person for whom the virtues of this means of expression remain creatively alive.
Professor Emeritus
Rudolf Arnheim, PhD of the Psychology of Art Harvard University
Vol. 20, pp. 347-348, 1993
0197-4556193 $6.00 + .OO
Copyright 0 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd.
Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
BOOK REVIEW
The Symbolism of Style: Art as Therapy R. M. Simon (London and New York: Routledge, 1992, 209 pages, $18.95 paper, $44.50 hard)
thing that can be put into words, and it does not necessarily have less integrative force if it is not put into words” (p. 124). The book, however, had to be written in words, and its theories had to be systematized in concepts, This involved the “painful work of translation,” of which Simon is quite aware. The result leaves her readers with a difficult translation task of their own. The difficulty is both terminological and methodological. She names the styles she uses with terms all her own, which the reader must translate into more familiar ones. The methodological problem is more complex. Simon’s theoretical system is based on the contrast between two basic styles. The “Archaic” style is the naive or primitive style, familiar to us from early art, both in children and in developing cultures. It is distinguished by simple, geometrical shape, symmetry, and elementary colors. Simon notes this style’s carefree boldness and spontaneity, due to its independence of outer controls. She distinguishes it from the opposite style, which she calls Traditional but is better called Naturalistic. It is the tendency toward the ~p~sentation of nature, found in most cultures including our own and, as Simon observes, more hesitant and tentative because it is dependent on its natural models. The two styles stand for the relation between the inner world with its own formative tendencies and the outer world, structures in its own way and to be coped with by the individual’s mind. In Simon’s therapeutic perspective, these two worlds are to be kept separate
Rita Simon has written one of the most captivating
books on art therapy I have ever read. She is a painter, and although 40 years as an active art therapist have absorbed much of her time and attention, she has never ceased to think and speak as a painter. At the same time, her experiences as a therapist have supplied her with a great deal of practical and theoretical knowledge of psychopathology and with an impressive array of individual case studies. These stories give to every step of her theoretical presentation a lively concreteness. Add to this a remarkably humane empathy with every person she meets and an imaginative sensitivity for what is going on in every mind she explores, and you find yourself in the company of an expert you cannot afford to miss. Simon bases her approach largely on the style of patients’ work rather than on the subject matter represented in it. “There is danger,” she says, “‘that we may pay too much attention to the subject matter and neglect the importance of the creative process itself: if we do this a drawing or painting comes to be used like a home-made Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test” (p. 37). And she insists that our understanding of the content is not diminished by the study of the patient’s style, rather it is enriched. As a painter she has a dominant respect for what the visual statement has to tell in its own language. This does not keep her from relying on verbal communication, but she also warns that therapists have come too often to mistrust any~ing that is not verbalized. “I myself have come to feel that consciousness arises during the creative activity of painting but this is not necessarily some341
348
BOOK REVIEW
in the interest of mental health. She describes “the basic distinction between inner and outer reality as the first essential of our sanity” (p. 73), and she says that “if each style is equally potent the art work will be fragmented. The images reflect a disruption of continuity in the artist’s sense of inner and outer reality” (p. 192). It must be pointed out, however, that this disruption is pathological and in need of therapy. In the undisturbed relation with the outer world there is an intimate interaction between nature outside and the mind inside. Correspondingly, in representational art there is, from the beginning, an interplay between the formative imagery of the mind and the observation of nature. The absence of this direct connection between the two styles strikes me as a basic shortcoming of Simon’s approach. She replaces the connection with references to two formal properties of style, the linear quality and what is commonly known as the painterly quality, which she calls “massive.” The Archaic style may stress linearity and thereby have an affinity with an equally strongly linear naturalistic style-the only affinity considered by Simon. Similarly, a painterly approach of the Archaic style meets an equally painterly quality in naturalism. This view of the relation between the outer and the inner worlds is made by Simon into a system of four styles, the two basic ones (the Archaic and the Traditional) and the two qualifications (the linear and the painterly). Forced into a circular and sequential diagram, this system imposes on the reader a conceptional model that I find unsettling. By no means, however, should this theoretical difficulty deter readers from seeking the benefit of this book. Whoever wonders whether the attitude of the artist and the therapist can really be reconciled will be reassured on every page. Simon’s personal experience has shown her how much organizational power the
artist can mobilize and how this power can serve him or her not only to shape the meaningful form of the work but also to organize and stabilize the artist as a person. Therefore, she realizes that “my need was less to know what I could do for patients than to know what they were doing for themselves and, incidentally, what I was doing for myself by creating art” (p. 4). In the view of the therapist, “each style is seen to symbolize a particular attitude towards reality” (p. 89). Simon endorses the commonly accepted interpretation of the painterly quality as expressing emotion and its opposite, the linear quality, as formal and perhaps intellectual. She is pa~icularly good on the key concept, the Archaic style, that is, the form of all early art, which serves the young mind to cope with the world by means of clearly defined shape. This wholesome affinity with outer reality, however, makes also for abstraction, which comes with geometrical simplicity. And this abstraction produces a stabilizing effect, which Simon calls “hypnotic.” In the arts it is exemplified by icons and other religious images, and under the proper circumstances it may therefore enhance a withdrawal to the inner life. In a broader sense, this arresting effect is a property of any organized artistic pattern. Therefore, in therapy, the stabilizing power of images is sought and needed by patients, but the paralysis of persistent form must also be overcome if the patient is to develop freely. At a time when the practice of the arts in exhibitions and criticism is reducing the art of painting to an endangered species, it is most refreshing to make the acquaintance of a person for whom the virtues of this means of expression remain creatively alive.
Professor Emeritus
Rudolf Arnheim, PhD of the Psychology of Art Harvard University