Getting Jung-er

“I am no longer an artist interested and anxious.  I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on forever.  Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth, and may it burn in their lousy souls.”

British Surrealist and War Artist, Paul Nash

“There are places, just as there are people and objects... whose relationship of parts creates a mystery.” (Paul Nash)¹

I have chosen two of my works that have a relationship to each other: Soldier of the Great War and Magnate.  These are found object sculptures utilizing items washed up on beaches or along roadsides.

Soldier of the Great War is a figure made of bone, lead, broken teacup, brass lighter cover, copper gas pipe, shell, shoe leather, shredded flag, and brick.  These, alone, unassembled, might make up the remnants of a soldiers kit.  However, they form a soldier, shot through the sternum, erect at attention, despite being neither in this world or the next.

‘Magnate’ is the soldier’s older contemporary, head of anthracite coal, plastic bottle neck, necktie, body of barnacle covered scallop shell, legs of plastic, bullet casing shoes.  His back is filled with newspaper clippings held in place by a sheet of black mica.  These elements, their texture and form, suggest a figure in command; a rotund figure stuffed with the daily news, whose posture is high-status.

Let me back up a bit, move out of the autopsy lab for a second.

I don’t go into the studio thinking, “I’m going to make a statement about war.”

It begins much farther back…

I am guided by a principle when I collect objects for my sculptural work.  This principle may have its origin in an ethic that desires to prove or persuade that the materials that art is made from are (ironically) immaterial.  I also have an ‘unconscious-brought-to-conscious’ affinity for weather-worn objects and bones (more on this later).  I’ve said that if someone gave me, or if there only existed, soggy newspaper or tennis balls, or dried leaves, I would still make the same art.  I am thankful though that these materials ARE discarded, washed up, run over, rolled in the sand, overlooked, waiting to be found.  It satisfies my sense of history in common objects.  The action of the weather, chance, or abuse, adds to the emotional potential of the final sculpture.  We are all weather-time-hazard-worn objects.

In looking back over my 50 years of making art, the material/media chosen has made little difference in the central theme of what I made.  Still, I (the intuitive ‘I’) am very selective.

Leaving this intention behind I quote Carl Jung “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”²

An object in the sand (or by the side of the road) draws my attention.  I have an immediate sense that it can play a part in a work although I don’t necessarily know what that work is, in specific.  I refrain from self-criticism yet when I pick it up and examine it, I may, upon closer examination, discard it.  Most often I don’t.  I place it in a bag and continue.  After a given amount of time, distance, road, or sand, I feel I have exhausted my ability to freshly choose objects.  At times, I find a perfect object shortly after this conclusion.  The objects then have to survive the travel to my studio.  If an object shatters, that is part of the selection process.

What occurs in my studio is this:  My worktable and shelves surrounding it contain the objects I have collected.  If an impulse gained upon picking up the object from its original location remains, I place that object in the front of the worktable.  As I gaze over the objects set out on the table, I allow the same intuitive pull to draw me to a second object and I place it in some juxtaposition to the first.

Here is where I enter the waking dream.  Once two objects are arranged, a momentum is begun.  Often, by the time a third object is placed with the first two, and I have a sense that I am present with the ‘dream’, a word emerges.  This word functions as a ‘working title’ or theme.

From this point, my intuition plays the role of supporting my intention.  With each additional object, attached to the previous ones, I can evaluate the effect and compare it to the ‘title’.  The title may alter at this point, usually to something more iconic or multilayered.  I continue to work until I can either see what kind of base the piece requires (stone, wood, brick, etc) or see what its presentational desire is.  Since most of these pieces are figurative, they tend to express desires of their own.

These two works were made in the context of the early 20^th century.  I knew, by the time they were taking their final form, that I had ‘made a statement’.

We tend to idealize the soldier’s world, fantasize it, cliché it, demean it.  The Great War (Sadly, known as World War One) utterly destroyed the possibility that ability as a soldier would count for anything.  Troops were mown down by mustard gas, air-bombing, machine guns, and influenza.  It was nothing short of an apocalypse.  The mental framework for the 20^th century was created by The Great War: our hopes for lasting peace, the planted seeds for succeeding wars, the hunger for more powerful and destructive weapons.

The ‘Magnate’ was participant in this cancerous growth.  Where the farm family lost a generation of children, the industrialists saw ten generations of wealth.  Where the European saw the land leveled and burnt, the magnate saw opportunity for cheap labor.

The Magnate devoured the wounded.

My attraction to the materials and to creating these two figures grew as I came to read the work of Carl Jung.  Although these works grew out of, “The debt we owe to the play of the imagination...” They also contain two of the primary archetypes described by Jung.

The Soldier has an aura of Innocent; Magnate is aligned with the archetype of King.  This can seem formulaic.  However, as I scan the media today, the classic books of the past, the actions of people, and history, I find that patterns appear. 

I’ve noticed, reinforced by reading Jung, that I have become more aware of the patterns of imagery and composition that have been a thread in my life and creative work.

³“Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. ” Carl Jung

Paul Nash said the “relationship of parts creates a mystery”. I see ‘mystery’ as a path that leads forward, that provides abundant clues but no final answer, that allows the contents of my unconscious or, perhaps, the collective unconscious, to press upwards.

I accept these mysteries.  I find that when I exhibit these works, they provoke responses; they are both beautiful and intriguing for my audience.  They may amuse because the objects that comprise the figures are ones that are macabre, pedestrian, or curiously historic.

Pat Conroy spoke about the effect of poetry. “It ratified a theory of mine that great writing could sneak up on you, master of a thousand disguises: prodigal kinsman, messenger boy, class clown, commander of artillery, altar boy, lace maker, exiled king, peacemaker, or moon goddess.” From Pat Conroy’s, My Reading Life⁴

The list he gives is precisely part of the cast of archetypes that surface when we pursue our practice. 

To become conscious of them strengthens the artist.  To be able to sink back into the pool of unconscious in exploration of the ‘mystery’ strengthens the work.

David Neufeld

November 4, 2014

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nash_%28artist%29

²http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carljung125713.html

³http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carljung114800.html

⁴ Conroy, Pat, and Wendell Minor. My Reading Life. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2010. Print.