Body and Psyche
The relation between the body and the psyche has intrigued philosophers for centuries. To what degree does our psychology reflect our physical being? Does our body give clues to our psychological state? Does our psyche live on after death? Are there such things as extra-sensory perceptions? Beginning with the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth-century, these kinds of questions have greatly interested artists as well. Depictions of the human form often no longer relied on straight-forward naturalistic approach, but, rather, sought to express invisible, internal psychic phenomena through the exaggeration or unusual manipulation of the human body.
These concerns continued to be important in the twentieth century. Some artists, such as Louise Bourgeois, pushed the depiction of the human body to such an extreme that the figure became virtually unrecognizable. Others, such as the photographer Diane Arbus, elicited uncanny impressions of psychological states through a direct, almost documentary approach. Some artists, especially those affiliated with the Surrealist movement, recognized the psychological potency of parts of the body in isolation. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, in particular, created works in which parts of the body stand in - in an elliptical, haiku-like fashion - for various psychological complexes. Following the lead of Surrealist artists like Rene Magritte, contemporary artists such as Nancy Grossman and Robert Gober have recently extended the parameters of the body to include clothing and costume, exploring ways in which such coverings become virtually inseparable from both our body and our psyche.
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Aristide MaillolFrance, 1861-1944 . La Douleur (Grief) . circa 1922 . bronze
. 1968.24
Gift of The Norton Simon Foundation, Fullerton, California
The French town of Ceret commissioned this sculpture in 1920 to commemorate the dead of the First World War.
As his early sketches for the work indicate, Maillol's conception of the work evolved from a figure wracked with grief to one who-in this final version-expresses meditative calm.