Art, Mourning and Psychoanalysis - Essay Example

Art, Mourning and Psychoanalysis Art has a unique ability to portray a vision of emotion that cannot otherwise be so clearly expressed. This is shown in every detail of the artwork, including the brush strokes against the canvas, the inclusion of specific elements, the juxtaposition of these elements, the symbolism associated with these elements and the lighting of the subject. An example of this can be found in John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia” in which the image is so full of beautiful detail and bright colors that it might seem at first difficult to realize it is a painting of sadness. However, as will be shown, the painting nevertheless evokes a feeling of deep melancholia and leaves viewers with perhaps a deeper sense of mourning than that expounded in Shakespeare’s play from which the image was taken. Many of these emotion-laden techniques are equally applicable to painting and to art photography, which has been shown to have a similar ability to convey emotion through works such as Tom Hunter’s “The Way Home.” The common denominator in both of these images, other than that they are based upon the same story and have much the same elements, is in the creative focus of the artist as he or she attempts to convey a specific feeling to his or her audience in association with the image presented. In many cases, science has assisted us in interpreting these messages as the works of such notables as Sigmund Freud have illuminated the inner workings of the human mind. While these more scientific works have provided us with the language through which these interpretations become clear, they have not been necessary for the proper expression of emotions such as deep melancholy or mourning. This is evident in paintings produced prior to Freud’s theories being published as well as after, as a comparison of the two above-mentioned works will also demonstrate. This essay will explore the understanding of mourning and melancholia as expressed in John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia” and Tom Hunter’s “The Way Home” from a psychoanalytic perspective, referring to Freud. In undertaking an examination of these two works of art, it is necessary first to have an understanding of Freud’s theories of mourning and melancholia. According to Freud, in his essay entitled “Mourning and Melancholia,” both of these emotions are a direct reaction to grief over the loss of a loved one. “In mourning, it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia, it is the ego itself” (Freud, 1989: 585). The ego, as described by Freud, can be equated with the concept of the conscious mind. This is the socializing element of the mind which functions to help us navigate through the outer world by bringing the impulses and desires of the more instinctual Id into more socially acceptable boundaries. With these definitions in hand, it can be seen that there is a distinct difference between the concepts of mourning and melancholy. Mourning can be seen as a natural process of death to be experienced by the living. When a loved one dies, it is normal and natural for the living to suffer feelings that the world is somehow emptier as that loved one is now absent. In this sense, mourning is little more than the sad cycle of adjustment for the living to a world without that loved one in it, eventually completing itself through a rebirth of sorts, into a life that doesn’t include the lost. In making the distinction between the two emotions, Freud says “With one exception, the same traits [of melancholia] are met with in mourning” (Freud, 1989: 585). That exception is the failure of the living to heal from the loss. Melancholia is considered by Freud to be a continuous open wound in the heart of the living, in which the Ego, the conscious part of one’s mind, becomes mired in the loss and is unable to adjust to new circumstances. This leaves the body in the control of the Id, which, in many cases, is interpreted as madness as the individual gives in completely to the feelings of the moment. Although it was produced well before Freud’s theories were largely known, John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia” demonstrates a great deal of what Freud had to say regarding melancholia, evoking in the viewer a sense of mourning for the lost girl in the painting. In the picture, Ophelia appears as calm as if she were sitting on dry land on an idyllic summer day despite the fact that she’s floating, just barely, within a dark pool of water. Her mouth is slightly open as a suggestion that she is singing, as is indicated she did within Shakespeare’s play. Other than this indication of her singing, there is little in her expression to denote her pain, suffering, confusion or knowledge of her imminent death. In fact, early critics of the painting pointed to this lack of expression as a hindrance to the painting. “The expression is in no way suggestive of her past tale. There is no pathos, no melancholy, no brightening up and no last lucid interval. If she dies swan-like with a song, there is no sound or melody, no poetry in this strain” (Altick, 1985: 301). However, the studies conducted by Millais in preparation for this painting indicates he worked diligently to capture the exact expression he was seeking. Looking at this painting from the perspective of Freud’s findings, Ophelia can now be seen to be suffering from the deepest form of melancholy in which she has become separated from the Ego and no longer has any true connection with the real world. Her lack of care over her own current dilemma not only leads inevitably to her death, but holds no true concern for her in her present state of simply enjoying the sensations of floating and singing the songs that are comforting to her. This interpretation is supported by the rest of her posture as it can be seen within the painting. Her hands are raised up at her sides in an accepting gesture, or perhaps as they would have raised naturally without any muscular or conscious volition on the part of the girl. Everything about her is floating – her hair fans out around her face, her dress is perhaps the only reason she is still afloat as it drifts along the top of the water, her arms float up at her sides and her mind is afloat in a world of only sweet sensation completely free of conscious thought or will. This mental disconnect is also supported by her surroundings. The flowers floating around her do not attract her notice, nor does the foliage growing on the banks or the thought that she is already beginning to sink beneath the surface, as the dark pool of water at her waist seems to indicate. Everything around her is green and growing, indicating life will go on, it must continue, yet Ophelia remains unresponsive. This is indicative of Freud’s concept of melancholy as an open wound that refuses to heal – Ophelia herself is drifting into the shadows, quickly being overtaken by the darkness below the surface despite the life that continues to thrive around her. This sad scene of a young woman lost for all time invokes a strong sense of mourning among the viewers of this painting, especially for those who recognize the Victorian language of flowers woven within the text of the painting. Rather than leave these flowers mere suggestions of paint splotches on the surface of the water, Millais takes special care to paint them in exquisite detail to ensure they are recognized. They are reflections of the types of flowers Ophelia was said in the play to have been picking, but the language behind them is strongly symbolic and would have been recognized at the time the painting was created. Some examples of how the flowers serve to illicit specific feelings of mourning among the viewers of the painting include the pansies, which signify love bestowed in vain; the poppies, which typically indicated sleep or death; roses symbolic of her youth; fritillaries which were used to express sorrow; and daisies to illustrate Ophelia’s innocence in what has happened to her. One of the primary flowers mentioned in the play and depicted in the painting were violets, which symbolized a youthful death. The careful interplay of light and shadow as it plays with the colorful life around Ophelia and the dark depths below her also help to evoke a sense of deep loss and sadness for the viewer. The darkness seems to coalesce around her head, giving the impression that her head will sink beneath the surface of the water at any moment. The portrait thus presented indicates her last few moments of life and evokes a solemn consideration of not only her physical, but also her mental condition. This moment of consideration is necessary to instilling a sense of mourning in the viewer as they first identify her state of mind and then sympathize with her inability to face life in its present circumstances. What is mourned is the loss of her innocence and beauty through no fault of her own. Tom Hunter’s photographed image “The Way Home” is modeled after Millais’ much earlier work in that it presents a modern-day Ophelia in a more modern-day setting. There are deliberately many similarities between the Ophelia in Millais’ painting and that in Hunter’s photograph. The two Ophelia’s are posed in much the same posture, each floating in the water with only their face and hands definitely above the surface and their waist already covered in water. Each one wears a completely calm expression on her face, indicating the ego disconnect described by Freud as being the principle difference between melancholy and mourning. Neither one is to blame for her death, neither one is conscious of its immediacy and neither one will probably notice when it happens. Both are seen to be drifting into shadow as their face emerges in sharp contrast to the dark water and shadows behind them. In each image, Ophelia is also seen amidst a tangle of overgrowth, almost swallowed up by the green life around them and the scenery is overflowing with symbolism. However, there remain some significant differences between the two in which Hunter is able to reinterpret the symbolism of Millais to create a duplicate emotional impression for the modern-day viewer. In Hunter’s image, Ophelia is not being dragged into the water by a heavy dress of silk and embroidery, but rather seems to be floating along already drowned in a non-descript pair of old blue jeans and a black sweater. Her head is so much in shadow that the length of her hair is lost in the depths already and the black of her sweater further helps to obscure the depth of her figure beneath the water. Black further touches the only areas in which her jeans project above the surface of the water, imbuing the image with a heavy sense of darkness and loss, full of the color and emotion of mourning. The way in which Ophelia’s body seems to merge with the darkness of the water already seems to give the impression that she’s already mostly absorbed by the small river, hardly existing as a viable human being at all. The image is overall much darker than that presented in the Millais image, automatically introducing a blue-gray depression upon the viewer as they approach. While the greenery surrounding Millais’ Ophelia seems to be reaching out to her, trying to encourage her to return to the living, to shake off her melancholy and allow herself to adapt, the greenery surrounding Hunter’s Ophelia seems more oppressive, as if it were trying to hide her from prying eyes and prevent anyone from interfering with this young sacrifice. Each Ophelia is surrounded by flowers within the pool, but Millais’ Ophelia seems bedecked with them as if she were already attending her own funeral while Hunter’s Ophelia seems to be hidden by the flowers that have rained down upon her accidentally. These differences translate to a modernized audience with the same impression of absolute despair and depression that the earlier Ophelia presented to a Victorian audience, easily illustrating the open wound of melancholy as it severs the individual’s connection with their conscious convictions. The artist invokes a similar sense of mourning and sympathy for this young lady as that felt by the contemporary audience of Millais by similarly changing the scenery in the image to reflect the ideologies and symbol sets maintained by a 21st century audience. Rather than relying upon the language of flowers to convey a sense of the sorrow and loss depicted in the image, which does not translate well into an industrialized society in which flowers no longer carry strongly specific definitions, Hunter expanded the view somewhat beyond the small portion of the river in which Ophelia drowns to show a more modern setting. Rather than drowning in some uninhabited stretch of a remote river, Hunter’s Ophelia seems to drown in the weed-choked backyard of suburbia. The roofs of nearby houses can be seen between the weed-tops and a mast aerial can be seen in the skyline looking almost like a devil’s fork and further accentuating the feeling of unavoidable doom. To the right appears to be a railway bridge making this Ophelia’s death a tragic occurrence in an urban wasteland where rivers are choked between concrete and polluted by noise and debris constantly rather than the romantic flower-strewn wilderness seen in Millais’ painting. Simply walking up to this image thus imbues the viewer with a sense of tremendous loss and mourning that closely approximates what much of the imagery included in the Millais painting was intended to create in the Victorian viewer. However, Hunter also goes one step further than Millais in treated his topic. Millais based his image upon the Shakespeare play Hamlet, and so, therefore, did Hunter. However, Hunter also named his painting in such a way as to connect it to headlines carried in the Hackney Gazette in reports of a young girl’s death (Lomax, 2006). By doing this, he is able to connect not only the modern day viewer with the traditional images of art and the poetic words of classic literature, but also to connect these events to everyday life occurring within and around us all the time. By keeping some of the motifs of Romanticism, such as the flowers drooping into the water to cover her, Hunter’s Ophelia connects the modern day lived experience with the classic ideals of more than a century ago. As has been shown, a great deal of the emotions evoked in the viewer depends to a large extent upon a shared symbology between the artist and the audience. This shared symbology managed to convey a strong sense of mourning to the audience of Millais’ “Ophelia” as he depicted her in her extreme melancholic state; however, this same sense of sorrow is not necessarily conveyed to a more modern audience because of a lack of understanding of many of these symbols and misinterpretation of the bright colors. Hunter’s re-creation of the image in his “The Way Home” successfully translates the emotions of Millais’ composition to the modern audience thanks to a willingness to find new symbolism that works both with the classic interpretation as well as the everyday news headlines. In both cases, therefore, the concepts of Freud’s interpretation of melancholy, in the complete disconnect of the young lady leading up to her death, and the powerful mourning experienced by the contemporary audience viewing this image. References Curnow, Harriet. (n.d.). “Work in Focus: Millais’ Ophelia.” [image of “Ophelia”]. The Tate Museum. Available March 5, 2007 from < http://www.tate.org.uk/ophelia/> Freud, Sigmund. (1989). “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Freud Reader. Peter Gay (Ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Hunter, Tom. (2000). “The Way Home.” ArtNet. Available March 5, 2007 from Lomax, James. (February 23, 2006). “Tom Hunter Photography.” Available March 5, 2007 from < http://www.jameslomax.com/words/435/tom-hunter-photography> Read More