Artistic and Psychoanalytic Processes: Morgan, Warhol, Herrmann, and Freud

Abstract

Can an artistic project be treated as analogous to a psychoanalytic interpretation? To explore this question, this article considers Morgan’s series of dance photographs, later appropriated by Andy Warhol as silkscreen prints, as a single “case study.” The analysis of this pair of artistic processes develops into a discussion of their similarities with a psychoanalytic interpretive process, thus serving as a “testing ground” to consider how analytic interpretation may prove relevant to artists and art critics. This differs from the more common idea of incorporating psychoanalytic theories into the analysis of art (among other simplistic and methodologically incoherent applications of one of these fields to the other). The article draws upon the theoretical contributions of Fabio Herrmann. João Frayze-Pereira’s ideas of the intrinsic relationship between Art and Psychoanalysis are implied.

Keywords:
psychoanalysis; interpretation; art; photography; Brazilian psychoanalysis