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ART — Defies Defintion by It's Nature
Art is hard to define and, as with Jung’s soul, it defies definition and explanation by its very nature. This question does not ask what art is but what it does—what it’s purpose is. Art history reflects human history and the evolution of consciousness that underpins it. Like Jung (1933) said the “artistic disposition involves an overweight of collective psychic life as against the personal,” describing art as “a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument” (p. 169). “The artist,” Jung continued, “is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him,” shaping the “unconscious, psychic life of mankind” (p. 169). Art serves the evolution or individuation of the individual and the world. It serves the anima mundi or world soul.
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The art-based teaching of The Red Book is a process of UNLEARNING that is a "knowledge of the heart." It is "everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not." C. G. Jung
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“The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth." C. G. Jung
"It [art] is a process which brings into being a new centre of equilibrium...some kind of centering process, for many pictures which patients feel to be decisive point in this direction." C. G. Jung
