Alfred Kubin: A Dreamer for Life

Abstract

The essay considers the graphics and the work of fiction of Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), Bohemian artist on the edge of the Expressionist movement, who attracted countless suggestions of psychological interpretation with his fantastic writings and his dream drawings. Howeer according to the author, it is not possible to decipher the quality and originality of Kubin’s creations through the symbolic contents, considering them a priori indicators of deep psychic material that flowed from the unconscious. It is more interesting, if anything, to try to make order between the different levels of intentionality and consciousness that are intertwined in his creations. Freud and Kubin were contemporary, both lived in the heart of central Europe, they spoke the same language, breathed the same fervent cultural climate, but they ignored each other. Differences between them are irreconcilable also from the theoretical level, as for Freud the dream is only the way – altough “the royal road” – to reach the unconscious, but it is in itself a brute and primitive matter. For Kubin instead the unconsciuos is an overestimated phenomenon, an independent creative and higher, almost metaphysical, principle. Instead, the method by which Kubin says how he would like to be watched is deeply linked to the modern spirit of psychoanalysis: "The real enjoyer, as I want it, should look at my papers not only appreciating and criticizing them, but as animated by secret feelings, he should turn his attention also to the rich dark room of his dream consciousness." That is, according to the most current psychoanalytic terms, the "transitional space" of the work is inhabited by the artist and the enjoyer, who give it potentially infinite meanings, more or less shared, which take on a significance in an encounter that activates synaesthetic affective and cognitive circuits.