Dr Freud on Art (1925)

Abstract

Clive Bell (1881-1964), English art critic associated with the Bloomsbury Group, was one of the most determined upholders of formalism in aesthetics. In this article he criticizes with ironic and stern attitude Freud's conception of art espressed in a famous passage of the Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, in which the artist is described as an unsatisfied person who will compensate through art his instinctive needs. According to Clive Bell the art pleasure is not derived from the wish-fulfilment, but from a special feeling that concerns only Significant Form. “The artist – he writes – is not concerned with even the “sublimations” of his normal lusts, because he is concerned with a problem which is quite outside normal experience. His object is to create a form which shall match an aesthetic conception, not to create a form which shall satisfy Dr Freud’s unappeased longings.” He concludes: “To me it seems that Dr Freud may be an excellent psychoanalyst, but I am sure he had better leave art alone.”