The 'Id', the 'Art', and the 'Other'.

“I am fundamentally a beast –

But a beast that can’t get over the ceaseless thirst for god” – Evelyn Underhill.

Our personalities are unorganised in places. Its basic structure contains fundamental drives. The id is an inaccessible branch or corridor through which our unconscious mind strives to bring about the satisfaction of instinctual needs.

The id is a mechanism responsible for that which gives us a sense of completion or wholeness towards an absolute fulfilment.

There is a psychological explanation for god. Materialism, having been significant in the early modern period, first two decades of the twentieth century, (1910 – 1920) sees a moral crisis, the domination of capital over existence. Freud is also writing his groundbreaking works during this period and as an atheist he sought to explain all mental phenomena in terms of science (whilst not being a scientist). 

God is now displaced from heaven and into the psyche. God is in the realm of the id or more specifically, the ‘god spot’ responsible for harbouring a sense of the divine.  

Tracing the Sacred

Titan - 'Venus of Urbino' -oil on canvas- 1538

When Titian painted ‘Venus of Urbino’ in 1538, he purposefully presented Venus on another plane as though it is different level of existence. From the annotated diagram, we can see that the perspective on the tiled floor in the background scene simply does not correspond with the height at which Venus is. She should be below the floor. I don’t believe there to be a hidden step between these spaces, descending into the room in the foreground.  

Venus’ other plane is an intriguing idea in my art.

Antony Gormley - 'Another Place' - Crosby Beach.

Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ deals with a similar situation. The cast iron figures are positioned on the shifting sands at Crosby beach. This has the effect, in some cases, of burying the figures, or in others revealing the plinth-like supports on which each is stood.  Each figure stands looking out to sea. They appear to be observing something out of frame, something ‘other’.

Anselm Kiefer 'To the Unknown Painter' - 1983

Anselm Kiefer’s painting, ‘To the Unknown Painter’ - 1983, is a typical display of his consideration of space expanding from the canvas. Recalling the clarity of  the renaissance, perspective works to stretch the image into space, however no people inhabit it. There appears to be a feeling of disunion between the figure and it’s 

world.

We may be able to sense a figure present in this painting but outside of the frame, external to the image, in another place.

As we seek wholeness and find it a thirst forever unquenched, this quest for something ‘other’ or something greater than ourselves continues.

Ideas involving otherness and ‘out-of-frame-ness’, surround my latest performance work ‘ Departure From the Frame’.

Tim Barnes, 'Departure From the Frame', Performance, 2011

Tim Barnes, 'Departure From the Frame', Performance, 2011

Tim Barnes, 'Departure From the Frame', Performance, 2011

There is a desire here to be out of frame, but I refer to the frame in the sense that an art school may be considered a frame. The world is a frame in this sense. I wanted to become something ‘other’, external to profane things.