I will be giving a presentation for the Freud, Psychoanalysis and Culture Lockdown Lecture Series, organised by Dr Luke Devine at the University of Worcester, on Monday 13th July at 5 pm. The lectures will take place online and details can be found in the link.

My talk Beware the Boa Constructor! Freud, Modern Art and the Riddle of Interpretation takes its title from the art historian Erwin Panofsky, who would warn his students against ignoring historical facts for the convenience of a compelling theory. Ernst Gombrich made reference to the ‘boa constructor’ in his 1984 lecture on Freud’s aesthetic theory ‘Verbal Wit as a Paradigm of Art’, where he used it as an example of a play on words that reveals a ‘trapdoor’ to the unconscious. Most of Freud’s references to the Fine Arts were classical and he was famously unmoved by modern movements like Expressionism and Surrealism which purportedly brought the artists unconscious into aesthetic form. For Freud an artist’s unconscious should be mediated by the technical traditions and cultural conventions of established art forms rather than trying to subvert or transgress them. The riddle of interpretation for modern art is exemplified by Freud’s pre-occupation with Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses, which had a formative role in his own auto-analysis, exemplifying his struggle against academic discipline and ‘the law of the father’. The riddle Freudian psychoanalysis poses for both the making and appreciation of works of art since Modernism, I argue, is whether meaning resides primarily in the intentions of the maker or the unconscious of the interpreter?

The lectures take place in a virtual classroom, so to attend click the link in the title of the lecture (on the page linked above) on the appropriate day/ time.

The program begins on Wednesday 8th July at 5 pm with Luke’s lecture on ‘Freud and Political Psychology’.

For anyone in or around Edinburgh this week I highly recommend attending this very special event at St. Cecilia’s Hall on Tuesday 25th February at 6 pm.

My colleague Alan Hunt, a Kwakwaka’wakw chief and carver, who worked with the late Beau Dick, will be performing an Atlakim Ceremony along with 12 members of the Alert Bay and Fort Rupert communities. The ceremony is a dance of the supernatural forest spirits usually performed during potlatches and winter dances. Traditionally, after four performances, the masks are ceremonially burned.

In 2008 Beau Dick was the first artist in 50 years to perform this rite. He did so again in 2012. The set of Atlakim masks currenty on display in the Pine’s Eye exhibition at The Talbot Rice gallery, were intended to be burned at documenta14 in 2017.

Please do encourage your colleagues, friends and students to attend this event.

I wish I could be there too.

I’ll be speaking at the Remote Proximity event at Goldsmiths tomorrow. Places are limited but it’s free. I’ll be speaking about the BC Time-Slip project between 10.00 and 11.00.

My review of David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivans Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy is now online at Third Text.