subject: Willem De Kooning Beauty And The Beastly Artist: Willem De Kooning's Destructiveness By Donald Kuspi [print this page] Directly our paranoid potential is aroused, it is as if we set foot into a mythological world inhabited, not by human beings, but by
demons, ogres and witches whose evil practices can only be combated by equal malice on our own part.
Of course, when we enter the other state in which projection plays such a marked part, the state which Freud called "the psychosis of
normal people" and which is better known as the state of being "in love," we also enter a mythological world which suddenly seems
transformed by the magical influence of the beloved into a place of sweetness and light inhabited by only the kindliest and most
noble of persons.
"Falling in love" is generally recognized as being a common state of mind, and, in spite of Freuds diagnostic label, is not
considered abnormal. Its opposite, "falling in hate" is not so widely acknowledged. Yet I believe it to be about as common, and a
great deal more dangerous.
-- Anthony Storr, Human Destructiveness(1)
Well, yes, we must face it: the little woman -- or, more specifically, her body -- has, throughout history though to varying degrees,
been considered dirty, diseased, putrid -- the more so, perhaps, as she is actually desirable.
-- Wolfgang Lederer, The Fear of Woman(2)
The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego. . . .i. e. the ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly those springing
from the surface of the body.
-- Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id(3)
In relation to all the other sensory registers, the tactile possesses a distinctive characteristic which not only places it at the
origin of the psyche, but allows it permanently to provide the latter with something which one might also call the mental background.
This is the background against which psychical contents stand out as figures, or alternately the containing envelope which makes it
possible for the psychical apparatus to have contents. . . .
[T]his is based upon the container-content relation which the mother brings into play in her relation to her infant. . . the crucial
relation of the containment of exogenous excitations, a relation of which the child -- initially stimulated no doubt by its mother --
derives its experience from its own skin.
-- Didier Anzieu, The Skin Ego(4)
When it was shown at Martinets, [Manets Music in the Tuileries, 1862] was judged scandalous, both for its technique -- setting off
the striking, almost caricature details of the faces against the sketchiness of the apparel and the setting -- and for its allegedly
violent palette. . . . In 1867, Babou speaks of Manets mania for seeing things as patches [taches], particularly in the portraits
of this painting: the Baudelaire patch, the Gautier patch, the Manet patch.
The prevailing reactions to [Olympia, 1863] have always been of two kinds. The formal reaction responds to technical, painterly
values. . . . It comes directly from Zola. . . in an apostrophe to Manet: For you, a picture is but an opportunity for analysis.
