Publication details
Reading Life and Personality Through Artwork - Interpretation on the Edge
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2004 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Art and Science, Proceedings of the XVIII Congress of the IAEA |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://fss.muni.cz/~kodrlova/lisboa.pdf |
| Field | Psychology |
| Keywords | Psychological interpretation of artwork; life story and personality of writers; autobiographic documents; Sylvia Plath; Sarah Kane |
| Description | The authors of the paper will concentrate on these two questions: What evidence about a writer's personality is suggested by his/her work and how can this evidence be tapped? Does the life of an artist determine the form of his/her artwork, and if so, in what way? These areas will be touched upon in the paper: a) The possibility of interpreting an artist's personality and life by confronting his/her artworks with autobiographical and biographical materials, b) The limits of reconstructing an artist's personality and life from his/her artworks when the personal documents and the biographical data are unavailable. The authors illustrate the two approaches to the psychological analysis of literary texts on the work of Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane two authors who committed suicide. In case of Sylvia Plath they will show the potential of psychological analysis of the artwork, grounded in comparing the artworks and life experiences revealed in the biographical materials and personal documents. In case of Sarah Kane, on the other hand, the authors demonstrate that without these materials, factual life events may only be suggested. They will show that through the analysis of the artwork itself only information about the artist's mode of experiencing may be deduced. |