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On Leonardo, the Two Tables, Peace Doves and Chance: A Dialogue about Art and Psychoanalysis

by | Full text, Vol 22 (2) 2004

This dialogue explores four aspects of the work of the Belgian artist Johan Clarysse: (i) the overdetermination or stratification of psychical determinants of plastic work, that is, the differentiation between conscious/preconscious determinants on the one hand and unconscious determinants on the other; (ii) the process of symbolising and/or representing affect in plastic work; (iii) formal research and its connection with self expression as implied in the work of Clarysse; and (iv) the role of chance and its impossi¬bility in the creation of plastic work.

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