Picasso, Cubism, and the Eye of the Beholder: Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Psychology

The purpose of this article is to summarize an approach to Picasso that integrates psychoanalytic theory with the scientific methods of cognitive psychology. ¹ Psychoanalysts have always been especially intrigued by Picasso, as his private biography and public artworks alike are steeped in a notoriously Freudian current of sexuality and aggression. And to make matters more enticing, Picasso’s seething content is mirrored in his tumultuous pictorial form—or as he put it: “A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions” (Ashton 1972, 8). This content/form correlation, emerging in force with the 1907 Demoiselles d’Avignon, suggests that Cubism might be profitably approached through a psychoanalytic regression-for-progression theory. That is, Cubism, the greatest leap of modernism, may have originated in a psychoanalytic descensus ad infernum—a heroic invocation of primitive conflicts in pursuit of a new aesthetic. Psychoanalytic speculation on the matter dates back to Jung and Ehrenzweig, and continues in the writings of Gedo (1980) and Kuspit (1989).

The present essay, relying on the psychoanalytic tradition, argues that Cubism begins with the eruption of vitalized latent contents, which are disguised and tamed by the art-work (as in dream-work, symptom-work, or joke-work). The translation of the latent into the manifest is enacted in Cubism through classic primary process mechanisms: condensation, displacement, and symbolization. To put this differently, Picasso’s vitalized latent contents seem to have fueled the development of an ambiguous pictorial style, capable at once to reveal/conceal or express/suppress the covert message.

In grappling with questions about the audience—or the eye of the beholder—we may turn to cognitive psychology for assistance. The purpose of studying the audience is to tackle the problem of aesthetic communication (e.g., Wollheim 1987), where the sender (the artist) transmits a coded message (the artwork) to receivers (the audience). And why turn to cognitive psychology, instead of, say, the semiotic reception theorists, who problematize the privileged and privilege the marginalized (e.g., Bal and Bryson 1991)? The answer lies in the pictorial structure of Cubism. As will be argued, Cubism packs a seething array of latent contents that, for all intents and purposes, are subliminal—you will find little notice of them in the extant Picasso literature. Yet, cognitive psychology has demonstrated that subliminal contents, analogous to the Picasso imagery, can often be discerned by the viewer, unconsciously. By unconsciously, it is meant that the subliminal or latent contents are not available to the viewer’s introspective, phenomenal awareness, but nevertheless exert an ongoing, tangible, and measurable effect on both intellectual and emotional responsivity (e.g., Bornstein and Pittman, eds. 1992).

What exactly is at stake here? If it can be demonstrated that a large audience discerns Picasso’s latent contents, unconsciously, then compelling convergent validity will have been established. To this end, an internally consistent model will be advanced, where theories of production and reception converge, mutually validating each other, and uniting artist, artwork, and audience.

The article proceeds with the Cubist latent contents, in Picasso and psychoanalysis. This is followed by Picasso and cognitive psychology, which describes the experiments that I ran on audience responsivity, and reproduces some fascinating viewer drawings copying Picasso. Finally, in Picasso, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, and mainstream art history, I will integrate my work with current state-of-the-art Picasso scholarship.

Picasso and Psychoanalysis

Some preliminary words of definition: According to Freud (1900), latent material: (1) involves sexual and/or aggressive wish-fulfilling content; (2) is organized according to primary process form: condensation, displacement, and symbolization; and (3) tends to be unconscious, at least prior to insightful decoding. Other assumptions are numerous, but they tend to be ancillary. For example, (4) latent contents express childhood experience, usually conflictual and always imperishable. Psychoanalysis, in fact, is not one theory; it is a vast collection of mini-theories. Generally, the mini-theories are independent of each other; each one can be embraced or jettisoned, depending on the purposes at hand. For our purposes, we must articulate a...