In this first article I would like to talk about art, creation and feeling of being oneself from a phenomenological perspective because all of this comes from a personal experience, from my own encounter with art and creation. This time of creation is a departure on an expedition inside my being. I walk in my imagination to transcribe what I feel. All these images wander before my eyes and then assemble on a canvas, a macramé, a piece of paper ...
When I paint a new world opens up to me, that of a space and a time outside of my daily existence. Like what Maldiney describes about the brushstroke, like a flash of creation. I feel transported to an imaginary world, where the colors appear to me, like sparkles, where the gesture of my hand holding the brush expresses itself naturally, without thinking. In these moments, I feel carried by creativity, in an elsewhere which is however present, here and now and cannot be reproduced identically. I feel a sense of well-being and accomplishment during my pictorial expression where everything is possible.
In this experience I feel deeply connected with what we can call the self, the self or even identity. Through this experience the body and the mind become one. The bodily sensations, the sight, the smell, the movements of the hand, the arm, or even the body give life to the expression of an idea, a thought, a subject belonging to the closed world of my mind.
I think that through the meeting of art we can then experience this deep feeling of being oneself, in harmony with oneself. This told experience expresses what we value in phenomenological thinking. The register of phenomenology is that of Sentiment which aims to found a continuity of psychic life, starting from bodily experience in the register of the originary, before the constitution of the representation of object.
So I’d like to talk to you about creation, artistic experience and experiencing the feeling of being yourself. Nowadays it is not always easy to find one's place, to accept oneself as one is without trying to convey the image that others expect of us. And it seems to me that creating allows us to reconnect with who we are in the depths of our being. Creating allows us to give ourselves this freedom to be ourselves.
The creation would be to let its being arise. To create you have to be amazed at the world we live in, amazed at what we see. This astonishment will be fostered by observing the world around us at all times of our lives. Maldiney highlights the capacity for astonishment as a creative act:
And wherever there is astonishment, there is an opening […] a first clearing up.
Living an Artistic experience, opens up to the meeting of an event, of a world, thus allowing to experience new possibilities of being. In the encounter with art it is a question
of opening to the pathic dimension of the meeting and the event.
The pathic dimension is the affective capacity to open up to others. It is a knowledge that we can acquire only by experiencing, that by feeling through our senses. This is what is played in contact with art. Contact with art invites us to experience through all of our senses what we are experiencing in this experience. So we experience feelings, emotions, bodily sensations that invite us to acquire this knowledge and to open up to meet the world around us. Our senses give us all the information we need to understand the world. And creating pushes us to explore our senses. Winnicott wrote,
It is by playing, and perhaps only when playing, that children and adults can be creative and use their whole personality. It is only by being creative that the individual discovers the self..
He understands creativity in the sense of a quest for self. In artistic workshops, this dimension of creativity is underlying it. The artistic activity is the support of the game in order to let the self express itself, the personality in its entirety. Winnicott tells us that through creativity the individual "can come together and exist as a unit, not as a defense against anxiety, but as an expression of I am, I am alive, I am myself. " Thus art and creativity, through play, would allow the human being to experience the self in its totality. Art and creativity would open up to oneself, to the mind and to the other.
By creating you allow yourself the freedom to be yourself and it’s a lot of good to allow yourself time to be yourself. To create is to take the path of self-acceptance while meeting the world and others. Without world, without other there is no creation because ultimately we are inspired by all that we live and all that we observe. So creation is a perpetual exchange between our inner world and the outside world, while leaving room for the freedom to be oneself.
1 H. Maldiney, (1985), Art et Existence, Paris: Klincksieck, 2003, p. 174
2 H. Maldiney, (1970), Art and pathology, . "Folio essays", 1975, p. 110rt et pathologie,
3 F. Dastur, Henri Maldiney A phenomenology of encounter and event, Review of the International Association Henri Maldiney L’Ouvert, n ° 1/2008 L’Ouvert, n°1/2008
4 D. Winncott, (1971), Game and reality. Potential space, Paris, Gallimard, coll. "Folio essays", 1975, p.110
5 D. Winncott, (1971), Game and reality. Potential space, Paris, Gallimard, coll. "Folio essays", 1975, p. 110
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