THE FORMAL ANALYSIS OF THE HENRY GORSKI RETROSPECTIVE
AT THE MUSEUM OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS
The museum is located at The Wilburton Inn, Manchester, Vermont
It consists of five permanent art exhibits introducing the scientific study of the Creative Process.
DR. ALBERT LEVIS
I was born in 1937 into a Jewish family in Athens, Greece. In my childhood years I witnessed battle scenes of World War II, of the Civil War in Greece and the specter of my family’s imminent deportation to a concentration camp. This was averted by changing domiciles and personal identities during the years of the Nazi occupation. As a survivor of this period, during which my father and grandfather died along with 96% of the glorious Jewish community of Greece, I began a life- long search to understand the nature of human behavior.
I attended medical school in Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland and came to the States in 1964, where I completed psychiatric training at Yale in 1967. I then established a psychiatric practice, the Center for the Study of Normative Behavior, a private research and training clinical institution. My research was inspired by the composition of a dramatic play about the Trojan War. It established insights into the conflicts of World War II. Upon this play writing exercise I studied the pattern repeated in the five generations of the Greek creation stories and detected in them a conflict resolution process as a periodic entity. This became the object of my research on the creative process as a conflict resolving mechanism. In this process I rediscovered Aristotle’s observations on the structure of Greek tragedies as Teleion Holon, or the “perfect universe” experienced as an emotional catharsis.
I went identified this process as a natural science and moral order phenomenon, combining physic’s Simple Harmonic Motion and the mathematics of the equilibrial scale. I identified parallels between the constructs and formulas of these two phenomena and the mental dialectic, which I termed the Conflict Resolution Process (CRP), a periodic equilibrial entity, that could be qualified, quantified and graphically portrayed. This entity, manifested as the plot of stories. Thus the creative process reflected psychology’s unconscious. I thus introduced the CRP as the scientific moral paradigm integrating the social sciences into the exact Moral Science.
I identified the key objectives of emotional education as learning about the unconscious, identifying the alternative ways of resolving conflict as wellness diagnostic categories and utilizing the creative process for self-discovery. Utilizing creativity for self-discovery I developed a user friendly self-assessment, the Conflict Analysis Battery, a diagnostic, therapeutic and educational tool. Combining the study of the art exhibits and the completion of the Conflict Analysis Battery, I advanced a concise program of emotional education, Creativity and Power Management, that can be delivered in the classroom as well as in therapy.
In 1987, with the objective of launching this program with a dedicated training center, I acquired the historic Wilburton Inn in Manchester, Vermont, incorporated it as Art to Science, Inc. and installed there a number of art exhibits that became the Museum of the Creative Process.
I used Gorski’s paintings in 1972 in my presentation of the Formal Theory to the New Haven Medical Association and I have since collected his canvases illustrating the abstract concepts of the Formal Theory with the symbolism of his canvases. The Gorski exhibit humanizes the scientific, aesthetic, moral and psychological characteristics of the Process.
HENRY GORSKI
Henry Gorski, born in 1918, started life in the “Polish ghetto” of upstate Lackawanna, New York. The son of a railroad repairman and tavern keeper Gorski’s first artistic efforts were sketches of men drinking beer at his father’s tavern. Gorski pursued his interest in art receiving his BFA in 1939 from the University of Buffalo. In the fifties, the Gorskis moved to Connecticut, where they worked as artists and educators. They have two sons.
Letter from Henry Gorski to Dr. Levis dated 1987
“William Blake’s prophetic and apocalyptic poem speaks to our present age of all-pervasive dehumanization:
“My mother groan’d! My father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt:”
I leapt out of my mother’s womb in the back room of a work- ing man’s tavern located in a steel town during a world war. My personal odyssey since that traumatic day encompassed half the spinning globe and spanned a depression, another war worth three bronze stars, apprehensions of atomic dis- solution as a map maker, still another war which threatened one son, dealing with a severely handicapped hyperactive other son, etc., etc…Painting and art became a defensive shield which cushioned the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” What these “interesting” times (“interesting” in the acrimonious sense of cursing an enemy: “May you live in an interesting age!”) had wrought to my inner person deter- mined the directions my painting would take.
Interest in other cultures dealing with these inward conflicts and bogey men of spiritual undergrounds took me to Pre-Columbian Mexico, mystical Spain and most recently to Italy. The study of Primitive Art experienced first hand in New Guinea, the island arts of the Pacific, Australia and the West Coast, the anxieties of Kafka and Dostoevsky and the mosaics of Italian basilicas established my particular thrust toward expressing and revealing some dimension of the inner person.
A chance meeting, perhaps a natural gravitation, a confluence of opposite attractions (of Art grafting onto Science) has since developed into a fecund relationship. Albert Levis perceived seemingly parallel directions in my paintings as symbols applicable to his Formal Theory of human behavior — directions of which I was not consciously aware.
My own comments on my paintings are, to the best of my memory, the sources of inspiration which motivated them. At times there may be differing, even contradictory responses to my work; but that is the multi-faceted nature of art — that it can present different aspects, evoke varying responses at different times.
Albert Levis in his formal approach to behavior theory, as seen and interpreted through the artist’s eye, has enhanced the realm of creative vision which I experienced intuitively as a painter. His new dimension of insight fostered a meaningful relationship between the Formalist and the Intuitionist. Levis’ Formal Theory extends the frontiers of understanding our humanity.”
Two Scientific Models, the physics of the pendulum and the formal operations of the scale, provide the graphic presentation of the Conflict Resolution Process, the Universal Harmonic, the Unit of the Social Sciences.
The three Formal Operations, mastery, cooperation and mutual respect, organize the symbolic universe of Gorski’s canvases. They illustrate the Process as the path to conflict resolution.
The Formal Analysis of the Gorski Retrospective
The core thesis of the Formal Theory is that the unconscious mind deals with stress by transforming it to a compromise through a process that has a distinct structure and moral function: the Conflict Resolution Process (CRP). Its structure follows a predictable dialectic of six emotions: stress, response, anxiety, defense, reversal and compromise. This transformation is guided by three inner needs as formal operations seeking comfort and stability, i.e. a state of rest. The operations transform passivity to activity, antagonism to cooperation and alienation to mutual respect.
The connection between Levis’ Formal Theory and the Retrospective is that the art demonstrates the science of the process. The process is illustrated by Gorski’s canvases as integrated into a single, three-act dramatic continuum. The canvases of the artist thus become meaningful while validating the abstractions of the six role-states and the three formal operations.
The Retrospective is displayed chronologically, retracing Gorski’s personal drama as the three acts of Adam/Kafka, his central hero. In each act we see a resolution as a compromise with life’s painful realities summed up at the end of each series by one or more of the artist’s self-portraits. In the following text we address the conflicts experienced in each period, accompanied by miniature displays of the formally related canvases in sequences of conflict resolution. These cycles and the artist’s comments are included next to each canvas in the gallery, and the sequences are displayed on the walls of the dedicated museum.
The Retrospective as Three Acts of a Drama
Act 1, entitled by Gorski as “Pain-things”, distinguishes Adam/Kafka evolving through two cycles of conflict resolution. The first cycle pertains to conflicts about his elder son’s institutionalization as a result of his autism. The second cycle revolves around political matters as the younger son was threatened by the draft into the Vietnam War.
Mouthless paintings in both cycles show the artist feeling overwhelmed by these oppressive conflicts. Two canvases with religious themes illustrate Gorski’s devout faith. These two cycles are concluded with two self-portraits, both presenting the artist’s face emerging from suffocating fingerprints. The first is in the shape of a clamshell, the second, as seen in the self-portrait focus exhibit, is in the shape of the Pentagon.
Act 2 is characterized by Adam’s erotic adventure. The mouthlessness of the first act is replaced by his obsession with sensuous kisses. The kisses multiply, intensify in color and lead up to The Rape of the Rose, the violation of innocence. A canvas labeled Nowhere to Hide is succeeded by several crucifixion- associated self-portraits, Identity and Eye-dentity. They reflect the artist’s willingness, with tongue in cheek, to conform to cultural norms.
Act 3 addresses Adam’s issues with morality and mortality by presenting sports paintings as alternative crucifixions. These were inspired by the predicament of ancient Aztec athletes sacrificed upon losing in athletic games, as depicted in the first canvas of the series, Vestigial Being. These canvases are presented as illusions of victory and success contrasted with the reality of painful situations depicted in portraits of institutionalized, disabled individuals, companions of his son. Canvases depict Adam empowered by his genuine emotions.
In the self-portrait Shadow Play the artist as the creator, the painter of kisses and crosses, accepts responsibility for determining his own emotional reality. Gorski’s final self- portrait, Paradox, presents the artist reconciled with the world of pain and love. He sketches his face upon a cross composed of kisses. He is wearing a crown of thorns. The end of his Retrospective seems to coincide with the reconciliation of the conflict between the kiss and the cross, between pleasure and responsibility, the ability to love and feel loved.
The predictable pattern, the six-part emotional dialectic directed by three formal transformations, has been demonstrated to organize the Gorski images meaningfully into three phases of conflict resolution. Hence, the Retrospective introduces the Conflict Resolution Process as the scientific way of looking at art, depicting the creative process as having a scientific structure and a moral function.
Three Focus Studies Clarify the Moral Function of the CRP
The chronological evolution of Gorski’s work into a dramatic play is accompanied by three exhibits focusing on the psychological functions of the process: the healing function; the normative compliance function; and the norm-changing function.
The Healing Function
The Self-portraits Study is of extraordinary scientific significance as it integrates the disconnected self-portraits separated by thematic phases and multiple years into another Conflict Resolution Process. Remarkably, the self- portraits are in the anticipated formal relation to each other. The series begins with Gorski’s identity emerging in the first act from political powerlessness, a state of passivity, to a post-war era of peace and love, from oppression and mouthlessness to kisses. The next self-portraits capture Gorski’s anxiety about kisses and his resolution of the erotic conflict, as he identifies himself with a crucifix. This illustrates his cooperation and compliance to Christian norms. The final act portrays Gorski experiencing the third formal operation, mutual respect, in two ways: he is the creator of kisses in Shadow Play; and in Paradox he sketches himself in 1993 on a cross of kisses that is also being kissed that was initially completed in 1969. The evolution of these self- portraits leading to this positive outcome demonstrates the healing function of the creative process. Thanks to his artwork, Gorski adjusted well to the painful adversities of his life.
The Normative Compliance Function
The second focus exhibit addresses Gorski’s preoccupation with religion and moral values. Here we see a great number of canvases with religious themes: Biblical references, images of God, Lazarus, Crucifixions, and the Apostles. Religion is shown to affect his perception of the man-woman relationship. Women are blinding lights, scintillating temptations, dangerous spiders, mysterious contraptions and radioactive cats playing with mice. Men are portrayed as victims: Kafka bugs, suffering saints and faceless athletes. This focus exhibit underscores the importance of Christian norms in shaping Gorski’s symbolic language and the intensity of his preoccupations with sexuality, stemming from its taboo nature.
Focus Exhibit 3: The Norm-Changing Function, Gorski vs. Bacon
In the third focus exhibit we study the parallels and differences between Gorski and another contemporary figurative expressionist, Francis Bacon. We identify three equivalent phases or acts in both artists’ personal drama to highlight opposite modalities for resolving conflict.
In the first act we see dramatic differences between the two artists’ heroes and their respective values: Gorski’s Adam/ Kafka figures are the antithesis of Bacon’s screaming Popes; Gorski’s heroes are mouthless and Bacon’s are screaming; both artists’ portray crucifixions and self-portraits but these reflect the opposite perceptions of the sacred and of personal identities.
In the second act, the erotic adventure phase, we perceive diametrically opposing choices in the depiction of sexuality, love and eroticism. Gorski is very discreet and subtle, choosing the self-restraint of a saint, whereas Bacon is explicit, graphic and indifferent to any moral inhibitions regarding sexual and erotic matters.
In the third and final act, on morality and mortality, Gorski is spiritual, introspective and willing to accept painful realities, whereas Bacon defies restraints and limits. He depicts yet more sexual encounters and identifies himself with mythic heroes such as Oedipus versus the Sphinx and as Prometheus versus the eagle.
In contrasting the two artist we can readily identify two different relational modalities, alternative ways of resolving conflict. Submissiveness and cooperation characterize Gorski’s art and personality; dominance and aggression characterize Francis Bacon’s. While submissiveness leads Gorski to introspection and compliance with norms, Bacon’s dominance approach to conflict resolution has the individual prevailing over the social system. Instead of kind Gorski conforming to the system, the dominant Bacon seeks to change the system. We may object to his choice of imagery or his radical way of confronting our sensitivities, but Bacon’s dominant-aggressive mode of relating has contributed to changing our homophobic world.
Formal Theory’s Relevance for the Arts
Focus Exhibit 3 applies Formal Analysis to the works of a second artist, demonstrating the universality of this analytical model. Bacon’s well-known work, which has challenged the art world with its explicitness, irreverence, and choice of triptych presentation is rendered meaningful with the Formal Analysis. It introduces the dialectic organization of his multiple canvases into a single conflict resolution.
The exhibit highlights the parallel structure between the two artists: Act 1 introduces heroes and conflicts; Act 2 presents the adventures of these heroes; and Act 3 concludes the drama with a certain moral message. The artists’ messages are diametrically opposite. Formal Theory thus illustrates both the continuity of dramatic action and the spectrum of alternative ways of resolving conflict.
Map of the exhibit integrating the canvases into three acts of a single dramatic continuum contrasting it with the equivalent phases in Francis Bacon’s works.
ACT 1: HERO’S CONFLICTS AND VALUES; Gorski’s Kafka as “Pain-things” with obstructed mouths and crucifixions; (1962–1970)
ACT 2: THE HERO’S ADVENTURE, EROTIC CONFLICTS AND GUILT; Gorski’s shyness and religiosity, he is remorseful and surrenders to religion; (1967–1976)
ACT 3: THE HERO’S MORALITY AND MORTALITY; Gorski’s realities and illusions; (1979–1993)
Francis Bacon’s retrospective
PUBLICATIONS BY DR. ALBERT LEVIS
Conflict Analysis The Formal Theory Of Behavior: A Theory And Its Experimental Validation
Conflict Analysis: A Program Of Emotional Education
Moral Science, The Scientific Interpretation Of Metaphors: Essays And Case Studies
Science Stealing The Fire Of The Gods: A Guide To The Exhibits Of The Museum Of The Creative Process
Creativity and Power Management, two volumes of case studies
The Moral Science Primer
CREATIVITY AND POWER MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP
This is a concise program of emotional education available at Manchester, Vermont’s Wilburton Inn. This program is suitable for the general public as well as the training of professionals interested in the scientific understanding of psychology, moral order and oneself. It is helpful in understanding concepts and achieving personal insights. The program is educational, diagnostic and therapeutic at the same time.
The program is based on the scientific interpretation of metaphors as conflict resolution phenomena. It consists of three segments: part one targets the study of the creative process with guided tour of the museum exhibits; part two taps creativity for self discovery and personal growth utilizing the Conflict Analysis Battery; and part three targets integrating religions as complementary discoveries of science into the Moral Science, psychology as the Science of Conflict Resolution.
For more, visit www.museumofthecreativeprocess.com
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