Painting, Psychoanalysis, and Spirituality - Contemporary Artists and Their Critics

This book examines the spiritual and transcendental dimension of painting. Using psychoanalytical ideas, the author demonstrates the developmental processes that are the inner core of the creative process. Newton shows how painting can psychologically transform the artist or viewer through engagement with the spiritual dimension of the art work through analyses of works of contemporary artists such as Roger Hilton, Willem de Kooning, and George Baselitz, along with those of the painters Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Nicholas Poussin, and Cézanne. By exposing the unconscious creative processes that determine the figurative symbols and narratives formulated to represent them, he advances the theory of artistic creativity.