Metaphors for the mind in art

[trenton]

I am currently working on a book about self love. I finished my first draft for chapter 1 but I'm going to expand on the artworks and metaphors behind them. This chapter discusses how the mind constructs illusions through meaning, stories, emotional attachment, and so on. It ends with practical techniques for recognizing and breaking out of illusions.

The first painting I used was " the treachery of images. " it is famous for "this is not a pipe." The metaphor behind it as understood in this chapter is that the mind creates images and models of reality but then mistakes those models for reality itself . In the context of self love this can be applied to what you believe about yourself, who you are, and what you are capable of. Your thoughts about what reality is ultimately blinds you so long as you are attached to a model, thought, or perspective. The mind gets lost in itself and its illusions.

I have a drawing I'm going to make for this chapter to expand on this metaphor. I wanted to draw a hand reaching out of a black abyss and through a chaotic sea and into a white light in which the hand disappears and fades. This is how I think of the mind in terms of grappling with truth. There are many layers of meaning behind this image I want to make.

Part of the meaning behind it is that seeking truth behind the domain of relativity leads to the mechanism by which truth is sought being deconstructed for it itself is a construction. The mind creates various lies and stories to try to grasp truth, but all of them ultimately collapse into nothing. The truth is too profound to be grasped through conventional thought and sense making. The ego is seeking freedom from itself and it is using mind to get there only for all of its illusions to fall apart.

Do you know any other paintings or artworks that symbolize how the mind works and how it constructs illusions? There are many perspectives I could I use to expand on this and it should become a very interesting chapter.

Thanks for any help.

[LastThursday]

The obvious ones that spring to mind are Salvador Dalí and Maurits Cornelis Escher (M. C. Escher). Escher's tiling's are a good example of how we extract meaning out of perception, where one form morphs and interlocks into another in a gradual manner. And Dalí is a trip into the subconscious mind and how dreamlike reality is.

The impressionist Claude Monet is also good for deconstructing reality, in that it's not made up of clearly defined stuff, but lots of amorphous colour and shapes; we just interpret those to give us a definite sense of the world.

You can also look up artists who employed Tromp-l'oeil in general (like René Magritte), this is a way to produce three dimensionality on a canvas. The idea being that our three dimensional world is a construction or a "trick of the light".

 

[Schizophonia]

[Nilsi]

Not visual art, but Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories align well with your vision - especially The Circular Ruins, where a man dreams another into existence, only to realize he himself is being dreamed.

You can read it here: The Circular Ruins – Jorge Luis Borges

[trenton]

@LastThursday that sounds good. Do you know the names of any particular pieces or can you find the images?

[LastThursday]

I'd hate to do your homework for you, but, here are some to start you off with:

Dali:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swans_Reflecting_Elephants

Escher:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_and_Water_I

Monet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Garden_at_Giverny

Tromp l'oeil examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-l'œil

[trenton]

@LastThursday thank you for the pictures. I will definitely want to read about the background behind these.