Cézanne and The Post-Bionian Field: An Explroation and a Meditation.

Abstract

Inspired by his visit to an exhibition of C ezanne’s portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Robert Snell has combined his passions and his expertise as art historian and analytic psychotherapist to create a remarkable book. C ezanne and the Post-Bionian Field: An Exploration and a Meditation is “an exploration and meditation” that places C ezanne’s visual concepts in a contrapuntal dialogue with Bion’s oneiric models and Nino Ferro’s field theory. The result is a beautifully illustrated and deeply informative volume that works well on many levels–-art historical and cultural commentary, introduction to Bion and Ferro’s field theory, and applied psychoanalytic comparative investigation–-as it invites readers to accompany the author in this extraordinary encounter between art and psychoanalysis. Here, art “‘serve[s] to interpret psychoanalysis,’ in a collaborative meeting that can open up new meanings in both arenas... [as] multiple voices claim a hearing: those of artists, art historians, psychoanalysts, philosophers, some contemporaries of C ezanne and... that of the painter himself” (p. xiv). It is Snell’s contention that: