Central Organizing Fantasies and Their Relationship to the Signature Style and Masterworks of Two Artists

Abstract:I am positing that at the core of the signature style of most great artists are powerful internal forces originating in childhood. These forces are usually encoded in a cohesive system of interrelated fantasies- many of which develop in early childhood and express the artist's need to pursue a line of exploration that is congruent with his or her preoccupations. Such preoccupations usually begin as unconscious fantasies and may or may not become conscious as the artist develops the theme or formal innovation.I will make the case that a system of interrelated fantasies is encoded in the signature style and masterworks produced by the modernist Alberto Giacometti and the early Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Giacometti's gaunt filiform figures and Artemisia's bloody decapitations and alluring nudes reflect what used to be called their "central organizing fantasies." That term is now outdated and oversimplifies the concept I have in mind. As a clinician as well as a researcher in art history, I have found that most individuals have a wide variety of separate unconscious fantasies that often coalesce into predominating and cohesive motivational forces.