The Conceptions of existence and nothingness in Lacan's Theory of Unconscious and Its Visualization in Contemporary Artworks

In recent decades, psychoanalysis has been one of the main methods of interpretation in art criticism, philosophy and history of art. Today, the psychoanalytic view has enriched the field of aesthetics and achieved great success in the analysis of different types of images. After his precursor Sigmund Freud, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan became the key figure in the science of psychoanalysis, impacting on various areas of arts and humanities. Lacan connected two realms of psychoanalysis and linguistics in the 1960s, considering the structure of the unconscious same as that of the language. Therefore, what is explained in Freud’s unconscious theory as the process of condensation and displacement were considered equal to metaphor and metonymy in the realm of language. Other key concepts such as the mirror stage, the gaze, and the idea of the lack as cause of desire are also prevalently utilized in many interdisciplinary fields of study. Accordingly, the multi-layered language of visual arts allows the psychoanalytical views being applied to the field. The three orders of mind in Lacanian system—the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic—have frequently been used in the analysis of artistic practices in contemporary period.

This article seeks the ways in which the articulation of unconsciousness in Lacanian psychoanalysis could explain the mental processes of contemporary artists. As Lacan has shown us, the nature of the unconscious in parole (speech) is in strong connection with the notions of ‘existence’ and ‘nothingness.’ He describes the unconscious in the phase of the Symbolic through the concepts of ‘projection’ and ‘interiority.’ These concepts are reflected in speech characteristics such as discontinuity, distribution, referencing, centrifugal, puncture, split, and emptiness. Among the contemporary artworks, those in line with the mentioned characteristics are chosen and analyzed, including works by David Salle, John Stezaker, Eva Hesse, Anish Kapoor. As manifested in conclusion, these artists' multi-faceted language from the 1960s onwards aptly match the Lacanian theory of psychoanalysis, associating with the Lacanian articulation of the unconscious in a subtle way. Their artworks associated with the concepts of ‘existence’ and ‘nothingness’ reflects the subject’s (artist’s) unconscious and thereby transfers the meaning to the beholder. Referring to the legacy of Marcel Duchamp whose ironic works refute representational art as well as modernist aesthetics, these artists attempt to address their unconscious within the linguistic structure of mind in different ways. This research examines the pictorial and textual documents to explore the layers of meaning in conceptual artworks and attempts to provide a model of analysis for the art in the post-1960s period. Needless to say, these samples are chosen to demonstrate the psychoanalytic traits of contemporary art in its larger sense and to provide a model of art criticism on the basis of psychoanalytic theory.