Telling a traumatic story through Art: Arshile Gorky’s ‘The Artist and his Mother’

Abstract

For more than a decade, through re-working a composition based on a sepia photograph, Arshile Gorky (ca. 1904–1948) tried to give form and represent that which by definition defies forms and shatters one’s capacity for representation. Having witnessed the systematic ethnic cleansing of his people as a child, Gorky began a ‘journey’ in his attempt to comprehend his traumatic ordeal through Art. In 1926, with the safety of a constructed name and life, the artist started working on ‘The Artist and his Mother’ series. Focusing on the two versions of Gorky’s early painting and using relevant aspects of psychoanalytic theory, the paper explores his work through a psychoanalytic lens. Psychoanalytic theories on extreme traumatisation along with psychoanalytic notions of temporality will be utilised in an attempt to follow the artist’s struggle to re-create and rework aspects of his traumatic history.

Keywords:

• Arshile Gorky
• trauma
• loss
• repetition compulsion
• après-coup
• temporality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.