Museums of the Mind: Magritte`s Labyrinth and Other Essays in the Arts [Hardcover]

Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 1994

This book eloquently demonstrates that just as our human relationships change and develop over time, so do our ties to cherished works of art. Such works, with their overlays of perception and projection, exert a lasting influence on the psyche. In the first half of the book, Ellen Handler Spitz guides us through a maze of surreal paintings by René Magritte, with psychoanalytic thought as her beacon. In the second half she leads us on a kaleidoscopic journey through other "museums of the mind," where interrelated works in drama, film, cartoon art, poetry, and opera are illuminated and rediscovered. She analyzes a performance of Chekhov's "The Bear," revisits the 1970s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance from the perspective of the 1990s, reviews the film "Dead Poets Society," muses on the psychological themes in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, rereads a beloved sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and reconsiders "Antigone" to discover startling insights into the "twinship of good and evil." Her final chapter, "Music of Hope," looks directly at the power of art to shape the mind as well as to be shaped by it. Here Spitz reflects on the impact of the children's opera Brundibár, written by the Czech composer Hans Krása in 1938 and performed many times by inmates of the Terezín concentration camp.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte's mother committed suicide by drowning herself when he was 13. Spitz, a psychoanalytic critic, interprets his enigmatic paintings as signs of a lifelong struggle with this loss. In this dense but intriguing scholarly miscellany, Spitz (Art and Psyche) muses on the absurd as manifested in Chekhov's play The Bear and in Freud's dissection of jokes; interprets Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as an avant-garde postmodernist work; and explores themes of nonconformity and rebellion in the film Dead Poets Society and in Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip whose six-year-old protagonist creates a florid fantasy life with his toy tiger. In Sophocles's Antigone, Spitz finds an ethical imperative: conflicts in life must not be avoided. Her poignant concluding essay on Brundibar, a Czech children's opera that was performed many times by child inmates at the Nazis' Terezin concentration camp, illumines the power of art to inspire hope and a will to live. Illustrated.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Spitz is at once a philosophical psychoanalyst and an eloquent poet. Captivated and marvelously inspired by the disjunctive visions of the surreal Magritte, she devotes nearly half these associatively written contemplations to the labyrinth that is his work. In her view, the suicide of Magritte's mother looms as the primary motivation for his "painted puzzles" and the source of his personal eccentricity. Spitz follows her meditations on Magritte with literate observations on snippets of drama, Hollywood film, and icons of popular culture. Writing across the disciplines, she discourses on absurdity and the joke and reviews Chekhov, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Dead Poets Society, and the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. Recommended for both general readers and scholars.
Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 206 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (December 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300060297
• ISBN-13: 978-0300060294
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,120,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ellen Handler Spitz writes the Children's column for The BOOK at
"The New Republic" website online.

To read her reviews, please go to:
www.tnr.com/book/reviews/children's

Her own website is:

www.ellenhandlerspitz.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richly informed...dazzling, April 6, 1998

By 

Julie C. Van Camp (Huntington Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Museums of the Mind: Magritte`s Labyrinth and Other Essays in the Arts (Hardcover)

"Interdisciplinary consideration of art is nothing new, but rarely has it been accomplished with the stunning breadth of this volume. A psychoanalyst and an expert in aesthetics for children, [she] offers art appreciation, history, and criticism richly informed by psychoanalytic, philosophic, and literary theory. . . . Spitz's writing and insights dazzle the imagination. If one learns to write in part by reading, this volume is a teacher to be treasured by all who value art and ideas." --from my review in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 31 (spring 1997), pp. 117-120.