The Rubedo of Beauty and Grief

ABSTRACT

This paper centers around the “redness” of seven works of art from Roman times to our contemporary world. These include representational and abstract paintings that are linked by the primal, archetypal color red. Throughout the author explores deeply the experience of Beauty and Grief.

KEY WORDS:

• Beauty
• conscious
• Grief
• heart
• image
• passion
• red
• Rubedo
• unconscious

NOTE

References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton University Press (USA).

Notes

1. In 1964 Rothko was commissioned to create a meditative space with his paintings. Located in Houston, Texas, the chapel serves as a nondenominational space of contemplation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Wells Barron

Mary Wells Barron, MA, MIM, MBA, is a Jungian psychoanalyst who trained at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich and has lectured in the US and abroad for thirty years on the interface of art and psyche. She is a senior training analyst of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. She was a member of the board of directors for the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS). Her work has been published in Anima, Spring, and on ARAS Connections and includes “Breaking of the Vessels: Destruction and Creation in the Art of Anselm Kiefer” (2001); “Destruction and Creation, Useless Science or the Alchemist by Remedios Varo” (2006), and “Remedios Varo: The Spiral Journey” (2022). Other works include papers on Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding and a “Tear in the Veil: Beauty and Shadow in the Art of Alexander McQueen.”