Corps affecté, corps éprouvé : existence des œuvres de Judith Scott et Frida Kahlo

Abstract

Objectives

The aim here is to grasp the ways in which the creative body appears in the works to which it gives form. The works of Judith Scott and Frida Kahlo will be of particular interest to us in their ability to account for the incarnation and the existence of their bodies as experienced through the exploration of creation.

Method

This study attempts to give substance and environment to the works that are the object of our reflection through the dialogue of psychoanalysis, which questions the body at work and the body of the work under the aegis of Didier Anzieu; the phenomenology of Henri Maldiney, who is interested in the emergence of the work in the movement of Gestaltung; and the aesthetics of Georges Didi-Huberman, who is interested in the body, the flesh of images.

Results

Thinking of the creative body as a « cutting body” allows us to glimpse the phenomena of the presence of the bodies at work and the body of the work. Their encounter does not perhaps emanate from a situation of loss or original lack but from a welcoming and shaping of what exists.

Discussion

The psychoanalytical approach does not seem sufficient to explore the sensoriality and bodily experiences at work in creation. Making links with aesthetics and phenomenology thus makes it possible to open up the time and space of creation to the effects of presence that inscribe the work and its creator in an ecology of gestures and forms.

Conclusion

The creative body, tested and marked by pain and disability, the creative body outside a stable and normalized family genealogy, puts the work to the test as a « cutting body” that appears where it is cut, extends itself, and pushes the marks of its suffering.