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Distributed for Scheidegger & Spiess

The Red Book Hours

Discovering C.G. Jung’s Art Mediums and Creative Process

In 1913, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and theorist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) experienced powerful visions, often terrifying. However, seeing their great potential value, he found ways to encourage further visions and fantasies. Over many years, he recorded his experiences in a series of small journals, added commentaries and transcribed them, using calligraphy and illuminations, into a large, red, leather-bound volume, commonly known as The Red Book. Jung never published the Liber Novus, as he called this pivotal part of his oeuvre, and left no instructions for its final disposition, and it therefore remained unpublished until recently.

The large format, leather-bound volume of The Red Book Hours complements the facsimile edition and English-language translation of The Red Book, published in 2009, and draws out insights into Jung’s affinity with art as a means of personal insight. Psychologist and multimedia artist Jill Mellick documents copious research into Jung’s choices regarding media and technique and his careful design of environments in which he could experience creative processes and allow unconscious content to flow forth. Her unlikely journey includes explorations of memory, serendipity, and science. A stunning interplay of texts and images includes magnifications of the wildly colorful and intricately detailed sketches from The Red Book and a selection of Jung’s own pigments, never seen until now, The Red Book Hours presents a more comprehensive picture than ever before of the foundational psychoanalyst’s experience and expression of his rich inner world.

460 pages | 545 color plates, 22 halftones | 9 1/2 x 11 3/4 | © 2018

Art:

Biography and Letters


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Table of Contents

 Preface
 
Introduction
 
Creative Impulse, Creative Process
Perspectives on Jung’s Creativity
 
Contexts for Jung’s Creative Process
Jung’s Experiences with Art Prior to The Red Book
Jung’s Reasons for Making The Red Book
The Physical Context of Küsnacht
Jung’s Standing Desk for The Red Book
The Physical Context of Bollingen: A Creative Matrix
Materials for Exploring and Researching Inner Images
Jung’s Tools: Shaping Spirit
 
Pigments of the Imagination: Research and Analysis
Face to Face with The Red Book
In Search of Fugitive Fragments in The Red Book
Sampling Jung’s Pigments at Bollingen
Dust or Gold? The Red Book Paint Fragments and Bollingen Pigments
Unsung Heroes: The Bollingen Pigments
Keim Pigments
IG Farben Powdered Pigments
Orphan Pigments
Elemental and Molecular Analysis
Scientific Analysis of The Red Book Paint Fragments and Bollingen Pigments
The Cost of Beauty: Toxicity
 
Matter and Form of Spirit: Jung’s Painting and Calligraphy Techniques
The Matter of Spirit
Designing Pages and Making Changes
Outlining
Working in Color
Creating Transparency and Opacity
Pooling
Layering
Working in Miniature
Creating Patterns
Tiling
Creating Natural Symmetry
Using Perspective and Dimensionality
Using Calligraphy: Hand Matters
 
The Matter of Confession
Jung’s Work in Stone
 
More Than Art: Jung’s Contemplative Practice
Art-Making as a Spiritual Practice
Space in Potentia in Jung’s Creative Work
Time and Place in Jung’s Creative Process
 
Passing on Passion
Teaching Patients
 
Appendices
 
Bibliography
 
Acknowledgements
 
About the Author

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