Melankolie in gekose werke van Pauline Gutter

Abstract

This dissertation presents an investigation into the role of melancholy as intermediate emotion in four selected paintings by South African artist Pauline Gutter (born 1980). These artworks include: Uit die blou van onse hemel (From the blue of our heaven) (2004), Bull on truck (2005), Circus (2010) and Misguided sheep (2010). I propound that melancholy plays an important part in the creation and interpretation of art and that Gutter herself uses this emotion intuitively when she engages in the act of painting. Furthermore, Gutter succeeds in transferring melancholy, as an aesthetic emotion, onto the viewer by using specific metaphors and themes to evoke certain memories and ideas from the viewer. The basic formal elements in her work, with emphasis on tactility and colour, also add a melancholic undertone, ultimately encouraging the viewer to react either intensely positively or negatively towards the imagery presented in the paintings. The inference is made that melancholy is used intuitively as a mechanism to evoke certain memories and events, especially surrounding the South African issues regarding violence, through the incorporation of an empathic mood in a tangible visual format. As a result, the subjects in the works are perceived to be the metaphorical substitutes of the Lacanian object a. It is this strong emotional connotation regarding the metaphorical object a in the paintings that creates a melancholic reflection and awareness of the subjects’ plight in the artworks. Since Gutter shows an intuitive need to solve social problems via art, she experiences an emotional homeostatic process through the creation and subsequent contemplation of the artworks. The metaphorical representation of the subject as object a, as well as the intuitive responses and melancholic contemplation while creating the artwork, ultimately leads to the achievement of an emotional equilibrium by both the artist and the viewer due to a nostalgic connection with regards to the metaphoric content of the paintings.