because i know you were so waiting for this.... here is the first half of my paper!

In this essay I will discuss the psychoanalytic approach to art interpretation; including the idea psychoanalysis has of the artist and artistic production, the basis for interpreting the meaning of works of art, and the relationship between art and psychoanalysis. I will be using Freud’s essays entitled “Jensen’s Gradiva,” “The Moses of Michelangelo,” and “The Uncanny” to help illustrate these relationships.

Sigmund Freud came up with the very idea that there is an unconscious motivation for artistic creation. Freud was committed to understanding and interpreting art and his view of art interpretation was to give meaning to the work of art itself, as well as figuring out why the viewer of the art was moved or affected by that particular work. The answer he came up with was that the work of art somehow connected with the viewers’ unconscious and caused some kind of emotional stirring. The essays that he wrote about art were written as illustrations for his theories. (Writings on Art and Literature, xi)
(abridged version)