Page 2

Take, for example, Titian’s The Death of Actaeon in the National Gallery in London. Here Titian is depicting the crisis point in the myth which tells of the fateful and accidental meeting between the hunter Actaeon and the goddess Diana. Actaeon, out hunting one day with his hounds, chances upon Diana while she is bathing. Unable to tolerate the notion of a mortal man seeing her naked, Diana turns Actaeon into a stag and sets his own dogs on him. In this painting we see them tearing him to pieces with a little help from Diana. Having inadvertently killed him, the dogs then wander in search of their beloved master. Titian captures the moment brilliantly, both as an illustrator of the myth and as a psychologist.

But why can this late period of life bring forth such high creativity? In his book Reclaimed Powers David Gutmann (1987) makes an intriguing suggestion, namely that at this time in their lives artists can be engaged in a radical re-evaluation of themselves.

An intriguing prospect opens before us, namely that an underlying characteristic of the productions of artists in later life is a re-appraisal of assumptions, roughly-speaking the opposite of the stereotype of the person in later life as cognitively-rigid and intellectually routinised which is so entrenched in Western attitudes.

As an art critic and psychologist this interests me, not least because such an approach lends itself to becoming part of a wider public debate.

This site is administered by cjsmithmedia.co.uk