UPC: 9780190064495 | The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence (Hardcover)

UPC lookup results for: 9780190064495 | The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence (Hardcover)

Some artists have an inclination towards violence with art helping to mitigate or redirect their destructive energy. For others their art helps them gain power over or make sense of violent environs. Finally for some violent perpetrators art simply mirrors and even perpetuates their psychopathic cycles. Through it all The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence explores – and seeks to understand – these interrelated paths of destruction and creation. To inform this dynamic Dr. David E. Gussak relies on various psychological and sociological perspectives of violence and aggression. Beginning with brief psychobiographies of violent artists such as Caravaggio Cellini Pollock and Dali and those whose work emerged from violence such as Goya Beckmann Picasso and Vann Nath among others Gussak illustrates a potent dual nature of art-making: as a way to mitigate violent inclinations and as a tool to regain control amidst turmoil. From here the book provides an in-depth look at our society s fascination with the products of violent perpetrators in the form of murderabilia as the art of serial killers such as Gacy Manson and Rolling finds its way to art collections feeding into perpetrators narcissism and psychopathy. The book concludes with Gussak s reflections from his thirty years as an art therapist working with violent offenders on how art can be used as a therapeutic tool to assuage violence and aggression and promote peace in volatile situations. The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence is a far-reaching and thought-provoking examination of the competing and complex impulses motivating artwork and those who make it.