The perception of doors: A sociodynamic investigation of doors in 20th century painting

Pergamon

If the doors of perception were cleansed every-thing would appear to man as it is : infinite . Forman has closed himself up, till he sees all thingsthro' narrow chinks of his cavern .

William Blake (1757-1827)

If one were to give an account of all the doorsone has closed and opened, of all the doors onewould like to re-open, one would have to tell thestory of one's entire life,

Gaston Bachelard

This paper presents a sociodynamic investigationof doors as boundary in 20th century painting . Withina phenomenological perspective, using paintings asvisual semiotic reflections of psychological states, Iexplore meaning to penetrate and illuminate interpre-tations of space . Images of doors by painters GeorgiaO'Keeffe, Pierre Bonnard, Edward Hopper, AliceNeel, Elizabeth Layton, Ben Shahn and Mark Rothkoare used to explore dimensions of the human being'srelationship to the environment and to speculate aboutbalance, intimacy, separation, limits and boundaries .The artist's visual topology is seen as metaphor-adoorway if you will, through which to plumb deeperlevels of meaning hidden beneath the surface . Thisinquiry is based on the assumption that experiences ofpersonal space and boundary are intrinsically linkedto human development, psychopathology and psycho-therapy and therefore have direct relevance for artspsychotherapists and the mental health community . In

0197-4556(94)00052-2

THE PERCEPTION OF DOORS : A SOCIODYNAMIC INVESTIGATION OF

DOORS IN 20TH CENTURY PAINTING

MAXINE BOROWSKY JUNGE, PhD, LCSW, A .T.R.*

-Maxine Junge is Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Marital and Family Therapy (Clinical Art Therapy), Loyola MarymountUniversity, Los Angeles, CA .

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The Arts in Psychotherapy . Vol . 21, No . 5, pp . 343-357, 1994Copyright © 1994 Elsevier Science LtdPrinted in the USA . All rights reserved

0197-4556194 $6 .00 + .00

addition, it is driven by an essential tenet of expres-sive therapies : that created artwork is a visual map ofthe person's inner world, of their world view and theirreality . By deeply entering in, by dwelling in theworld of the visual product, we gain understandinguseful to us as clinicians and to our clients and en-riching to us and to them as human beings . Whenasked why he chose certain subjects, painter EdwardHopper answered :

I do not exactly know, unless it is that I believethem to be the best mediums for a synthesis ofmy inner experience . Great art is the outwardexpression of an inner life in the artist, and thisinner life will result in his personal vision of theworld. (Levin, 1984 p . 52)

Artists have much that is useful about spatial impli-cations of human personality to teach clinicians aboutthe psychological vicissitudes of space .

The Personal

When my son was 17 years old and in the springsemester of his senior year in high school, he began toleave open the front door of the house as he went outto school in the morning . Then, in the late afternoonsupon returning, dropping his things as he went, hewould strew his school books and jacket from thedoor on down the hallway to his room . Neither ofthese behaviors was typical of Benjamin who, since asmall child, had known well to close and (with two

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working parents and the increasing dangers of citylife) lock the front door . Although he was not famousin the family for any exceptional neatness, previouslyBen had managed to contain his messes within theconfines of his room behind his closed door . But thatspring was different . For along with anxious highschool students across the country, he was waiting foranswers to his applications to college; he was hopingfor admittance to his first choice, a college on anothercoast, 3000 miles away from Los Angeles and home .And he was approaching that essential rite of passageof June-high school graduation-with its co-existingexcitement for the future of new experiences of inde-pendence and growth and its sadnesses of leaving oldfriends and familiar comforts . Ben was fast reachingthe boundary that separates childhood and the begin-ning of adult life. His struggle to maneuver throughthe shoals of that ambivalent transition was expressedin many ways, but no more dramatically than throughthe metaphor of the door. As he left it open in themorning to adventure out, he symbolically kept openthe possibility of returning to a known and comfort-able environment. As he re-entered the door in theafternoon and scattered his belongings inside, he cre-ated for himself a trail, like a reverse Hansel andGretel's bread crumbs, to mark the way back to thedoor and its beckoning future of independence andpotential .

Bachelard . a French philosopher, wrote : "Memo-Ties are motionless, and the more securely they arefixed in space the sounder they are" (1964 . p . 9) . Atthe age of three or four, I remember sitting in the darkat the top of the stairs of the family home secretlywatching the grownup party going on down below . IfI sat just right on the gray carpeted top stair andcraned my neck, I could see directly through the widedoor of the living room to the light and life and ex-citement of the mysterious adult world. Occasionally,I would be observed and invited to come down thestairs to join the party and, although my enjoyment atbeing a part of things was rich, I would not stay forlong, but would climb the stairs to my comfortableperch again. There is no question but that this earlymemory, of the boundary between the world of theobserver and the actor and the ability to move be-tween, has reasserted itself in many ways in my laterlife, but it is most essentially felt in my work as an artpsychotherapist .

Western thought has historically dichotomized per-son and environment whereas Eastern tradition tendsto conceptualize reality as holistic with few such sep-

arating boundaries, Some have written of birth as thefirst experience of boundary-of inside and outside,of self and the world, of person and environment .Artists have known about and used this concept intheir understanding of aesthetic space as not truly di-chotomized-not empty nor filled-but instead posi-tive and negative space as two equally important sidesof the same coin . The artist may paint an object, butthe object defines the space around it as the spacearound it defines the object and it is together that theycreate meaning . Artistic space is never merely vacant ;it is full of potential in the contextualized relationship .

Based in an environmental psychology perspectivein this inquiry, I explore the sociodynamic implica-tions of doors as boundary in some visual artist'swork. Resting on the assumption of the human beingas actor on the environment and the environment asactor on the human being and of the enduring inter-relationship of both, the paper is explorative and spec-ulative . It is based on the belief that the artist's workreflects a social-psychological milieu and providesimportant artifacts of social phenomena, which, re-ciprocally, may influence and define our environ-ment . Additionally, my journies and speculations rep-resent the eye and heart of an art therapist at work .My thinking about art in this paper is not unlike myexplorations with clients regarding their creative workas the verbal dialogue back and forth compares theclient's comments and validating thoughts with theviewer/therapist's reaction . This essay does not pre-tend to offer answers ; it suggests that a framework forthinking and experiencing from different fields anddisciplines can be useful and that evidence from artmay take us closer to unconscious meaning about selfand environment .

The Door As a Dialectical Integration of Insideand Outside

Spatial experience is acquired by infants much ear-lier than human speech . At first, they perceive motherand self as same. But soon they reach out to touch, tograsp, to explore-a breast, a finger, a rattle-and toacquire first-hand knowledge of the environment . Be-fore infants are many months old, they crawl . As thechildren mature, they venture out . From these earlyexperiences, our referent for environmental scale isalways the human body .

Our first home, our whole environment, is withinour mother's womb . After birth, each of us inhabitsan essential personal universe radiating out from ourown body and with our most important boundary of

the skin . It is from this self as home that we encoun-ter, experience and interact with the larger environ-tnent. Writers from many disciplines have developedthis model of the house as self. Jung (1969), for one,emphasized the house as a self symbol and defined theself as both individual and social, existing within asocial context. Bachelard (1964) elaborated on thetheme in his suggestion that as the self and the non-self represent the basic divisions of psychic space, sothey are represented by house and non-house (envi-ronment) as basic divisions of geographical space .The house by its boundaries both encloses space andexcludes space . Its dialectical opposites are reflectedin interior and facade, insides and outsides . A housedefines an intimate interior revelation of self, whichmay be protected, controlled and revealed only tothose invited inside . Its exterior (in Jungian terms,the Persona or mask) expresses a metaphor for thepublic self we choose to show to others . Eliade(1959), writing on the history of religion, expandedthis assumption :

One of the outstanding characteristics of tradi-tional societies is the opposition that they as-sume between their inhabited territory and theunknown and indeterminate space that sur-rounds it . The former is world (more purely,our world), the cosmos; everything outside it isno longer a cosmos but a sort of "other world,"foreign, chaotic space peopled by ghosts, de-mons, foreigners . . . Habitations are notlightly changed, for it is not easy to abandonone's world. The house is not an object, a "ma-chine to live in," it is a universe that man con-structs for himself. (p . 29)

As with the human body, essential elements of anybuilding or house are the openings, which permit in-terchange between interior and outside world, that cansupport and renew life. Eliade (1959) described theentrance to a temple as the division between the pro-fane of the outside universe and the consecrated innerworld, and the threshold as suitably embellished toward off evil spirits that might seek to invade . Thelocation of the threshold and its unique configurationvaries in different cultures (Rapoport, 1969) and of-fers a symbolic metaphor for the individual's relation-ship with the world outside the door . Greenbie (1981)wrote :

The openings in the walls enclosing a spacemake the difference between boundary and bar-

THE PERCEPTION OF DOORS

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rier, between an enclave and a prison. As thehouse walls present our social face to the world,so they let the world come in to us . (p . 4)

The following quotations speak of the writer's aware-ness of the psychological and symbolic implicationsunderlying one's sense of boundary and of door ."One of the maxims of practical education that gov-erned my childhood ." wrote the French author Co-lette, [was) "Don't eat with your mouth open"(quoted in Bachelard, 1964, p . 40) . Anais Nin wrote :

When I took at the large green iron gate frommy window, it takes on the air of a prison gate .An unjust feeling, since I know I can leave theplace whenever I want to, and since I know thathuman beings place upon an object, or a personthe responsibility of being the obstacle when theobstacle lies always within one's self . In spiteof this knowledge I often stand at the windowstaring at the large, closed iron gate, as if hop-ing to obtain from this contemplation a reflec-tion of my inner obstacles to a full openlife . . . . But the little gate, with its overhang-ing ivy like disordered hair over a runningchild's forehead has a sleepy and sly air, an airof being always half open . (1966, p. 4)

And, of course, Robert Frost (in Williams, 1952) :

Before I build a wall I'd ask to knowWhat I was waiting in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offense . . .

("Mending Wall," p . 135)

At the dialectical poles of self and other, of houseand universe, stand the pulls of inside and outside asfelt through the artist's imagery of a door. Bachelard(1964) described some dialectics of inside and outsideas "this side and beyond," "here and there," "run-ning toward the center or escaping," "void and nonvoid," "within and without," "open and closed,""surface separated from region of other," "the`yes' and 'no' which divides everything" and hequestioned :

But how many daydreams we should have toanalyze under the simple heading of doors! Forthe door is an entire cosmos of the Half-open . Infact, it is one of its primal images, the veryorigin of a daydream that accumulates desires

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and temptations : the temptation to open up theultimate depths of being and the desire to con-quer all reticent beings . The door schematizestwo strong possibilities which sharply classifytwo types of daydream . At times, it is closed,bolted, padlocked . At others, it is open, that isto say, wide open . (1964, p . 222)

Georgia O'Keeffe bought her house at Abiquiu,near Santa Fe, New Mexico because of her obsessionwith a door. She said :

When I first saw the Abiquiu house it was a ruinwith an abode wall around the garden broken ina couple of places by falling trees . As I climbedand walked about in the ruin I found a patiowith a very pretty well house and bucket todraw up water . It was a good-sized patio with along wall with a door on one side . That wallwith a door in it was something I had to have .It took me ten years to get it-three more yearsto fix the house so I could live in it and afterthat the wall was painted many times . (1976,Plate 82, no page number)

This author has written before on Georgia O'Keeffe'sart as visual metaphors symbolic of psychologicalpersonality struggles concerning independence andintimacy-separation and attachment (Junge, 1986) .It is my speculation that the viewer catches a paintedimage of these struggles through O'Keeffe's extremesensitivity in her art to distinctions between boundaryand edge and to the relationships between filled spaceand void . O'Keeffe, in a 1944 exhibition catalog,described her ongoing awareness of the pulls of thisinteractional spatial quality :

I was the sort of child that ate around the raisinon the cookie and ate around the hole in thedoughnut saving either the raisin or the hole forlast and best . So probably-not having changedmuch-when I started painting the pelvis bonesI was most interested in the holes in the bones-what 1 saw through them-particularly the bluefrom holding them up in the sun against the skyas one is apt to do when one seems to have moresky than earth in one's world . . . . They weremost wonderful against the Blue-the Blue thatwill always be there as it is now after all man'sdestruction is finished . (Exhibition catalogue,An American Place, 1944, quoted in O'Keeffe,1976, p. 74)

O'Keeffe's paintings of the door in her house atAbiquiu are of open spaces, not closed opaque sepa-rators. In Figure 1, we see her door from an undefinedinterior patio speaking of the intimacy and secrecy ofenclosure . Yet in the mysterious dark, we are simul-taneously held and intrigued with a world outside .Although true to the built architecture typical of aparticular culture, time and place-adobe houses ofthe southwest-the painter has reduced detail to whatis essential, creating a sense of timelessness and theappearance of an archetypal symbol. One can hardlyimagine the hand of a human being using tools in theconstruction of these houses . And if ever a woodendoor had existed, to close and to open, it has longsince faded away ; only the essential shell remains, asin O'Keeffe's famous paintings of skulls bleachedwhite by the desert .

The composition's center of interest is the beauti-ful shape described by and seen through the door .Thus, the viewer remains bound in the space betweeninner comfort and outer adventure . O'Keeffe's doorsinvite contemplation, daydreaming, but not action,and they exert a feeling of tension ; they arc not doorsone wants eagerly to walk through . Human behaviorwithin O'Keeffe's spaces would need to be careful,quiet, meditative and adult . The loud, messy habita-tion of children cannot be imagined within them .

An example of exterior doorways from O'Keeffe'spaintings of Canadian barns also illustrates the pointof the continuity of the painter's psychological vision .We sense a cool, neat life within the buildings, but itis difficult to imagine that "real" farmers or livestocklive or work inside . The artist holds us at bay, caughtin the boundary of the threshold of picture frame . Noimagistic paths are offered that provide entry .O'Keeffe's doors are apparently open but, paradoxi-cally, they serve to keep us at an edge that is uncross-able. At once, they invite us in and they keep us out .And this struggle to cross the threshold keeps theviewer bound in a dialectical tension . She wrote :

. . . The black door held a horrible fascinationfor me, nearly a sickness . You find a door andyou are bound to it . It's a curse the way I feelthat I must continually go on with that door .(1976)

Interiors and the Experience of Intimacy

Crossing the threshold into the personal space ofinteriors, filling our vision and our psyche with asense of more private intricacies inside, we neverthe-

Figure L Georgia O'Keeffe, "In the Patio, 1," 1946 . Private Collection, Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation . Printed with permission .

less remain aware of the dialectical pull of the uni-verse outside the door. Asymmetrical though the ten-sion is when inward (or outward), there remains adynamic sense of counter energy to the prevailingfocus. Our houses provide privacy, the regulation ofhuman interaction, shelter and an environment for thedeepest of human relationships-family life .

The sense of the separate family dwelling as arevelation of self may be particularly American . Coo-


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per, an environmental psychologist, reminded us that"the frontier image of the man clearing the land andbuilding a cabin for himself and his family is not farbehind us" (Cooper in Proshansky, Ittleson & Rivlin,1976, p . 153) . Numbers of studies in England, Aus-tralia and the United States have shown that whenasked to describe their ideal house, people of all in-comes and backgrounds tend to describe free-standing, detached family homes (Cooper, 1976) . In

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1968, in a survey of 748 people in 32 urban areas inthe United States, 85% stated that they preferred tolive in a separate family house rather than in an apart-ment (Michelson, 1968) . Granted, this survey is morethan 20 years old, and the uses of urban space and oflife style have changed dramatically in that time . Nev-erthclcss, it may be that the myth of the self-mademan, carving out his home in the wilderness and pro-tecting his family against ever-encroaching intruders,remains psychologically pervasive . Studies of per-sonal space, territoriality and of crowding have per-petuated the notion that we carry with us an innatesense of space- Although these studies may be basedon differing assumptions about the etiology of a per-son's spatial needs, there is agreement that to depriveone of the essential sense of space usually leads topsychopathology and even, ultimately, to breakdownentirety in the sense of self . Bachelard wrote :

The house shelters daydreaming, the house pro-tects the dreamer, the house allows one todream in peace . Thought and experience are notthe only things that sanction human values . Thevalues that belong to day dreaming mark hu-manity in its depths . (1964, p. 6)

Pierre Bonnard, the French painter, is known forhis benign and intimate scenes of family life and forhis luxurious, decorative compositions that oftencombine landscape with interiors of everyday Frenchlife. Figure 2 is a painting of the dining room in hiscountry home .

Through his use of color and structure, Bonnardrendered the interior as most important in this com-position. The middle-value blue of the table extendsinto the middle-value green of the door . The twostructures together create a central shape that divides

Figure 2 . Pierre Bonttard, "Dining Room in the Country," 1913 . Minneapolis Institute of Arts . Printed with permission .

the picture plane and effectively contrasts inside andoutside . The walls of the dining room are deep red,providing a sense of lushness and interest inside thatis not repeated in the somewhat haphazard and acci-dental landscape . Although this is in no way a for-bidding landscape, even the tree seems frail and doesnot invite . The female figure is wearing a red dress(like the red of the dining room) and appears to belongto the interior rather than to the cool hues of thelandscape . She leans on the window sill looking in-ward, and the comfortable rocking chair inhabited bya kitten seems a safer place from which to view theenvironment as observer of the scene rather than as anactor in it . Nevertheless, the door to the room standswide open as does the window ; it is a door with itsfour panes of glass constructed to let in the light andlandscape and to thus create for the inhabitants of thisroom an interaction of their interior world with therural landscape . In this painting, there is a very realsense of the relational influences of human behaviorand environment .

American artist Edward Hopper portrayed a differ-


349

ent version of interior-exterior visual meaning andrelationship. In his interior of a public place, 'Sun-light in a Cafeteria" of 1958 (Figure 3), Hopperpainted a door as an enigma . A woman sits near thewindow highlighted against a wall slanted with brightsunlight . Her arms are bare and round, With an un-touched coffee cup before her, she looks down, lost inthought. A green, spiky plant sits on the window sillbut does not catch the sun . The urban building outsideis gray, anonymous, forbidding and sidewalk andstores seem empty of all human imprint. On the rightside of the painting, in shadow, sits a man who maybe looking at the woman or looking at the window ; itis unclear. His back is to us and we see him only inprofile . Although he holds a cigarette, his hands seemineffectual . There is no evidence of replenishing foodin front of him . A shaft of sunlight strikes the wallnear the figure, but it only serves to increase his gray,almost ghostlike appearance .

Compositionally, there are three doors in thispainting and, because of their visual meaning, not oneof them can be opened nor threshold crossed . On the

Figure 3 . Edward Hopper, "Sunlight in a Cafeteria ." 1958 . Yale University Art Gallery, Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, BA 1903 .Printed with permission .

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left, the window serves as a door closing off the om-inous outside environment . This must be the cleanestwindow in the city because we have no feeling of it asglass or tangible reality . Paradoxically, this completetransparency serves to accentuate the effect of closureand separateness . It might as well be a brick wall! Theboundary delineated by the sunlit wall, between thewoman's row of tables and the man's, becomes an-other impenetrable barrier prohibiting human interac-tion. The "actual" door of the painting, the revolvingdoor, is tucked into the wall on the right side on theman's "side" of the picture . It seems too small inscale for the other structures . It is not clear it is bigenough for people to maneuver through it . The viewercannot understand the relationship of this door to theoutside landscape . Instead, it provides a formidablebarrier in which one could apparently revolve forever .Size and ambiguity of interactional potential makethis door seem false, tricky and intensely dangerous .The only air and life in Hopper's urban world arewhere the woman sits in the sun. Although she seemsphysically healthy, the viewer feels that the plantwill not grow and the waitress will not bring lunch .In Hopper's world, people do not interact with eachother or their surroundings. They sit suspended ina wax museum of architecture with no exit, intoeternity. What is not allowed through this door ischange .

Alice Neel was an individualistic New Yorkpainter who died a few years ago at age 87 and whohad become known for her honest and idiosyncraticportraits of well-known people, capturing "the spe-cific person plus the Zeitgeist" (Neel, quoted in Hills,1983, p. 187) . Elizabeth Layton, who also died re-cently, was a Kansas artist who began to draw at theage of 68 and through her artwork, mostly self-portraits, found a way to come to terms with a diffi-cult life and a 30-year struggle with depression . Bothwomen married, raised children and grappled with theprevailing expectations and limitations for women inthis culture . In looking through books of reproduc-tions of the two artists' work, I was struck by doorsonly appearing associated with a particular subjectmatter-that of family .

Neel's artwork is direct and unencumbered . Herportraits seldom include background information ofany kind . In reproductions of 179 of her works, thereare merely seven doors, or shapes that could he con-strued as doors, and most appear in paintings ofNeel's family (Figure 4) . In these family composi-tions, space around the figures deepens and becomes

more complicated . These are not simple doors to readas open or closed, as connecting interior to environ-ment psychologically or physically . But that they ex-ist at all in her family portraits leads me to speculateabout the artist as mother and grandmother . I cannothelp wondering if whatever ambivalences pervadedthis role for Neel are not expressed through the imageof the door: women bear children, raise them, lovethem and then let them go out the door to create theirown life's adventures .

In Through the Looking Glass : Drawings by Eliz-abeth Layton (1984), 36 drawings are reproduced .Doors are included in only four compositions . Threeof these appear in portraits of Layton's second hus-band Glen . Layton married her first husband in 1929when she was 20 years old . After 10 years she foundherself with an unstable marriage and five children .She endured a series of separations for the next yearsbut did not divorce her husband until 1953 . Divorce,after all, in a small Kansas town, was immoral .

Layton married Glen in 1957 shortly after under-going 13 electroshock treatments . Layton's opendoors speak of the comings and goings of a marriage,of reciprocal giving as love, and of the lack of privacyand the psychological and physical shrinkage of ill-ness (Figure 5) .

Bachelard described houses as

the places in which we have experienced day-dreaming . [they) reconstitute themselves in anew daydream, and it is because out memoriesof former dwelling places are relived as day-dreams that these dwelling places of the pastremain in us for all time . (p . 7)

We cover the universe with drawings we havelived. These drawings need not he exact. Theyneed only to be tonalized on the mode of ourinner space . (p . 12)

Exteriors and the Experience of Separation

When we enter the "surround"-the outside en-vironment-we may feel a sense of spaciousness,freedom, independence and a fear that we are outsideour skin and alien to home . Naturally, our experienceof exterior space, whether built or natural landscape,differs and carries meaning according to its own re-ality, our feeling response to it and the interactionbetween . Although both offer spatial and visual ex-citement, to walk in the skyscraper canyons of New

Figure 4 . Alice Neel, "Mother and Child," 1967 . Private Collection . Copyright the Estate of Alice Neel, courtesy of Robert Miller Gallery,New York . Printed with permission .

York is a different sensation than to stroll the wild-flowered headlands of Mendocino, near my home inCalifornia, watching the wild ocean break over an-cient rock formations . All behavior takes place insome sort of space and all behavior is an adaptation toa physical environment. The differing environmentsrequire dissimilar behavioral responses . Walking inNew York, near Times Square, we behave differentlythan in Mendocino. In New York, we walk with de-termination and guile, dodging people coming at us orin front of us. We are aware of and prepared forpossible dangers, particularly in this neighborhood .We make no eye contact; we proceed, hurryingbriskly on-screening out-to our destination . On theMendocino Headlands, we stroll relaxed, allowingour eyes and senses to stray, to take in sights andsmells and perceptions and experience . The unex-pected colors and shapes of flower, rock, ocean de-light us. The path itself, along the ocean cliff, is wellenough marked by other walker's feet, but often we


35 1

step outside it to explore something that has caughtour interest . Except for a garter snake now and then,no dangers lie in wait outside its boundaries, althoughwe are aware of the ocean as a potential hazard off toour left so we are wary ill that direction . But thevision of surging and breaking waves never ceases tocompel attention and we stop to watch .

Winston Churchill said: "We shape our buildingsand thereafter they shape us" (in Greenbie, 1981, p .28) . The relationship between the architectural envi-ronment and the individual is complex and shapeshuman mood and behavior . Some environmental psy-chologists (Baum, Harpin & Valins, 1975), posit anarchitectural determinism that forms people's behav-ior. This viewpoint ignores interaction influences,privacy and group formation . Another researcher,(Porteus, 1977) has suggested that an architecturalenvironment presents us with opportunities whereinwe are free to make individual choices . Obviously,the reality lies somewhere in between in that all ar-

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Figure 5 . Elizabeth Layton . "Husband on Scales ." Courtesy of Don Lambert, Topeka, Kansas . Printed with permission .

chitecture allows for choice, but also offers probabil-ities associated with specific instances of design andbehavior. Built architecture represents an environ-ment built by human hands interposed between peopleand the natural environment . We relate to the builtenvironment that we experience from the outside, andit delimits and bounds our sense of ourself psycho-logically and physically . Are we once again caught ina dialectical spider web? In the exciting expansive-ness and potentiality of the "surround," do we feelcast out of intimacy and do we paradoxically yearn to

MAXINE BOROWSKY LUNGE

"go home again"? Or do we eagerly seek to walkaway to adventure, to find a separate context, to es-cape the constraints of home? Doors by artists provideinteresting definition to the meaning of being outside .

If Edward Hopper's interiors often convey a feel-ing of loneliness and separation within the potentialfor intimacy and a dangerous world outside, his ex-teriors perpetuate his vision . "Early Sunday Mom-ing" (Figure 6) may well have been inspired by theset by Joe Mielziner for Elmer Rice's play "StreetScene." According to Levin (1984), Hopper saw the

Figure 6 . Edward Hopper, "Early Sunday Morning," 1930 . Collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York . Printed withpermission .

play in 1929 and his painting originally had a figure inone of the upper windows, as in the set, but it waspainted out. By removing all the people and theiractivity and changing the time from night to earlySunday morning, Hopper, once again, created an im-age of detachment and silence . Although this buildingclearly contains human activities and commerce, allare now suspended. The light falls on the upstairswindows where people sleep . Downstairs the shopsare empty and in shadow, their doorways deeply hid-den within the structure, like eyes behind closed lids .Tomorrow the doorways and the stores will openagain and people will move through them, but fortoday it would not do to go banging on these doors .As the viewer projects into the future of Mondaymorning, we imagine that, like a stage set, thesebuildings are shallow, will only allow for limited ac-tivity in space, and that the people who enter and exitthese doors will move slowly as in a dream .

Hopper's "South Carolina Morning" (Figure 7)and "Summertime" each shows a solitary female fig-ure emerging through a door from a building into thesunlight. They stand on the last step and seem to beconsidering whether to cross into the outside world .In Figure 7, sunlight assaults and the woman bends


3 53

backward to avoid the sun and heat . Window shuttersare tightly shut . The house seems suspended aboveyellow grass, but not connected to it-substantial yetdetached. In the distance is a hint of a cooling ocean,but one cannot see a pathway through the grass toreach it. The young woman in "Summertime" (sheresembles the figure in the sunlit cafeteria) seems tobe enjoying the sunlight . She has walked away fromthe cool and shadowy door, come down the steps andwill soon walk into the street . We imagine she may beon her way to meet a friend . The possibility of humandialogue exists in this environment. The wind rustlescurtains through an open window that conveys a senseof interaction between interior and exterior elementsand hints at a door that permits free interchange ofinside and outside. The threshold acts as a cocoon toprotect the figure . But we infer the door behind asclosed and as a barrier . We speculate that the womanwould go back inside if she could to the comfortingcool and dark . Avoidant, she is thrust out alone intothe unwelcoming elements .

In "East 12th Street" and "Book Shop : HebrewBooks, Holy Day Books," Ben Shahn portrayed twoconflicting versions of doorways in the urban scene .In "East 12th Street," three girls roller skate up a

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Fi me 7, Edward Hopper, "South Carolina Moming," 1955 . Collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Printed withpennission .

sidewalk past hundreds of anonymous, unwelcomingdoorways . Another series of doorways frames the op-posite side of the empty street . These doors have largeround holes in them . The viewer experiences thedoors as fortress, as thick barrier against a fearfulenvironment outside . They portray a kind of peephole through which the distrustful person inside canpeer out unobserved . But they are impenetrable . Itseems an impossibility that any of the three people onthe street would be able to open one of these doors togo inside. Streets arc centers of social life and they arepassageways . But Shahn's street through the lonelylandscape is solely a passageway . The environment isstripped of trees and cars and empty of any signs ofthe litter and residue of human life. Is this a war zoneafter the rubble has been cleaned away? The girls'roller skates give a hint of play, but they may alsosimply be a way to speed more quickly through the

MAXINE BOROWSKY JUNOE

devastated desolate city toward the horizon line andthe natural world of sky .

In "Book Shop," Shahn described a more wel-coming doorway. This bookstore door image con-nects the viewer to ethnicity and to the pleasures of ahomogeneous cultural group, and we have an echo ofan attachment/separation theme in the contrasting de-mands of the American immigrant experience of as-similation and differentiation within the dominant cul-ture . In particular, the painting conveys values of theJewish culture, with its emphasis on education andbooks as the repository and the carrier of tradition .Additionally, we gain a sense of the Jewish emphasison family through a portrayal of mother and child .The image conveys that there is not only past butfuture and that the ethnicireligious traditions of com-fortable stability will be passed on .

Through his expressive line, Shahn emphasized

the architectural details of the building that are or-dered, balanced and reminiscent of Roman architec-ture. The door itself is sheltered within an alcove andthe woman stands with her baby against it . The door-way shelters the woman and her baby as the bookstoreshelters books . As far as we can tell, it is a glass door .Unlike Hopper's window in Figure 3, this glass hassubstance and offers protection, but it also presents acomfortable transparency . The eye can see through itto the inside and to the outside . That this store housesbooks, with all their information and potential odys-seys for the imagination, offers interest and comfort(for those of us who love bookstores). And the sign inthe window, "Basement," lets us know that thisbuilding has depths to discover (and perhaps bar-gains). Viewers bring their own associations to thepicture, which creates an image in the mind of a fa-miliar and inviting interior .

It is interesting to compare the relationship to itsenvironment of Shahn's figure in the doorway withthose of Hopper . Shahn's mother and child seem in-timately connected to their surroundings . (Perhapsthey live in the store or building .) They are protec-tively contained by the entryway and compositionallyby the shape of the door . This visual meaning isechoed in the way the mother protects and containsher baby with her shawl, but the baby's head is free toexplore the world . The figures are not thrust out,nor held inertly within the door frame-there is indi-vidual choice in such a world-and we interpret arelaxed integration of intimate needs with the expec-tation of choiceful independent action through theurban environment .

Most of the examples in this section are from urbanlandscape and, in most, we sense the separation of thecity dweller who, within the density, noise and stim-ulation, feels alone. Outside the composed space offacade, in the external world, we are aware of aninterior life inside the boundary of the door that maybe comfortable, compelling, distanced or refuge . Inthese artists' paintings, the viewer experiences what itwould feel like to go back and forth through the doorand whether exterior is compatible with inner space .By removing evidence of human interaction and vis-ible residue of human behavior Hopper and Shahncreated an exterior landscape stripped to basics, asilent world with all sound muffled in cotton, a worldsucked clean even of air, a world in which we feelalone . It is a world that exerts a strange fascination onthe viewer because it is so alien to our day-to-dayexperience of urban life . The imagistic subtext is of


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the profound loneliness and isolation underlyingmuch of urban life .

A different sense is conveyed' by Hopper's "Sum-mertime" and Shahn's "Book Shop" in that the pos-sibility of human interaction and connecting exists inthese exteriors-of dialogue, diverse and homoge-neous small group behavior and of community .

Through the Door and Beyond : Transcendence

Dictionary definitions of transcendence are "ex-ceeding usual limits," "extending or lying beyondthe limits of ordinary experience . " In Kantian terms,they are "beyond the limits of all possible experienceand knowledge," and "transcending the universe ormaterial existence" (Webster's Ninth New CollegiateDictionary, 1986) . Thus, transcendence implies thegoing beyond ordinary materialistic reality or bound-aries of thought and feeling . In a dream, we open adoor and find ourselves transformed within a spatial,psychological experience that did not exist until wedreamed it . Out of the paraphernalia of daily life andevents, out of all that we know and are, through an actof transformative imagination in our dreams, we cre-ate a new existence unencumbered by laws of gravityor demands of the real world . Very few artists,through the creative act, have portrayed a visual im-agery of transcendence that communicates to theviewer and promotes a perceptual dialogue that can takeone into new realms of being. Bachelard wrote: "Thepoet speaks on the threshold of being" (1964, p . 3) .

Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko of-fered an example of transcendence in art . To experi-ence his painted rectangles of fluctuating color is toenter metaphoric doorways through which viewerspass and are transformed . The intensity of the phys-ical reality of Rothko's paintings cannot be under-stood by looking at reproductions. But standing infront of one of his huge paintings (or a wall of them)in a museum, viewers find themselves drawn past theouter boundaries of the canvas into a fascinatingworld of color and feeling, through which one passesas if in a dream. If viewers allow the called-for fusionwith the image, they become for a moment the image,and cannot return unchanged . Huge expanses of colorjuxtapositions create a psychological and physical re-action in viewers. They seem to breathe and hover .The art historian and Rothko's biographer, Dore Ash-ton, described :

He knew how to stage a moment of stasis full ofpromise. I can remember entering the Janis Gal-

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lery and stopping in the center of the room . Itwas much as if I had entered a remote forest ona still day with nothing stirring, and heard, orimagined I heard, a single faint rustle some-where . In the paintings there was always someall but invisible movement that I could neverquite locate but that seemed to pervade thewhole . . . it was this very equivocation thatgave back so much that had been banished frompainting-a chance for metaphor, a chance forindeterminate feeling, a chance for mystery .(1983, p . 175)

Abstractions, relying on universal, archetypal formsand colors, Rothko's paintings speak of another placeand of a hidden world beyond, beneath the surfacethat is only apparently visible but easily vanishes aswe move into the picture . Critic Andrew Forge said,"When I first saw Rothko's work I felt I had falleninto a dream" (in Ashton, 1983, p . 167) .

[Rothko] discovered that a painting sufficientlylarge so that when you stand close, the edgesarc grayed off to one's peripheral vision, takeson a kind of presence in its surface that rendersinternal relationships irrelevant . The momentcolor and scale begin a dialogue, a close view-ing range is like opening a door into an internalrealm . (Ashton, p . 191)

Rothko could have been describing this experience oftranscendence when he said about the process of cre-ating his paintings: "Ideas and plans that existed inthe mind at the start were simply the doorway throughwhich one left the world in which they occur" (Ash-ton, 1983, p . 3) .

Within Rothko's compelling vision, viewers areinvited through the doorway of the canvas frame, intoa resonating, enigmatic and obscure environment ofthe mind and heart beyond anything known or seen .Rothko had said he wanted to paint the finite and theinfinite . The paintings from his last years, after aserious aneurysm, were dark and foreboding . Insertedin them was a decisive line separating two rectangles .He said: "The dark is always at the top" (in Ashton,1983 . p. 188) . Mark Rothko committed suicide in1970 at the age of 67 .

Conclusion

Within a sociodynamic perspective and as an artpsychotherapist, I have explored images of doors by


20th-century painters. Some dimensions of the humanbeing's relationship to environment have been illumi-nated as I have speculated about balance, intimacy,separation, limits, boundaries . This exploration wasbased on the assumption that, like the client's creativework in art therapy, the artist's visual topology inpaintings represents an externalization of an internalpsychic world and can be seen as metaphor, a door-way through which to plumb the deeper levels ofmeaning beneath the surface to what is hidden . Sincethe invention of photography, artists have been untiedfrom the necessity to create image as a substitute fora perceived reality . Artists as they paint are architectsof a space that evolves from their own psychology . Inthis investigation, portrayed spatial relationships inartworks were seen to represent a glimpse of the art-ist's sense of self in the world and the vicissitudes andstruggles that lie within those relationships . So too,client-created artwork in the art psychotherapy pro-cess provides a particular set of formal spatial rela-tionships from which the client and therapist togetherlearn . Through the power of an imagination that doesnot pass through the demands of the natural world, onthe canvas the artist creates a world that has neverexisted before. Metaphor is the bridge to memory andthe artist's and the client's invented world is informedby perceptions, memories and dreams and the expe-rience of living in a particular place, time and culture .

Space that has been seized upon by the imagi-nation cannot remain indifferent space subjectto the measures and estimates of the surveyor . Ithas been lived in . . . with all the partiality ofthe imagination . Particularly, it nearly alwaysexercises attraction for it concentrates beingwithin limits that protect . (Bachelard, 1964, p .xxxiii)

This inquiry suggests that information from di-verse sources and disciplines may offer arts therapistsknowledge about the essences of relationship betweenhumans and the natural and built environment, andthat we can look to artists for how we have lived andhow we might live and for insights about our work .What artists teach is that in our perceived world, as inthe realm of the imagination, there exists no true di-chotomy between self and surround except by bound-aries that arc artificially drawn . These artificialboundaries all too often may be perceived as limita-tions and barriers by our clients instead of flexibledoors that can be used in a variety of ways . These

barriers can inhibit the free play between inside andoutside, wall off and create stereotypical and problemthinking and acting instead of permitting in the light

and air of change . The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote :

Works of art always spring from those whohave faced the danger, gone to the very end ofan experience, to the point beyond which nohuman being goes . The further one dares to go,the more decent, the more personal, the moreunique a life becomes . (1963, p . 29)

Artists teach that the environment and human be-

ings are not only interdependent, but inseparable,like form and content, and this suggests that what areneeded are bridging models and theories for descrip-

tion . Finally, what artists tell us is to look beneath the

surface of our landscape to fresh ways of seeing, torecognize our assumptions, to be supported, but not

bound by them and to search for enhancing and cre-ative new ways of visioning our relationships . As thetherapy clients' artwork provides the doorway to aninner world not accessed through words, so the artistson the canvas open their interior psychic space to usand invite us in to understand its meaning .

References

Ashton, D . (1983)- About Rothko . New York : Oxford UniversityPress .

Bachelard, G . (1964). The poetics of space . New York: OrionPress .


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Baum, A., Harpin, R . E., & Valins, S . (1975) . The role of groupphenomena in the experience of crowding . Environment andBehavior, 7, 185-192 .

Cooper, C . (1976). The house as symbol of the self. In H . M .Proshansky, W . H . Ittelson & L . S . Rivlin (Eds .), Environ-mental psychology (2nd ed .) . New York: Holt/Rinehart/Winston.

Elude, M . (1959) . The sacred and the profane : The nature ofreligion . New York : Harcourt .

Greenbie, B . B . (1981) . Spaces: Dimensions of the human land-scape . New Haven, CT : Yale University Press .

Hills, P- (1983). Alice Neel. New York: Harry N . Abmms .Jung, C . (1969) . Memories, dreams and reflections . London: Fon-

tana Library Series .Junge, M . (1986) . Georgia O'Keeffe, themes and resonances . An

art therapist's viewpoint . Unpublished paper presented atthe meetings of the American Art Therapy Association, LosAngeles .

Levin, G . (1984) . Edward Hopper . New York : Crown Publishers .Michelson, W. (1968) . Most people don't want what architects

want . Transactions, 5 . 37-43 .Mid-America Arts Alliance Program. (1984) . Through the looking

glass : Drawings by Elizabeth Layton . Kansas City, MO : TheLowell Press.

Nin, A. (1966) The dairy ofAnais Nin-1931-1934 . New York :Harcourt .

O'Keeffe, G . (1976) . Georgia O'Keeffe . New York : A Studio Bookof the Viking Press .

Porteus, 1 . (1977) . Environment and behavior, Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley .

Rapoport, A . (1969). House . form and culture . Englewood Cliffs,NJ : Prentice-Hall .

Rilke . R . (1963) . (M . Herter Norton, Trans .) Letters to a youngpoet . New York : The Norton Library . W. W . Norton,

Williams, O . (Ed .) . (1952) . A little treasury of modern poetry.New York : Scribner's .

Documents

The perception of doors: A sociodynamic investigation of doors in 20th century painting