rorschach
Phillips de Pury & Company is pleased to present “Rorschach”, a selling exhibition curated by Alex Glauber which explores the artistic tradition surrounding Hermann Rorschach’s projective personality assessment vernacularly known as the “InkblotTest”.While the psychological phenomenon of the inkblot extends back beyond Rorschach’s 1921 tome Psychodiagnostik, its ubiquity since has enticed artists to engage it as a symbol and mechanism. By the time Bruce Conner underwent the test in 1958 he remarked how the popularity of the ten standardized inkblots utilized in the test diminished its efficacy. Nevertheless when Andy Warhol took up the subject in 1984 he revelaed an unlikely expressive desire when he made the presumptive mistake that he, like the patient, was to create inkblots which would be interpreted
by a doctor, or, in his case, the public.
Despite being abstract, Rorschach’s inkblots were designed to elicit the projection of a subject’s underlying personality traits and unconscious conflicts.To stimulate a range of potential responses, Rorschach carefully engineered his inkblots such that they walked a fine line between abstraction and representation. In their color, contours, and density, each inkblot was designed to stimulate but not manipulate.
WhileWarhol and Conner’s interest in the inkblot find continuation in the recent work of Blake Rayne and Louise Despont, even when those distinct bilateral silhouettes are not present, that which seems abstract may not be to the mind’s eye.To that end, “Rorschach” assembles its own projective test with works by artists who rely on viewers to anchor the ambiguous in reality.