voi Cesof his interests and the changed nature of his mental activity. What interested
him in a picture was above all a problem; and behind the first one he saw
countless other problems arising ... after the most exhausting efforts to bring
to expression in it everything which was connected with it in his thoughts,
he was forced to abandon it in an unfinished state or to declare that it was
incomplete.
(Freud 1957 [1910]: 77)here Freud presents two distinct models of creativity, one in which artistic activity and
identity can be communicated to an audience through the object of art, and another in
which an object is constantly being destroyed and re assembled as part of the operations
of unconscious knowledge. What remains at issue for arts- based research is whether
the level of the utterance, of the ‘speaking truth’ that is disclosed by psychoanalysis,
can accommodate the making of art and the objects of art. To put this another way,
does assuming the rigour of the researcher within a psychoanalytic framework preclude
the production of artistic objects? in lacan’s Ethics of Psychoanalysis, (1992 [1960])
he suggests a way forward with this issue, and proposes a model of sublimation as the
cultural frame of unconscious knowledge, which can indicate a ‘tipping point’ between
the artistic subject and the subject of the unconscious. This depends upon the notion of
an actual object that is ‘raised to the dignity of the Thing’ (Das Ding, the fundamental
or archaic object posited by the notion of sublimation). a real object thus becomes
the indicator of a decisive shift in the position of the subject that inaugurates the
possibility of a psychoanalytic investigation. The key example lacan provides here is
the assemblage of matchboxes made by the sometime- surrealist Jacques prévert in
the straitened circumstances of the Vichy regime in France during World War Two. in
an anecdote that concludes his seminar on ‘The object and the Thing’ of 20 January
1960, lacan tells of his delight on seeing a set of matchboxes, linked together by their
extruded inner drawers, in prévert’s living room: ‘i don’t say that it went on to infinity,
but it was extremely satisfying from an ornamental point of view’ (lacan 1992 [1960]:
114). lacan is ambiguous on the question of whether prévert’s slight, unfinishable and
unstable work carried sufficient charge as a cultural object:
perhaps you can even see something emerge in it that, goodness knows, society
is able to find satisfaction in. if it is a satisfaction, it is in this case one that
doesn’t ask anything of anyone.
(lacan 1992 [1960]: 114)an object that doesn’t ask anything of anyone may or may not qualify as an art
object, but it may also qualify as an object that marks the transition from the subject
position of the artist to that of the artist- researcher. it could thus be seen as part of
the ensemble or ‘thesis’ that constitutes the rigour of the researcher within arts- based
research. it is significant that in the leonardo essay, Freud aligns the incompatibility
of leonardo the artist and leonardo the researcher with an assumption that da Vinci’s
thirst for research and knowledge did not extend to the study of the mind. This is
contrasted with the double vision of the conscious and unconscious levels of da Vinci’s
creativity that is afforded by Freud’s adoption of the subject position of the analyst and