In fact, primitive man is not more logical or analogous than we are. He just thinks and lives from completely different ideas than we do.
K.G. Jung
Most of human history on Earth is spent living in primitive conditions, a huge period of time that preceded our modern civilization. It was he who had the most significant, fundamental influence on us.
Modern consciousness perceives objects by external signs, using body functions and logical thinking. The «scientific approach» separated perception from emotion, that is, for us now the very fact of what we saw is more important, and not what we felt upon contact with it. Archaic consciousness uses the same sensory-motor complex as a modern person, but feels and sees something completely different. We grasp objective features: shape, height, size, color, expression; for archaic consciousness, the power emanating from the object is important, and what it can mean for it. Previously, emotions, sensations, experiences, impulses, which formed a mystical reality, played a major role in constructing the reality in which a person lived.
At that time, the personality had not yet been centralized, a person felt himself to be everything at the same time: everything that was inside was external, and also the external was inside. Everything lived in one undivided state, overlapping and superimposing each other.
Over time, the integrity of the initial state began to change. The rational self began to differentiate more and more from feelings, intuitions and experience. The ability of consciousness to divide itself into a rational, intelligent part and a natural one appears.
The principles of thinking of the past have a stronger power over us than it seems to us — representatives of perhaps the most pragmatic and rational civilization of all that have ever existed on Earth. Studying the rituals, symbols, signs of our ancestors is an opportunity to touch the origins, the very beginning of humanity, not yet separated by civilization from nature. Modern man knows himself only to the extent that he can be conscious of himself.
Man, projecting the narrow framework of rationality around himself, forgets himself, loses sight of his instinctive nature and puts himself in the place of a genuine being. In this regard, the role of self-expression of the «primary state» is taken on by art, because it is an area where the boundaries of what is permitted by reason are erased, where man can boldly express himself without rational evaluation.
Art allows us to touch the world of the past, to feel old connections and to develop new ones in ourselves. In fantasies, «primary images» become especially visible. Artists such as Evgeny Antufiev, Nestor Engelke, Ulyana Podkorytova, Vlad Mikhailov, Madu and Anastasia Loktaeva, in their works vividly respond to the various traces of the past, showing a special sensitivity to the voices of their ancestors and the power that is now hidden from ourselves.
The meaning of religion and art is positive and synthesizing not only in primitive cultures, but also in our own, overly conscious culture, precisely because they represent an outlet for the contents and emotional components that are too harshly suppressed.
K.G. Jung
Curator Anastasia Loktaeva
