This presentation will provide an experience of the dreams and paintings of the Swiss artist Peter Birkhäuser (1911-1976). A unique aspect of Birkhäuser’s paintings is that they express a modern individual’s call by the inner world.
During his life, the neuroses and depression that afflicted him became an opening to the creative power of the objective psyche. Birkhäuser was given new life and meaning by allowing this unknown factor to express itself on canvas. Who is this unknown guest, that sometimes takes the shape of an insect? It turns out to be the completely “other” who fertilizes the soul. Its dark eye seems to be the sun in its nocturnal state when the light is reborn.
Marie-Louise von Franz had this to say about one of Birkhäuser’s dreams:
“A wonderful dream! These dream images show impregnation by the dark god. The dark chthonic god is trying to make the soul fecund. We are living in outwardly evil times, but underneath great things are in motion, as at the time of Christ’s birth. This underlying process, the hieros gamos, is being illustrated here. It is the fundament of the world, but it is taking place in you.”
Birkhäuser’s work is thus a dialogue with the unknown “other,” and their mutual transformation. The “other” turns out to be the creative spirit of nature, of our instinct, the bringer of renewal. The artist’s own individuation process can be seen as a pregnancy depicted in pictures, bringing forth a new myth.