Museums of the Mind: Magritte's Labyrinth and Other Essays in the Arts

by Ellen Handler Spitz

This book eloquently demonstrates that just as our human relationships change and develop over time, so do our ties to cherished works of art. Such works, with their overlays of perception and projection, exert a lasting influence on the psyche. In the first half of the book, Ellen Handler Spitz guides us through a maze of surreal paintings by Rene Magritte, with psychoanalytic thought as her beacon. In the second half she leads us on a kaleidoscopic journey through other "museums of the mind," where interrelated works in drama, film, cartoon art, poetry, and opera are illuminated and rediscovered. She analyzes a performance of Chekhov's "The Bear," revisits the 1970s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance from the perspective of the 1990s, reviews the film "Dead Poets Society," muses on the psychological themes in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, rereads a beloved sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and reconsiders "Antigone" to discover startling insights into the "twinship of good and evil." Her final chapter, "Music of Hope," looks directly at the power of art to shape the mind as well as to be shaped by it. Here Spitz reflects on the impact of the children's opera Brundibar, written by the Czech composer Hans Krasa in 1938 and performed many times by inmates of the Terezin concentration camp.

206 pages, Hardcover

First published December 28, 1994