Scavenger Hunt: a Search For Psychological Meaning in Art

By Jonathan Solomon
     
        On Sunday, March 25th, members of the Psychology Collective visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a scavenger hunt. The hunt was unique in that it placed focus on locating works of art that conveyed a psychological theme. Students were broken into groups and were instructed to find works of art that expressed psychological themes such as love, hate, longing, and happiness. Each student had to choose two such works by taking pictures, which were to be discussed at a dinner party after the tour of the museum.

      Some students chose works that they thought reflected a sense of love, while others chose a work of art that conveyed a sense of anger. One student wrote a poem about one of the works that he thought expressed a sense of repressive thought.

      One of my group partners, Julianne Day, chose Kuindzhi's landscape painting Red Sunset on the Dnieper, depicting a sunset in the midst of a red sky above a beach. She described this work as depicting serenity because she believed it conveyed a longing to connect with nature. My other group partner, Vinny, told me that he believed the painting conveyed solitude, since peaceful scenes are best experienced alone.

     Right next to the painting of sunset, I saw a Claude Monet painting called Camille Monet Sitting on a Garden Bench. Camille Monet was the famous impressionist's wife who is depicted in his painting. Right behind Camille is a man, perhaps the artist himself, gazing at Camille with wild eyes, I thought this work suggested the psychology of lust, since it illustrates physical desire devoid of personal human interest.

      As my group partners and I navigated our way through the museum, we wondered if psychological themes can underlie some of the more abstract expressionist works.One such piece was Jackson Pollock's painting, Autumn Rhythm, which appears to be just blots of paint thrown haphazardly on a canvas. I got the feeling that the painting could convey disorganized thought and confusion.

    After the two-hour tour, the students of the Psychology Club regrouped at the front of the museum and we made our way to the Shanghai Pavilion, a local Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. At dinner, students presented their pictures and described how their chosen works of art related to psychological themes. The other guests were instructed to rate, on a scale from 1 to 10, how strongly they agreed with the description. In the end, Beryl, the Vice President of the Psychology Club, won the competition with 258 points. But all of guests left the trip as winners, for the trip was nothing short of a real work of art.

Discussion Group on Social Media

    Students were invited to a discussion group on how social media affects the psyche on Tuesday, February 7th. Some felt that the media, particularly the news, delivers too much negative information, such as news coverage of mugging, murder, and rape. Meanwhile, others expressed that the people involved in the media industry might fabricate stories based on propaganda.

    Students also created a hypothetical scenario. In this scenario, media coverage would place more focus on positive topics than on the negative topics. They wondered if this shift in the media industry would make the world a more positive place. One student felt that it depends on how you define the words negative and positive. The other students expressed that they were only discussing specific negative aspects of social media, such as violence and crime. In response, the student said, "But aren't there other types of media topics besides violence and crime that can be perceived as negative?"

     This student suggested that the psyche might already make its own choices on what is negative and pessimistic and what is not, depending on the individual's perception of reality. Because of this comment, a new perspective developed. Perhaps it is not negative social media that influences our psyche as much as it is our pre-existing perceptions of the world that influence what we classify as negative.