The Art of the Self

<p><strong>Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881-1962) was the pioneering founder of the famous Eranos Conferences which since the early 1930s have attracted to Ascona (Switzerland) some of the most influential scholars of the 20</strong><sup><strong>th</strong></sup><strong> and 21st centuries and made an extraordinary contribution to world intellectual history. The unpublished anthology of her artworks which we refer to today as the <em>Blue Book</em> can be traced back to two distinct periods. The first phase was essential for a series of Meditation Plates painted between c. 1926 and 1934 and particularly during her collaboration with theosophist Alice Ann Bailey (1880-1949). The second phase concerns a collection of Visions drawn between 1934 and 1938. These were the crucial years of her enduring intellectual relationship with psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) who was one of the main sources of inspiration at Eranos and provided the impetus for the creation of the Eranos Archive for Research in Symbolism. </strong></p><p></p><p>Convinced that the deepest things in human life ... can only be expressed in images Fröbe-Kapteyn documented in her <em>Blue Book</em> the forms of imagination of a creative and independent woman. Because of the care with which she had drawn composed and preserved it Fröbe-Kapteyn perhaps hoped that her <em>Blue Book</em> would survive her and also allow future generations to rediscover and make it their own as a special testament to that endless search for the Self at once personal and universal that Jung would theorize with the idea of the individuation process.</p><p></p><p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p><p>Foreword (Fabio Merlini) </p><p>Preface (Murray Stein) </p><p>Acknowledgements</p><p>Editorial Note </p><p>Introduction </p><p>1. Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn's Interest in Art and Symbolism </p><p>2. Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn's Iconographic Corpus </p><p>3. Artistic Itineraries from Monte Verità to Eranos </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>Illustrations </p><p>Afterword (Her Royal Highness Princess Irene of The Netherlands) </p><p>Index of names </p><p>Bibliography </p><p></p>