The Artist, the Double & Creative Will

This talk was prepared for a conference entitled “Rank Horror” to be held at Columbia University in 2024. The lecture covers the concepts developed by early psychoanalyst and student of Freud, Otto Rank, of the role of art and the artist in society, the uncanny figure of the double, and the importance of creative will by providing illustrated examples of artists who lived their lives as works of art – Danish outsider artist Ovartaci, French surrealist Pierre Molinier, performance artists Breyer P-Orridge, and British artist Val Denham.