By:
Michael Croft
Collaborative Researcher
i2ADS Institute of Research in Art, Design & Society
Porto University, Portugal.
Abstract:
The article oscillates between fiction and reflective-academic writing concerning the dispersal of identity between three people and two visual artworks. Two drawings are seen to occupy the same studio, one of which is presented as the author’s, who is also the in-text referenced artist, and the other as the work of a fictional protagonist called Morry. The article concerns a discussion between the artist, Morry, and another fictional protagonist that wavers between belief and disbelief concerning how a drawing practice may involve both the formatting and articulation of ideas of the subject. The author references the Lacanian formation of identity during early infant development, Lacan’s idea of the psychical gaze, and Paul Ricoeur’s idea of narrative identity through an explanation of one of the two drawings, Self & Other. The narrative provides a means of discussing the underlying motivation of both drawings. The question of the narrative’s believability is endorsed by a quote from Musil’s The Man Without Qualities in which a certain decline of human identity is replaced by the essay form.
To cite as: Croft, M. 2025, “(Un)Believable Discussion: A Hybrid Narrative of Three People Interacting in a Space between Two Adjacently-Placed Drawings,” PsyArt 29.2, pp. 44-66.