Joseph Campbell, Paul Mellon Distinguished Fellow Lecture 1987

Drawing on literature, world religions, mythology, art history, and case studies of psychologist Carl Jung, mythologist Joseph Campbell examines universal themes such as the development of self and the conflicts resulting from desire and fear. He argues that art which appeals to fear is not true art but rather didactic or pornographic in character, and that aesthetic vision looks at humanity through a cleansed perception of wholeness, harmony and radiance. The tape contains two sessions, the first of which is described above, the second taking place the following day and devoted to questions which cover topics ranging from dreams to the androgynous figure as it occurs in Eastern art, the Nag Hammadi Library, gnosticism, secret doctrines within all religious traditions, the Mayan calendar, and back again to the themes of pornographic and didactic art explored in the previous night’s lecture.