Last week, we were invited to the Rubin Museum of Art for an early morning press conference announcing the launch of “The Red Book of C.G. Jung,” a new exhibit that marks the first time the leather-bound manuscript into which psychoanalytic pioneer (or spiritual guru, depending on who you ask, or maybe even both) Carl Jung poured refined versions of the daily products of his imagination has been made available for public view. (It’s a big production for the Rubin, which is also conducting a series of celebrity interviews spurred by images from the book.)
In addition to letting the Red Book out of the vault where it’s been hidden away for decades, Jung’s descendants also gave W.W. Norton permission to reproduce the book in a deluxe oversized edition that combines reproductions of Jung’s calligraphy and paintings with an English-language translation. The task of preparing the manuscript for publication was handled by a company called DigitalFusion.
We met DigitalFusion co-principal John Supra at the press conference, and afterwards we emailed him about his personal (as opposed to technical) interest in the project. “I had been ‘exposed’ to the work of C.G. Jung in a minimal way,” Supra wrote back. “I had read Memories, Dreams, Reflections on a recommendation from a friend and found it interesting and had a general awareness of Jung’s work. However by no means am I a scholar or that well/broadly read in Jung.”
“The excitement and interest in a project of this nature starts when you are asked to prepare a quote that involves reproducing a secret book that is locked in a vault in Switzerland and the family that owns it requires you to do the work at the vault,” he continued, alluding to the intense aura of secrecy the family has kept around the Red Book since Jung’s death (in large part due to concerns about how its contents would be received by the public). Ultimately, the bank vault proved inadequate to DigitalFusion’s needs, and a workspace was set up at a photo studio in Zurich. “As we opened the book for the first time,” he recalle, “everyone in the room was stunned by the vibrant color, intricate detail and amazing beauty that the page hold. I honestly didn’t expect the quality of the images and the condition of the book to be so significant.”
“As we worked with the book for the week, each time we came to one of the larger images I found myself drawn into it,” he said of the digitizing process. “Looking for the details and the team would often talk about what they saw in the image. There was a lot of ‘do you see that…’ Each image has such detail and complexity that you can look at it for hours and still discover symbols you didn’t notice before.” Supra doesn’t read German (and even if he did, Jung’s calligraphy is highly stylized), so it’s the artwork that predominantly shaped his experience with the Red Book, although he does say he’s looking forward to reading the translation.
“I have been fortunate to be a part of the publishing of this important work,” Supra concluded, “and the entire team that has worked on it has made every effort to faithfully reproduce the work so that everyone has an opportunity to be share in the experience we had opening the volume for the first time and reflecting on the powerful images it contains.” We’ve only had an opportunity to browse casually through the book so far, but between those glances and the reproductions that were on display at the Rubin, so far we’re mightily impressed—and looking forward to coming to terms with the actual contents, which, we were told repeatedly that morning, would completely overhaul modern understanding of Jung and his theories.