Paris, Art, and Sublimation
This November I had the opportunity to travel to Paris for a friend’s birthday. It was the first time I had been to Europe in 21 years. It was a quick trip, the kind where you never fully unpack, but I managed to make it to a retrospective of Gerhard Richter’s work at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which I highly recommend.
Interestingly, the last time I was in Europe I also saw a Richter exhibit, that time in Berlin. It famously ended with his series 18. Oktober 1977, a set of 15 blurred, photo-based paintings Richter created in 1988 about the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof). The series has been one of his most debated bodies of work, circling themes of memory, media imagery, terrorism, state power, and mourning.
The 2025 retrospective in Paris included this series, but expanded across six decades of his work: dark, somber moments in history, bright abstractions buzzing with color, and small, quiet paintings of the ordinary. The show began on the ground level and spiraled upward, each gallery marking a different period of his work and of history, ending at the top with more contemporary pieces.
The physical journey of walking up those stairs was surprisingly tiring, and I noticed the irony when even I needed to sit down in the final galleries. I found myself thinking about time, aging, and how our priorities and attention shift as the years accumulate. What we are drawn to, what we can tolerate, what we seek out for comfort or stimulation, all of that quietly rearranges itself as our lives change.
On our last night in Paris, a friend called in a favor and somehow got us tickets to see Lady Gaga at the Accor Arena. A large pop concert is not something I would typically choose, especially in my current early-bedtime era, but I was grateful for the novelty. It was incredible. Gaga has said that the show represents “internal conflict” between her light and dark sides, exploring themes of personal chaos, trauma, and self-acceptance.
Two very different artists, in very different venues, pointed to the same thing for me: the power of art as a way of metabolizing experience.
Freud called this sublimation, the process of transforming powerful, often uncomfortable drives and feelings into creative, socially meaningful expression. In more ordinary language: it is what happens when we take the energy of our anger, grief, fear, or longing, and give it some kind of shape that does not destroy us or the people around us.
Sublimation as a defense
In psychology, defenses often get a bad reputation. We think of “being defensive” as a problem to get rid of. But defenses are simply the ways we protect ourselves from being overwhelmed. Some are more helpful than others, but all of them are attempts to cope.
Sublimation is a defense, too, but it is a productive one. Instead of denying feelings, or projecting them outward, sublimation takes that same intensity and reroutes it into something that builds.
You can see this in Richter’s work. He takes images tied to political violence and grief, and instead of turning away from them, he alters them. They become blurred, layered, distant yet haunting. The paintings do not solve the history they reference, but they allow something to move. They hold the tension between wanting to look and wanting to look away.
You can also see it in Gaga’s performance. The “internal conflict” she describes, the negotiation between light and dark, becomes staging, sound, costume, choreography. Shame, grandiosity, vulnerability, and rage are not acted out directly on the people in her life. They are staged, symbolized, put into form. The same energy is there, but it is transformed.
Sublimation does not erase conflict. It does not make painful feelings disappear. It simply gives them a container where they can be expressed and worked with, instead of staying lodged in the body or leaking out in more destructive ways.
What this looks like in everyday life
Most of us are not Richter and not Gaga. But sublimation is not reserved for famous artists. It shows up in very ordinary ways, often quietly.
It might look like:
Turning a difficult experience into a story, poem, or journal entry rather than just shoving it down
Channeling frustration into cleaning, organizing, or problem solving instead of snapping at a partner or child
Using movement, exercise, or dance to move through emotions that feel too big for words
Cooking for others after a loss because the grief needs somewhere to go besides tears
Pouring anxiety into learning, creating, or caring for something, instead of spinning in worry
In each case, something potentially overwhelming is being translated into a form that can be shared, used, or at least tolerated.
This does not mean every coping strategy is sublimation. Sometimes what we label as “being productive” is actually more like avoidance in disguise. The difference is subtle, but you can usually feel it.
Sublimation tends to leave you feeling slightly more connected to yourself and others, even if the feeling is tender. Avoidance usually leaves a faint sense of hollowness, or a quiet knowledge that you have simply postponed something.
Not fixing, but transforming
One important misconception is that if we find the “right” creative outlet, our feelings will resolve and never return. That is not how any of this works.
Richter’s paintings do not resolve the history they reference. Gaga’s performance does not close the chapter on trauma and self-conflict. My stair-climbing through the museum did not resolve my relationship to aging, time, or changing priorities.
What these experiences do offer is a way to live with what cannot be neatly fixed. They make it possible to be in relationship with our feelings rather than ruled by them or cut off from them.
Sublimation is less about “getting over it” and more about “staying in contact with it without being destroyed.” It is a quiet shift from “How do I get rid of this?” to “How can I hold this differently?”
A few questions to sit with
If you are curious about how this might show up in your own life, you might ask yourself:
When I am feeling something intense, where does that energy usually go?
Are there ways I already transform emotion into something else without naming it as such?
Is there a form, however small, that feels natural to me: writing, movement, humor, cooking, sound, design, caretaking?
Do I notice a difference between when I am genuinely expressing something, and when I am simply distracting myself?
You do not need to become an artist, go to Paris, or buy concert tickets to engage with this. The point is not to be impressive. It is to recognize that part of being human is finding ways to metabolize what happens to us, internally and externally.
Art just makes this process visible.
Two very different nights in Paris, one in a museum and one in an arena, clarified something simple but easy to forget: we cannot choose what life hands us, or even always what we feel. But we do have some say in what we do with those feelings. Sublimation is one of the ways we turn inner turbulence into something that can be seen, shared, and maybe even understood.