DOI Heft:
Nr. 2
DOI Artikel:Henshaw, Julia Plummer: Images of Women in Polish Symbolist Art
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18901#0048
9. Jacek Malczewski, Moment of Creation—Harpy in Dream, 1907, Private Collection in Poznaii
eyes closed and their mouths open, lost in passion; it is the dark male figure of a satyr whose
eyes are open and whose toungue darts suggestively out.
It is this theme of the irrational and passive nature of woman in the throes of sexual passion
that becomes the explicit subject of Władysław Podkowinski’s Frenzy (1894, National Museum
in Warsaw, fig. 11). In this sketch for the large composition at Cracow, the female figure is all
lust, all mindless abandon. Every clichéd detail is called into play: this woman is blond and
blond hair has been prized as „an attribute of feminine beauty from the time of Imperial Rome,
where it became the fashion for prostitutes and wealthy matrons to wear blond wigs made of
hair brought back from conquered Gaul”4. Her long hair streams out loose behind her; one has
only to think of the expression „letting down one’s hair” with its implications of abandoning the
conventions of polite society, and of the many references in nineteenth-century art to the sexual
suggestiveness of uncoiffed hair5. Once again, this woman’s eyes are closed. While her arms
encircle the neck of an impossibly large horse, her naked thighs clag his body. This animal symbol
for rampant masculinity rears up in an ecstatic leap and carries the completely passive woman
with him. Her humanity is lost in the pervasive animal force; she is woman seen in her true,
lustful nature.
4. Susan Brownmiller, Femininity, New York, 1984, p. 70.
5. Sec Robert Goldwater, Symboltsm, New York, 1979, pp. 70—70.
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eyes closed and their mouths open, lost in passion; it is the dark male figure of a satyr whose
eyes are open and whose toungue darts suggestively out.
It is this theme of the irrational and passive nature of woman in the throes of sexual passion
that becomes the explicit subject of Władysław Podkowinski’s Frenzy (1894, National Museum
in Warsaw, fig. 11). In this sketch for the large composition at Cracow, the female figure is all
lust, all mindless abandon. Every clichéd detail is called into play: this woman is blond and
blond hair has been prized as „an attribute of feminine beauty from the time of Imperial Rome,
where it became the fashion for prostitutes and wealthy matrons to wear blond wigs made of
hair brought back from conquered Gaul”4. Her long hair streams out loose behind her; one has
only to think of the expression „letting down one’s hair” with its implications of abandoning the
conventions of polite society, and of the many references in nineteenth-century art to the sexual
suggestiveness of uncoiffed hair5. Once again, this woman’s eyes are closed. While her arms
encircle the neck of an impossibly large horse, her naked thighs clag his body. This animal symbol
for rampant masculinity rears up in an ecstatic leap and carries the completely passive woman
with him. Her humanity is lost in the pervasive animal force; she is woman seen in her true,
lustful nature.
4. Susan Brownmiller, Femininity, New York, 1984, p. 70.
5. Sec Robert Goldwater, Symboltsm, New York, 1979, pp. 70—70.
38