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#0059
20. Wojciech Weiss, Obsession, 1899/1900, Warsaw, Muzeum Literatury
Literature in Warsaw, fig. 20). Here, one sees a blood-red tangle of nude female figures who
swarm like a vast wave towards the right. Out of this largely undifferentiated mass of limbs
only two forms distinctly emerge: the principal figure of a bacchante who holds in her arms the
decapitated head of a man whose facial features resemble those of Przybyszewski and a compa-
nion just behind her whose arms are raised in a triumphant gesture of victory and celebration.
The principal figure is blindfolded: here is another example of a woman whose power of sight
is denied, and once again it is worth noting that the blindfold is a standard humiliating device
used in hard-cere pornography. Above all this frenzied activity there is the apparition of an
enormous death’s head in the sky. The message is apparent: lust and the sexual act lead nowhere
but to death for men. Man, the finest achievement of God, created in his own image, is the victim
of woman whose depraved sexuality leads her to lose all rational restraints, and who glorys in
this salacious destruction.
It is interesting that Malczewski repeatedly used a figure that is female, if ambiguously so,
to symbolize death (Thanatos) in a number of paintings (fig. 21), even though Death is more
commonly represented in western art as a male figure, such as the Grim Reaper or Death on
the Pale Horse. Another example of a symbolic female figure used to suggest death and destruc-
tion is found in Edward Okuii’s We and War (1917—1923, National Museum in Warsaw, fig. 22).
Here we see elegantly dressed couple interrupted in their stroll by a gray-haired, scraggly toothed
old woman. Why should an old woman represent war, the quintessential activity of men which
only creates despair in women of all ages? The obvious association of this type of female figure
is the witch, the archetypal dreaded old hag who has lost all her womanly appeal and whose
power has been perceived as evil by the male establishment for centuries. Here is another old
stereotype reminding us of men’s fear of women’s power.
49
Literature in Warsaw, fig. 20). Here, one sees a blood-red tangle of nude female figures who
swarm like a vast wave towards the right. Out of this largely undifferentiated mass of limbs
only two forms distinctly emerge: the principal figure of a bacchante who holds in her arms the
decapitated head of a man whose facial features resemble those of Przybyszewski and a compa-
nion just behind her whose arms are raised in a triumphant gesture of victory and celebration.
The principal figure is blindfolded: here is another example of a woman whose power of sight
is denied, and once again it is worth noting that the blindfold is a standard humiliating device
used in hard-cere pornography. Above all this frenzied activity there is the apparition of an
enormous death’s head in the sky. The message is apparent: lust and the sexual act lead nowhere
but to death for men. Man, the finest achievement of God, created in his own image, is the victim
of woman whose depraved sexuality leads her to lose all rational restraints, and who glorys in
this salacious destruction.
It is interesting that Malczewski repeatedly used a figure that is female, if ambiguously so,
to symbolize death (Thanatos) in a number of paintings (fig. 21), even though Death is more
commonly represented in western art as a male figure, such as the Grim Reaper or Death on
the Pale Horse. Another example of a symbolic female figure used to suggest death and destruc-
tion is found in Edward Okuii’s We and War (1917—1923, National Museum in Warsaw, fig. 22).
Here we see elegantly dressed couple interrupted in their stroll by a gray-haired, scraggly toothed
old woman. Why should an old woman represent war, the quintessential activity of men which
only creates despair in women of all ages? The obvious association of this type of female figure
is the witch, the archetypal dreaded old hag who has lost all her womanly appeal and whose
power has been perceived as evil by the male establishment for centuries. Here is another old
stereotype reminding us of men’s fear of women’s power.
49