KRISTIN ZETHREN, PhD
Under the Covid lockdown I’ve been editing documentaries shot in February–just under the gun. One film is titled“An Afternoon at the Museum,” where a curator explains the various symbols embedded in a work of art. So, for months I’ve been in solitary confinement, symbol-ridden... and my art shows it.
Anima
(Oil on Canvas, 24” x 36”)
It’s always risky to try to reify a construct. In this painting it is the Anima, which, for Jung, is the soul-image of Woman – a fantasy of the male unconscious. I aimed for a female face with gravitas and deep sincerity, who gazes at the viewer with equanimity and wisdom. And maybe with an unspoken query.
There are iconographic touches to amuse the art historians among us – quotations from other traditions. For instance, the angel who holds the crescent moon is a quote from the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The hand with the cigarette – well, smoke is spirit, after all -- but cigarettes are also symbolic of a form of transgression, of death. Kant calls ‘sublime’ that aesthetic satisfaction which includes as one of its moments a shock, an intimation of mortality. It is why people who take up smoking, for pleasure, know on some level that it can kill them. Among women, smoking began with those who got paid for staging their sexuality: the gypsy, the actress, the whore. This, too, is part of the Anima.
Embedded in the swirling smoke around the image of the Anima are the ten luminous emanations of the Sephirot. Here the Anima appears as the Shekhina, which, according to Jewish lore, is the feminine aspect of God. That’s a lot of freight for a painting to carry, but, in the history of western art, there are numerous images of God, all male, all elderly. Here’s a different take.