If you don’t have your costume ready, here are two ideas.

 It is amazing to see how often the word “fright “ is used – on the front page of a daily paper, plastered to a shop window, as a candy label in the grocery store, and even “Fright Night”, the theme for a symphony orchestra’s October concert.

In art, there are many images that are meant to intimidate, scare, terrify or send a warning. This post is having a little fun decoding the intentional use of the female, carved or painted, to SCARE. 

(As in the previous posts, the artists were male.)

One of the oldest “frights” is Greek: the limestone West Pediment of the Temple of Artemis at Corfu, ca. 590 BCE. The height is 9’2”. 

The central figure, enlarged in scale to fill the triangular shape of the pediment,  aggressively lunging towards us, is Medusa, undercut as to be almost three-dimensional.

She is one of the three Gorgon sisters of mythology. She is flanked by her two children: Pegasus, the winged horse, and Chrysaor, the wild, winged boar. Both sprang from the blood of her decapitation and are now, unfortunately, fragments. They are flanked by lions, typically guardians of gates and temples in the ancient world.

The myth of Medusa really belongs to the escapades of Perseus: a Thriller!

Perseus was a son of the god, Zeus, and Danaë, a mortal. He was conceived when a drop of rain (from Zeus) pierced Danaë. After Perseus became an adult, King Polydectes wanted to marry Danaë, but Perseus served as armor against her suitors and violators. However, Polydectes hatched a plan for Perseus to die. He ordered Perseus to bring him the head of Medusa, knowing of the danger.

Medusa was described as beautiful, the only mortal of the three enticing Gorgon sisters. But she acquired one horrific feature when she rejected the advances of Poseidon. In a rage of anger he turned all three sisters into monsters, covering their heads with snakes. (And yes, there is another version of how she acquired the snakes involving a jealous Athena).

The deadly danger was that if you looked at Medusa, you were cursed and turned to stone.

YES, this is the stuff of myths.

Perseus was clever and carried with him a mirrored shield so that he could see Medusa’ reflection and sever her head without looking directly at her. In her retaliating rage, she mistakenly looked at herself in the shield, and it was SHE who was turned to stone – limestone. The evidence is here!

READ her. 

She is clearly aggressive. She is muscular with a masculine buffing, and a sadistic smile that adds to her demonic quality. Her eyes bulge with exploding revenge. She wears a loincloth, and a girdle with two hissing snakes coiled at her waist, symbols of fertility in the ancient world.

She has a message. BEWARE. I am the GUARDIAN of the temple. I ward off evil.

In this ancient world of superstition, this was effective.

A monster from Ancient Greece.

Look for a resemblance – “Woman on a Bicycle”.

Who, or what, is this?

Is this a disturbingly fitful, twentieth century Gorgon, ghoulish and intimidating?

Is she plastered with layers and layers of paint, some industrial, to create a grid, a web to restricted her?  Is she held in bondage, trying to escape?

Picasso started this – the deconstruction and reconstruction of the female face and form, rotating the eye, moving features and limbs, distorting the color of skin, enlarging body parts. It caught on – Matisse, Kirchner, Duchamp, Dali, Moore, Leger, and others.

Why?

A quote from Picasso  “I paint what I think not what I see.”

“Woman on a Bicycle” was painted in New York, in the peak years of Abstract Expressionism.

Willem de Kooning was married, but a regular in the wild, tangled, and abusive boy club of the Cedar Tavern that included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline and others. They met, talked, smoked and drank and drank. Their lives ended tragically by suicide, cancer, heart failure, alcoholism, a car wreck, and in de Kooning’s case, Alzheimer’s. 

So, are they, male artists who sculpt and paint grotesque women, the more recent slayers of the female form or are they just having fun?

Maybe they are mad at their mothers, their mistresses, their spouses?

Perhaps this is sexual. Perverse male desire?

An orgasmic moment?

A boob fetish? 

A mouthy poster for dental floss or eye liner? 

A commentary on the speed of estrogen, a woman on a bicycle with clothes flying, a crash, a visual form of aggression, confrontation, a breaking through the gate? What gate? 

A testament to female strength?

Castrating, insulting? humorous? 

Or is it “just” modern art, doing something different, experimenting, testing the waters, out to make a wave?

We don’t know. De Kooning holds the meaning and the secret. 

What do you think?