Fear+in+art

A short dissertation on fear represented in art
Margherita De Cunzo

Writing about fear and how it was represented in art looked like a complex idea to me; I wondered if I knew all the images (paintings, sculptures, frescoes) by which it has been expressed; in the meanwhile it seemed to me a good idea because I believe that fear is an emotion we often want to forget or to conceal out of convention and shame or because of a mistaken interpretation of the opposite feeling, courage, and I thought it interesting to investigate in that forgotten field.

Courage does not forget fear, it contains it, and I judged it important to think of all the images, the dreams, the expressions of removed fear art has made real and condensed into works which express what we do not know but also what we know about this feeling. We live together with fear wether we are aware of it or we let it act without our knowledge; if we live together with fear openly we keep it from changing into something else. If we do not know it, it does not mean we have got rid of it and to ignore fear make it change into something else: unjustified aggressiveness, indifference,cynicism.

Speaking of fear we often use the verb “overcome” but even if we work them out, some fears remain and a discreet living together is better than to compete; our relationship with fear is somehow like a story of routes with difficult and slow returns. It depends on us but also on the context, on our story and on other people’s story.

Being aware, on the contrary, means acting in a conscious way and preventing if possible. My choices depend on my knowledge which is limited and on my memory which is also defective because of removal. My work may be enriched by other people who, like in a puzzle, will find other aspects and other ideas which will consent to specify and to define this emotion and the implications connected with it.

In the Gigantomachy on the Altar of Pergamon the Galatoes who dressed their hair into hard locks with a chalk paste called “titanos” to scare their enemies, are represented by the Titans, winged beings with heads of wild beasts and legs like the tale of a snake, who rise against Jupiter and are in the end defeated by Ercules’ strength and Athen ‘s rationality.Therefore, fear is like a weapon; scaring might be an instrument?

And was Laocoon, terrified by the snakes that suddenly come from water, punished by a goddes even if he was right? May one be punished and be afraid even if one has no fault? It seems so.

The terrified girl in Pompei and the beautiful "Slaughter of the Innocents" by Giovanni Pisano confirm it. Are certain mechanical and stiff gestures of Herod’s soldiers enough to explain unjustice?

Fear makes us human: the pitiful, disheartned, desperate gestures of the mothers who protect or mourn their sons are different one from the other like the gestures of the martyrs in the Execution by Shooting on "May 3rd" by Goya. But if one does not choose, fear is again the consequence, if that scared man covering one of his eyes in The Last Judgement by Michelangelo represents the sin of Sloth.

Also the sleeping man in the engraving by Goya is not thinking, he is sleeping and, in the sleep, winged monsters are bred. But the dog sunk under the sand in the frescoes of the Quinta del Sordo might be saying “where is the fault?” They are different and opposed interpretations; fear is a feeling of the “Innocents”, but also of those who do not choose, do not take a decision.

The man by Munch shouts the indifference of a conventional society, that does not care about men like the nature around him where the scream of a man with no skeleton seems to get lost. Does fear make us feel a lack of form or does it depend on a lack of form on our side? Both.

The eyes of Brother and Sister, by Erick Heckel, seem to be saying:” does it depend on a lack of awareness, of rebellion of those who, because of fear, keep out of human community?” It seems that Sclemihl speaks in this manner in the xylographies by Kirchner.

Still, fear is fascinating, ghastly things are attracting like everything we do not know and, for this reason, we fear: in Kubin or in the Bomarzo garden.

Who plays and who capitalize on fear?

In the Last Judgements of the middle ages devils “scare” and torment human beings on purpose with instruments of torture. In the centre of the dome of the Baptistry in Florence Lucifer, who is devouring the dammned, has human characteristics, horns and jaws like snakes coming out of his ears.

In the end, why do we forgive fear so little if it is not iustified by real slaughters of innocent people?

We justify it and it becomes heroic only if, like in Guernica there is a whole people victim of an unjust abuse, otherways it is awkward or attracting, never understandable. Yet, like in novels, modern heroes are scared, they are victims of their own weakness which is not always real. Fear is a common feeling, or rather an emotion. It is at the origin of a lot of actions and somatization; it is common but rejected, justified only when it is caused by real dangers; but we cannot justify or reject complexity, we have to listen to it in its differences and shades, in its low or noble feelings.” We have to listen to its story” say those images of the artists and writers who describe this emotion which is so human and so little observed.