After reading Alice Miller's book named The Untouched key-Tracing childhood trauma in creativity and destructiveness, I was very interested in the experience of a painter (Chaim Soutine) that mentioned in the article, although the form of oil painting may be not related to me. I think that the creative background of this painter and the relationship between his work and childhood experience are very attractive to me. This blog is an analytical reflection on several of his masterpieces.
Soutine pioneered a unique way of expressing personal psychological issues through painting, which will be reproduced in abstract expressionists. His early religious persecution experience had a significant influence on his character and art. His personal discriminatory experience has provided him with the impetus for the expressiveness of everyday objects and themes, such as his vivid still life paintings, with his unique expression to focus on the fruits and animals that are eaten daily. There are often many distinct symbolic meanings in Soutine's oil Painting.
Still Life with Herrings (1916)
In the era when the Jews were subjected to war and government oppression, Soutine grew up in such an environment and suffered enormous poverty as it grew. Therefore, food plays an important role not only in Jewish religious rituals but also in the status of his life. Soutine's stomach ulcer experience made him unable to eat regularly for a long time, so in the work of Still Life with Herrings, the man in the black
shadow and the 'man' opened his mouth and looked down at his own food, holding the plate by two hands that look like forks, reached into the plate and grabbed the herrings. He used this image to convey the hunger in childhood subtly. The color of the whole painting is also a dark color giving a feeling of oppression.
Self-Portrait (1918)
In Self-Portrait, Soutine injects his self-portrait into a clear sense of self-disgust by exaggerating his characteristics, so that the image of the painter in the painting cannot be recognized. The twisted nose, mouth, ears and dark yellow light, as if the artist himself is exploring his darkest personality flaws. The corresponding small portrait on the easel shows that his perspective is melancholy.
Chicken Hanging Before a Brick Wall, 1925, oil on canvas. Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland. Artwork © ARS
The artist's fascination with the "killing" became the central theme in his work. When he was a child, Sutine witnessed a butcher cutting the throat of a goose and bleeding it. For a long time, he claimed that this experience, coupled with the existence of the Jewish slaughterhouse and the ritual slaughter of animals in religion, which had a lasting impact on the subject of his choice. In work, the bird hangs, which implying movement and Soutine's dead bird oil painting is also interpreted as a memory of 'kapparot' in childhood. Kapparot is a ritual of the Jewish community, transferring the evil to the bird before Yom Kippur. This made his works of this period full of a tragic atmosphere that is easy to feel, a clear sense of death.
Chaim Soutine's innovation in the way he chooses to represent his theme: the thick paint, the surface of the canvas, the palette, the visible strokes and forms that transform the artist's inner torture. The artist expresses it through painting, I think this can be understood as the early enlightenment of art therapy. My question is that for ordinary people, they may not have artistic talents such as painting. Thus, do they have the ability and opportunity to express their inner trauma and torture? Is there any way to subtly help them to release those traumatic memories?
Reference Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/soutine-chaim/
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