Day 54 - Medusas

June 11, 2018

Gallery 172 is the venue for a temporary exhibit called "Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art." The title is something of a misnomer, because the exhibit, in addition to Medusa, presents images of sphinxes, sirens, and Scylla, all culled from the Met's own collection.  The underlying commonality is that all of these mythological creatures were women who lured men to their deaths.  The show is small and accessible, but my experience of it is diminished, not enhanced, by too-loud music I would rather not hear.

A caption explains that the image of Medusa was transformed from that of a horrifying round face with a protruding tongue -- an image I've often seen on representations of Achilles' shield and one capable of turning men to stone)-- to that of a beautiful woman with long, snaky tresses. This change is attributed to the idealization of the human form associated with the classical period.  The two objects visible in today's image are bronze leg greaves, both from southern Italy, that show these two ways of representing Medusa. What is interesting to me is that the right-hand greave, which presents the ugly, scary Medusa, was produced during the 4th century B.C.E., whereas the left-hand image, with its oval-shaped face and regular features, dates to the Archaic period (550-500 B.C.E.).   This suggests  that the idealized version may have grown out of Archaic images -- or else that the labels somehow got reversed. 

I am also struck by the myths themselves.  According to the later tradition, Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden seduced by Poseidon inside the temple of Athena.  Athena punished her by changing her into a horrible-looking Gorgon and turning her hair into snakes. And according to Ovid, Scylla was a beautiful maiden whose bathing pool was poisoned by the envious Circe. Scylla's body below the waist was transformed into a pack of snarling dogs, and she was condemned to be alone while luring men to their deaths.  So although these are female figures who bring about the ruin of men, their destructive powers arise from the anger and envy of other women. Men are completely off the hook in having responsibility for the creation of these femmes fatales.

The parallel to the story of Adam and Eve is striking.  Women's sexuality is a power to be feared, and one that men cannot control.  But of course, it is men who have created these myths.  It feels like a bind from which women cannot escape, at least until the myths and images are examined critically.  That, I suppose, is partly the purpose of this exhibit.