Iakov Levi
Marino Marini and “The
Coachmaker’s Three Daughters” (Le tre figlie
May 30, 2006
We use up too much artistry in our dreams - and therefore often are
impoverished during the day.
(F.Nietzsche, II Human All Too Human, 194)
Freud has shown that the number 3 is
the symbol of the penis[1].
Therefore, three women are equivalent to a female penis, which in
children’s fantasy is like the one of the male. In Western mythology the
representation of three women recurs in an obsessive
way peculiar to a neurotic symptom. It is the expression of the rooted
unconscious conviction that the woman possesses, or had possessed in the past,
a penis similar to that of the male. The obsessive repetition relieves through
the process of catharsis the anxiety suffered at the stressful discovery of its
absence, which did activate the child own castration anxiety.
However, in Marini’s painting there is something more; one of the three
women wears a sock.
Jean Baudrillard, dealing with the
strip-tease, writes:
…when she is naked she is much more adorned than when she is
dressed […]. She wears gloves that
cut her arms. She wears green, red, or black socks, also cutting her legs at the
level of the thigh […]
The body that the woman worships through a sophisticated manipulation, and
through an intensive narcissistic discipline without any weakness, transforms
her and her sacred body itself into a living penis, which represents the
woman’s castration. To be castrated means to be covered with phallic
symbols. The woman is covered with them, and she is constrained into
transforming herself into a living penis, if she aspires to be desired [2] .
Therefore, the sock cutting
the woman’s leg represents also her own castration, as in every hint
which associates with “cuts” and “cutting”. It is not
casual that in the painting the woman wearing the sock is represented with her
back turned to the spectator, at difference with the other two women, and she
does not shows her genital like her two companions. The castration’s
symbol equivalent to the lack of a penis is already expressed by the
“cutting” of the sock.
Furthermore, the third woman,
showing a “cut” (the sock cutting her leg), explains the lack of a
penis in the other two women: “They do not have a penis because it was
cut off”.
Works of arts are like dreams. They
“explain” through the associative link between the different
elements. As Freud said, our unconscious knows no grammar. If it wants to
deliver a message, it works by associating components. It does not use
particles, symbols of denials or other grammatical devices. The first two women
display a female genital lacking a penis, and the third woman explains
what happened: it was cut off.
The child, when he discovers the
lack of a penis in the woman, side by side with a tentative of denial, he also
gives to himself an explanation that the father was responsible for that
mutilation[3].
He cut off her member, and in this way he “made” of her a woman[4].
Facing Marini’s painting, the
spectator is confronted with an unconscious content, which was repressed, but
was also pressing for recognition. This work of art speaks to him to the degree
in which this content was indeed pressing for recognition. If the repression is
total and completely successful, this great work of art hardly says anything to
him.
However, if the energetic investment
is still active, the work of art will deliver a relief from the sufferance
inherent to the process of active repression. Seeing outside what is pressing
inside ourselves represents a relief, even if there is no conscious
realization, and the all process is worked in the underground. Consciousness
may be aware only of the subsequent enjoyment.
The enjoyment of a work of art is a
function of its capability to bring relief to the sufferance inherent to the
energetic effort invested in order to repress psychic contents charged with
anxiety. It can be done only through the vehicle of a language that can be
understood by our unconscious. This language is the music of the work of art,
and as such communicates directly from unconscious to unconscious. The
language, namely the lines, the forms, the colours of the painting are the
notes of that music. Without it, it will lack the catharsis' vehicle. Our
unconscious does not understand words, but their music, the tune accompanying
them. If we praise a child by a threatening voice, the child does not
understand the praise but the threat. Therefore, it is the tune of the work of
art, which expresses the true contents, namely the sentiment. If the tune is
artificial and not sincere, there is a shortcut in the communication, which
results in an isolation of the sentiment. The work of art is not such,
but only a declaration, and no relief can be expected.
Marini’s “Le tre figlie
The archaic inference
”The Coachmaker’s Three
Daughters” reminds the archaic phallic triads of Greek mythology: the Erinnyes,
the Harpies, the Graiae, and particularly the Gorgons.
The most famous among the Gorgons was Medusa, who was decapitated – castrated
by the hero Perseus (See: S. Freud, Medusa's Head, 1940). Here we have a
Greek marble dating 600 B.C. representing Medusa, to day at the Museum of the
Acropolis in
The archaic reference unconsciously reconnects to our own archaic history; the
first nebulous years of infancy, which are removed but are the source of all
later anxieties, those same anxieties that the work of art comes to relieve.
NOTES [1] Sigmund Freud, "Symbolism in
Dreams"; "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" (1915-1917)
in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Ed. and
Trans. J. Strachey, Hogarth Press, London 1964, Vol.XV, pp.163-4. [2] Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic
Exchange and Death, Chap. IV). [3] S.Freud, "An Infantile Neurosis", [4] Karl Abraham: “The Female
Castration Complex”, 1920, and “An Infantile Theory of the
Origin of Female Sex”, 1923.
Another painting by Marino Marini shows a naked woman with the same sock cutting her thigh
Moreover, the symbol of her
existencial condition of castration is not only the sock cutting her tigh but also the lost shoe. In Cinderella the lost shoe is the loss of penis - virginity at the climax of the Fuga on the staircase (Cf.Cinderella and "The Puss with the Boots"
).
Links:
Three Women: the Penis
Caravaggio and the Deposizione nel sepolcro