Medusa

Description of the artwork

Ambiguous and paradoxical, the mythological figure of Medusa has fascinated artists and captivated spectators for almost three millennia. Frightening, protective, seductive, melancholy or rebellious, from Greek Antiquity to the present day, Medusa is a figure of both horror and beauty. She even became an icon of the femme fatale from the late 19th century onwards. It was a figure that many Symbolist artists seized upon.

In early representations, her round face with wide-open eyes and mouth expresses terror and the grotesque. Over the centuries, this primitive image evolves into a beautiful, seductive young woman whose fatality takes on a new meaning.

In the 19th century, the Romantic reading of the character led to the development of Medusa's melancholic character, and the world she enters becomes a reflection of the despondency that artists feel in the face of industrial modernity. It is in this context that the aesthetic quest evolves, with the notion of the “Sublime” now occupying a central place; it is the product of the tension between beauty and horror, the fruit of an extreme plastic experience, capable of transcending beauty and overturning the notions of harmony and balance inherent in classical beauty. It is intimately linked to a brutal confrontation with the incommensurable, sending the being back to its insignificance; recognizable by the effect it produces, the sublime triggers an immediate seizure in the subject. What better figure than the petrifying jellyfish to embody this effect of instant stupefaction? The paradox of Medusa's condition makes her the personification of the notion of the Sublime, as well as the perfect metaphor for art and the effect of art on the viewer she is about to turn to stone.

Rieper's work is representative of the figure of Medusa as a femme fatale who tends to lose her monstrous aspect to become a symbol of enigmatic beauty. He depicts her with the classic characteristics of the ancient figure: serpentine hair, wide eyes, tortured facial features.
The menacing snakes in her hair rise up and accompany Medusa's staring gaze. With her wild, exorbitant eyes, she prepares to petrify the beholder. Her aged hands with contracted fingers accompany this gaze in her desire to captivate us and cast her fatal spell. We also note the presence of two snakes around Medusa's wrists, which seem to handcuff her, the better to restrain her in her condition. Her raised hands also evoke a way of proving her innocence, since this sinister power is not of her own volition but a fatality imposed on her: both executioner and victim, she implores with her gaze while bewitching the viewer.