Metamorphosis and the aesthetics of loss: II. Lady of the woods–The transformative lens of Francesca Woodman

Abstract

As interpreted by the celebrated American photographer, Francesca Woodman, the myth of Apollo and Daphne forms an allegorical locus for the transitions and tensions of adolescence and young adulthood. Woodman’s employment of this myth and related themes is also expressive of a preoccupying topos of regressive longings. Seamlessly extending Ovid’s transformation of the metamorphic myths into poetic epic, her work delves deeply into their driving purpose: to make sense of change, of loss, and of life itself. Over the millennia, classical myth is infused and enriched with personal meaning by the reanimating, clarifying and transformative lens of art.

“To Half Believe and Wholly Play”: Dialectics of Reality in Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice

“…In discussing fantasies of transformation, Searles (1960) observes that the "yearning to become nonhuman" often indicates a longing "to regress phylogenetically, to 'return' symbolically to the nonhuman state out of which the human race emerged…in order to get a fresh start in the struggle to achieve individuation, and subsequent emotional maturation, as a human being" (p. 250). To sharpen this argument, the fantasy of assuming an earlier phylogenetic state may metaphorically symbolize the (no less fantastical) wish to regress to an earlier developmental state (Tutter, 2011a(Tutter, , 2011b-to turn back, rather than forward, on the "dark journey of life." By extension, one of the ways for Potter to revisit the amusement and wonder of a child's unfettered, unjaded imagination was to create fantasy stories populated by animals.…”

“…6). If we view Two Bad Mice through the lens of the allegorical representation of the changes of adolescence that Alice offers (Tutter, 2011b), it can function as a parallel allegory for the disillusionments children will encounter along their "dark journey" from childhood to adulthood, as they "outgrow" their dollhouses and leave their parental home behind for a new home of their own. For now, the smallness of the dollhouse (and the mouse hole) achieves containment, rather than confinement.…”

Metamorphosis and the aesthetics of loss: I. Mourning Daphne –TheApollo and Daphnepaintings of Nicolas Poussin

“…6 6 Part II of this essay will further develop the myth’s exploitation of the tree’s representational plasticity to represent the conflictual, anxious maturation of a young girl into a woman, and, at the same time, the wishful reversal of this process, (Tutter, in press) . …”