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Der Schöne und das Biest |
Description of the painting
The picture shows a standing man in dotted underpants, with a helmet and sword, and a chimpanzee sitting in front of him, also wearing a dotted bikini and looking up at him. The human figure can thus be read as a man, the animal figure as a female. The man is leaning on his sword. The female ape is superior to the human in terms of physical strength but is inferior to him when unarmed. The man stands for ingenuity, rationality and stamina. The female ape stands for animalistic instincts, irrationality and second-rate status.
There is a long tradition in our patriarchal society that in countless fairy tales, feature films and musicals, a beautiful woman always has to fall in love with an ugly man or even an animal for some reason in order to transform this beast back into an attractive man. The story goes back to an old French folk tale (La Belle et la Bête). The Grimm fairy tale "The Frog Prince" is also based on this motif.
In my picture, the roles are reversed. The beautiful superhero has met a female chimpanzee. Will she turn into a beautiful woman when he kisses her?