Interpreting Art: Analysis 1

"In the Gas Chambers."

Wiktor Siminski
Pencil
(Sachsenhausen, 1944)

When I first looked at this image, I was shocked and disgusted.
The subject of this pencil drawing by Siminski, which was created at Sachsenhausen Extermination Camp in 1944, documents mass extermination of female prisoners by the Nazi's, through the horrific method of gassing. 


 The subject matter is revolting and inhumane. I am left in despair at the helplessness depicted in these suffocating individuals but also by the fact that Siminski, like so many others, were subjected to this kind of visual torture every day in Camp life. 


I think that these feelings must come from the way in which Siminski has created this image. The construction of the artwork brings you inside the Gas Chamber. On the ceiling, you can see the old trick - shower hoses - used by the Nazi's to deceive and "reassure" the prisoners that they were going to come out alive. The viewer is alongside these women as they twist into helpless poses, almost reaching for any kind of help, for a breath of clean air, for hope that this torture will soon end as the gas is unleashed. 

The way in which Wiktor Siminski has drawn these women, to me, resembles the beautifully elegant, curvaceous Renaissance studies we see from the likes of Botticelli and Da Vinci. Perhaps this is why the female figures exude such innocence? I feel that despite the fact that the Nazi's aim was to dehumanise these people, this image shows the females as human beings and with feelings. And also, that haunting and questioning expression..."Why?".  


After analysing this pencil drawing some more, I spot the SS Guard leering in through the window. Watching, with a haunting smile as he carries out this atrocity. But then, I see that his face is actually a skull. Like Death watching over as he claims more victims. And also, like the skull that made up the SS Insignia. A true image of terror - an image that brings home the reality and the cruelty of the Holocaust and the Nazi Regime. 


I am reminded, as I look through this image, yet again, of Vladimir Propp's theory. Clearly, the Villain is shown and so are the Desperate in need of help. Unfortunately, the Hero is missing. 

Story Telling...through Art.

After talking to one of my classmates about my project she told me about Vladimir Propp and his ideas about stories and how we subconsciously turn them into fairytale scenarios.
So I decided to do a little bit of research into Propp in the library and I found a book called:

'Critical and Cultural Theory' by Dani Cavallaro

Published 2001 by The Athlone Press [p.19-20]

In this book, I found a piece of text on Vladimir Propp's 'Morphology of the Folk Tale' (1928). 

Here is the text:

"Propp maintains that the traditional tale, as a prototype of all narrative forms, is based on a fixed number of components. There are 7 spheres of action, associated with the characters and roles of the 'Villain', the 'Donor', the 'Helper', the 'Princess and her Father', the 'Dispatcher', the 'Hero', and the 'False Hero', and thirty-one functions, associated with key moments in the action e.g, 'Preparation', 'Complication', 'Struggle', 'Return and Recognition'. No tale contains all 31 functions. However, the ones it does contain occur in the same order in all tales. What is most intriguing about the folk tale is its duplicity: its basic form is repetitive, yet it is capable of producing a limitless number of the imaginative and colourful variations. For Propp, what makes a tale ultimately appealing is not its unchanging skeleton but the changing features of its characters and settings."

My thoughts on this piece of text:

I think that this theory is relevant to my research for this project. I hadn't thought about our life scenarios in this way before but in every circumstance we relay to others, there seems to be a fairy tale like theme to them. The characters and the themes are always there. Not always at the same time and not all of them in the same situation like Propp says. But when I relate back to the Holocaust and all the different people who were involved and the millions of different stories that came out of it...well, surely all 31 of those actions and all of those different people e.g the Hero, the Villain, the Donor etc were all involved and therefore can be found?

It's hard for me to look at the Holocaust as a story because it was REAL. It happened and therefore it is FACT. And a horrific one at that. So to apply Propp's theory to this huge historical event and to find that it makes sense, to me it shows, that sometimes we can subconsciously apply a story like quality to certain situations in order to protect ourselves and somehow make hearing about it more bareable. 

So by seeing the photo's and the sketches of the prisoners - does that make it easier to take on board what happened because we are somehow separated and therefore sheltered from the true reality?