Adam and Eve and Art

There was a sculpture in the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt that really spoke to me. Really. It stopped me in my tracks and grabbed me and shouted at me. As art sometimes does. 

Adam and Eve by Max Beckmann.

Bronze sculpture, designed in 1936, cast in bronze in 1979. 

In the sculpture, Adam is huge, impersonal, with the snake coiled around him, peering over his shoulder. 

Eve is tiny, huddled in fear in his hand. Adam holds her there, but he doesn't see her. 

And then I had to know. Who is this Max Beckmann who could incorporate into one sculpture all the angst and fear and powerlessness I have felt as an Eve in a patriarchal society, particularly in my attempts to belong to my childhood religion, the Mormon church? How could he have known? 

I grew up in a patriarchal household and a patriarchal religion. Women are meant only to do certain things, to become certain people, under the instruction of the men who lead. The women can be great, with the permission of the men, as long as they do women things first.

Why? Why are women so restricted? Eve is an allegory of why. Woman is a temptress. Women choose poorly when left on their own. 

In Mormon landscapes, Eve is even more of a twisted soul, a compelling story. Over the years there have been words about how Eve chose correctly. And yet in their deeper ceremonies and sacred spaces they show Eve as the reason why women stay quiet, why women don't lead, why women need a husband to take them to heaven. 

 So the Adam and Eve story has been one that has bothered me for years. 

Typically, male artists show the story like this, another painting from the same museum:

Eve the temptress. Eve the evil. Eve who will make sure that snake gets you as soon as you reach for the apple. Watch out for Eve. She is evil. 

So it was such a shock to turn the corner and to see the sculpture that showed what the Adam and Eve story really means to women. 

Eve is vulnerable. In our patriarchal world, a patriarchal religion, Eve depends on Adam for safety and well being. And yet Adam is inhuman, unaware, and in league with the snake. You can tell from the sculpture that things are not going to end well for Eve.

How? 

How did a German man in the 1930s reach into my head and capture the experiences of a Mormon woman in the 21st century so precisely?

I looked up the sculpture at home. What had others written about the process, the art?

And of course it was disappointing. 

Max Beckmann, a man, was angry at the National Socialists, who in the 1930s had treated him with hostility, and called his art "degenerate".

And so he sculpted himself as Adam, a man in power, with the evil temptress representing the National Socialists there in his right hand, where he was going to crush her.

...

A thing about art is that is doesn't really matter what the artist intended. It can still speak to you in your own way, and make you sit up and think. 

And yet ... I think these fancy museums need to display more women's art.