Rape of the "Daughters" of Leucippus
This work is based on what is probably the most famous artistic depiction of rape, Rubens painting of the same name. But that’s not what you’d know to look at it. It is designed so that the process the viewer undergoes in understanding it, mirrors the process we should all undergo to understand the problems it describes. At first glance, it seems to be a random array of spheres of different sizes and colors. As you look longer, you can begin to see the spheres suggest other things if you look at them in combination. Eventually you see figures and horses emerging from the chaos of particles. But this is only possible if one loses their objectivity and begins to think subjectively. It’s the ability to put seemingly unrelated objects together that leads to understanding them. After being able to see that the subject at hand is a rape scene, one can look and see that some of its particles seem to be in motion. This is because it represents the beginning of a nuclear reaction. What does this have to do with an artistic rape scene? We’ve all heard about how the work of the early nuclear physicists was co-opted by the potential military applications of what they had thought of as purely objective Science. The prime example of this dilemma was Einstein. Once the theoretical genie was released, he had little choice but to recommend weaponization of his theoretical offspring to the lesser evil. So if one puts together pieces of the rape scene into a larger subject, one can see a portrait of the leading victim of this phenomena. But you don’t have to be a physicist to have been effectively raped by your own objectivity. The same problem has occurred in the arts in recent years, often with the blessing of the critical opinionmakers. The notion that art should simply exist as an object devoid of any larger subjectivity has enjoyed a certain disturbing (to me anyway) vogue. So this piece is truly a cautionary tale which I hope is itself an example of the need to have meaning and preclude an objectivity that can be a danger to art, science, and life itself.(By the way, the "Leucippus" of my title, but not Rubens ,refers to the Greek philosopher who invented atomic theory, and his theory as the "Daughters")
