Vica Hicks
The Seeming Beginning
I want to write about a piece from the exhibition Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War. The piece is titled The Seeming Beginning. It is by Dorothy Hood in 1943. Created with ink and pencil on paper, it is 22 ⅛ inches by 34 ⅛ inches.
This piece drew me as soon as I walked into the exhibition. The haunted look on the main girls face, as well as the empty eyes and bizarre posturing of the other characters resonated with me emotionally. In this piece I saw myself. I saw myself lost and looking out into the world with wide eyes, while what I am seeing cannot be seen by the viewer. The cyclical and repetitive use of line highlighted the daily cycles we live through and that create us. The sun in the background cannot be see by any of the characters, despite how strong it is and how defined it is.
When I first looked at the painting I wanted to cry. I was overwhelmed with empathy for this girl, and overwhelmed with her loss in the world she’s living in. Overwhelmed by the darkness in her eyes. Despite her small stature she seems to be carrying all the hardships of the world upon herself.
After looking at it longer I put it into its context. This piece perfectly fit into the exhibition. It summons imagery of the hardships people living through WWII had to deal with. It reminds me of the tortured expressions of children in the holocaust. Of men fighting in Europe. Of people whose homes were ravaged and destroyed by war in the countryside. No image that I have encountered in my lifetime has been able to so perfectly reflect to me my own thoughts and emotions, as well as those of a specific time period in history. This is the success of The Seeming Beginning.
I couldn’t find anything to read on the painting. The box next to it only provided the basic information, and there didn’t seem to be much analysis of it online. I did however manage to read more about Dorothy Hood and found it pretty unusual that this was among her works. She was one of the first abstract surrealists, and this ink drawing doesn’t seem to fit into her large range of oil paintings (which, by the way, are also gorgeous and moving).
The Seeming Beginning
Others from the exhibition (click for larger version):
From the rest of MoMa:
