Collections Database

Description:
Groups of men; bird-headed sculptures

Label Text:
French created this line-drawing on tracing paper in preparation for his well-known painting by the same name. Jeffrey Wechsler, in The Rediscovery of Jared French, reads this composition as an interpretation of the conflict between the persona (exterior self) and the anima (true and inner self) that Jung calls the "war of opposites." In Wechsler's scheme, the standing figure at front is anima--a purely psychic, potentially disturbing, in this case clearly menacing, entity--and the prone figure, persona. The opposing rows of figures in the background represent the clash of four sets of diametrically opposed forces that Jung names: conscious/unconscious, sublimation/repression, rational/irrational, and introversion/extoversion.

MD, 2013

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2012.286

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