Adam and Eve c. 1920

This painting of Adam and Eve, by Franz von Stuck, is a very dark and moody scene. Look how the artist conjures the figures from the depths of shadow. I am very sympathetic to artists and what they were thinking when they made this sort of work. It’s clear that Von Stuck was interested in the symbolist movement. He's trying to get at some kind of underlying truth – a hidden reality, perhaps? I imagine he might have started with a dark ground, and then slowly built up the figures with thin glazes of paint. The serpent, wrapped around Eve's arm, is particularly striking. The way the light catches its scales, is almost jewel-like! It has a kinship with other paintings that also try to find the mythic quality of the human body, or maybe more accurately, an inner state of mind. It reminds me that all artists are in conversation. It's about ambiguity and uncertainty. You know, there are many interpretations of the world. It’s not fixed!