monster

nationality

American

occupation / innovator as

art historian

university teacher

is symbolic of the latent and dangerous forces, in a greater or lesser state of freedom, of the human unconscious in its aggressive and ugly aspect.

For Walter Abell, in The Collective Dream in Art (Cambridge, 1957), monsters also symbolize the latent and dangerous forces, in a greater or lesser state of freedom, of the human unconscious in its aggressive and ugly aspect. He points out that monsters are the principal characters in the 7th century Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. He establishes an interesting comparison and asserts that, in later prehistory (the Neolithic Age, the Age of Metals), the monsters dominated the gods; between Antiquity and the Romanesque period, the gods succeeded in counterbalancing the monsters, who, nevertheless, still played an important rôle (as revealed, for example, in miniatures and capitals of the time); and in the Gothic period, the angelic spirits triumphed over the monsters. In more than one aspect, contemporary art, especially since Blake and Goya, might be taken as pointing to a certain ‘resurrection of the monsters’ and of the monstrous, as seen particularly in the surrealist movement.

Walter AbellThinkers

Walter Abell