ThunderThoughts
Intertwines 20260427
I recently realized — something no one had noticed or mentioned, and neither had I — that everything I showed during my recent open studio is intertwined. Not because I made and displayed it, but also because of an overarching theme behind it that was not immediately obvious. The cardboard heads (the pendant about Slavery, the Golgotha trilogy), the birds (rooks, ravens, and crows), the clumsy heads... they constitute an indictment. An indictment against inactivity, standing by, letting things happen: dehumanization, degeneration, and destruction of nature; resulting in war, slavery, climate change, biodiversioty loss. Everything is interconnected, with one common factor: we, I, us, humans. Yes, there is beauty in decay, because it reflects life, death, happiness, sorrow, hope, and solace. In essence, it attempts to open my eyes and ours, a plea for compassion, sacrifice, empathy, being.
Birds - My vultures, crows, ravens, rooks, etc. act as opportunists, omnivores, curious for what is new and different, and highly intelligent, ready to explore the landscape. They are the first, the early birds on the scene, scanning the landscape, horizon searching for something odd. Ravens act like Hugin (Thought) and Munin (Memory), the shamanic totem animals Odin would set out into the world each day at dawn, representing (the god’s) powers over fate and magic (ref. Edda).
Heads - My heads are we, the bystanders, the onlookers, those who let it happen, de zwartgalligen, de wegkijkers, Pharisees and Sadducees if you will; people of good will, observers that hesitate to take action; but also selfportraits, mirrors for human imperfection. Always outsiders,
Wildthoughts 20260517
Wild Men - Reading and looking at Charles Fregér's Wildermann (2012) I wondered how old these these zoomorphic figures (l'homme sauvage, e.g. Tschäggättä of the Valais) - half-man half-beast - could be. These figures look like archetypes, which survived by storytelling long before being written down, in folk- and fairytales, legends and myths. Around 1560. Pieter Breugel the Elder, depicted the Wild Man in several of his works ('The Struggle of Carnival and Lent', 'The Wild Man') as a common scene at Carnival. In the late 17th century, Nicolaes Witsen, a Dutch statesman and explorer, made the earliest known pictorial depiction "Duyvelpriester /Priest of the Devil', of a Siberian noaidi (schaman) wearing antlers in a 'pagan' ritual, From a christian missionary perpective this was the devil in disguise:), which had to be conquered, eradicated. Though often marginalized thereafter, it has always survived - in seasonal rituals, beliefs and festivals - reviving in modern times.
Bear - Looking at Fregér's Wildermann (l'homme sauvage), some wild men are half human - half bear. The bear enforces great respect because of its size and force. On one side this might reflect the real bear they were hunting since prehistoric times, covering themselves with bearskin not only to protect themselves against the cold, using it as camouflage, but also to unite the human spirit and the spirit of the animal prey. This might even go back to the times man was actually sharing his cave with bears for shelter, 17-20.000 years ago!
Prehistoric - Whether this is true, or not, evidence by other means is difficult: images - e.g. pteroglyphs, cave paintings, stone figurines, etc. - are scarce. The earliest indication of a ritual costume in human history of a Wildman, could be a cave painting from the Upper Paleolithic made 13.000 BCE in the Cave of the Trois-Frères, Ariège (France). It shows a humanoid figure - half man, half stag, with an animal tail and feet - later interpreted as a shaman, At Star Carr (England), archaeologists uncovered red deer skulls carved and worn as headdresses - likely used by shamans about 11,000 years ago (British Museum of Archeology). Shamans have been depicted wearing antlers until more recent times. But no proof of the bear yet.
Wild stories 20260521
Thoughts continued..
Storytelling - A bit of research showed, that anthropologists already have demonstrated that some common fairy tales can be traced back 5,000 years, or more, long before the development of written traditions. Graça da Silva & Tehrani (2016) suggests that some common fairy tales can be traced back to the origin of the Indo-European language family. Following phylogenetic comparative studies of cultural traits they employed language trees as a model for population histories, and found evidence that folktales like the Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin could be about 4,000 years old. One tale (‘The Smith and the Devil’) could be traced back to the early Bronze Age, some 6000 years ago. The story about a blacksmith who strikes a deal with a malveolent supernatural being (e.g. the Devil, Death, Genie, etc.).
One main character, the blacksmith, fits with the time when humans began working with metal and using it as weapons and tools, in other words when they became farmers and warriors. The other character, the devil in this tale (and death, monster, beast, etc. in others), might be much older though: this figure is not a profession, but a supernatural figure, originating from much more ancient times, that our ancestors were hunters and gatherers, roaming in a (super) natural world.
It is relevant to consider that language changes and words evolve over time: e.g. the words 'blacksmith' and 'devil' likely did not exist at first, but refer to someone who... resp. something what.... Both may reflect a certain role in stories, and only later - when people started to write things down - became the name for a particular character.
Mosaic - This brings me to another lineage of human descent: recent research shows that in Europe and Asia, humans (Homo sapiens) not only were sharing grounds (and caves) with other hominins, such as Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), and Denisovans (Homo longi, a non-sapiens) in East Asia, but als their genes (roughly <5%). Moreover, Platt et al. (2026) show that interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was strongly sex biased and that Neanderthal males mated more often with Sapiens females (or that their Y gene was more compatiblke than the other way around).. My wild hypothesis therefore would be that the Beauty and the Beast - a woman falling in love wtih a beast - might be one of, if not the oldest tales humans have told since prehistory, and that the Beast in fact was a Neanderthal.