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标题：Re-Proposing ‘Heroic' Abduction in Art: On the Side of the Victims The Abduction of the Daughters of Leucippus by Peter Paul Rubens (1616) and Classic Tragedy by Michael Merck (2004)
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作者：Rosanna Lauriola ; University of Idaho, US
期刊名称：New Voices in Classical Reception Studies
印刷版ISSN：1750-6581
出版年度：2011
期号：06
出版社：The Open University
摘要：Engaging in a dialogue with past artists and becoming a part of a historical continuum, Michael Merk, an emerging artist from Texas (USA), has often chosen mythological themes to express his own feelings and view of life and, at the same time, to prompt his viewers to reflect on matters that have shaped the western Weltanshauung, by thus stimulating an active reception of the Classical Antiquity out beyond its time. One of the classical themes Merck has chosen touches on a social issue which is as topical as ever: abduction and rape. Central to the painting of P. P. Rubens, ‘The abduction of the daughters of Leucippus’ (1616), which constitutes the main model of Merk’s collage ‘Classic Tragedy’ (2004), the ‘heroic’ rape/abduction-image characterizes some, if not most, of the key monuments in the canon of art history. Re-elaborating the painting of Rubens through his collage ‘Classic Tragedy’ Merck reacted to the standard view of rape-abduction among the Ancients, which early modern era artists and humanists have appropriated, and he thus takes the women’s side, the side that has often been disregarded through the tendency, evident in preceding artists and art-historians, to ‘sanitize’ and aestheticize the event, i.e., to discount the predatory violence of the deed.