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What comes to mind when you think of existentialism? The encroaching tide of death? The meaninglessness of your life? Existentialism isn’t the easiest of concepts to understand, and it’s even more difficult to come to terms with. Philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus spent decades scratching their heads trying to comprehend and serve existentialism to audiences who also had trouble thinking about life in that way.
Powerful, philosophical pieces emerged from existentialism, especially during the postwar era. Everything from sculptures to paintings depicted the abstract feelings of freedom and choice, dread and doom, identity and self-realization. While these diverse works often land on the more somber side of art, they’re still works of beauty to behold and appreciate. So with that, here are four pieces of existentialist art on which to ponder.
“The Card Players,” a series created by Paul Cézanne, is one of the earliest examples of existentialism in art. Since card games were often played in lively settings with plenty of food, drinks, and fun, Cézanne’s depiction of a card game seems to diverge from the norm. The male characters are focused on their own hand with stern, absorbed stares, the bottle of wine remains unopened, and the atmosphere is completely devoid of amused observers. Cézanne’s work isn’t just about what’s in the painting, but also what’s missing from it.
Alberto Giacometti denied directly relating “Walking Man I” to tragedies of war, but he did portray “the absurdity and fragility of human existence” with this piece. Although a man is clearly weathered by his surroundings and life to the point where he is nearly a skin-strapped skeleton, he still trudges on forward.
Francis Bacon is hailed as one of the most poignant examples of postwar existentialist art. “Study for the Head of a Screaming Pope” displays harsh motion distorting the face of a screaming man; it is a painting that reminds some of a “prevailing sense…of a human figure screaming into the void.” And if existentialism could be summed up in one phrase, it would be that.
One of the overlooked members of the postwar era of existentialist art, June Leaf asserts her talent and creative interpretations of existentialism. The colors Leaf uses in “Arcade Women” have the same aesthetics of an arcade video game; by placing these female characters within that setting, all sitting in opposite directions from one another in solitude, the inspirational woman highlights the absurdity and self-absorption in life.
