Jean-Léon Gérôme – truth emerges from her well to shame mankind

Late in his life, classical French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) painted a series of canvases on the topic of truth, depicted as a nude woman, trapped in or emerging from a well. The paintings were inspired by the Greek philosopher Democritus, who said that “In reality we know nothing, for truth is an abyss.” It was translated as “Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well.”

After several preliminary studies in 1895, Gérôme produced his definitive work on this theme—Truth Coming Out of Her Well, Armed with Her Whip to Chastise Mankind—the following year.

Gérôme was the leading French painter of his generation. He attended the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts and trained in the style now known as academicism, with a strong emphasis on figure drawing and realism. His subjects included historical and classical works, though he is probably best known for his Orientalism. One critic wrote that Gérôme was “arguably the world’s most famous living artist by 1880.”

The Truth

Gérôme was not the first to paint on the theme of Democritus’ aphorism, which was clearly well known in French artistic circles. A painting by Paul Baudry, The Truth (ca. 1879), shows a nude woman sitting on a well, looking into a mirror.

A few years later, Jules-Arsène Garnier used the same title when depicting a nude emerging from a well, clutching a mirror, with crowds of people fleeing. The painting was exhibited at that year’s Paris Salon. The catalogue entry included a line attributed to the novelist Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian: “The naked Truth one day came out of her well; everyone fled at the sight of her.”

Gérôme was no stranger to depicting nude women. Many of his Orientalist paintings feature nudes in exotic Middle Eastern settings, often bath houses. With his realistic, pre-photography style he was arguably the leading pornographer of his day. Two of his classical paintings prominently featuring nudes, King Candaules(1859) and Phryne Before the Areopagus (1861), created scandals and were attacked by some critics.

As the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more it’s the same thing. You might get away with posting Gérôme’s paintings of Truth on social media, but not a photograph with the same composition. Two centuries on from Gérôme’s birth, humanity remains unable to deal with the processes by which it reproduces and the bodies it inhabits.

Mirroring

The association of Truth with both a well and a mirror is very telling. The well represents our unconscious, the place where we bury—or try to bury—everything we’re afraid of, ashamed of, and unwilling or unable to take responsibility for.

The mirror relates to the psychological concept of mirroring, or ‘subconscious imitative behaviour,’ where we repeat behaviours such as gestures and language of people that we feel an affinity with, increasing our sense of rapport.

Mirroring begins when infants replicate their caregivers’ behaviour as these are deemed to be safe. But what’s not mirrored—like difficult emotions or sexuality—is instinctively felt to be unsafe and, lacking permission, is unconsciously repressed.

Truth holds up the mirror to reveal these unowned, unwanted aspects of the self through our automatic recoil reactions—the scandal, the fleeing crowd. Yet the truth mostly passes unnoticed, and we seek ever-stronger internal and external prohibitions to avoid seeing the mirror again, of feeling the burning flush of shame.

Shame

This is the shame that Truth rises from her well to castigate us about. What I encountered over two decades ago when I broke out of porn addiction and saw that my whole way of being was mired in unconscious shame. In time I saw our whole society was engulfed in toxic shame, which I describe in my first book, Sexcatraz.

Art historians differ on Gérôme’s intentions when painting his Truth series—it may have been an attack on Impressionism, which swept him into the dustbin of artistic history—but the underlying, driving view from Democritus and de Florian is crystal clear.

Early psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich wrote that “Man is the only species that has destroyed its natural sexual functioning, and that is what ails him.”

Humanity has so destroyed his conception of—and connection to—its feminine aspect that for thousands of years it called itself ‘man.’

Man—in his wounded, masculine-dominant incapacity to handle feelings—has rejected, repressed, demonised, punished, rationed and commodified the feminine—and buried this truth down a well.

And now, in the early 21st century, Truth comes out of her well, armed with her whip to chastise mankind. She is angry—hence the whip. She is not here for frivolous games where men and women act out bondage and masochism rituals, misinterpreted distress signals from their deep woundedness.

The prudish audiences of the Paris Salons found Jean-Léon Gérôme’s stark depiction of Truth too much to bear. Art critics lashed out. Time swept away Gérôme before his Truth could be recognised.

She can no longer be ignored. We’re drowning in mental illness and sexual dysfunction, the inevitable result of several thousand years of disconnection from our emotional and sexual natures. Now Truth will have her way.

The Nurturer Truth Lies in a Well, Having Been Killed by Liars and Actors, 1895

All images via Wikimedia (Creative Commons)