Lying with the Wolf
Lying with the Wolf. Kiki Smith. 2001 C.E. Ink and pencil on paper.
This delicate but large-scale work on paper, which depicts a female nude reclining intimately alongside a wolf, represents the assimilation of several themes that Kiki Smith has explored throughout her decades-long career. Featuring an act of bonding between human and animal, the piece speaks not only to Smith’s fascination with and reverence for the natural world, but also her noted interests in religious narratives and mythology, the history of figuration in western art, and contemporary notions of feminine domesticity, spiritual yearning, and sexual identity.
Lying with the Wolf is one in a short series of works executed between 2000 and 2002 that illustrates women’s relationships with animals, drawing from representations found in visual, literary, and oral histories.
The pair as depicted in Lying with the Wolf, however, seems locked in a more intimate embrace, as the wolf nuzzles affectionately into the nude woman’s arms. She wraps herself around the animal’s body in a gesture of comforting, her fingers stroking the soft fur beneath its ears and along the side of its stomach. The wolf’s wildness is tamed, and both figures seem to nurture one another
Smith imbues a story that is normally quite violent with a kind of tenderness that is characteristic of her overall aesthetic.
It has been suggested by some critics that Smith’s reinterpretations of Red Riding Hood and Sainte Geneviève represent a feminist approach to popular folktales. This is supported by her placement of “woman” amidst the natural world, but also, importantly, at a structural level: in the way in which the two narratives are fragmented and combined. Borrowing from divergent sources in order to forge a new storyline, Smith demonstrates the slippery relationship between a visual image and its multiple references
“Instead of presenting them in their traditional roles as predator and prey, Smith re-imagined these characters as companions, equals in purpose and scale.” The distinction between “predator” and “prey” might be thought of as a metaphor for hierarchies of power in human relationships, which have traditionally been drawn along the lines of gender, race, and class. Because patriarchal societies typically grant more power to men, while requiring women to be submissive or dependent, we can think of this “overturning” in Smith’s art as a political statement against such inequalities.
As is the case with Lying with the Wolf, several of Smith’s works integrate a diverse list of themes and motifs that she has accumulated over the course of her career.
Smith would come to embrace her religious upbringing, creating works that are spiritual, ethereal, and markedly more decorative. Celestial motifs and references to the natural world became ubiquitous, although these themes are still deeply connected to the body. As an investigation of the body in its capacity for fertility, reproduction, and nurturing, this turn towards the natural environment would eventually lead Smith to her interest in animals and our connections to them.
Lying with the Wolf is an extension of this yearning to connect the earthly with the spiritual and the personal with the collective.
This delicate but large-scale work on paper, which depicts a female nude reclining intimately alongside a wolf, represents the assimilation of several themes that Kiki Smith has explored throughout her decades-long career. Featuring an act of bonding between human and animal, the piece speaks not only to Smith’s fascination with and reverence for the natural world, but also her noted interests in religious narratives and mythology, the history of figuration in western art, and contemporary notions of feminine domesticity, spiritual yearning, and sexual identity.
Lying with the Wolf is one in a short series of works executed between 2000 and 2002 that illustrates women’s relationships with animals, drawing from representations found in visual, literary, and oral histories.
The pair as depicted in Lying with the Wolf, however, seems locked in a more intimate embrace, as the wolf nuzzles affectionately into the nude woman’s arms. She wraps herself around the animal’s body in a gesture of comforting, her fingers stroking the soft fur beneath its ears and along the side of its stomach. The wolf’s wildness is tamed, and both figures seem to nurture one another
Smith imbues a story that is normally quite violent with a kind of tenderness that is characteristic of her overall aesthetic.
It has been suggested by some critics that Smith’s reinterpretations of Red Riding Hood and Sainte Geneviève represent a feminist approach to popular folktales. This is supported by her placement of “woman” amidst the natural world, but also, importantly, at a structural level: in the way in which the two narratives are fragmented and combined. Borrowing from divergent sources in order to forge a new storyline, Smith demonstrates the slippery relationship between a visual image and its multiple references
“Instead of presenting them in their traditional roles as predator and prey, Smith re-imagined these characters as companions, equals in purpose and scale.” The distinction between “predator” and “prey” might be thought of as a metaphor for hierarchies of power in human relationships, which have traditionally been drawn along the lines of gender, race, and class. Because patriarchal societies typically grant more power to men, while requiring women to be submissive or dependent, we can think of this “overturning” in Smith’s art as a political statement against such inequalities.
As is the case with Lying with the Wolf, several of Smith’s works integrate a diverse list of themes and motifs that she has accumulated over the course of her career.
Smith would come to embrace her religious upbringing, creating works that are spiritual, ethereal, and markedly more decorative. Celestial motifs and references to the natural world became ubiquitous, although these themes are still deeply connected to the body. As an investigation of the body in its capacity for fertility, reproduction, and nurturing, this turn towards the natural environment would eventually lead Smith to her interest in animals and our connections to them.
Lying with the Wolf is an extension of this yearning to connect the earthly with the spiritual and the personal with the collective.