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- Title
The Face of a Fiend: Convulsion, Inversion, and the Horror of the Disempowered Body *.
- Authors
Clifton, James
- Abstract
This paper examines strategies for the depiction of disempowered bodies in early modern art, as well as cinema, with particular attention to the subject of demonic posession and works by Rubens. While convulsion is well documented as a symptom of demonic possession in early sources and is frequently represented, inversion is less so, yet is also often represented. The upside-down state of a figure (either with respect to the fictive ground or merely with respect to the viewer) generally signals the figure’s loss of control over his or her own body. The trope is trans-cultural and transhistorical and has an unsettling and even horrific effect on the viewer because of the brain’s difficulty in processing inverted forms.
- Subjects
HISTORY of human figure in art; SEIZURES in art; INVERTED posture in art; RUBENS, Peter Paul, Sir, 1577-1640; EXORCIST, The (Film); HUMAN body in motion pictures; FACE in art
- Publication
Oxford Art Journal, 2011, Vol 34, Issue 3, p373
- ISSN
0142-6540
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/oxartj/kcr036