"Metamorphosis" by Steffen Thomas

The Personification of Duality

Drenched in duality and contrasting symbolism Steffen Thomas’s “Metamorphosis” is a deeply multifarious piece. Just as it depicts both an “inner and outer” image of a woman, it’s tones and styles also reflect an “inner and outer” meaning.

Originally commissioned by a plastic surgeon and later dismissed by him, the painting shows a woman transforming into a more beautiful state, much like a butterfly. The piece features both a new self, with long hair and pillow-y bosoms and an old or hidden self directly behind. The violent colors are captivating and the result of Thomas’s deprecating eye sight that he developed as he got older. This piece was created in 1965, when Thomas was 59 years old and approaching the end of his time at the Stone Mountain, Georgia home where he raised his four children. Shortly after the rejection of this piece, Thomas gave up commissions. “This piece was his work,” expressed Lisa Conner, his daughter and former Steffen Thomas Museum of Art Director, “He painted for himself.”

Thomas’s uses a painterly style, exhibiting his mastery through thick brush strokes that texturize the entire work. According to Conner, the material used, polyester resin and tar, gives the canvas multiple layers and emulates Jackson Pollock’s drip painting technique. The size of the painting is striking, at 48” x 40” approximately, the painting both draws the eye to the action of the canvas and looms over the viewer, immolating something otherworldly.

Throughout his career Steffen Thomas idealized women subjects in his art. In the words of art historian, Anthony F. Janson, “[Thomas idealized women] ‘…are allied to the classical tradition stretching back to ancient Greece, without being specifically classical in appearance.” The juxtaposition of Classical Greek tropes and Modern depiction is effective in this piece specifically, manifesting itself in the Doric and Ionic columns to the right and left of the two transforming, abstract figures.

Conner explains that this piece draws from the Chinese religion, Taoism, which adopted The Yin-Yang Symbol, a dualistic Chinese philosophy. Thomas applied this idea to “Metamorphosis”, expressing that “people have two sides to their nature at different times—introverted and extroverted; happy and sad; good and bad’ the socializer and the recluse; the child and the adult; feminine and masculine.” Although Conner claims that Thomas’s subject matter got lighter as he grew older, this piece still deeply commentates on the stature of inner beauty versus outward appearance and expresses, not an ideal form of femininity, but a critique on humanity as a whole.