Orb Print

Oil on Belgian linen 30”x 30” unframed. This image depicts the figure of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (Russian: Григо́рий Ефи́мович Распу́тин; 22 January [O.S. 9 January] 1869 – 30 December [O.S. 17 December]) who was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II, or Nikolai II (Russian: Никола́й II Алекса́ндрович, Nikolai II Aleksandrovich; 18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918), known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer in the Russian Orthodox Church, the last monarch of Russia, who appears inverted in the foreground. Rasputin gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia. He has been described as a monk or as a "strannik" (wanderer, or pilgrim). After traveling to St. Petersburg, either in 1903 or the winter of 1904–05, Rasputin captivated some church and soocial leaders. He became a society figure, and met the Tsar in November 1905. In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for Alexi Nikolaevich (Russian: Алексе́й Никола́евич) (12 August 1904 [O.S. 30 July] – 17 July 1918) of the House of Romanov, the last Tsesarevich and heir apparent to the throne of the Russian Empire. Alexi is being uplifted by his mother, Alexandra Feodorovna (6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918), Empress of Russia, and spouse of Nicholas II—seeking treatment for her son, a hemophiliac. Rasputin is seated on a donkey cart encased in an orb that levitates between two pylons. Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna appears beneath the orb. Alexandra, a devout Catholic, was motivated by the positive psychological function of religion which was unquestionably universal and necessary. Her religious inspiration had two sources: the desire for immortality, and a craving for communion with god. Her faith was based on these twin needs and gave her a sense of purpose and a feeling of peace and wellbeing. Her belief gave her mastery over her fate, where science was narrowly concerned with control over the natural world. She poses as a devotional figure, witnessing Rasputin’s triumph over corporeal harm, and refusal to capitulate to death, as she offers up the Tsarevich Alexis in supplication. Her nakedness underscores her vulnerability and susceptibility to Rasputin’s mysticism. Orb explains magic in similar terms, stressing that it has both psychological and social functions. Rasputin’s magical ability to alleviate Alexi’s suffering could be seen as a system of beliefs and practices that derive essentially from emotional responses to situations of frustration. Magical rites and spells, though standardized and associated with an elaborate taboo system and mythology, are the outcome of emotional experiences, of natural responses to those impasses in practical life when technical knowledge or control is inadequate. When forsaken by her knowledge or coming to a gap in her practical activities, Alexandra’s nervous system and her whole organism drive her to some substitute activity that science and medicine was unable to provide. Thus Rasputin’s magic served to bridge over the dangerous gaps in every important pursuit or critical situation; it gave Alexandra a feeling of confidence and poise—and a certainty she was staving off death. As Malinowski writes, “Magic flourishes whenever man cannot control hazard by means of science. It flourishes in hunting and fishing, in times of war and in seasons of love, in the control of wind, rain and sun, in regulating all dangerous enterprises, above all, in disease and in the shadow of death” (Sex, Culture and Myth,1963:261).