What Are We Looking at?

As viewers we find ourselves in a situation that at the very least could be described as awkward. We appear to have entered the post Eden-phase of Adam and Eve's existence, right at a moment when they are engaged in carnal desire and abandonment. Worse still, God is also apparently there, confronting the viewer by holding an apple as if to challenge us to think about our own voyeurism in relation to forbidden fruit, and whether or not we might lead a righteous life, or even care about doing so.

How Can the Image Be Interpreted?

It would seem that this intimate engagement is either just starting or ending. Either way, the act is likely to lead to the moment of ultimate surrender: the shuddering into another realm, into nothingness, an exquisite state of collapse, of letting go completely, of being carried away into temporary separation from ourselves in exchange for a brief connection to everything else.

God's unwavering gaze is upon us here, and most of us likely have memories of personal and large-scale tragedies that are difficult to reconcile with a benevolent and forgiving entity. How can suffering be explained? We are not likely to miss that Adam and Eve are an interracial couple; a transgression that would have cost the couple dearly in most times and places.

As if all of this weren't enough to contemplate in one image, there is much more. God made Adam in His own image and made Eve to keep him company from one of Adam's ribs. None of these people seem related to one another, a situation that begs the question of what “in His own image” means. Does it mean humanity in all its ethnic and unique manifestations on earth? Also, why is God wearing a suit? Is he in fact someone else? Is the man actually the Devil, impersonating God to trick us? A wolf in sheep's clothing? Or, is this a more contemporary, corporate version of religion? Someone is balancing the books of the vast religious entities around the world so that, in turn, we are encouraged to balance the books of our own deeds; keeping a ledger of morality to account for how we have led our lives.

God is all knowing of deed and thought. Is he telling us, “I too have seen you, just like this, in the throes of lust?” Is this bearded man meant to represent the latest incarnation of Big Brother, and to be all knowing, all seeing? Is he the head of one of the surveillance and security agencies that are incrementally intruding more into all of our lives? Is the fear and guilt of fire and brimstone replaced by facial recognition software and digital fingerprints so large that anyone's life can be laid bare, even via satellites orbiting the earth like solar-celled winged angels to keep an eye on all of us?

As if knowing that the viewer will eventually need a rest from these troubling questions, Jansson offers a kind of peace in the background of the image, a glimpse of Eden at night with the temptation of some exotic and intoxicatingly perfumed flower, even if one isn't quite sure what the plant entirely looks like. For all we know this plant only grows in Eden. But to get there we have to go through God, or the artist's version of Him, after hopefully first apologizing to Adam and Eve for barging in on their earthly life at such an inopportune moment.

God has the choice of either green or red apples. The one he holds in his hand is red, red like a traffic signal on our path to Eden where we are not to set foot. This is another reference to contemporary authority and obedience and for good reason. Running a red light may well end up in death—and not just one's own. And red light districts all over the world offer the promise of physical gratification but with the risk of potentially deadly STDs. Eve too, is a redhead, reinforcing the forbidden. From the Egyptians through the Greeks, redheads were shunned and sacrificed. In this context, maybe most significantly, redheads were thought of as the product of unclean sex, fiery and hot-blooded, vampires even. Thus we must wonder about the artist's choice. Just how bloody does it get, when removing another's rib?

The twice-repeated trinity in the candelabras speaks of something unassailable on the one hand and fraught by multiplication on the other. Humans were created on the sixth day, and were meant to labor for as many, before a day of rest, and because they were created on the sixth day, the number six represents sin. Thus the six flames in the image's mid-ground become a firewall between Eden and God and then between them and the viewer.

The closest object in the photograph is the chair. As a spectral visitor, traveling across time, I don't feel I can sit there as a viewer and even be seen as this visitor from the future. Maybe only God is aware of the visit. In fact, who knows exactly what is to come. As if to underline this, there is an heirloom table and more chairs, for eventually, as punishment, Eve will give birth, albeit painfully, and then, there will be a family.

To the viewer, the white sack may appear more negotiable. Not a white elephant exactly but something seemingly bulky and heavy. What is in the burlap sack? More apples? It seems as likely as not. When God put two attractive young people into the garden, naked, and without much to do, along with a talkative snake and an apple tree the outcome seems more predictable than not. In fact, how would God's word be spread without many voices to do so? The apples are already sorted by color just as tulip bulbs once were. In the 1600s, tulip bulbs commanded exorbitant prices. While not the first example of derivative swaps, they can be thought of as a referencing the irrationality of insatiable greed, predicated of course on yet another human weakness, the yearning for beauty in all of its manifestations.

One way to look at the sack is as baggage. I suspect we come into this world with a fair amount of it and through the circumstances of our lives add to it. Maybe that is why the sack is half empty; there is plenty of room for more. Maybe this image is all about the baggage we carry right from the start, when we were told that our deepest instincts and desires were wrong, unless highly contained within a sanctified structure. Possibly, the image uses an allusion to God and Adam and Eve to distract us from the sack. Maybe we are being told that we have forgotten to look inside of ourselves, where somewhere, implausibly and inexplicably, we have an innate knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong. Maybe the viewer is meant to pick up the sack, turn her or his back on the image, and start an individual and personal journey towards Eden. For some this will correspond with some established belief system and for others it will not.

Conclusion

Sometimes we have to take a risk. Jansson is reminding us of this, possibly that God meant us to take a risk, meant for us to see whether we can evolve and learn to balance our self-interest with the greater good in a way that is far more dynamic and unpredictable than the dogma we are made to think we are supposed to cling to.