The uncanny and the real

Psyche

Kees van Willigen · 1915–1990

Date

1981

Medium

Oil painting

Size

81 x 101 cm

Psyche depicts a “gasworks” (usine à gaz), an expression that now describes an unnecessarily complex system. In a depression, under the watch of metallic technocratic birds, assemblages of disparate blocks connected by galvanised pipes are being raised with cranes, with no legible purpose. The whole is surmounted by a cross.

The background is an arid, mountainous desert under a dark, deep green sky.