Metamorphic Images, Eagle with Figures 1942

Curator: This is Pavel Tchelitchew's work, "Metamorphic Images, Eagle with Figures," held here at the Harvard Art Museums. What strikes you first about it? Editor: It's like looking into a smoky mirror, full of half-formed memories and veiled shapes. There’s a definite sense of foreboding, don’t you think? Curator: Perhaps, but look closer. The eagle, a symbol of power and vision, is woven into a web of human figures. Tchelitchew was fascinated by the idea of hidden realities. Editor: The eagle is there, I see it now, but it’s almost dissolving into the crowd. Is it a comment on the fleeting nature of power, or perhaps the blurring lines between the individual and the collective? Curator: It could be both, couldn't it? Eagles often mean kings, and the king dissolves back into his people eventually—and the cyclical nature of things is really what I take away here. Editor: A haunting reminder that everything is interconnected, everything transforms. I leave this knowing that something is hidden within. Curator: Exactly. Perhaps that’s the point of the art: to notice what remains hidden in plain sight.