Untitled 

This painting was made by Zdzislaw Beksinski, but we don't know when. What we do know is that he was a Polish artist, working through the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His art is full of what we might call dystopian imagery. It can be understood in its wider social and cultural context as an expression of anxieties about the decline of religious institutions and beliefs, especially within the former Eastern Bloc. The figure is dressed in what looks like a Catholic nun's habit, yet the face is obscured and the hands appear skeletal. The imagery is disturbing, but it is clear that Beksinski draws on the established visual language of the Church to create meaning. This particular image presents a critique of institutional religion, questioning its moral authority. Historians can research the social history of religious belief in Poland and Eastern Europe to gain a greater understanding of this work, but remember that the meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.