Chimeras in the Workshop 

Aurel Cojan made this oil painting, "Chimeras in the Workshop", sometime in the 20th century. It depicts an artist in a room full of unfinished paintings. The scene evokes the artist's studio. There's an easel, a palette, and canvases lining the walls. But look closely – the figures in the paintings are distorted and ghostly, seemingly 'chimera' of the artist's imagination. Cojan was Romanian, and the unsettling mood here might allude to the oppressive political climate that shaped cultural production in Eastern Europe during much of the 20th century. Was the freedom of the artist curtailed, confined to this space of the studio? Were they forced to conjure imaginary things because they could not depict real ones? To answer these questions fully, we would want to consult historical documents, the artist's biography, and other artworks from the same time. Art historians piece together this kind of evidence to understand how social conditions shape the meanings we find in artworks like this one.