Storm, James Storm 

Vincent Xeus painted ‘Storm, James Storm’, an oil on canvas, sometime after 1981. The directness of the image, a monkey in what looks like a moment of cold stillness, invites us to consider the place of animals in our culture. In the Western tradition, animal portraiture has often been a tool of anthropomorphism. By giving animals human traits and emotions, they can become symbols of human conditions, virtues, or vices. But here, Xeus eschews such easy allegory, instead offering a seemingly unvarnished depiction of an animal perhaps simply trying to keep warm. We might also consider the role of the artist. Is Xeus commenting on the act of observation itself? Does the monkey represent the artist, observing the world from a detached perspective? These are the kinds of questions social art historians ask, using cultural context and institutional knowledge to further expand our understanding of an artwork’s potential meaning.