Cleopatra 

Michael Cheval painted ‘Cleopatra’ in an undated moment of his career. In his surrealist rendering of the Egyptian queen’s famous encounter with Caesar, the artist seems to want us to think about the power of myth and the artifice of history. Born in Siberia but later working in the United States, Cheval has an interesting relationship to the western canon. He engages with its traditions of history painting, but then renders them strange through surrealist juxtaposition. Look at the way that the artist places Cleopatra and her entourage against the backdrop of a stage, complete with props and curtains. Are we meant to be drawn into the drama or kept at a critical distance? It is a question of how the institutions of theatre, painting, and museums create fantasies of the past, fantasies that, even now, are contested. Studying the ancient sources and their later interpretation can help us see how much our understanding of the past is constructed. And in this way, art helps us understand our present.