[One Thousand Characters a Day] Jeong Yeoul's 'Art Museum Only for Me' <5>

Editor's NoteThe works in the 5th gallery 'The Museum of Gods, Humans, and Liberation' in ＜A Museum Just for Me＞ deal with the passionate and intense desires of humans. In Caravaggio's ＜Judith Beheading Holofernes＞ and ＜Medusa＞, one can read the primal desire of the artist to fight against painful reality, even if it means becoming a monster. Fuseli encourages the courage to find light even in endless nightmares, Waterhouse depicts the death of Orpheus, the eternal role model of the artist's spirit, and Dal? portrays Christ nailed to the cross with a provocative perspective that transcends convention. Following the works and their interpretations by painters who vividly capture the joys and sorrows of characters from mythology and literature will deepen your perspective on viewing paintings. Word count: 1046.

According to depth psychology, no dream is a 'meaningless dream.' Every dream can have a prophetic function in the dreamer's life, but we simply fail to interpret it properly. Depth psychology views all images appearing in dreams as 'manifestations of the unconscious within me.' In other words, even if others appear in dreams, those others do not actually refer to those people but are 'projections of myself.' The reason monsters in dreams are frightening is the intuition that 'the identity of that monster is within me.'

In Fuseli's ＜The Nightmare＞, the subject of the nightmare is the woman sprawled on the bed, but the monster resembling a monkey pressing down on her might also be 'another self within her.' In other words, the monster we must fight is the one inside us. That monster torments us in various ways. The monster that threatens, 'You will never overcome this difficulty,' the monster that whispers, 'You can never beat that person,' the monster that scares, 'No matter how much you want to meet that person, you never will.' Inside us are countless monsters blocking our own happiness.

No matter how loud the voices of those monsters are, they can be summarized very clearly: 'You cannot live the life you want.' This inner monster might be the true identity of the fear we must fight even in our dreams. The woman in Fuseli's painting is currently surrendering in the fight against the monster. She is completely crushed by the monster. If you have experienced such a terrible sleep paralysis, the signal of that dream might be the unconscious's desperate cry: 'Wake up quickly and fight that monster.'

(Omitted)

Johann Heinrich F?ssli, , 1781, Detroit Institute of Arts

Is there no monster beside you right now? If so, you have not yet debuted in the ring called life. Are there too many monsters swarming around you? Then you are standing on the proper battlefield of life. Are you fighting monsters every day? Then you are truly living the best life. You, who fight countless monsters every day in your daily life, yet do not get tired or lose courage, you are the true hero.

- Jeong Yeoul, ＜A Museum Just for Me＞, Woongjin Knowledge House, 19,000 KRW