Steps, Ladders, Stairs in Art. Volume 1
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Infinity is an integral characteristic of the “stairway to heaven”. This is central to Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s installation (V1: 260). Since the 1960s, a primary theme of Kusama’s work has been numerous repetitions and reflections. Here it takes the form of a luminous road with no beginning or end, of which the viewer encounters only a small segment. An optical illusion makes the construction – a steel ladder wrapped with fiber-optic cable and two large round mirrors placed above and below it – appear endless, leading upwards to meta-space.
A different point of view on the heavenly ladder (V2: 278) is offered by Fabrice Samyn, depicting it from the opposite perspective with a wide base and steps narrowing as they get higher. Turning the iconographic symbol of man’s connection with God upside down, the artist transforms it into an instrument created by God for communication with man. The installation’s title, “You are the salt of the earth”, also suggests this interpretation. It is a reference to the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in the Gospel (Matthew 5: 13,14), in which Christ speaks of the great strength of spirit a person needs in order to travel the path of self-improvement and resist the forces of evil.
Stairs were used to represent the dialogue between the earthly and the divine long before the birth of Christian culture, in ancient architectural forms such as the Babylonian ziggurat and the Egyptian pyramid (markedly in the step pyramid of Djoser), symbolizing the ascent from various elements of nature to a common divine whole. The Dogon people’s stairs (V1: 217) are both a manifestation of the hierarchic nature of the cosmic world order, and in addition to their ritual character have a utilitarian function. The long, winding sandstone stairs, with graded steps and forked peaks, allow the inhabitants of the area around the Rocks of Mali to get to and from their homes.
Some Biblical scholars have noted the connection of the heavenly stairway with the Egyptian Ladder of Hathor, along which the souls of the dead ascend to heaven. Based on texts inscribed on the walls of corridors and pyramid chambers, Egyptologists concluded that the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt believed that they could reach the world of the dead only by climbing this ladder, and that deities guarding it (Horus and Set) assisted the deceased, turning the ladder into a path to heaven. During the Ancient and Middle Kingdoms, a wooden model of the ladder would often be placed in tombs; later, priests would draw a ladder on papyrus to illustrate texts from the Book of the Dead.
Stairs and ladders as ritual symbols have developed into a familiar metaphor for the passage out of the world of the living. In this context, a ladder appears in the finale of Slava Polunin’s lyrical show “Chu”. The show tells the story of a group of old clowns, who have only one thing left to do as their lives near their end: to leave on time. A ladder decorated with gold funereal tassels, lowered from “heaven”, indicates the solemnity of the moment; but it is not the ladder that predicts the clowns’ departure. At the appointed hour, an angelic guide comes for the hero, who is late, and punches his one-way ticket, thus marking the end…
Chaim Soutine, The Red Staircase at Cagnes, 1923–1924, oil on canvas, 28.5 x 21.25 ins
In Mihail Chemiakin’s work “The Ladder” (V1: 253) a border between two planes is clearly marked. The passage here represents not the transition between worlds, but rather the choice of a moral path. The change in color from red to white can be seen to symbolize the choice between spiritual purity (white) or bodily passions (red), if we consider red and white to be symbols of the diabolical and the divine. The dichotomy of red and white, present in European culture since the early Middle Ages, today is most often associated with the Russian Revolution.
“Stairs and ladders play a tremendous philosophical role in human life. Our life unfolds on the earth’s surface, on this plane, but we strive towards something higher; step by step we attain some sort of heights, like Jacob. And vice versa: if we do not behave as we should, we descend closer and closer to the underworld. The ladder is a symbol of human existence.“ [4]
Red and white tones predominate in Chaim Soutine’s paintings, notably in his “Red Staircase at Cagnes” – a profoundly tragic image that reflects the artist’s dramatic life and its constant psychological stress. This landscape from the artist’s early period is an attempt to comprehend the meaning of color. Soutine was very interested in red as the color of both life and death. His red staircase, reminiscent of the backbone of the split carcasses so often depicted by the artist, runs along a crooked street, conveying the finiteness of the flesh and the “fluidity” of being. Here once again we find the heavenly staircase, uniting the carnal and the sublime, the inaccessible but possible.
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Interview with the artist, 2018, France.
Leningrad nonconformist Gennady Ustyugov’s 1993 painting ”Whither Leads the Ladder?” (V1: 159) can be seen as a reference to Russian Orthodox Marian iconography. Ustyugov places the ladder, in dialogue with a female figure, against the background of an unreal landscape. The bent position of her translucent body reminds the viewer of the angels in Andrei Rublev’s “Trinity” icon, and her head is tilted toward a ladder, suggesting it is a way to the mountaintop. The female figure is imbued with the mood of estrangement from the earthly and the readiness to make a journey; the presence of a ladder as a transcendental sign gives hope for salvation, hope that the soul will gain strength and recover after suffering. The painting largely becomes a mirror of the internal state of the artist himself, who has defined his primary question in the work’s title: does the ladder represent atonement or punishment?
“My soul is created as if in the image of Russian icons.”
Stairs as a symbol of Christ’s suffering appear in the Catholic tradition as early as the 9thcentury and is found in icons, crucifixes and retablo. And although the presence of a ladder in “Ascension to the Cross” and “Descent from the Cross” is not mentioned by any Gospel – ladders first appeared in illustrations and images – ladders are often mentioned in theological manuscripts from the Middle Ages. One can even speak about the formation of established medieval iconography in the image of Christ climbing a ladder to the crucifix, an example of which we see in the illustration by Pacino di Buonaguida to the c. 1320 manuscript “Vita Christi” (V1: 102). In Fra Angelico’s “Nailing of Christ to the Cross” (1442) (V1: 106), both executioners and Christ are depicted on ladders leading to the cross. Thenceforth the ladder is frequently an attribute of execution. For example, Jan Luyken’s 1685 etching, “Anneken Hendriks, tied to a ladder and burned in Amsterdam in 1571” (V1: 119), depicts the execution of a woman condemned for heresy. Here the ladder itself, in an analogy to the cross, is the instrument of execution.
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Interview with Gennady Ustyugov, Sobaka.ru Journal, 2014. http: //www.sobaka.ru / city / art / 21028 (accessed date: 10/20/2019).
Among contemporary artists, Richard Humann developed this theme with a neo-conceptualist twist in his 2008 installation “ You Must be This Tall” (V1: 114–116). The artist explores the collective subconscious through a projection onto everyday objects in a miniature amusement park. And apparently innocuous, at first glance, children’s attractions turn out to be modified to serve for executions.
Thus, we can talk about the ambivalence of the image of stairs and ladders, now uplifting and sacred, now aggressive and destroying; they are often encumbered with elements contrary to their practical nature. Stairs or ladders, helpful tools that accompany a person on his path, can be transformed into obstacles blocking that path. The materials, stairs or ladders are constructed from, can evoke associations with physical pain, communicating an aggressive message and a danger sign.