ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the animal image in art from the side of aethetics. In paleolithic art, animal images seem to have restorative power to reduce castration fears. The fate of animals as reflected in Western art is one of declining power. Since the shaman was empowered by the totem, it also meant the decline of the shaman. Sigmund Freud equated the totem with the father, feared in rivalry with his sons for possession of women. Turning to Greece, the sphinx appears in the seminal myth of Oedipus. The myth can be seen as representing a phase in the displacement of the shaman-sphinx who calls for human sacrifice and increasingly so when disasters like famine or plague test his sorcery. The metamorphosis of Lotis, a later edition of the great virgin earth mother Gaea, central to the painting, represents the loss of power of the virgin goddess in favor of priapic gods.
