Interpretative Anxiety: Two Biblical Deluge Paintings by J. M. W. Turner in Light of Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety
No. 22 (2026-02-27)Author(s)
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Christian Reinach BaumgartnerIndependent researcherORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-8146-0188
Abstract
The Christian iconography of Turner’s paintings Shade and Darkness, and Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) (1843) has been only incipiently addressed by historiography. With the aim of delving deeper into it, in this theoretical essay I seek to demonstrate that Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety (1844) can function as an interpretive tool for the Christian narrative of the paintings, particularly as a despairing message about the human condition, especially in the nineteenth-century industrialist context. To this end, I establish a cyclical dialogue between the formal dualities of the works, the biblical duality of sin and reconciliation, and Kierkegaard’s religious-existentialist development.
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