The world of art is very subtle, emotional, expressive. For many, it is no longer a secret that a painting can transmit not only the artist’s artistic intent, but also his state of mind, his inner world at the time of creation of the work. One of the most striking illustrations of this statement is a picture of Bill Stoneham, The Hands Resist Him.
Bill Stoneham Biography
Very little is known about the author of the picture , which provides the basis for imagination and completing the image of the creator. American artist Bill Stoneham was born in 1947. After birth, his mother by the name of Miller (this is the only thing known about her) left the boy in a shelter, where he spent the first nine months of his life. Then he was adopted by the average American Stoneham family.
How did Bill develop relations with his parents, how did his school days go and his formation as an artist began - a mystery covered in darkness. And the darkness in the history of Stoneham and his paintings abound. Who is he, the real Bill Stoneham, whose paintings are painted in the spirit of surrealism - a man trying to express his pain or just a showman?
Scandalous picture
The artist became truly famous after creating the painting The Hands Resist Him, which translates as "Hands resist him." The painting was painted in 1972. And in the same year presented at the exhibition. The canvas caused tears, especially sensitive even fainted.
The first owner of the picture was the owner of the publication Los Angeles Time. Some time after buying the canvas, he suddenly died. Bill Stoneham’s eerie picture passed on to the next owner, actor John Marley. Two months later he died. The actor’s family blames the canvas for Marley’s death and throws it in a landfill.
There, in a landfill, an American family finds her and brings her to her home. On the same night, the youngest daughter begins to see nightmares and claim that the children in the picture are fighting. This went on for some time, and the father of the family decides to install a video camera in the room with the picture, which responds to movement. The camera turns off several times, but no movement is visible on the recording. Family puts The Hands Resist Him up for sale at eBay Online Auction. The description of the lot is accompanied by its dubious history and the warning of the future buyer about the potential danger.
The history of the picture of Bill Stoneham is gaining terrible fame and is overgrown with legends. The site administrators receive letters complaining of ill health and nightmares after touching the picture. It becomes so publicized that the number of page views with this lot reaches thirty thousand. In the end, the picture of Bill Stoneham was sold to Kim Smith. He posted it in his art gallery.
Description of the picture
The idea for creating the canvas was a photograph of the artist himself, where he was captured at the age of five next to his sister. Having discovered this photo in the parental home, Stoneham complements it with surreal details. The picture is drawn in the spirit of the forties. The colors give the impression of a yellowed photo card.
The author depicted on it does not look with the eyes of a child, but of a fifty-year-old man. A doll standing next to him evokes horror with empty eye sockets. She looks like a living one, but the joints on her hands give her artificiality. With a bright sunny day, which gives shadows on the faces of the characters of the picture, the darkness outside the door contrasts. What is there, inside the house, the viewer can only guess. But we can clearly see children's hands stretching and resting on the glass door.
Psychological interpretation of the picture
Bill Stoneham himself describes the content of the picture as follows: “A doll is a guide to the world of dreams. A glass door separates the real world from the fantasy world. Children's hands are unrealized opportunities and lives. ” We can only guess what he is - the world of dreams and fantasies of a five-year-old baby.
If you look at the life history of the artist through the prism of this canvas, you can interpret its contents. For a person, the most important, fundamental for later life are the first months after birth. Bill Stoneham, whose paintings are striking in their abstraction from the real world, spent this time in a shelter. When the child was supposed to be in the hands of the mother, he lay alone in his crib. This is the deepest trauma of a lonely baby, which the artist perfectly conveyed. Having a family, he feels estranged. His sister seemed to be inanimate, because he was not taught close relations in the first months of his life. Surrealism is an attempt to escape from the real world, cold and not accepting, into the world of fantasies - also not the most optimistic ones.
The history of the picture: mysticism or a successful PR move?
If you look at the picture, not taking into account its terrible aura, then you can see just a canvas that conveys the pain of a little man. The reaction of sensitive people to the plot of the picture is explained simply - he resonated with their childhood mental trauma. The second owner of The Hands Resist Him died at the age of 77. The description of the lot at an online auction made it possible to sell the painting not for starting 199, but for 1025 dollars.
Years later, Bill Stoneham created paintings that continued in the dynamics of the plot of the work “Hands Resist Him”. In each subsequent painting, the author grew older, and the doll more and more acquired the features of a living girl. Analyzing these facts, the picture seems less and less mystical and more and more resembles just a successful PR move.
The fate of the painting and the author today
To date, the canvas is still in the gallery of Kim Smith. Apparently, in anticipation of the moment when the scandalous picture of Bill Stoneham will reach all the maximum in price. The artist himself continues to live in California and write surrealistic canvases, as well as digital images for publications.
Bill Stoneham, whose paintings gained popularity thanks to The Hands Resist Him, became a legend in some way and secured a comfortable old age.