On the Edge of Eternity: The Union of Realism and Surrealism in Plutenko’s “Jesus and the Samaritan”
Stanislov Plutenko is a Russian painter whose work blends Realism and Surrealism. His unique style is a perfect expression for the themes of story painted above, “Jesus and the Samaritan.” [From John 4 — refresh on the story here]. In the painting, Jesus and the Samaritan woman talk on the border between what we in despair may call “reality” or “facing the facts” and the seemingly-surreal vision of eternity.
The Realism is in the grim depiction of a ruined town. Jesus sits on a pile of rubble and the woman lowers her jar into what looks like an uncovered manhole. Crumbling buildings and a charred tree surround them — conveying a sense of decay. The top half of the painting could be a photograph of a city ravaged by war. In Realism, artists seek to “portray their subject matter in an honest and accurate light without disguising the more unpleasant elements of life” (source).
The chaos isn’t merely external. This woman, as Jesus points out, has had five husbands — and not because four died. The crumbling background represents a life of chaos and hurt as the woman frantically searches for something she cannot find. Who knows what her exact circumstances were, but the painting gives her a past where nothing lasts and everything falls apart.
When Jesus tells the woman to fetch her husband she says, “I have no husband” (John 4:17). Maybe she’s finally declared her independence and decided she doesn’t need a man. Maybe the woman is the victim of her own desires. Maybe each husband was a generally decent man who tried his best, but was simply mortal.
The Surrealist element emerges as the manhole drops off into a cloudy sky. The bottom half of the painting looks straight out of a fantasy — the white rabbit might disappear into that hole at any time and if the woman slips she might fall into Wonderland. In Surrealism, artists use “a variety of techniques to map the clockwork of their dreams and innermost imaginings” (source).
The human heart longs for the eternal (Ecclesiastes 3:11). A heart has the potential and desire to receive perfect love, and believes it has found it when pulled into love with another (whose heart aches for the same). But, in what seems like a cruel trick, mortal hearts have a greater capacity to receive love than to give it.
And so a love between humans will never be fully satisfying. Driven by the emptiness in the unreached corners of our hearts, we search restlessly. And from man to man the Samaritan woman has moved — leaving behind ruins. The sky symbolizes the “living water” that Jesus offers the woman. An eternity that is terrifyingly cloudy, but that beckons nonetheless.
The painting draws our eyes to Jesus and the woman, who are positioned on the boundary of the real and surreal sections of the piece. Jesus knows the reputation she must have. He doesn’t condemn the woman for her adultery. He doesn’t tell her to “pull it together.” He doesn’t tell her to “shake it off” and remember that she doesn’t need anyone but herself.
He sits with her, amid the rubble. And he knows her struggle. Looking for complete happiness in another human is as futile as looking for drinking water in a manhole.
The woman encounters Christ at the divide between the ruins of her world and the depths of Heaven.
She stands, transfixed by Christ, as her jar is dipping towards the sky beyond the wreckage. In the story, He offers her living water — to quench the heart that (after five husbands) must have despaired of finding anyone. The woman later tells her village, “here is a man who told me all that I ever did” (John 4:29). In front of Jesus the woman is totally vulnerable, but also completely understood — perhaps for the first time in her life.
Combining surrealism and realism sounds like an oxymoron. But what is reality? Is it the ideals that inspire us? Is it the hard experiences that wound us?
Plutenko’s painting highlights the woman’s “reality” of marriages wrecked by fantasies promising satisfaction with something less than Christ. But the painting also reveals that the promise of “living water” may be a greater reality than anything yet known. It is here that Christ meets us — at the intersection of the eternal and the earthly.
