Jonah

Jonah

Here, a child’s toy figure is swallowed by a taxidermy bass amidst a riot of paper waves in a re-telling of the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale. The source material for the collage backdrop includes nineteenth-century Japanese and American prints; the latter was published under the title “American Maelstrom” in the satirical newspaper Puck, and depicts the ship of state in peril. Fichter’s allegories and allusions are multi-dimensional and open to many narrative interpretations. Is Fichter’s Jonah being saved from the storm (as in the Bible’s version) or eaten alive?

Robert W. Fichter

1980

Coll132-P041

Polaroid print

21 1/2 x 29 in.