The Polar Bear (1901)

by Alfred Kubin (1877-1959)

This mesmerizing drawing of a giant polar bear watching over a cabin in the Arctic is by the symbolist artist Alfred Kubin.

Unlike Kubin’s other works, which often feature a phantasmagoria of anxieties, dread, and despair, this work blends both comfort and dread. Is the bear stalking his prey or watching over them?

In Inuit tradition and spirituality, the polar bear represents the perseverance, intelligence, and resilience required to survive the freezing climate. We can easily imagine this giant polar bear as a godlike figure, coming out of the landscape at night.

In this image, the polar bear’s posture makes him almost look like a dragon without wings. To me he resembles Falkor the Luck Dragon from “The Neverending story.” It’s a fairytale image. The giant polar bear who comes only at night.

We know from Kafka’s journals that he admired Andrew Kubin’s art and writing. And it’s possible to identify similar themes in Kafka’s work, who with his “Tiererzählungen” (Animal stories) wrote about flesh eating horses, speaking monkeys, and the relationship between man and animal.

I’ve chosen this image because it represents a more gentle and romantic side of Kubin’s artistic output. His surrealist and absurdist images can be very extreme, often featuring themes of bestiality and self harm. The Nazi regime vilified his work as being “degenerate” or “Entartete Kunst”. Today we can see how Kubin’s work foreshadowed the loss of humanity and despair that would become emblematic of the 20th century. And yet his works are also morbidly comic, and feature a keen interest in the emergent preoccupations of his age: the unconscious, dream-analysis, surrealism, absurdism, and the isolation of modern man.

This image, whilst still a bit menacing , has a touch of the fantastical, which is why I chose it. One could easily imagine it as an illustration for Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series. I would encourage you to look up some more of Kubin’s art, but be aware that it can be very haunting.

“The Polar Bear” is also a good image for the Christmas Season. Here in Hamburg it’s been snowing just a little bit. And the Christmas Markets are already in full swing. Thanks for reading!

Julian

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