"A FANCIFUL PAINTING depicts four shaggy foxes approaching a pair of blue high-heeled shoes. Take another look, though, and something about the animals stirs unease: These foxes are not staring at the shoes, but back at the viewer, and the economy with which their bodies are rendered leaves them looking rather flat. This uncanny feeling reveals itself as misrecognition. These are not "foxes"; they have crossed the infrathin divide between beings and things to become "furs.""
"The appealing dark-blue, square-toed pumps near the bottom of the page are lined in satiny pink, or . . . can it be that the rosy pigment depicts penises inside those shoes? It is an unexpected rendering that if recognized at the time would have been shocking to genteel viewers and Fascist censors alike, playing into the link between shoe/foot fetishes and emasculation that had been introduced in psychoanalysis and explored by Surrealists during the interwar years."
"The apparent whimsy of Opera n. 11 (Renards) belies layers of potentially complex significance. For audiences unfamiliar with Rama's work, it is a good place to start, since it contains subtle examples of the many complex iconographic and topical elements that would pervade her work for more than seven decades: eyes, shoes, animals, and prostheses, as well as dismemberment, liminality, taboos, and, of course, sex and desire."
Opera n. 11 (Renards) portrays four shaggy foxes approaching a pair of blue high-heeled shoes, yet the animals stare back at the viewer. The rendering flattens the figures and reveals that they are not foxes but taxidermied furs with heads still attached, a 1938 fashion. The dark-blue, square-toed pumps are lined in satiny pink, with a rosy pigment that can be read as penises inside the shoes. The image invokes shoe and foot fetishism, psychoanalytic readings of emasculation, Surrealist themes, and Fascist-era sensibilities and censorship. Recurring motifs include eyes, shoes, animals, prostheses, dismemberment, liminality, taboos, sex, and desire.
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