One rarely encounters a single image that encapsulates an entire sitz-im-leben, and when it happens the encounter is a holistic spiritual/visceral selfquake - a tangible entanglement with the cosmic dark night of the soul.
At one level, we see a woman refusing a plate of food. But why? Is she vegetarian, rejecting the meat? Is she a carnivore rejecting the greens? Is the meal below the standard to which she has become accustomed, or is she simply on a diet? This surely, is the eternal feminine mystery, and as each viewer strives to answer the question they will find themselves drawn into the Nietzschien mirror - is the viewer looking into the picture, or is the picture looking into the viewer?
Or is it too much perhaps to see the woman as Eve, cast out from Eden, clad in pink (PINK, mind, not scarlet) to hide her newly discovered nakedness, one hand raised in horror as she strives to resist a second temptation, or indeed, a second helping?
Here we see the deeply fractured nature of the modern psyche - she rejects the plate with her left hand (the sinister side?), but no one is forcing it upon her - indeed, it is her RIGHT hand which holds the plate.
If we discount the theories of Snackenberg, Lunzsh, Beanburgher et al (I personally find their claims that this is a sexist work unconvincing) there can be little doubt that the message of this image is clear. We are ALL women in pink cardigans rejecting the burger and beans of life, while continuing to cling grimly to both.
But more - as I have argued in 'WOMAN WITH PLATE: A GNOSTIC REAPPRAISAL" (Oxcam, 2008) we are also the contents of the plate. We are the beans (the HUMAN BEANS?) weighed down by the greasy carnal flesh (the burger), hoping that since we are already cooked we will not, ultimately, be rejected by the huge cosmic pink-cardiganed woman.
Or are we?