WASHINGTON — Rapunzel is a story that can usually be summed up in a single image--a captive girl lowering her blond tresses down a tower for her beau to climb up on.
That's what artist Catherine Satterlee remembered about the fairy tale until the day she had a strange revelation in her therapist's office. She was exactly like the 17th-century damsel in distress, she said out loud, then went home to reread her daughter's copy of the story.
"For me, it has to do with desire," Satterlee said of the tale. "Rapunzel completely neglects her desires. She's just sort of hanging around this tower and throws her hair out the window in response to somebody else's desire."
"I hung out in my studio for 20 years and that was very similar to the story of Rapunzel. I sort of waited for things to happen rather than acting," Satterlee said.
Three years later, Satterlee's own modern and dark Rapunzel paintings--images strikingly different than the feel-good bedtime-story treatments the story usually gets--are the springboard for an exhibition that runs until January at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington.
Krystyna Wasserman, curator of "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Hair," literally searched the globe for Rapunzel images.
She collected books, illustrations and puppets that conveyed as many interpretations of the story as she could find-from the feminist to the funny, the classic to the contemporary. The collection of 41 texts written in English, French, German and Dutch and the artwork gathered from international artists are displayed so their many variations can be seen side-by-side.
The fairy tale begins when a pregnant mother has cravings for rampion (which translates to "rapunzel" in German). When her husband steals the greens for her to eat, he's caught by the garden's owner, a witch, who tells him he can take as much rampion as he wants-in exchange for their unborn child.
The daughter is born, the witch takes her away, and when she is 12, she places the girl, Rapunzel, at the top of a tower to live shielded from the outside world. The witch visits the girl by shouting "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair," and then shimmying up the tower, grasping onto Rapunzel's tresses.
A prince, after surreptitiously observing the witch's routine, also begins climbing up Rapunzel's hair for visits and falls in love with her. When the witch finds out, she cuts off Rapunzel's hair and casts her off into the forest alone.
