by Cornelius Krieghoff
MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
ART OF THE LOBBY
COLORADO POSTERS ⎔ GERMAN POLITICAL CARTOONS ⎔ LOG HUT ON THE ST. MAURICE ⎔ MT. HOOD POSTCARDS ⎔ MYSTERIES ⎔ NORTHERN RIVER ⎔ PAYSAGE D’HIVER ⎔ SOLEMN LAND ⎔ STORMY WEATHER ⎔ TOWER OF BABEL
APPEARANCE
Seen first beside The Solemn Land. Seen numerous times throughout the remainder of the film, in the same place. Also transports to the 2nd entrance for two passes.
Appears finally during the skeleton ball, to the right of the final skeleton group. It should be a different Krieghoff beside the skeletons. It probably switched because Hallorann’s corpse disappears in this scene, and the St. Maurice of Catholic mythology was a black man.
Weirdly, in the first Wendy-free shot of the skeleton ball the Krieghoff has vanished, leaving only Group of Sevens. You can also see in this shot the spot where Hallorann’s corpse should be, but has also vanished.
IDENTITY
Krieghoff got his start by enlisting in the army in 1837, from where he made sketches of the Second Seminole War, considered the most costly (violent) war of Americans vs. indigenous folks of all time. After moving to Montreal around 1846 he befriended the Mohawk peoples and did a bunch of paintings of them. Charles C. Hill, Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery, said, “Krieghoff was the first Canadian artist to interpret in oils…the splendour of our waterfalls, and the hardships and daily life of people living on the edge of new frontiers.” That’s a nice little metaphor for our story’s genesis (Jack going to live in isolation).
Krieghoff liked to paint numerous variants of certain paintings. Not duplicates, but scenes extremely similar to other of his paintings.
HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE
The St. Maurice was a major route for logging goods.
It had several names from the local indigenous folk: I especially like “river that ends” for how that speaks to the mirrorform (we’ve begun with the river that ends). It has a few major tributaries with interesting names, but perhaps none more interesting than Windigo, no doubt named for the mythical man-eating creature, which is sometimes linked to cannibalism.
MYTHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE
As for the mythic St. Maurice, he was one of the few black saints. His (debated) martyrdom involves refusing to clear a pass (slaughter innocents) through the Alps. So that’s a connection to conquest-through-mountains being a bad thing.
There’s also a cute myth about Maurice appearing as an apparition to a woman that has to do with him telling her that Mary (mother of Jesus) is both on earth and in heaven. That feels like a callback to the first shot in the movie, of the helicopter gliding over St. Mary Lake, as it reflects the sky.
FEAST DAY
The Catholic feast of St. Maurice is on September 22, and what’s the most recent newspaper lying around the Torrance apartment in Boulder showing on its cover? A story about the Vela Incident, a thing that happened on September 22. So the first day of this story might actually be the morning after the feast of the guy from this painting. Given the strength of my theory about the hotel meaning to kill Hallorann, it seems almost a little too convenient that we would have a painting here with a Windigo tributary, and an indirect reference to the “feast of” St. Maurice, a black saint.
Next art reference: Mysteries of the Lobby
MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
OTHER MAIN PAGES FOR SHINING ANALYSIS
THE MIRRORFORM ⎔ THE BEATLES ⎔ THE RUM AND THE RED
BACKGROUND ART ⎔ OVERLOOK PHOTOGRAPHS ⎔ GOLDEN SPIRALS
PHI GRIDS ⎔ PATTERNS ⎔ VIOLENCE AND INDIGENA ⎔ ABSURDITIES
THE STORY ROOM ⎔ ANIMAL SYMBOLS ⎔ THE ANNOTATED SHINING
EYE SCREAM 