Pandora

"Pandora," is a still life painting that was painted from Bohrod's studio arrangement of the objects depicted and translated in a 1:1 ratio of scale. That was the format for most if not all of his post 1954 still-lifes. The picture is among the best designed and meaningful from a period in which he was both prolific and making art at an exceptionally high level of intellect and craftsmanship. The title refers to the figurine depicted in the picture, who by juxtaposition with the simulated prints of bees, wasps, and beast, desiccated creatures and assembled detritus, has taken on the guise of the first woman from Greek mythology. Pandora first appeared (unnamed) in an epic poem by Hesiod (ca. 8th-7th century BCE) where she is cast as the first woman molded from earth into a treacherous, evil beauty. Late she is named by Hesiod in "Works and Days," - another poem in which the most famous and notorious of her attributes appear. Gifted with attributes from the goddesses, she also bears a jar (later changed in the tale to her "box") in which is held "burdensome toil and sickness that brings death to men "including disease and "myriad other pains." Pandora scatters the contents of her jar out into the world, leaving only hope inside the vessel, which is sealed up again. Pandora's jar (box) became a familiar trope in literature and art, and in Bohrod's time was often made analogous with atomic power and weapons. In the Richard Aldrich film noir, "Kiss Me Deadly," for instance, that precise correspondence is made between a dangerous woman, nuclear energy and a mysterious box at the center of intrigue. Bohrod's picture includes a reference to an atomic explosion in his use of an actual mushroom emerging from the open vessel calling to mind the iconic mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as other subsequent test detonations.