Who was Leda? A beautiful princess from ancient Greek mythology, with beautiful black hair and white skin, who became the queen of Sparta. In mythology, on the basis of which she has been portrayed by many artists over the centuries, Leda was associated with the swan, i.e. Zeus, the arch-god transformed into a swan. From this seduction was born the beautiful Helen, the cause of the Trojan War.
In Miljard Kilk’s version, there is a surreal subconscious process going on here, where the swan (the pinnacle of power and politics) and Leda (the beautiful queen) look at the viewer rather than at each other, as in many paintings on the same theme. Leda has the head of a night owl and the body of a real woman, not a body painted after an ancient Greek ideal sculpture. A scarlet devil steals the limelight and there is a blue devil in the background. The scarlet rose in Leda’s hand suggests passion. The powerful symbols of the subconscious here seem to derive more from Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreaming, subconscious desires and urges, and the censors that guard them. The theatrical, dramatic scene was created by Miljard Kilk as an artist who has worked in theatre and film, and who had a major survey exhibition at the Estonian National Museum in Tartu in 2022.