Tessa Valo

The Procrustean bed is an expression derived from ancient Greek mythology and the figure of Procrustes. Procrustes, his name literally meaning “he who stretches”, was the ancient champion of enforced conformity and arguably the most interesting of Theseus's challenges on the way to becoming a hero. He kept a house by the side of the road where he offered hospitality to passing strangers. After a pleasant meal the guests were invited to spend a night in Procrustes`s special bed, which he described as having the unique property that its length exactly matched whomsoever lay down upon it. What Procrustes didn't volunteer was the way this miraculous "one-size-fits-all” conformity was achieved, namely as soon as the guests lay down Procrustes would stretch them  on the rack if they were too short for the bed or chop off their legs if they were too long. Theseus ended the life of Procrustes by fatally adjusting him to fit his own bed.

The Procrustean bed thus represents a standard that is enforced uniformly without regard to individuality; an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced. It is a basis for comparison, a reference point to which other things can be evaluated, but an arbitrary reference point! Society and its rigid social norms can in a sense be understood as a procrustean bed, suppressing  individuality, originality and difference;  its arbitrary norms cutting the legs and heads of its victims.

In The Procrustean Bed of Society the two heads in the upper part stand for society, one blindly setting the norms and the other watching if they are followed. The central image of a man carrying a dead body of a woman expresses the death of what would otherwise flourish and grow, the way the tree in the behind does, were there no man-created arbitrary imposed restrictions.