Meaning Behind Lumon’s Kier Paintings

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 9 of “Severance,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

“Severance” is known for its precise visual aesthetic, and that’s seen nowhere more clearly than within the surveilled halls of Lumon. Part of Lumon’s institutional power arises from its ability to make every employee adhere to the ethos of its founder, Kier Eagan, instilling a strict dedication to a mythology that blurs the lines between corporate culture and religion.

Lumon’s way of communicating the Eagan family’s ideals and beliefs is often through visual art. For the “Severance” artisans, using art to canonize the story of Lumon was “definitely intentional from the get-go and very important,” says Catherine Miller, the show’s prop master since the first season.

Art is everywhere in “Severance,” from Season 1’s O&D paintings and Perpetuity Wing wax figures establishing the Eagan history to the animation depicting the innie’s revolt that opens Season 2. Lumon uses visuals to create a specific way of presenting itself to the innies, whose bifurcated memories limit their understanding of a world beyond the office.

Miller emphasizes that “there is nothing random” about any of the artistic choices that go into shaping Lumon’s visual landscape.

“It all stems from this understanding that we, creatively, have about the history of Lumon as a corporation, what they’re trying to achieve and how they are trying to achieve it within these very specific frameworks,” Miller says. “We all keep each other in check to make sure that we’re within this original concept of what this company is, and how this company builds upon itself to achieve what it’s ultimate mission is.”

The artisans have back-and-forth discussions with creator Dan Erickson and executive producer/director Ben Stiller to take a description of an artwork in a script and develop it into something that fits “into the vision of the show,” says set decorator David Schlesinger, who joined “Severance” for Season 2.

Miller and Schlesinger spoke with Variety to break down some of the artworks that appear in Episode 9 and how they contribute to Lumon’s overall image.

“Kier Pardons His Betrayers”

“Kier Pardons His Betrayers” is a new painting that greets the innies in Season 2. Placed squarely in front of the elevator bank, the dramatic, grand scene of Kier Eagan showing mercy to four figures is a metaphor for the four refiners — Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry) — who are also “trapped up to their necks in the sand” following their use of the Overtime Contingency at the Season 1, Miller says.

The painting marks “a moment of forgiveness” in which Lumon is saying to the refiners that “Kier forgives you for what you’ve done,” Miller says. “It’s two-fold, as a lot of what Lumon artwork and practices are. On the surface, it’s forgiving, and on the underneath part, it’s maybe a warning that maybe next time you won’t be forgiven.”

The painting, which was illustrated and created by artist Danny Aviles, was inspired by Soviet-era propaganda art. The buildings in the background are a reference to the Salt’s Neck-based ether factory that Harmony Cobel worked in as a child, as revealed in Episode 8.

Stiller and production designer Jeremy Hindle were drawn to “deep, earthy reds and rusts” for the painting. The color scheme is rare for innies to see since their world typically features blue and green shades. Miller points out that the arrival of Ricken’s book, “The You You Are,” in Season 1 is the first time red is visible on the Severed floor. “It’s the spark of the revolution,” she says.

The color scheme also builds a sense of renewal, with the sun forming a halo on Kier’s head.

“It’s a new day,” Schlesinger says.

Ms. Huang’s Water Toy

In Episode 9, Mr. Milchick informs Ms. Huang that her Jame Eagan Wintertide Fellowship position has ended early. Ms. Huang is then instructed to use a bust of Jame Eagan to destroy her water game in a ritualistic acknowledgement of her departure.

The idea behind the ring toss water toy was to give Ms. Huang a childlike distraction to match her actual age, despite her preternaturally professional nature.

The team settled on making the toy cell phone-sized, “like this is the Severed floor’s version of what kids do, being distracted by a cell phone,” Miller says.

Because water games aren’t often made in that size, the team “fabricated this from scratch, and modeled it after a real water toy, made it larger, put the Lumon logo on it,” Miller says. Penko Platikanov, who handles the show’s sculpted objects, “actually carved our little Kier swimmer and painted them by hand, and then we attached that into the toy. And it was practical. It really worked.”

The artisans made 12 of the toys, and Miller made sure two were left aside. “We smashed the heck out of the other 10.”

There was some initial difficulty getting the plastic to crack. “We went back and did a round of inserts, very close up, where I was actually the one taking the bust and smashing it so that we could get enough power underneath it or over it to actually have it smash up,” Miller says.

The team originally experimented with different designs for the toy, including one of Kier with a mohawk and one where his arm is extended Statue of Liberty-style. “But ultimately, Ben fell in love with this diver and the old-fashioned swimsuit that was in the water toy because he was in water,” Miller says.

Jame Eagan Wintertide Fellowship Bust

Ms. Huang’s bust — carved from walnut, and as heavy as it looks — is an updated version of Cobel’s same trophy that marked her own fellowship period. Each trophy reflects Jame Eagan’s age at the time that it’s awarded. “When we see Cobel in Episode 8 pull out the bust of her Wintertide Fellowship, Jame Egan — he’s much, much younger. He’s 40 years younger,” Miller says. (Platikanov also worked on this bust.)

The “juxtaposition of the carved wood against the plastic” and “the idea that, as it smashed, the liquid inside bled out on the handkerchief that was laid down … was all very symbolic,” Miller says.

Iceberg Painting in Milchick’s Office

Once Milchick takes over the Severed floor, Cobel’s former office gets a new look. Schlesinger says it was actor Tramell Tillman’s mention of icebergs as a symbol that inspired the artisans to include an iceberg painting behind his desk. With icebergs, “you don’t really know what’s underneath, much like ‘Severance,’” Schlesinger says.

“When we changed the color of the wall to blue, having this very small painting was really impactful,” Schlesinger continues. “So we ended up with this. It’s printed on metal, and we didn’t know it at the time, but the painting is actually of an iceberg in Newfoundland, which is where we ended up shooting Episode 8.”

The piece is by an artist named Lisa Lebofsky. Schlesinger says that multiple sizes were tested, but the larger versions “dominated too much space on the wall,” and “that negative space around it is really powerful.”

Break Room Posters

At the start of Season 2, the innies return to a break room transformed into a supposedly more fun environment. There are new posters, including one labeled “Hang in There” and portraying Dylan facilitating the Overtime Contingency, which was the only one that was scripted.

“It’s just too weird to have only one — if you have one, you then call so much attention to it,” Schlesinger says.

So Erickson wrote up the slogans for the rest, Aviles illustrated the posters and graphic artist Tansy Michaud worked on the final versions.

The posters are Lumon’s “version of trying to motivate these people,” Schlesinger says.

They also serve the mission of trying to change Lumon’s image to the innies.

The design is similarly taken from Soviet-era visuals and “aligns with the idea of Lumon creating their own propaganda for promoting themselves as something new and different to these refiners,” Miller adds.

The purple color scheme of the “Hang in There” poster matches the chairs in the break room, and is an example of the “Severance” artisans and creatives staying within a particular, recurring color palette throughout the set, according to Schlesinger.

Purple shows up in other significant moments.

“Going back to Season 1, [purple] was a color for the empty administrative space on the severed floor that Mark passes through when he’s giving Helly the tour back to MDR, and it was the first time we saw purple in there,” Miller says. “We saw it again when Mark and Helly went in there to have their intimate moment. And then it’s also now in the break room too. It’s interesting that that color is coming up in certain areas.”

Creating the “Severance” aesthetic involves sticking to a number of general guidelines such as pulling from a set of fonts and colors. But the types of artistic mediums that the series uses to portray Lumon varies and evolves, as the company itself finds new opportunities to convey its message to employees.

“There was always a sense of depicting Kier through his different phases of life, and depicting him through those different phases in different art styles that would best explain those,” Miller says.

That includes the Fourth Appendix in Episode 4 in which the innies learn about Kier earlier in his life when there was an incident involving his brother, Dieter Eagan.

The Fourth Appendix is styled after vintage fairytale books and the Grimms’ stories in particular, which can be “terrifying,” Miller says. “Some of them are eerie or left you with an uneasy feeling, and so Ben definitely wanted to lean into that direction because that seems very apropos for what Lumon would be.”

“If Lumon had to create a fairy tale, there’d be some edge to it. There would be some underlying sense of menace,” she adds.

The Lumon art pieces usually carry a sinister feeling. The more absurd or humorous examples, like the animation of Irving that plays at his funeral, can also be disconcerting. “It’s whimsical,” Miller says. “But there’s a duality to it, because Irving is dead and innie Irving won’t come back. So there’s a fun bit to it, but then there’s also the Lumon-ism of it as well.”

The visual development of “Severance” relies on an awareness of Lumon’s “brand identity” and specific choices made around that, Schlesinger says.

Conversations about the “Severance” world were crucial early on, according to Miller. “The culture of Lumon grew organically from understanding what this organization is and what the company does and us building those ground rules together early on,” she says.

The “Severance” team carefully considers every aesthetic detail, down to the clothing and accessories.

“That’s what’s so great about this show, is being in the room and being able to collectively understand and create these worlds that we’re building and have everybody’s understanding of it respected and grow upon it and build upon it and become more and more specific,” Miller says. “So that there isn’t just some random watch on a person for no reason.”