Betelgeuse and Mintaka, Part I - The First Contact

The Evolution of the Dragon, by Ellliot Smith

I did some search on Gutenberg.org about the subject fantasy art (for my book "Much Ado About Fantasy Art History) and found this scientific article (book) about dragons. The Evolution of the Dragon, by Elliot Smith (PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER) from 1919.
Very interesting one, maybe not for an average reader but for the more intellectual one....
If you are into ancient time, history, archaeology and anthropology maybe you will find it fascinating. Here a fragment from the article:

In the earliest records from Egypt and Babylonia it is customary to portray a king's beneficence by representing him initiating irrigation works. In course of time he came to be regarded, not merely as the giver of the water which made the desert fertile, but as himself the personification and the giver of the vital powers of water. The fertility of the land and the welfare of the people thus came to be regarded as dependent upon the king's vitality. Hence it was not illogical to kill him when his virility showed signs of failing and so imperilled the country's prosperity. But when the view developed that the dead king acquired a new grant of vitality in the other world he became the god Osiris, who was able to confer even greater boons of life-giving to the land and people than was the case before. He was the Nile, and he fertilized the land. The original dragon was a beneficent creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings and gods.

But the enemy of Osiris became an evil dragon, and was identified with Set.

The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother, as the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood; and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the conflict between Horus and Set.

When a substitute was obtained to replace the blood the slaying of a human victim was no longer logically necessary: but an explanation had to be found for the persistence of this incident in the story. Mankind (no longer a mere individual human sacrifice) had become sinful and rebellious (the act of rebellion being complaints that the king or god was growing old) and had to be destroyed as a punishment for this treason. The Great Mother continued to act as the avenger of the king or god. But the enemies of the god were also punished by Horus in the legend of Horus and Set. The two stories hence became confused the one with the other. The king Horus took the place of the Great Mother as the avenger of the gods. As she was identified with the moon, he became the Sun-god, and assumed many of the Great Mother's attributes, and also became her son. In the further development of the myth, when the Sun-god had completely usurped his mother's place, the infamy of her deeds of destruction seems to have led to her being confused with the rebellious men who were now called the followers of Set, Horus's enemy. Thus an evil dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great Mother and Set. This is the Babylonian Tiamat. From the amazingly complex jumble of this tissue of confusion all the incidents of the dragon-myth were derived.

When attributes of the Water-god or his enemy became assimilated with those of the Great Mother and the Warrior Sun-god, the animals with which these deities were identified came to be regarded individually and collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent, the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express the different manifestations of the vital powers of water. The process of elaboration of the attributes of these monsters led to the development of an amazingly complex myth: but the story became still further involved when the dragon's life-controlling powers became confused with man's vital spirit and identified with the good or evil genius which was regarded as the guest, welcome or unwelcome, of every individual's body, and the arbiter of his destiny. In my remarks on the ka and the fravashi I have merely hinted at the vast complexity of these elements of confusion.

Arcimboldo - an eccentric artis

I am busy at the moment writing a book about Fantasy Art and its history. While searching online and reading reports and books on this subject, I have discovered that some artists, that for me so obviously (and without any doubt) should belong to the genre of unique fantasy art/fantastic artists haven’t been mention at all; either in books or reports. Extremely peculiar.

One of the artists that I haven’t come across in any of the sources I looked through is Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Maybe the reason that nobody has mentioned him is the fact that his art is very bizarre and very difficult to categorize. People love to pigeonhole everything. If something or somebody is very unique or uncanny or extremely original and difficult to put away in a drawer with other similar things than sometimes we just ignore it or forget it. This is only my speculation.

Back to the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527 and grew up during the High Renaissance (Mannerism). He was extremely famous during his lifetime. He was a court painter of Emperor Ferdinand I (Habsburg), then Maximilian II and at the end Rudolph II. Part of Arcimboldo's duties included designing gala events for the imperial family. These were flashy affairs with gilded fountains and rivers of champagne, parades and promenades, flocks of coloured birds, music, theatre, tons of original artwork, sculptures, and much pageantry. Arcimboldo invented many unique special effects for these events such as an enormous hydro-mechanically powered musical instrument which acted like a modern colour organ; called the "Harpsichord of Colour." He was a man of many talents, and in the vein of other Renaissance great spirits (like Leonardo da Vinci) he served also as an architect, stage designer, engineer, water engineer and art specialist.

But as soon as he was dead he was totally forgotten. I can only speculate again about the reason, why people lost interest in his art. Perhaps he was misunderstood by the generations that followed? Maybe his sinister paintings weren’t enjoyable, interesting or intriguing? Or maybe they were too bamboozling, too insane for people of past centuries. Some of the contemporary reviews spoke about “the state of a deranged mind”. The interest in his abstruse and fantastic pictures, of which we only have a very few originals nowadays, revived only at the end of the 19th century. The surrealist movement brought him back into the public interest.

Personally I like his bizarre paintings. They are such unique art works, unique concepts, the creations of a very eccentric, intelligent and sophisticated brain. The documents of the time bear witness to the fact that monarchs and his contemporaries in general were also enthusiastic about his art.

His most recognizable paintings are known as the The Four Seasons series. The artistic concept of these pictures from 1563 was unique and laid the foundation of Arcimboldo’s success as a painter. The Four Seasons consist of four paintings - Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. All of them depict faces and heads but not normal human heads, vegetable-fruit-flower-tree heads.

Other famous works by him are: Water and Fire (1566), The Lawyer (1566), The Cook (1570) another series of the Four Seasons from 1572, two series of Four Seasons in 1573. He painted The Four Seasons twice again in 1577.

In 1591 he painted two of his most famous pictures, Flora (c.1591) and Vertumnus (1590-1591. Vertumnus is a portrait of Rudolph II, showing him as Vertumnus, the ancient Roman god of vegetation and transformation. The painting Verumnus consists entirely of magnificent fruits, flowers and vegetables. Rudolph II awarded Arcimboldo one of his highest orders in 1592. Next year on 11 July 1593 the painter died.

The Winter 1572 (Private Collection, Bergamo)

Looking at Arcimboldo’s bizarre paintings I can’t escape from thoughts about the human brain and the endless possibilities of the uncontrolled imagination. How did a man born in the time of the Renaissance, in a time when nobody painted such paintings, decide to create monstrous images of human heads?

For example, have a look at the Winter - head from The Four Seasons. The profile of the man is made up from the knobby stump of a tree, with a broken branch for the nose, moss for the stubble on the chin and two parasitic mushrooms for the lips. Is this more or less sinister than the hellish monsters thought up by Hieronymus Bosch? Arcimboldo paints a parody that is at times almost plausible in its suggestions of death and decay in a living being. The Winter portrait, the image of the head can horrify people, but at the same time it is so amazingly beautiful. The balance of the colour-palette is astonishing and tremendous. What a great imagination Arcimboldo had, and what a great colourist he was!

These puzzle-visionary-capriccio images of all the Portraits-Heads-Faces made by Arcimboldo are incredibly unusual, surreal and fantastic. I am curious if there are viewers who won’t see any faces in his paintings, only flowers and vegetables?

Above is a painting from a series based on the Four Seasons; this one is called Summer. The nose of the person appears to be made out of a very ripe cucumber. The chin is from a pear, and the cheek is made from a peach. Look closely at the man's coat. Can you see the name of the artist woven into the collar of his jacket, and the date 1573 embroidered on the shoulder?

Tamara Lempicka – the master of mystification.

Maybe you are wondering why I am talking here about Tamara Lempicka. She has nothing to do with Fantasy Art; not really.

She painted some surreal landscapes, at the end of her artistic career, but they were not especially outstanding or unusually beautiful. Personally I think they are not even average. But nevertheless she wasn't a surreal painter, she was an very original portraitist. But it is her life that is more interesting that her art. She was the master of mystification; she mastered the skill of disorientation, puzzlement and confusion to the highest level. There is no single thing from her biography she didn't colorize at all, sometimes for public relation purposes, sometimes out of vanity, indisputably that is why the story of her life is as difficult to put together as biographies of the masters of early gothic.

It is hard to tell you where Lempicka's paintings can be seen, firstly because they are owned predominantly by private collectors.

I had enormous luck once when I was in Vienna, I think it was in the autumn of 2004. Almost the whole collection of her paintings were to be found in BA – CA Kunst Forum. That exhibition was the first complete exhibition of her work. I was totally conquered by her work. As I was born in Poland I heard of course about her (she was one of the not so many famous female artists and not only that, she was Polish too!) but I never saw her work live. I expected lots of paintings in Art Deco style but I had no idea that she was not only very famous in her time for her lifestyle but also for her talent.

Some official text "She is best known for her pictures epitomising the flair and lifestyle of Art Deco: her Self-portrait in a green Bugatti stands as a symbol for the period, but Lempicka's exceptional artistic qualities have remained largely unappreciated. Today's art world is experiencing renewed interest in the figurative and realistic painting of the 20th century. The younger generation has rediscovered artists who, turning their backs on the official avant-gardes, developed independently and made their own way. Artists such as Frida Kahlo, Edward Hopper, Francis Picabia and Tamara de Lempicka have acquired new importance and relevancy in postmodern art history as well"

The BA-CA Kunstforum showed included around 60 major works from museums and private collections in Europe and the USA.

I found in her painting lots of cool erotic undercurrents. I will try to explain it: a combination of sultry sensuality and cool classicism, together with the influence of cubism give the paintings an original, unique erotic magic. It was a quite experience for me. I visited the exhibition twice, and spent a lot time inside the walls, admiring Lempicka's paintings. I was imagining the exciting time that she lived between the two World Wars, the time of decadence (almost every artist would love to be decadent), Paris, Hollywood, her marriages, her sexual affairs (lots of them). Her style of living was very different from contemporary moral norms. We have become more and more strait-laced. I am wondering why?

Where can you see Lempicka's work? Three paintings are owned and exposed in Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, in Paris. To know: "The Unfinished Man", "Kizette on the Balcony" and "Girl with Gloves". National Museum in Warsaw has owned three of her paintings, but unfortunately they do not expose it. (I guess it is possible to arrange a private 'meeting', I will try it very soon). The rest of her paintings are owned by private collections/collectors. If I am wrong, please let me know and correct me.

Dream

Marc Chagall, the visual poet!

I gave an interview recently about Art, Fantasy Art, me - being an artist. At one point the interviewer asked me which artists from the Surrealist Stream impressed me, influenced me the most. I said nobody in particular. But after few minutes I came back to the question. There is one painter that I was really impressed with, and I still am. Chagall.

I made once a long time ago a water colour painting 'la Chagall. I sold it or gave it to somebody, can't remember. I don't have it any more. It was a nice one. The street where my grandparents lived, a row of houses, a farmer with horse and wagon, a flying angel, a violinist on top of a church, some toys from my childhood. The whole painting was like a picture from my childhood of my happy tie with my wonderful granny and grandad.

Later that same day I was thinking about Chagall. I love his art, his spirit, some of his creations.
A great free spirit, great imagination, incredible feeling for colours, unbelievably productive.
Maybe in the beginning of his stay in Paris he was influenced by cubism but for the rest his art was unique. He dreamed his life. He painted a life not a dream. He painted that which he saw and how he saw it. Using his imagination and the pallete of the colours he has been telling stories about his life, his loves, his wives, his parents, his friends, his people and their history (Jewish). He was a passionate inmate of this planet.

He got very angry when people called him surrealist. He answered: "Don't call me a fantastic artist! On the contrary, I am a realist. I love the World."

He lived in a world where the cows were flying in space; the fish were playing violins, where the lovers were connected in a passionate embrace in the clouds, where everything was possible. I love his world; his world is my world too. Period!

My favorite creation by Chagall is his first big work, the sketches, drawings and paintings for the Jewish Theater in Moscow. I just loved them. I saw all of them in the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam.

A big collection of Chagall work (not only the biblical paintings) can be found in Nice in his own museum; Musée National Message Biblique, Marc Chagall. Don't expect any information in English. Welcome to France!

Moma NY has a few paintings and a lot of sketches and drawings.

The Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk (Belarus) owns the following collection: the series of illustrations to Nicolai Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" (1923-1925), the series of colour lithographs on the theme of the Bible, made in 1956 and 1960, the cycle of colour lithographs "The 12 Tribes of Israel" (1960) and other works by Marc Chagall.

La Mariee

Art Print

Chagall, Marc


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Introduction Video to a fantas

Introduction Video to my new story, in pictures as well as in word, about two extraordinary dragons, Betelgeuse and Mintaka from the Nebula in the Constellation of Orion.

Betelgeuse and Mintaka, the Boltzmann Babies.