Salvador Dali's "Family of Marsupial Centaurs" (1940) references Hugo Steiner Prag's "At The Master Grave" (1915) for The Golem



 
 
(Still collating, and also have to add articles about how Gleeson and Giger reinterpreted elements of this painting in their own works)

leading from
and

“Family of Marsupial Centaurs”


a) I noticed that James Gleeson's painting "The Sewer" painted in 1940 appeared to reference perhaps aspects of the colour scheme of this painting and I couldn't really understand what Gleeson was getting at, but Gleeson's piece also seemed to reference Hugo Steiner-Prag's "At The Master's Grave" from his illustrations for Gustave Meyrink's The Golem from 1915.


"At the Master's Grave" by Hugo Steiner Prag for The Golem, 1915
(https://p2.liveauctioneers.com/)


b) Moment of realisation
17th April 2017 Paul Chimera who runs the blog for http://www.dali.com/ published an article about his explorations "Dali’s ‘Marsupial Centaurs’ is Both Surrealistic and Classical",    

Reading this inspired me to have a clear look at this painting and suddenly I could see commonalities between it and Steiner-Prag's Golem drawing, and this realisation helped very much because I could then perceive commonalities between the Dali painting and Gleeson's more obviously, and also I could see that Giger was aware of connection through various details in his Mordor VII

There was a crooked dividing line of light and shadow in Steiner-Prag's image running from the upper middle right and it would lead in the direction of the lower left corner but dissapear halfway through the picture





c) Comparing the middle and lower left of Steiner-Prag and Dali's compositions
Compare for example the rounded tombstone on the bottom left transforms into the buttocks of a horse. 

The flat topped broken tombstone below it transforms into a slanted of lit ground where beyond is covered in shadow.

The knee turns into the lower left females centaur's breast, the left side of the body and the head transforms into the centaur woman's arm.

The eye of the Golem transforms into a bunch of grapes held by the centaur woman




d) Comparing the upper right of Steiner-Prag and Dali's compositions
The large tombstone on the upper right transforms into the upper body of the upper right female centaur. 

The circle in he side of the block on the top of the tomb transforms into a cavity in the stomach area of her human torso. 

The pointed top of the tombstone turns into space between her raised arms and beneath the baby's genitals

The shadow on the tomb stone represents the area of her upper torso
 
Branches at the top in the background turn into the raised baby

No comments:

Post a Comment