*

Movement and (e)Motion

When the viewer moved, so did The Kiss: the flowers seem to ‘blend’ together giving the illusion of wind through petals, metallic stars dance in the void, the robes glint and glimmer which makes you feel like the lovers are about to get up because their clothes are moving. 

Trailing threads from the man’s robe spread into the meadow. For me, this is about love spreading love: they are happy and beautiful, and trailing that right into the ground below. The man’s clothes appear more rigid decorated in mostly squares, hers are mostly swirls and circular shapes. But her swirls seem to have influenced his overcoat, and she has squares on her arms. This makes me feel like they’re becoming embedded in one another, that ‘embedding’ is driven home further by the inlaid stones in his overcoat.

Motion is in their stance: he’s bending (somewhat uncomfortably) and she’s kneeling. That’s not a super natural way for either of them to stand, so this isn’t a relaxed kiss, this is harnessed in the moment. Her stance is curious: reminding us of her agency, willingness and intention? The kiss is happening to her, but it appears to be a choice. She’s kneeling, but if she wasn’t, would she not tower over him?

The stances also comment on how love is less a give and take, more a give and give. She is giving him surrender, and he appears to be giving her protection by covering half of her visible form. She offers a cheek and he’s giving her the mouth and face. There are flowers behind her hand locked in between them: maybe she’s giving him flowers? She has flowers in her hair, and is decorated with Nature so maybe she is giving him growth? The squares on the masculine character’s clothes could look like doors, perhaps Love could be a door to opportunity for the feminine character.

Scale is important because the people are almost life-sized, occupying ~ 75% of 1.7m in height. Scale indicates importance, grandeur and the anonymity of subject generalises these Lovers to be Anyone In Love.

To Kiss or Be Kissed

My favorite part of this painting is the Kiss itself: it’s not on the mouth! It isn’t about the obvious, perhaps because this secondary cheek-kiss is more intimate given their relationship. The clothes appear erotically charged through their color vibrancy and decoration, flushed cheeks and willing passivity signal this could be about romantic love. It doesn’t look friendly.

Criticisms of The Kiss often cite female passivity. To query this: is it passive to accept service?




Klimt’s intention in stance and kiss could be to convey that for lovers, acts not necessarily ‘public displays of affection’ can feel shocking and private to witness because of the energy they are charged with. It’s like being at a bar and knowing the two people sat opposite each other on their phones, ignoring each other, are married. 

This is a dynamic painting because of the effect of movement in the meadow, and because it captures a single moment in time that typically doesn’t last very long. Ephemerality indicated through stance and the unnatural brightness of the world occupied could pitch this as a journey of shared movement, a becoming ‘Liebespaar’ i.e. falling in love (made more powerful by you as viewer-voyeur falling into the dizzying decoration and void). 

It could equally symbolise a journey more lewd and differently explosive, but by drenching it in precious metals and painting it 6ft tall, Klimt makes this something Holy.

*

Death’s three key hues are blue, purple, and green. Life’s are a lot warmer: coral, mustard, yellows, peaches, pinks, colder greens, red, brighter blues than in Death’s robes. Sombre against celebratory. Life contrasts against the background much more strongly than Death. 

Death’s purple-ish robe is royal. There is unresolved movement between sad and vibrant in Death’s color palette with muted blues against green, vibrant purple-blue. It’s like the clothes are supposed to be sad, but are not quite as sombre as they should be.

Covering and Ornament

The crosses on Death’s robe mark Christianity and morality, evoking gravestones and reminders of death. Crosses can also be seen to mark respect for Death, despite its negative associations of sorrow, grief, ending; because it is unlikely crosses are associated with taboo or evil. The specific co-sign of crosses defangs the Death skeleton without sacrificing complexity and gravity.

Death’s robe has on it whole circles, circles bisected in two, a circle bisected horizontally with the lower half then bisected vertically. Life’s robes have circles with no linear divisions; there are some circles that have a curve kind of like that in the Pepsi logo. Death’s crosses contrast with the circles on Death’s robe, angular opposite curve. Death robe feels narrower than a wiggle skirt: the compression suggesting ‘stuck’ which implies inevitable.

Life is wearing shapeless covers of patterned and ornamented fabric – no less, but differently embellished than Death’s robes. Life’s symbols are of nature (flowers) drawn simply, childlike alongside triangles. Triangles suggesting perfection and power (Holy Trinity, parent state, Mind Body Spirit, Past Present Future). The mathematical symbol for change is also a triangle, life is constant change.

Death’s expression contradicts expectation: the 1908 version shows Death’s side profile with head bowed but this changed to quizzical, humorous, playful, sinister by 1915. The head tilt and grin are almost playful like I’m about to hear a joke, which is surprising. 

In ‘Life’ there are closed eyes, the tallest character wears an almost sybarite smirk, two figures have their head bowed like they’re wrapped up in each other. Life’s character set is not really looking at anything, self-absorbed, not looking at Death. Life is engaging with Life, which is the point of Life.

Position, Staging and Weight

Klimt’s Memento Mori juxtaposes skeletal Death against a mass of nine human figures of all ages: one blissful, one smugly joyous, one with mouth half open, one half-visible with eyes closed, two heads bowed, one baby and one elderly woman, one blind figure with eyes wide open.

Life’s side of the painting has a sense of pantomime. This ‘artifice’ might come from the poses being unnatural, the expressions exaggerated and the combination of people unlikely. It is also kind of ‘unreal’ how life must be lived without thinking about death so much as to be paralysed by fear, but aware of mortality enough to maximise for contentment. Klimt posed Death somewhat realistically. In contrast, Life’s character set is physically placed in ways we would never see people. Death carries connotations of honesty, because bone is natural, when clothes are stripped there is a body, when the body is stripped there is skeleton: the ultimate equaliser.

Death takes up about half the visual weight of the ‘Life’ form. The distance between Death and Life’s figures is about the size of Death. Death’s form is cleaner: the curves are longer, it is obvious what the figure is, Death is contained inside the canvas space. Life’s forms contrast with wavier edges, a huddled mass of many people of unknown origin and terminus, existing in a meadow ending ‘off screen’. Life is much messier, with implied motion because of the waviness of everyone’s robes, and through causing eyes to dance around the section as we scan the faces. The background is curved and graded lighter behind Life, appearing as though Life emerges from a tunnel of (dim, so, faraway) Light. Death isn’t in a ‘resting’ position but the figure looks still, expectant.

Visual asymmetry and the awkward distance between the two sets of figures suggest imbalance and disconnect. Life is not a choice but the living have agency in terminating it. Death is a destination that cannot be left, but can be entered by choice. Life is the absence of Death. Death is Life absenting. 

Second Look

While the subject matter and Klimt’s painting style are obvious cues we should ‘look deeper’, in looking deeper, there is a sense of things not being as they are (or, should). In personifying abstract concepts Klimt has made us empathise, leading us to see Death as ‘a being like us’: finite. The curiously blissful expressions in ‘Life’ initially suggest serenity, fulfillment, togetherness but to smile so sweetly next to Death feels foolish. Death’s head tilted creates curiosity, coupled with the skeletal grin this doesn’t produce a menacing skeleton. A grin with so many teeth suggest flight attendant instead of belly laughter, it’s not quite honest. To ‘show your teeth’ is to communicate you can defend yourself – can Life? In querying this expression (and we naturally are drawn to faces), the association is initially with humor and we forget that we see a grinning skull only once Death has visited. 

The grin and teeth make the skull as a symbol essential to dialogues of mortality, honesty and surprise in this painting. The skeleton, being covered by clothes like a body, is less ‘raw’ – more anatomically accurate Grim Reaper.

Death is armed with a club, the only entity in possession of an object other than clothing. This also makes Death the only figure with obvious intent, suggesting agency and power. The weapon suggests inevitability, Death’s entitlement. A club specifically might say bluntness, directness, surprise: the moment of Death always unforeseen.

Looking again: an armed, powerful, relentless Death dressed in more masculine colors opposing static, unaware, helpless Life in colors ‘hyper–natural’, feminine and warm. Life’s figures feel more fragile now, ephemeral, perhaps posed unnaturally precisely because the pose will never hold. 

Between Versions

Klimt’s revisions are the most compelling technical aspect of the painting: they feel correct. The later background competes less with the figures, and it also feels a lot less holy. It feels much more brutalist, reminding me of the Chromatica Ball stage where Lady Gaga uses minimal setting to allow a ‘real hard look’ at the performance. The newer background does not impede eye movement between both sides of the painting as much, forcing a hard look at the relationship between Death and Life. It also reminds me of the black curtains at the backs of stages.

In between versions Klimt raises Death’s head, expands the visual weight of Life, makes Death more fluid with curving robes, and arms Death. At risk of sounding overly simplistic, these are all cues to pay deeper attention: to see more sides of the same thing so you feel more fully about it. These moves also empower and endear Death; the previous version’s bowed head version is too formal, too spectre-like to feel personified. 

I’m not like other girls, I’m sad

Death appears alone, Life in ensemble. Death is a door to homogeneity: When you are dead, you are dead like any other dead person. When you are alive, no two lives are the same. Not like the opening of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way”, where Tolstoy homogenises happiness.

Elsewhere, referring to the group therapy setting, Princess Babygirl writes in ‘Millenial Maxxing’ that “All the people who hurt us are complicated in the same way, sacrificing in both directions as the lamb and the butcher”. It looks like hurting (as an action, not a reaction) is made up of the same-ish landscape. To live unhappy long term can make you feel ‘dead inside’. Happy families can be understood as those with contentment, the source of which is acceptance. Personally, nine Lana del Rey albums and several years spent on tumblr make the sameness of sadness feel like a welcome sentiment. 

Playing with these quotes alongside the painting is interesting, because Klimt renders Living as terribly complex, full of purpose yet pointless, and death a leveller. Homologation is the relationship between two opposing entities – let’s examine these homologies:

• Life : Death
• Alive: Dead
• Content : Discontent [Happy : Unhappy]
• Heterogenous : Homogenous



Klimt’s ‘Life’ characters are not painted so bright as to shout from the canvas, they swell from a tunnel of light, they are many, they are different in age, gender, body, position, expression – they are alive, some of them are smiling, none look particularly sorrowful. But Death is not particularly sorrowful, not really menacing. This creates ambiguity in seating Death at both the tables of Content and Discontent, because the feeling that doesn’t neatly fit there is acceptance – that’s what the painting says as a whole, even as the sides Life and Death speak for themselves. Death appears to fade, but not quite, but is not a spectre of doom. This visual effect feels like an acceptance of the human condition.

Words are the wrong medium for trying to explain what this painting says. They can just guide you to the kinds of stuff you might want to think about.

I’m inclined to feel artists become more introspective during times of instability, likely because the Self is the most Controllable thing – our desire for control increases alongside background anxiety. Therefore I am unsurprised Dali centered himself and wife Gala in his painting, and that Gaga’s album explores fears and facets of the Self in The Fame Monster. I see glimmers of this now in the culture ‘waking’ to endemic lack of agency alongside the serious threat of rising levels of authoritarianism, perhaps by working on physical fitness or imbibing Ozempic, expanding their skill sets in times of prolonged post-pandemic lack of prosperity.

A curious difference is the optimism which shines through Gaga’s album, yet despite icons and symbols of hope, is lacking in Dali’s painting. It is impossible this opinion is not tinted with the lens of nostalgia, because I grew up with Gaga’s album and am far more familiar with it. I do think there is some objective truth in the feeling of Gaga’s album being positive, even if purely that it is dance music, which was experienced in togetherness – whereas Dali’s art creates some distance purely through egocentricism of theme (you can’t unsee his face, you can sing Gaga’s lyrics). 

Dali also titles the painting such that monsters are doing the invention, whereas Gaga’s monsters are self-invented in tandem with socially constructed identity, self-experienced. It’s not the monsters that have the power, in her work so much – in Dali’s, they are empowered.

Masks abound in Dali’s painting, which of course echoes the many masks Gaga wears. I cannot yet talk more about this.

Money Made With Love is Art?

Dali said he had a “A pure, vertical, mystical gothic love of cash”. Which may explain why he designed the Chupa Chups logo, of all things. It’s undeniable he did a good job, placing the logo on the top of the sucker instead of the left, so you would always see it no matter how the lollipop was placed. Gaga during her ARTPOP days wanted to reverse Warhol who wanted to make art of the soup can, by ‘putting the art on the soup can’. I’m not sure that Dali beat her to it because he was not quite as literal as putting a Bosch print on a McQueen dress, or a Koons on the album cover…but I wouldn’t say he didn’t. 



Gaga remains a hypercommercial, if not the most commercial, artist of our times: featuring in blockbuster movies, Vegas residencies, two Haus Labs marketing emails weekly, tour tickets retailing with multiple zeros at the end of the price tag. It is intriguing that her merch may sell out, but she doesn’t: the integrity coming maybe from the feeling that everything is genuinely felt, even if it’s expensive. 

Finally, I would like to introduce the interesting coincidence that Joan Miró who introduced Dali to the Surrealists, painted ‘Carnaval de Arlequin’ in 1924. Gaga released her album Harlequin a full 100 years later, in 2024, in a melding of her own cinematic universe and that of Todd Philips’ Joker. 



Another interesting link is Dali’s Mae West lips sofa turning up in ‘House of Gucci’ in a scene where Maurizio, played by Adam Driver, is in the middle of flirting with Paola Franchi. He tells her initially not to be scared of touching anything, but later says “actually, be a little scared, that couch costs more than most people’s apartments in Monte Carlo”. 

Here are two Surrealist skulls:

• Salvador Dali, Skull of Zurbarán (1956) 
• Paul Delvaux, Skeletons in an Office (1944) 

There follows a little information about them alongside what I consider the aspartame of analysis, since the goal is just a very brief glance, not a deep, lingering, full-fat look.

Squelettes dans un Bureau

Paul Delvaux was a Belgian painter considered a Surrealist despite only briefly working with the Surrealists. Surrealist techniques disposing with ‘reality’ appear to have erased constraints for him, with the artist noting that ‘painting lit lamps’ alongside ‘Roman arches’ unlocked ‘great inventiveness’. 

He used skeletons as a leitmotif but publicly available research or commentary on his work focuses on the female nudes. This makes it difficult not to scoff at societal attitudes to skeletons and skulls, but the lack of cranial content encountered likely reflects my weaknesses as a researcher. 



This painting is titled ‘Squelettes dans un Bureau’ translating to ‘Skeletons in an Office’. In some sources it’s called ‘Skeletons in an Office (Waiting for the Librarian)’. It measures 99 x 123.5 cm and features a library with six skeletons in it. Delvaux’s title is funny, echoing my experience in trying to write this because I too was waiting for the librarian (Facebook group admin to give me institutional PDF access). 

The skeletons are used as stand-ins for humans, which he did frequently. Initially, this creates humor from the expectation gap: boney entity doing human thing. Beyond being funny, the use of the skeleton has an anonymising and slightly objectifying effect. In the setting of an office, this is effective. A 21st century reading can’t help but affiliate ‘drones’, interchangeability, thing-ifying humans with a work setting. 

We don’t read the skeletons as mindless machines with negative connotations perhaps because the setting is cheerful; there’s a big sunny window and we appear to be safe high up in a building. The skeleton placed near the window looking outwards implies there is something to look up, or forward to, which is optimistic. Positive associations of productivity arise from being in a library, and through the collaboration implied by the six skeletons’ awareness of each other’s presence. I wonder if the literary mood of this painting prompted several novelists to reference or respond to Delvaux in their work.

The skeletons poses are carefree, very natural so while they may appear inquisitive or engaged, they don’t seem stressed (likely the skeletal ‘grin’ effect makes us feel like they’re smiling, subconsciously). 

He didn’t paint this as crisply or eerily as some of his other skeletons, in fact it reads as a storybook style and I would not be surprised to find this on the cover of a young adult book. This seems intentional, given skeletons were a nostalgic motif for him, a symbol that he found beauty in after being afraid of them as a child. The Surrealists were also fascinated with Alice in Wonderland, which is a children’s book, perhaps that was in the back of Delvaux’s mind when painting this.

I see this as an uplifting painting but note that Belgium (like much of Europe) was war-torn while Delvaux was experiencing this fascination with skeletons (war : bodies, death). It’s probably not a coincidence that I’m obsessed with skulls post-pandemic, perhaps reinforcing that all light needs dark for balance.

Skull of Zurbarán

We all know Dali, and today I’m finding him especially grating, so let’s keep biography minimal. This is a painting from 1956, in his ‘classical period’ where he explored (according to the Dali fangay organisation museum) ‘meticulously detailed images of religious, historical and scientific themes’: what he called ‘nuclear mysticism’. He remarried wife Gala in a Catholic Church in 1958. I conjecture he influenced Kanye West to infuse his relationship with Bianca Censori with the same caudalism as his own marriage.

The skull referenced here belongs to Fransisco de Zurbarán. He was a Spanish painter known for dramatic chiaroscuro (very strong light-dark contrast), monks and still-lifes. 

He painted in a Baroque style, which – apologies – I find tremendously boring. The most interesting thing Zurbarán did is infuse his monks with little context, little narrative and use mostly bluey, cool tones instead of the warmth of something like “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” by Joseph Wright. Without the title, you would not know this is the skull of Zurbarán.

Initial associations:

• Archway: knowledge, journey
• Monks: religion, thobes
• Tesselated Cubes: Zellij, mosque, math, Ibn Battuta, precision, technology
• Bulbuous temple: Temple (lol), wisdom, unknowable, moon and craters
• Skull: MF Doom, Marvel comic villains, Phantom of the Opera, Ballerina en tête de mort, death, warning
• Color of ‘skull’: gilded, riches, earthly, promise
• Height of space relative to monks: cavernous, echoey, important

The skull doesn’t easily read as a human skull, which is why I selected this painting in contrast to the explicit skeletal presence in Delvaux’s painting. This skull reads masklike. However, it’s irrefragably a skull because of Dali’s title.

We tend to reflect on mortality as we get older, which is why renewed religious focus or conversion (reversion if to Islam) is common amongst middle-aged people. When your vessel (body) begins to creak with age, it seems obvious to think about your afterlife, and indeed morality. Since he’s just like other girls, Dali experienced a ‘reversion’ to his Catholic roots in middle age – the roots which were initially blamed for (gasp) guilt about sexuality (interestingly manifesting in him being a virgin when he first met Gala). 

He valued the ‘perfect architecture’ of the faith, this admiration led him to paint a well-received rendering of the Immaculate Conception for Pope Pius XII in 1949. This ‘perfection’ may be reflected in the mathematical precision of the tesselated squares, and in the painting itself being a perfect square, 1.03 x 1.03 meters.

This is the context in which monks approach the archway. Which leads me to a relatively generic interpretation of religious journey, reverence. The destination aimed for being Zurbarán’s skull echoes Dali’s reverence for master artists in Spain, I personally hear the message that to emulate or exceed the greats, you must first approach them. The destination being positive or great is reinforced because the temple of the skull resembles a cratered moon. The two cubes in the bottom left of the skull have small archways, doors perhaps to options. One arch is cracked with what resembles water damage, one painted very out-of-focus. The cracked arch symbolises a negative path. Since it’s in a skull which houses a mind, perhaps speaking to some negative facet of self in both Zurbarán and Dali. The unfocused archway perhaps is about the unknowable, what’s inside you that you have yet to discover, and maybe if you did see it you wouldn’t know what it was. 

More interesting details here are the colors in the lighting on the tesselated cube flooring, very delicately rendered purples and greens, giving a …well, surreal and otherwordly feeling. The precision of tesselation alongside it’s zellij association injects a (muted) note of optimism: it feels futuristic, technological, glowy. I doubt Dali intended to reference Islamic architecture; then again he would’ve been well aware of Spain’s Muslim past. The zellij, archway, skull surface echoing lunar all scream Islam to me which carries connotations of earned peace, practice and repetitive handmade work.

The skull here appears to signal wisdom, religious consciousness of mortality, reverence, inner exploration, armor and (due to the muted color palette) a mild warning. 

That’s all I want to say today about this painting, which is more than I can find online.

References:
Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.). Skull (Zurbarán). Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved November 19, 2024, from https://www.si.edu/es/object/skull-zurbaran:hmsg_66.1027

Israel Museum. (n.d.). Object 194792: [Title of the artwork]. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/194792-0

Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum. (n.d.). La ville rouge / Paul Delvaux. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Retrieved November 19, 2024, from https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/artworks/4078/La-ville-rouge-%2FPaul-Delvaux

The Art Story. (n.d.). Paul Delvaux - Biography and Legacy. Retrieved November 19, 2024, from https://www.theartstory.org/artist/delvaux-paul/

Parkinson, Gavin. (2012). The Delvaux Mystery: Painting, the Nouveau Roman , and Art History. Nottingham French Studies. 51. 298-313. 10.3366/nfs.2012.0029. 

Derzelle, E., Strivay, D., Defeyt, A., Klein, S. -J., Vandepitte, F., & Defeyt, C. (2023). Paul Delvaux: The Study of Nine Paintings by Non-Invasive Methods. Heritage, 6(11), 7181-7201. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage6110376

This Surreal Skull is in a guarded painting, difficult to learn more about. The only evidence of it’s existence online is on art auction websites.

It’s by Gertrude Abercrombie, a Chicago painter closely affiliated with The Beat Generation and she was called ‘the queen of the bohemian artists’. I confess I don’t know much about her, but it’s difficult not to fall in love with her strong visual language. Shells were a recurring motif in her work (many snails and other conch), as well as cats, eggs, flat landscapes all kind of claustrophobic insides. I especially love her very precisely rendered moons. She was happy to be called a Surrealist, inspired by Rene Magritte; stating “When I saw his work, I said to myself, ‘There’s your daddy.’”

Three Conch and Skull (1944)

I selected Three Conch and a Skull (1944) because I can find so little said about it I can hardly resist saying something myself. Surrealism aside, it is a strange painting because it’s very economic, very sparse. There’s some threadbare looking curtains framing a window with the moon placed like a pearl in a shell outside, in a very blue sky. There’s a brown, kind of unpleasant looking carpet –maybe its a wooden floor. There is a table covered in a beige cloth all round, holding three conch, one tall bowl with shiny black grapes and a skull.

The grapes hold my attention because they are the shiniest, and indeed the richest looking object in the entire painting. They look ripe, not overripe, fresher than everything around them. It’s interesting that they’re elevated above the shells (human head and conch) – perhaps prioritising the living above the husks thereof.

Grapes in vanitas immortalized the painting commissioner’s wealth: you’re so rich you can let the fresh grapes rot. They symbolize abundance and fertility, when they’re so inky they can echo a little mystique, some sensuality. They also evoke Dionysian imagery, you think of Bacchus and hence fun, prosperity, a little bad-ness (grapes crushed make wine, which makes good times). These ones have a particularly long stem, perhaps evoking their connection to Nature and emphasising the life therein. Gertrude Abercrombie appears to have lived somewhat sybaritically, surrounded by alcohol, jazz, musicians and embedded in art. She also said everything she painted was “autobiographical in a sense, but kind of dreamy” so perhaps the grapes are a celebration of that life.




Why shells, why three, why conch?

This is entitled Three Conch etc, but the way she painted these conch really look more like snails or a nautilus shell. I recently read a book about the Golden Ratio, which is echoed in most natural spirals. The conch in Lord of the Flies is used to call meetings, emblematic initially of authority, order, indeed power and voice (it was held while speaking in meetings by the speaker, something a startup I once worked at repeated with a ‘talking stick’ to enable orderly turn-based conversation). 

This is likely because conch shells have been used to amplify our voices, in architecture for secret listening points, and of course you’re supposed to be able to ‘hear the ocean’ in any seashell. The conch resembles the cochlea, our inner ear component responsible for transduction, i.e. convertion of energy from one form to another. These associations make me relate these three conch with autonomy, having a voice, using it and architecting it through painting. The affiliation of conch with speaking power is interesting, because the painting itself is quite assured, self-confident, possesses power within instead of power over. 

The conch in particular appears to be the functional, less the sensual or glamorous kind of shell – interesting considering Gertrude Abercrombie’s self-perception as ugly duckling. The conch is also very similar to the inner ear cochlea, both spiraling and relating to the amplification of audio. Abercrombie painted these very similarly to how she has painted snail shells (the conch is a sea snail, snails are slow, eaten). The conch is also spiraled, like the cochlea, spirals akin to cycles (the shell is dead, the shell is dead, the shell is dead, the grapes are alive, the skull is dead). Spirals also represent ongoing-ness, journey, change. It’s interesting how static the painting feels considering so many spirals should indicate some motion.

Inside Messages

Why three? Spirals, nature and three are all affiliated with perfection. Three in particular with harmony. While this is not a  perfect painting, it is precise, the painter appears to possess some understanding. Despite this wisdom alluded to, it is a very lonely, very empty painting: it can be lonely knowing something when you’re the only one who knows it.

Shells were used as money, though mostly cowries. These conch are painted almost larger than the human head so taking their size into account, alongside the alive grapes there seem to be messages about wealth; maybe alongside the skull it is about the richness of inner life, the loneliness of living in your head. I don’t doubt the existence of a very clear, very direct message because of the head-on way we’re looking at the objects, and how they’re presented like a collection in a museum, inviting meaning-making. I think it’s a message about inner worlds, self-reflections on mortality and decay because we are literally indoors in a room. That said, knowing there is a message doesn’t go far enough in deciphering it, she really held on tight to painting something unknowable, enigmatic.



The skull of course is the shell of a human. If we are (kinda) our minds, then the skull encases where we imagine ourselves to be housed; what we spend most of our time in: our heads. Abercrombie seems to have a rich inner world, from what little I read about her, I sense she held a deep respect for this life, and for the lens through which she saw life and painted. The skull here may act as an anchor and of course echo mortality and death (when doesn’t it?) – but it may also reinforce how her paintings were powerfully anchored to her distinct experience of the world. Coming back to the hedonist themes in her life, perhaps the skull is painted jawless to instill stillness, inertness and finality. There is rarely a sense of motion, wind, cloud, air or movement in her paintings. If the skull had the rest of its jaw, it would probably be unbalanced and more active, if it was painted so full frontal, it would appear to grin. It is more somber because some of it is missing, which is perhaps to signal decay, finality, inevitability.

My love for the skull as a symbol is dangerous as familiarity can breed positivity of association. That said, despite the sense of sombreness, the scattered remains, the muted color palette and the fact that it is clearly night, this painting retains a strength and certainty that keeps it from being scary or sad. Certainly mysterious, occult, a little witchy, but the cartoonish rendering lends it some lightness, the moon’s fullness keeps it feeling loved, a little fearless. Returning to that moon, it is painted as though it is sitting inside a shell, which it very well could be because she is a Surrealist, by her own admission. This absurdity also brings some light, firstly because the cloud-shell is quite illuminated, secondly because pearls are generally positive, shiny, rich things and humorous to see outside your sparse living room window in the night. The overall painting is also well lit internally, despite being so muted: look at the sharp shadows thrown by the objects.

Initially I wanted to upscale ‘detail’ images, but it is charming that they look like video game scenery, pixelated. 

All in all, this is a compelling painting purely because I’ve looked at it for nearly 40 minutes, and it isn’t giving up much more than what I’ve already said. That makes it interesting, and well worth a second, third, fourth and fifth look.

The etymology of cyanide comes from cyan, which comes from the Greek kyanos (dark blue, or lapis lazuli). In science, cyan- the word part is sourced from cyanogène (roughly translating to ‘blue generator’) referring to the compound molecule C2N2. Cyanide can describe compounds or ions containing the CN group. In bastardised chemistry, it can be said cyanide is produced through heating the dye Prussian Blue, which is made of iron atoms tightly bound to cyanide groups, which break down upon heating to produce the toxic gas hydrogen cyan, an acid.

Cyan is a primary subtractive color in CMYK (printers) translating as no red (00), full green (FF), and full blue (FF), i.e. hex code #00FFFF. Subtractive color spaces create color by taking light away, i.e. using color inks or pigment, and black is made by adding all 3 primary colors (cyan, magenta and yellow). In an additive color space, like a light-emitting screen, you make color by adding light of different colors so black is the absence of all color. A hex code is notation for RGB values in a base-16 system in format RRGGBB which can occupy values from 00 to FF. Cyan can be called acid blue, because its sharp on the eye, analogous to lemon’s acidity on the tongue. 

Prussian Blue is a much darker pigment with a very faintly green undertone, named so from the French bleu de Prusse because it was discovered in the capital of then Prussia in the early 18th century. Prussian Blue became iconic for its use in Edo-period Japanese woodblock prints because it was lightfast, rich and intense compared to the previously utilised indigo. Being more costly than standard, naturally produced pigments in Japan in the late 18th century, Prussian Blue signified prestige and wealth. 



Most famously, Prussian Blue appears in Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa prints which later inspired Van Gogh, Degas, and Monet to use ukiyo-e compositions, flatter color, silhouette and line in contrast to the realism-laden academic approaches of late 19th century Europe. Beyond being beautiful and my favorite blue, Prussian Blue is used to treat thallium poisoning, in dye degradation to remove methylene blue pollutants from fluid, for energy storage and even electrochemical water splitting. The aforementioned methylene blue interestingly is an antidote for potassium cyanide poisoning, and for treatment of methemoglobinemia (of which a symptom is cyanosis, blue skin).

The deep sky in The Starry Night comes from Prussian Blue, likely mixed with cobalt blue and ultramarine for depth. Note the blues radiating in value, getting lighter as they approach moonlight.





”Cobalt — is a divine colour, and there’s nothing so fine as that for putting space around things”

- Van Gogh’s letter to brother Theo



Cobalt blue is a lighter, less intense blue pigment made by sintering cobalt oxide with aluminium oxide, famous for use in Chinese Yuan-dynasty ceramics. Cobalt blue was rediscovered in Europe by Louis Thénard, friends with the scientist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac who synthesized cyanogen. Thénard was asked by the French government to synthesize a cheaper alternative to ultramarine, which was obtained by grinding up the expensive precious stone lapis lazuli (kyanos). Synthetic (French) ultramarine is more lightfast than the natural and was known to Goethe as early as 1787. Ultramarine is adjectival, from French outremer which describes ‘ over the sea’ places like Afghanistan, which is where the lapis was sourced. 



“Carry me home, got my blue nail polish on
It’s my fvorite color and my favorite tone of song ”

- Lana del Rey in ‘The Blackest Day’



Ultramarine’s several famous shades include Marian Blue, used to portray the Madonna in art history, with an example below by Sassoferato. 

Another example below by Palma Vecchio hangs in the King’s dressing room at Windsor Castle.



More recently, International Klein Blue (IKB) was developed by artist Yves Klein and paint supplier Edouard Adam(who’s still in business in Paris) with a special ‘linking paint’ (resin binder) preserving true pigment color. That’s why IKB is so blue (#002FA7) and curiously was identifiable by colorblind actor Eddie Redmayne, who wrote his thesis in Art History about it. IKB is also the color of all fiction book covers by Fitzcarraldo Editions with white titles text, they invert this color scheme for non-fiction.



Ultramarine pigment is also non-toxic alternative to the ‘phthalo blue’ (copper phthalocyanine) often used in dyeing blue polythene bags.




Tonight’s final blue on my mind is Le Blue Asse, the particular ‘incomparable color’ of airy blue used by Genevieve Asse. I invite you to disclose to me the pigments used to obtain it, you will have my gratitude.