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, no 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 are 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, mind then it shells 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 a deep respect for this life, 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 still has 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 really is painted as though it is sitting inside a shell, and 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.