DOI article:
Bentkowska-Kafel, Anna: Anthropomorphic landscapes in 16th- and 17th-century Western art: a question of attribution and interpretation
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48916#0083
ANNA BENTKOWSKA
Southampton Institute
Anthropomorphic Landscapes in 16th- and 17th-century
Western Art. A ąuestion of attribution and interpretation
Margaret Barr, the wife of Alfred H. Barr Jr,
the first director of the Museum of Modern
Art in New York, recalls how they met
Salvador Dali for the first time at his show
at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris in 1931. It was then that:
Dali showed us a postcard of one of the colonies in
Africa. Natives in front of a big white tent, leaning,
sitting, lying, etc. It was a horizontal photo. When he
turned it vertically, what we saw was the large head of
a woman - the tent was her chin, the figures her
features. The double image.1
The artist claimed that this face, accidentally spotted
while searching for an address in a pile of papers, had
inspired him to create a series of Paranoiac Landscapes
(ill. I).2 A few years later A.H. Barr Jr organised the
exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism? On display
were works by Dali, Arp, Miro, Ernst and other modem
artists. A selection of old masters, who were fascinated by
bizarre and fantastic themes, was also included, in order to
present ‘certain pioneers and antecedents’ of the difficult
and still controversial new art, and to root the movement
into an established pictorial tradition. The paintings were
not arranged chronologically, but according to ‘devices’,
‘techniąues’ and ‘media’, and included such categories as
simple composite images, double images, fantastic
perspective, metamorphoses and isolation of anatomical
fragments. Among the Bosches, Fuselis, Goyas and Blakes
there was a painting from Barr’s own collection recently
acąuired in an antiąuarian shop in the Austrian town of Bad
Gastein. It depicted a mountainous landscape, which, when
turned to the left by 90 degrees revealed the profile of a man
(ill. 2). Trees, rocks, buildings and other elements of natural
and man-made environments were used to represent his
anatomical features. The surrealists and their patron were
instrumental in reviving the interest in anthropomorphic
landscapes such as this one. The strange composition and
unexpected, initially hidden, second meaning well suited
their artistic ideals and fascination with multiple vision.
Ideas stimulated by accident and chance observation, often
expressed in psycho-analyticał terms, were part of their
creativity. When describing his experience of looking at the
postcard with black people in front of a tent, Dali considers
the illusion created by subseąuent readings of the two
images, of a tent and of a face, and of switching between
them. He confesses that:
The analysis of this paranoid image allowed me to
discover, with a symbolical interpretation, all the ideas
that had preceded the vision.4
The interest of artists in this century in such peculiar
and enigmatic capricci or bizzarie of old masters was long
lasting and manifested itself in both artistic practice and
theoretical writings. In the 1950s Oskar Kokoschka
contributed an essay to Benno Geiger’s book I dipinti
ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldo, in which the author
considered a number of such double-images.5 The
introduction to the 1963 edition of Giovanni Battista
Bracelli’s etchings, originally published in Florence in
1624, was written by Tristan Tzara, the founding member
of the Dada movement.6 Bracelli’s Bizzarie di varie figurę,
which include two etchings depicting a townscape and a
landscape (ill. 3), both shaped as figures of reclining giants,
were created - as the artist claims - „as a flock of various
and most choice fancies formed in the bottom of his
intellect”.7
When A.H. Barr Jr showed the painting purchased in
Bad Gastein to Erwin Panofsky the latter’s judgement was
that it was of the School of Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(1528-93),8 whose other painting with a composite head
representing an allegory of winter was also included, as a
photographic reproduction, in the New York Surrealism
display. In a book complementing the exhibition, the
landscape was published hesitantly as a late 16th century
Biuletyn Historii Sztuki
R.LXI, 1997, Nr 1-2 69
Southampton Institute
Anthropomorphic Landscapes in 16th- and 17th-century
Western Art. A ąuestion of attribution and interpretation
Margaret Barr, the wife of Alfred H. Barr Jr,
the first director of the Museum of Modern
Art in New York, recalls how they met
Salvador Dali for the first time at his show
at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris in 1931. It was then that:
Dali showed us a postcard of one of the colonies in
Africa. Natives in front of a big white tent, leaning,
sitting, lying, etc. It was a horizontal photo. When he
turned it vertically, what we saw was the large head of
a woman - the tent was her chin, the figures her
features. The double image.1
The artist claimed that this face, accidentally spotted
while searching for an address in a pile of papers, had
inspired him to create a series of Paranoiac Landscapes
(ill. I).2 A few years later A.H. Barr Jr organised the
exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism? On display
were works by Dali, Arp, Miro, Ernst and other modem
artists. A selection of old masters, who were fascinated by
bizarre and fantastic themes, was also included, in order to
present ‘certain pioneers and antecedents’ of the difficult
and still controversial new art, and to root the movement
into an established pictorial tradition. The paintings were
not arranged chronologically, but according to ‘devices’,
‘techniąues’ and ‘media’, and included such categories as
simple composite images, double images, fantastic
perspective, metamorphoses and isolation of anatomical
fragments. Among the Bosches, Fuselis, Goyas and Blakes
there was a painting from Barr’s own collection recently
acąuired in an antiąuarian shop in the Austrian town of Bad
Gastein. It depicted a mountainous landscape, which, when
turned to the left by 90 degrees revealed the profile of a man
(ill. 2). Trees, rocks, buildings and other elements of natural
and man-made environments were used to represent his
anatomical features. The surrealists and their patron were
instrumental in reviving the interest in anthropomorphic
landscapes such as this one. The strange composition and
unexpected, initially hidden, second meaning well suited
their artistic ideals and fascination with multiple vision.
Ideas stimulated by accident and chance observation, often
expressed in psycho-analyticał terms, were part of their
creativity. When describing his experience of looking at the
postcard with black people in front of a tent, Dali considers
the illusion created by subseąuent readings of the two
images, of a tent and of a face, and of switching between
them. He confesses that:
The analysis of this paranoid image allowed me to
discover, with a symbolical interpretation, all the ideas
that had preceded the vision.4
The interest of artists in this century in such peculiar
and enigmatic capricci or bizzarie of old masters was long
lasting and manifested itself in both artistic practice and
theoretical writings. In the 1950s Oskar Kokoschka
contributed an essay to Benno Geiger’s book I dipinti
ghiribizzosi di Giuseppe Arcimboldo, in which the author
considered a number of such double-images.5 The
introduction to the 1963 edition of Giovanni Battista
Bracelli’s etchings, originally published in Florence in
1624, was written by Tristan Tzara, the founding member
of the Dada movement.6 Bracelli’s Bizzarie di varie figurę,
which include two etchings depicting a townscape and a
landscape (ill. 3), both shaped as figures of reclining giants,
were created - as the artist claims - „as a flock of various
and most choice fancies formed in the bottom of his
intellect”.7
When A.H. Barr Jr showed the painting purchased in
Bad Gastein to Erwin Panofsky the latter’s judgement was
that it was of the School of Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(1528-93),8 whose other painting with a composite head
representing an allegory of winter was also included, as a
photographic reproduction, in the New York Surrealism
display. In a book complementing the exhibition, the
landscape was published hesitantly as a late 16th century
Biuletyn Historii Sztuki
R.LXI, 1997, Nr 1-2 69