Julius Klinger’s Salomé

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Salomé (1909).

I thought this current thread was finished yesterday but it seems not. Julius Klinger (1876–1942) was an Austrian artist and designer whose early work can be found in the first numbers of Jugend magazine. Subsequent work includes a number of erotic illustrations such as top-heavy Salomé here, a depiction which startles when you notice she’s carrying a set of severed genitals in place of the more usual human head. Given that many feminist and Freudian art critics tend to see the Salomé story as an emasculation metaphor this is perhaps appropriate.

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This pair of untitled pieces are from a feature on Klinger’s black-and-white work in #21 of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (1907), the entire edition of which can be downloaded here. The picture above may be another Salomé but is more likely that other decapitating heroine, Judith, with the head of Holofernes. The picture below, meanwhile, is entirely mysterious, and another fine addition to the artistic sub-genre of human/cephalopod encounters. Thanks to billy for pointing the way to all of these.

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The illustrators archive
The Salomé archive

5 thoughts on “Julius Klinger’s Salomé”

  1. This one is quite fabulous. Salome will never be finished-something about the muse and all that. What also strikes me is the color and pattern-the graphic quality- in the top illustration, and yes she got to the “heart” of the matter this time. Love all these finds of yours.pgt

  2. Hi Michelle. Yes, that’s possible although if Klinger’s depiction is of a fisherman’s wife then she’s transmuted from a human into some kind of mermaid creature.

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