{"id":20341,"date":"2021-01-25T17:16:51","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T17:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=20341"},"modified":"2021-01-25T17:24:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T17:24:05","slug":"figures-of-mortality-lawrence-versus-dali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2021\/01\/25\/figures-of-mortality-lawrence-versus-dali\/","title":{"rendered":"Figures of Mortality: Lawrence versus Dal\u00ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lawrence1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Famous Fantastic Mysteries (August, 1946).<\/em><\/p>\n

Salvador Dal\u00ed and Philippe Halsman popularised the image of a human skull created by an arrangement of bodies in Halsman’s 1951 photo-portrait of the artist, In Voluptas Mors<\/em>. The assemblage, which was based on a sketch by Dal\u00ed, has been imitated by photographers and poster designers but I’ve yet to see any mention of this painted precursor by illustrator Lawrence Sterne Stevens (or “Lawrence” as he was always credited) for Famous Fantastic Mysteries<\/em> in August, 1946. I’d assume the similarity is a coincidence. The subliminal skull in painting and drawing goes back at least as far as the 1890s (see this post<\/a>), while Dal\u00ed was always very adept at finding and creating visual rhymes. Variations on the skull-from-figures motif appear in paintings throughout his career, one of the earliest being a minor work, Dancer \u2013 Skull<\/em><\/a>, from the 1930s. Another painting, a commission for a wartime poster<\/a> warning US soldiers about the hazards of venereal disease, features a pair of women, and predates Lawrence’s cover by four years.<\/p>\n

\"skull_dali_halsman.jpg\"<\/p>\n

In Voluptas Mors (1951).<\/em><\/p>\n

Lawrence deserves credit, however, for having created a more successful arrangement of bodies than Halsman and Dal\u00ed managed, although it’s easier to do this in a painting than it is to arrange a group of women in a studio. Some of the limbs of Lawrence’s figures are extended or foreshortened, while the contrast between light and shade has been reduced to aid the composition. Lawrence painted a further variation on the subliminal skull in a cover for Famous Fantastic Mysteries<\/em> the year after the Dal\u00ed\/Halsman portrait, while Dal\u00ed himself returned to the theme with Skull of Zurbar\u00e1n<\/em><\/a> in 1956.<\/p>\n

\"lawrence2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Famous Fantastic Mysteries (June, 1952).<\/em><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 \u00catre Dieu: Dal\u00ed versus Wakh\u00e9vitch<\/a>
\n\u2022 Chance encounters on the dissecting table<\/a>
\n\u2022 Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s Maze<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dal\u00ed in New York<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dal\u00ed\u2019s discography<\/a>
\n\u2022 Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/a>
\n\u2022 Mongolian impressions<\/a>
\n\u2022 Hello Dali!<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dirty Dal\u00ed<\/a>
\n\u2022 The skull beneath the skin<\/a>
\n\u2022 Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Famous Fantastic Mysteries (August, 1946). Salvador Dal\u00ed and Philippe Halsman popularised the image of a human skull created by an arrangement of bodies in Halsman’s 1951 photo-portrait of the artist, In Voluptas Mors. The assemblage, which was based on a sketch by Dal\u00ed, has been imitated by photographers and poster designers but I’ve yet to … Continue reading “Figures of Mortality: Lawrence versus Dal\u00ed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Figures of Mortality: Lawrence versus Dal\u00ed","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4,21,22,43,44,12,38,18],"tags":[4069,5290,87],"class_list":["post-20341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-design","category-fantasy","category-horror","category-magazines","category-painting","category-photography","category-pulp","category-surrealism","tag-lawrence-sterne-stevens","tag-philippe-halsman","tag-salvador-dali"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5i5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}