The island of the dead
The island of the dead |
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Arnold Böcklin |
Original version , 1880 |
Oil on canvas, 111 cm × 155 cm |
Art Museum Basel |
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Second version , 1880 |
Oil on panel, 74 cm × 122 cm |
Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York |
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Third version , 1883 |
Oil on panel, 80 cm × 150 cm |
Old National Gallery , Berlin |
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Fourth version (b / w photo) , 1884 |
Oil on copper, 81 cm × 151 cm |
destroyed in Berlin during the Second World War |
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Fifth version , 1886 |
Oil on panel, 80 cm × 150 cm |
Museum of Fine Arts , Leipzig |
The island of the dead is the name of five paintings by Arnold Böcklin with almost the same motif of an island lined with cypress trees. They were created between 1880 and 1886. The motif is probably the painter's best-known and at the same time had a diverse and lasting history of impact. Furthermore, the island of the dead is considered to be one of the most important works of symbolism . Four of the original five versions are still preserved and can be seen in museums in Basel , New York City , Berlin and Leipzig .
The title “Die Toteninsel” does not come from Böcklin, but from his art dealer Fritz Gurlitt , although Böcklin himself used the name Toteninsel in a letter.
Motif
The paintings show a rocky island rising steeply from the sea, overgrown with black cypress trees in the middle . Niches are set into the rocks as burial chambers. A boat is heading for the island , in which there is a standing figure covered in snow-white, an equally snow-white coffin and a rower. The two figures appear feminine, but this remains indefinite.
The rocky island fills most of the picture. In the first and second version of the picture, a night or late evening sky surrounds the scene, which is somewhat illuminated from an indefinite source, in the following three versions it is a day sky with a threatening cloud backdrop. The narrow water surface in the foreground is smooth and reflects the rock formations. In the first and second version, the cypress trees clearly tower above the rock formations, but little in the others. Individual worked rock formations or parts of the wall emerge brightly from the brown and gray tones of the island. In the first, third and fourth version the bank is bordered with stone, in the fifth there is a kind of small harbor entrance.
In the course of time there have been many speculations about a real model of the island shown. It is often compared with the island of Pondikonisi off the coast of Corfu ; this is not confirmed and Böcklin was never there. The sponsorship of the island of Sveti Đorđe off the coast of Montenegro is equally unconfirmed . On the other hand, Böcklin is said to have told his pupil and friend Friedrich Albert Schmidt that the Castello Aragonese of Alfonso of Aragon on Ischia inspired him to create the island of the dead motif.
history
Böcklin completed the first version in May 1880 on the order of the patron Günther Alexander, but kept this version. While working on it, Marie Berna, widow of Georg Berna and later wife of Waldemar von Oriola , commissioned a “picture to dream” in April 1880 . Böcklin made a second version of the island of the dead for her, initially without a coffin and the white figure, which he soon added to this and the first version. He also called this version "The Island of Tombs".
The third version was created in 1883 for Böcklin's gallery owner Fritz Gurlitt. In 1936 this version was offered on the art market and acquired by Adolf Hitler , who admired the work. He first hung it up in the Berghof and from 1940 in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin .
Due to financial difficulties, a fourth version of the successful subject was created in 1884. It was later acquired by the art collector Heinrich Baron Thyssen and hung in his Berlin bank branch. It was burned there in a bombing raid during World War II . There is only a black and white photograph of her left.
The fifth version was ordered from the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig in 1886 , where it is still hanging today.
classification
The picture is strongly autobiographical; the subject of death always played an important role both in Böcklin's life and in his works. He lost eight of his fourteen children; he fell ill with typhus and suffered a stroke . From the third version onwards, Böcklin provided one of the grave chambers in the rock with his initials. In his other pictures he is z. B. in the portrait of dying Cleopatra and in self-portrait with fiddling death with this theme.
The morbid atmosphere of the island of the dead quickly established a great popularity in the fin de siècle , which has continued to this day. Some see “Die Toteninsel” as a swan song for European culture on the threshold of the technological 20th century. The pictures had a great influence on later painters; to this day there have been innumerable "new interpretations".
The painting is considered one of the most important works of symbolism , along with “The Shore of Oblivion” by Eugen Bracht . Kaiser Wilhelm II owned a version of both works.
The island of life
In 1888 Böcklin made a picture with the title The Island of Life . It also depicts a small island, but with gods bathing exuberantly and a few swans in the foreground, on the island a group of people facing each other and various kinds of tree cover in front of a summery cloudy sky. It hangs in the Kunstmuseum Basel, where the first version of the island of the dead is also located.
The island of the dead
Another version of this motif from 1901, painted by Arnold Böcklin and his son Carlo Böcklin, is in the St. Petersburg Hermitage under the title Die Insel der Toten .
Dates of the five versions
- First version: May 1880 - oil on canvas, 111 × 155 cm; since 1920 in the public art collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel .
- Second version: June 1880 - oil on panel, 74 × 122 cm; since 1926 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York.
- Third version: 1883 - oil on panel, 80 × 150 cm; since 1980 in the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin .
- Fourth version: 1884 - oil on copper, 81 × 151 cm; destroyed in Berlin during the Second World War.
- Fifth version: 1886 - oil on panel, 80 × 150 cm; since 1886 in the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig.
reception
Classical music
- Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen : Die Toteninsel, symphonic poem , 1890.
- Andreas Hallén : The Island of the Dead, 1898.
- Sergei Rachmaninow : Die Toteninsel, tone poem for large orchestra, op. 29 (1909); by far the best-known setting.
- Felix Woyrsch : Die Toteninsel in Drei Böcklin Fantasias for large orchestra , op.53 (1910)
- Fritz Lubrich : Die Toteninsel in Three romantic clay pieces for the organ (after Arnold Böcklin's pictures) op.37, no.3 Die Toteninsel (1912)
- Max Reger : Die Toteninsel in four tone poems after A. Böcklin op. 128 as No. 3 (1913); his student Fritz Lubrich jun. In the same year composed “Three romantic clay pieces based on Böcklin's pictures” for organ op. 37 (No. 3 Toteninsel).
literature
- Heinrich Mann : The goddesses. The island is described here, but the name of the picture is not mentioned and it is not a description of the picture.
- Friedrich Dürrenmatt : The judge and his executioner . The picture in question hangs in the room of someone who has disappeared. As in countless other adaptations, it serves as a harbinger of disaster.
- Kai Meyer : The alchemist. The protagonist's family residence is modeled on the painting. In the novel, a character claims that she commissioned Böcklin to paint the Institoris Castle and call it “The Island of the Dead”.
- Thomas Lehr : Nabokov's cat. Here the island of the dead is hung in a sick room.
- August Strindberg : The Ghost Sonata. At the end of the piece, the island of the dead appears in the background, accompanied by soft, calm and slightly melancholy music.
- Lena Falkenhagen : The Boron Island. The eponymous island depicted on the cover picture is very obviously based on the fifth version of the painting, just as the title of the novel in the fantasy world in which the story takes place is a synonym for the picture title.
- Richard Voss : The island of the dead . A magazine novel inspired by the picture, takes place in the time of the persecution of Christians in ancient Rome.
- Christian Kracht : Empire . The painting hangs behind the desk of the governor's residence, is mentioned several times and is certainly an analogy to Engelhardt's island, the protagonist of the novel and lonely hero on his “heavenly” island.
- Gerhard Meier : Island of the Dead . Roman, Zytglogge Verlag 1979. The first version of the painting in the Kunstmuseum Basel finds its way into the author's narrative world.
- Kyung-Sook Shin : I'll be right there: a novel. In several places reference is made to the picture, in one place it is described in detail.
Movie
In addition to short films, which mostly deal with the trip to the island of the dead, the image in I Walked with a Zombie (1943) serves to illustrate the above. You can see it very clearly in a night scene placed over the bed of the main actress.
In the film Isle of the Dead (1945), Val Lewton , the producer of I Walked with a Zombie, addressed the island of the dead one more time. At the beginning of the film, one of the painting versions can be seen during the title fade-in. The whole film takes place on a Greek island - the film set is a replica of Böcklin's painting. The plague has trapped a group of people on the island, most of them perishing. General Pherides (played by Boris Karloff ) initially rowed a boat to the island and thus corresponds to the ferryman figure in Böcklin's pictures.
Böcklin's picture is also cited in the science fiction film Alien: Covenant (2017) by Ridley Scott . The rocky island with cypresses is a garden in a necropolis , in which the android David met the late Dr. Elisabeth Shaw wants to be buried.
painting
- Böcklin's gallery owner Fritz Gurlitt wanted to achieve sales success with an etching of Die Toteninsel created by Max Klinger in 1890 .
- In around 1905, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach paid homage to his role model Böcklin.
- In 1932 Salvador Dali painted a surrealist landscape with the title The True Image of Arnold Böcklin's Island of the Dead at the Hour of the Angelus .
- In 1977 the Swiss artist HR Giger drew his homage to Böcklin. In the picture, the island of the dead is shown in the giger-typical, biomechanical style.
- In his famous Bayreuth staging of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (" Ring of the Century ", in the 1980 version), the French director Patrice Chéreau was clearly inspired by Böcklin's Island of the Dead for the set for the Valkyrie Rock (Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung).
- The German painter Michael Sowa created a parody of Böcklin's painting in 1992. In his version, the white-clad figure falls wildly with his arms rowing backwards from the boat.
Comic
- The Italian comic artist Gipi has painted an everyday version of the island of the dead, which can be viewed on his blog.
- The comic book Die Toteninsel by Guillaume Sorel (drawings) and Thomas Mosdi (scenerio) mixes the motif of the dead island with elements of the Cthulhu myth by HP Lovecraft .
- In the anime Kuroshitsuji , the island of the dead is shown as the place where Ciel's soul was handed over to Sebastian.
- The work is thematized in issues 224 & 225 (2000) of the Italian comic Martin Mystère . The cover of the 224th issue pays homage to Böcklin's Die Toteninsel.
literature
- Bernd Wolfgang Lindemann , Katharina Schmidt (editor): Arnold Böcklin. On the occasion of the exhibition "Arnold Böcklin - a retrospective" in Basel, Paris and Munich 2001–2002. Published by the Basel Public Art Collection / Art Museum and the Bavarian State Painting Collections / Neue Pinakothek Munich. Edition Braus, Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3-926318-97-X . Pp. 260-265
- Franz Zelger. Arnold Böcklin. The island of the dead. Self-heroization and swan song of western culture. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Frankfurt am Main 1991. ISBN 3-596-10514-5
- The dream of the south and death. Arnold Böcklin: The island of the dead. 1880. in: Rose-Marie u. Rainer Hagen. Masterpieces of European art declared as documents of their time. “Why does the goddess wear a mercenary hat?” Dumont 1984. pp. 308–320. ISBN 3-7701-1537-6
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: German Masters of the Nineteenth Century. Paintings and Drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany. Harry N. Abrams, New York 1981, ISBN 0-87099-263-5
Web links
- The island of the dead in the online database of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
- Website of the painter Pascal Lecocq, who has been collecting everything related to the “island of the dead” for decades. He calls it "a kind of Wikitoteninsel".
- Description and interpretation of "Die Toteninsel"
Individual evidence
- ^ The Metropolitan Museum of Art. P. 62.
- ↑ faz.net
- ↑ After completing the first version of the picture, Böcklin sent his client Alexander a letter with the words "Finally the island of the dead is ready enough that I think it will make the impression ...".
- ↑ Hans Holenweg: The island of the dead. Arnold Böcklin's popular landscape and its charisma to the present day . In: The Minster. Journal for Christian Art and Art History . 3/2001: High Middle Ages . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg September 18, 2001, p. 239 f .
- ↑ Böcklin wrote to Marie Berna on June 29, 1880: “Last Wednesday, the picture 'Die Gräberinsel' was sent to her. You will be able to dream yourself into the world of shadows until you believe you can feel the gentle, mild breath that ripples the sea. Until they are afraid to disturb the solemn silence with a loud word. "
- ↑ Böcklin himself apparently used the title “Die Gräberinsel” until the end of his life. On the occasion of a telegram of congratulations from Count Oriola on his 70th birthday, he refers to "the happy owners of the grave island".
- ↑ Birgit Schwarz: Geniewahn. Hitler and art. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78307-7 , especially p. 152 ff.
- ↑ on the right rock pillar, on the outside at the top
- ↑ faz.net
- ^ Toteninsel, based on Arnold Böcklin on dorotheum.com, accessed on June 24, 2016.
- ↑ The director of the century
- ↑ concerti.de
- ↑ Achim Frenz, Andreas Sandmann: Stop it now! The book on the Caricatura. Kassel 1992. p. 49.
- ↑ giannigipi.blogspot.de