It started with this rich (but baffling) painting on Pinterest a little while back:
(#1) A young boy, standing in a lake or river, holds up a fish he has caught on a line, while a band of intense light (a rocket launching?) shines from the far shore — a work by Irish figurative painter Conor Walton (born in 1970), who does still lifes and commissioned portraits, but also a lot of allegorical figurative painting, on mythological, cultural, and political themes
Some searching on Walton’s website identified #1 as Walton’s Phaethon (2015), so the subtext is mythological; comments to come. That search led to a clearly myth-based painting — a male nude to boot — showing Sisyphus. Then to a political / cultural painting featuring Vladimir Putin, except that it’s also about Slim Pickens’s character Major Kong in the movie Dr. Strangelove, and, yes, it’s another male nude. And finally to a monumentally complex painting on a cultural / political theme, Darwinian evolution.
There’s a lot more, but these four should give you a feel for Walton’s imaginative side.
Phaethon. From Wikipedia:
Phaethon (Ancient Greek: Φαέθων, romanized: Phaéthōn, lit. ’shiner’) … is the son of the Oceanid [water nymph] Clymene and the sun god Helios in Greek mythology [AZ: the union of water and sun, as in #1].
According to most authors, Phaethon is the son of Helios, and out of a desire to have his parentage confirmed, travels to the sun god’s palace in the east. He is recognised by his father and asks for the privilege of driving his chariot for a single day. Despite Helios’ fervent warnings and attempts to talk him out of it, counting the numerous dangers he would face in his celestial journey and reminding Phaethon that only he can control the horses, the boy is not dissuaded and does not change his mind. He is then allowed to take the chariot’s reins; his ride is disastrous, as he cannot keep a firm grip on the horses. As a result, he drives the chariot too close to the Earth, burning it, and too far from it, freezing it.
In the end, after many complaints, from the stars in the sky to the Earth itself, Zeus strikes Phaethon with one of his lightning bolts, killing him instantly. His dead body falls into the river Eridanus, and his sisters the Heliades are turned to black poplar as they mourn him.
The luminous otherworldly painting in #1 isn’t a straightforward translation of the Phaethon story into an image, but merely alludes to it. It partakes of our world and of the myth world, but belongs to neither of them.
Sisyphus. The Walton painting:
(#2) Rest (2018): Sisyphus taking a break with the rock partway up the hill of his eternal punishment; a scene again bathed in otherworldly light
Sisyphus is a frequent cartoon meme, appearing many times on this blog. The meme is a special favorite of cartoonist Bob Eckstein; see my 9/19/23 posting “Never-ending rock & roll”.
Putin. And Major Kong too. Another male nude (Walton is an equal-nudity artist, with plenty of female nudes, especially from mythology, but I’m focusing on the male body here). Otherworldly light again, with ominous brutal overtones that cut into what would otherwise be just entertaining playfulness:
(#3) Tsar Bomba (2022): Vladimir Putin riding a nuclear weapon (recalling both a famous photo of Putin exhibiting his masculine power and also a scene near the end of Dr. Strangelove) and waving the Russian Federation flag (a horizontal tricolor: white, blue, red)
Ingredient one: this 2009 photo of a shirtless Putin riding a horse:
(#4) Vladimir, stud on horseback (from the Macho Putin series)
Ingredient two: from the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Dr. Strangelove for short):
(#5) Slim Pickens as Major T.J. “King” Kong, who straddles a nuclear weapon and waves his cowboy hat for the U S of A as he rides the falling bomb to his death
Darwin. A crowded composition, with over a dozen figures in it: seven of them humans (from history, including Darwin himself, and from fantasy), the others not:
(#6)
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