Sometimes when writing the blog it is helpful to pick a topic that artists paint and react to, in this case it is Adam and Eve. Go into any gallery and normally there are at least ten paintings of this bible tale, but those paintings, usually pre 1900, were made to sell under a system of patronage of artists and their collectors. Today the topic is less fashionable, but I think these are curious works by modern artists.
Eric Fraser – Adam and Eve.
Charles Mahoney – Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1936.
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1936
Elisabeth Frink – Adam and Eve, 1968
Thomas Watt – Adam, Eve, Serpent and Angel, 1947
Catherine Wood – The Garden of Eden, 1971
In the picture below we have a curious bending of the tale, with Péronne used as the location, a shelled and bombed town in the Somme during World War One. A paradise lost and in ruins.
William Orpen – Adam and Eve at Péronne, 1918
Stanley Spencer – Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1936
What I also have thought of is the colour red and it’s link to danger, from signage, to the ruby slippers of Dorothy Gale. The serpent is green but the fruit is red.