"You Shouldn't Do That!"

“You shouldn’t do that!”

The full title of this painting is:

“You shouldn’t do that!”: The Legacy of Prometheus (Homage to Dali: Metamorphosis of Narcissus) 

Richard C. Allen, Oil on Canvas, 2022

The Myth of Prometheus

Prometheus was from early times the Champion and Benefactor of Humanity.

He was a Titan, who had sided against his own kind in the War between the Gods and Titans, and because of this he had become a great friend of Zeus, the leader of the Gods.

Zeus had the idea that Prometheus, who had artistic skills, should create a new species to praise and worship the Gods “To play with, to amuse us; a lesser adoring race of little miniatures, but only male.”.

Alone, as all artists like to be when working, Prometheus using Zeus’s divine spittle combined with Clay made a diverse and colourful array of masculine creatures with all the colours of the rainbow.

When Zeus returned with Athena to see Prometheus’s creations, he clumsily squashed the green, violet and blue creatures, leaving black, brown, ivory, yellow and pink.  Athena praised his work and Zeus asked her to breathe life into them, inspiring them with wisdom, instinct, craft and sense.

As they came to life Zeus and Prometheus disagreed, Zeus just wanted them to worship him, but Prometheus said he was their friend.

He decided to steal Divine Fire to enable them to become independent of the Gods and taught them how to use it.

Zeus was so furious, he punished him by having him chained to a rock, where during the day, vultures eat his liver, which because he was immortal, grew back during the night, thus consigning him to eternal torture.

To address the situation on Earth, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to make a female to be sent to spread toil, strife and sickness.  This first female was as beautiful as a Goddess and Zeus had all the Goddesses; Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis and Hera to school her in their skills and she was called “All gifted”, Pandora.

Pandora was sent as a gift to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus to marry him with a dowry, which was  a jar.  She was told to never open the Jar.

She could not resist the temptation and did open it, releasing Illness, Violence, Deceit, Misery and Want into the World; only Hope was left behind as she shut the Jar.

Prometheus’s bond with Humans is an intrinsic part of the Ancient Greek view of the World and it could be said that Prometheus and Pandora are similar to Adam and Eve.

This Painting

 The Homage is due to the fact that the painting was inspired by Salvador Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937 owned by the Tate Gallery, London., which the artist first saw at Tate Britain in the early 1970’s and is amongst his favourite paintings, indeed it was crucial in his decision to become an artist.  It was early in the 21st Century that the artist had a dream about the painting which included the image of a rhinoceros!  From that dream, came the inspiration for this painting, and after a long period of reflection, entailing many studies and drawings, “You shouldn’t do that” was created around the myth of Prometheus.

Dali’s painting had a poem to accompany it and he described it as “The first poem and the first painting obtained entirely through the integral application of the Paranoiac-Critical Method”.

The Paranoiac-Critical Method involves viewing the world not as a fixed external reality, but as an extension of our subjective selves.

By viewing reality in this way; by seeing faces in clouds, the mind evokes phantom images which are the result of unconscious acts and the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked.  Dali described the paranoiac-critical method as a:

“spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena.” *

Richard C. Allen has used the Paranoiac-Critical Method to create this interpretation of the Myth of Prometheus.

* André Breton hailed the method, saying that Dali’s paranoiac-critical method was an “instrument of primary importance” and that it “has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis.”

Origins

The Myth of Prometheus, about the origins of humanity, first appeared in the late 8th-century BC Greek epic poet Hesiod’s “Theogony”.  In the 5th-century BC the Greek tragedian Aeschylus created the most famous treatment “Prometheus Bound”.  In 1820 Percy Bysshe Shelley published “Prometheus Unbound” as a four-act lyrical drama, a closet drama, not intended to be produced on a stage, but to reside in the imaginations of his readers.  In the preface to this Shelley mentions that the Greek tragic writers, in selecting their subjects and stories employed in their interpretation a “certain arbitrary discretion”.  He goes on to say that he is taking similar license and his treatment is not a restoration of Aeschylus, but viewed from the perspective of Prometheus who he sees as the Champion of mankind, defying  the gods and not to be reconciled with the Immortal Oppressor of mankind, Zeus. 

Such an interpretation is in the tradition of Romantic poetry which is a reaction to the Enlightenment and the poetry of the Past; a further evolution of Humanism from the Renaissance; a perspective more centred on the relationship between humans and nature, whilst is far more familiar to us than Aeschylus. The prominence of Imagination is the key and look towards the future to Modern Mythology which is open to constant evaluation and similar to the way stories evolve through various media; Comics, Film etc.  

It should also be remembered that Mrs Shelley, Mary had written  “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus” in 1816.

In her “Note on Prometheus Unbound” Mary wrote how Shelly’s drama was written in Italy, where he had gone for reasons of health.  He had conceived his ideas whilst wandering in Italy’s Ancient Ruins “made one with Nature in their decay”.  What fascinated Shelley was “the mighty passions and throes of gods and demi-gods” and he believed “that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil”.  As such Shelly’s sensibility and motivation although essentially romantic, seems very felicitous to our own age.

“You shouldn’t do that!”: The Legacy of Prometheus

Prometheus: His mind wanders as he gets used to the pain.

"I can't believe he was late for the Ritual!"

"He loves her."

But she had to give him up,

for me

my Vestal Acolyte.

At night I heal, above the sleepy evening sounds

of a place on the edge of the vastness.

His Wrath was fierce.

My creatures,

which he asked me to morph from the Muck,

he wished them to just perform

actions without adventures,

just toys for the Gods.

His stumbling crushed my favourites

the green, the blue and the violet.

No one is perfect,

Zeus thinks he is.

But he isn't.

He could have damaged the sketch,

the reverse centaur,

Hippotayne; not a good idea.

We disagreed.

So I gave them their gift,

Conscious Fire.

I constantly hear his continuing cursing

from his foul-mouth, foaming,

As he devised, with the help of others,

this Pandora,

with her undine vase,

an egg,

Never to be opened.

With it's silvery tinkling inside,

to make her curious

to find the yolk.

She tampered. 

It opened with a crack.

The Whims of Decease,

Great Evils, Harsh Pains

that she had brought them,

made her weep to find what she had released;

Blind hopes He had caused to dwell in them.

Came guilt that turned her

divine beauty to this,

to find herself

ugly with this Mask.

But as she saw into the muck

she felt like a Black Venus

rising helmeted in the night

seeng the unicorn,

(called Rhinoceros in Greek)

greeted by my shining crescent

that is clouded

by my dreaming head.

To seem almost nothing,

a Virgin memory.

My Vestal Acolyte,

the shape of her,

To continue this blessing

To protect this unicorn,

that hides in the pool,

to convince him to sleep easy,

my vestal alone to attend him,

as I do to them, with my pain.

To give her my dream to defy Their presence,

(We have come a long way in 5000 years.)

to consign Them to the stars.

So They cannot stop us in the pursuit;

there are no limits to the lengths we should go

to save the world for this creature.

To create from rubble and muck,

as I did themselves as me.

"Behold the Life-Bringer,"

"Adore the Fire-Giver."

The Dark Moon, filled like a cup, with Humanity.

I taught them wild and human must co-exist,

to save the muck that made you.