Femme Fatale

My announced trip with the Badische Zeitung to Hamburg took place from December 12 to 15. On the long train ride, six and a half hours, including a 45-minute delay, I read an article about the ChatGPT AI program that may serve as a writing assistant.

Compared to a previous visit, we participants had much free time on this year's Hamburg trip, i.e., to stroll the many Christmas markets in the Hanseatic city. Christmas markets are not my thing, so I used half the free afternoon and the two free mornings for other activities.

On Wednesday morning, the day we left, I visited an exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle that had just opened the week before. On the second floor of their new building, the museum had brought together pictures dealing with the "femme fatale."

 
I quickly entered the term "femme fatale" into the ChatGPT mentioned above AI app, and here is what the Writing Assistant spit out:

Femmes fatales are women who have an aura of mystery and danger around them and are often seen as being sexually attractive and mysterious. They are often portrayed as being manipulative and using their sexuality to get what they want. They are often the villains or antagonists in stories and are often seen as being dangerous and irresistible to men.

ChatGPT's English is a bit bumpy and often is used too often, but the text alludes to the lust of men, i.e., painters and viewers alike, which Edvard Munch illustrated in the following lithograph.

Click the paintings for an enlargement.    

Edvard Munch, 1897, In the Man's Brain

And then there was Munch's Madonna.

Edvard Munch, 1894, Madonna

Red Baron stood in front of the painting and tried to associate the term Madonna with the lady's pose. I failed and consulted Edvard Munch's website for an explanation:

Originally called Loving Woman, this picture can be taken to symbolize what Munch considered the essential acts of the female life cycle: sexual intercourse, causing fertilization, procreation, and death. Evidence for the first is in the picture itself, an intensified, spiritualized variation in the nude of the 'mating' pose, the woman depicted as though recumbent beneath her lover … Procreation was implied by the decoration of the original frame, later discarded, on which were painted drops of semen and an embryo. That Munch associated the image with death is clear from his own comments on the picture, in which he sees it as representing the eternal cyclical process of generation and decay in nature. He continually connected love with death: for the man because it eviscerated him, for the woman because, following Schopenhauer, he appears to have thought her function ended with child-bearing.

To call the picture Madonna is not inappropriate if the word is understood metaphorically, for Munch, unable to accept Christianity or a personal god, regarded the continuous generation and metamorphosis of life in a religious light, subsuming its spiritual as well as its material components. The blood-red halo around the woman's head could be considered the spiritual counterpart to the touches of red on her lips, nipples, and navel. She seems to float within curing bands of colored light suggestive of art nouveau. Far from deforming her, however, they look like a supernatural emanation, possibly deriving from the spiritualist notion of an aura surrounding all individuals but only visible to mediums.

The "classical" image of the femme fatale is based primarily on biblical, mythological, and literary female figures widely portrayed as "fatal women" between 1860 and 1920.

Carl Joseph Begas, 1835, The Lureley

The Hamburg exhibition started with the beautiful Lorelei, who - being betrayed by her sweetheart - falls to her death from a rock above the River Rhine. She was transformed into a siren who lured fishermen passing the now-called Loreley rock to destruction.

Heine's fair copy of Die Loreley

Well-known is the poem by Heinrich Heine:

   

Die Loreley Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten Daß ich so traurig bin; Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn. Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt, Und ruhig fließt der Rhein; Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt Im Abendsonnenschein. Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet Dort oben wunderbar, Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet, Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar. Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme Und singt ein Lied dabei, Das hat eine wundersame, Gewaltige Melodei. Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe Ergreift es mit wildem Weh, Er schaut nicht die Felsenrisse, Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh. Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn. Und das hat mit ihrem Singen Die Lorelei getan.

Lorelei I don't know what it means, That I am so sad; A tale from the old days, Won't get out of my head. The air is cool, and it's dark, And calmly flows the Rhine; The summit of the mountain sparkles In the evening sunshine. The most beautiful virgin Sits wonderfully up there; Her golden jewels flash, She combs her golden hair. She combs it with a golden comb, While doing so, she sings a song; That has a wondrous, A mighty melody. The skipper in the little ship It seizes him with wild pain; He does not look at the rocky reefs, He only looks up to the heights. I think in the end The waves swallow up skipper and barge; And that with her singing Has done the Lorelei.

Both paintings depict Lorelei as an adorned but not necessarily seductive or even cruel woman.

Fiedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Martersteig, 1871, Loreley

Matersteig's Lorelei of 1871 has a touch of Germania watching on the German Rhine and looking out for the French Marianne.

Julius Hübner, 1828, The Fisher Boy and the Mermaid

Half she pulled him, half he sank down. Fornication with a minor?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1863, Helen of Troy

Was it Helen's blue eyes that the Trojan War was fought for?

Evelyn de Morgan, ~ 1900, Medea

Another lady in Greek mythology is Medea. From the female painter's point of view, did she become guilty solely due to her excessive love for Jason?

Herbert James Draper, 1904, The Golden Fleece.

Medea sacrifices her brother Apsyrtos when the pursuers after the stolen Golden Fleece approach her ship. 

Alfons Mucha, 1998, Medea.
In the title role, Sarah Bernhardt with mad eyes.

When Jason leaves her for another woman, Medea finally becomes a mad avenging fury.

Gustave Moreau, 1884, Oedipus and the Sphinx

A sexually aggressive Sphinx asks Oedipus, "What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?" He answered correctly, which caused the sphinx to commit suicide.

John William Waterhouse, 1891, Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses

On his long journey, Ulysses was often exposed to female temptations. The sorceress Circe turned his companions into pigs.

The Bible knows many fatal women.

Hermann Hahn, 1898, Judith with the Head of Holofernes

Franz von Stuck, 1926, Judith and Holofernes

Von Stuck added the erotic touch with Judith holding the sword playfully.

Max Liebermann, 1902, Samson and Delilah

A vicarious victory? As a surrogate of Smamson's manhood, Dalilah holds Samson's severed lock triumphantly toward the sky.

Lovis Corinth, 1899/1900, Joseph and Potiphar's Wife

Is the painter's phantasy going overboard?

Victor Müller, 1870, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist

A thoughtfully sobered Salome ...

Lovis Corinth, 1899/1900, Salome II

... and a sensually excited Salome.

Gustave Jean Jacquet, ~1890, Pandora

A chaste Pandora ...

Odilon Redon, ~1914, Pandora

... and here, sexually exaggerated.

Male gazes drive the market for depictions of femmes fatales.

Jean-Leon Gerome, 1862, Phryne before the Judges

Hetaira Phryne was prosecuted for άσέβεια (impiety) and defended by Hypereides. He exposed Phryne's breasts to the jury, who were so struck by her beauty that she was acquitted. Only a few men remain seated in stoic calm.

Hermann Kaulbach, 1882, Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia's dance is eagerly commented on, and some men cast lascivious looks.

 

The next painting was not shown in Hamburg but in Freiburg in 2017 and fits  perfectly:

Johann Heinrich Ramberg, 1800, Cherry-picking girl.

The innkeeper's naked daughter is picking cherries off the ground with leering old men watching.

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