Saturn Devouring His Son

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I didn't go to art school, but that doesn't stop me from continuing a lifelong love of learning about art and artists.

Betty: And I'm Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but I definitely also love learning about art and still have not gone back into an art gallery, despite me saying a couple of episodes ago that it was going to happen. So at this point, I'm just staying at my house for the next 5,000 years.

Quinn: Just like me! But that's not what we're talking about today. Today, we're talking about an entirely different kind of apocalyptic event and that's because today I just want to lead you through the kind of wild story and culture around the painting Saturn Devouring His Son. 

Betty: I love this painting, but also hate it.

Quinn: It's got a lot going on. So I will with the, I'm going to start with a little bit of background first, before we get into describing the painting for people who might not be familiar with it. But just a little bit of fun facts about it. It is painted by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya who lived from 1746 to 1828. And this painting itself was painted sometime between 1819 and 1823. And I'll get into more details of this in a bit, but it actually was originally painted directly onto the walls of his house, as well as 13 other works, that were all collectively known as the Black Paintings. Now after his death, like kind of way later, these works were actually removed from the walls and put onto canvases so they could be publicly displayed, but that is why portions of this painting are actually in far worse quality than they would have originally been painted. It's theorized that some of the details of this painting are a lot less clear than they would've been originally, but it almost kind of adds to the effect. That's a good thing to keep in mind as we go forward is this was painted by a man on the wall of his house.

Betty: I, yeah, I don't think I knew that because one of the things I was going to ask is like, I've seen some of his other paintings and this one does seem to be a lot more of like a looser brushstroke than his earlier work. And I was going to ask, is this like a style change he had in later life? Or is it because it’s so degraded, or is it both? 

Quinn: Oh, there's a lot going on historically with when and why this was painted, but definitely some of it at least is due to just degradation over time. But with that kind of basic context in mind, would you like to describe Saturn Devouring His Son for the audience?

Betty: For those of you who aren't looking at this painting either in the chapter artwork or in the show notes, normally I would say look at it if you can, if you're not like driving. But if you're someone who has a weak stomach or don't like gruesome images, maybe don't look at it because it is a bit disturbing. What I'm looking at is a vertical painting. It's actually very elongated in terms of portrait format. It's got what seems to be a completely black background, although with the bit of texture and in front of it is what looks like a man who is probably naked. And he has long hair and he has his mouth open and he's holding what seems like a smaller person, but the person’s head is missing, arms are missing. And it seems like the bigger man is eating the smaller person he is holding, and the smaller person is also naked. So you can see like a part of the flesh being torn by his mouth is what it looks like. And you see like blood and red coming off of the person who's being eaten. There seems to be really high contrast in the the way the figures are painted. And the brushstrokes do seem kind of choppy. Like it's not a totally realistic rendering of naked people who are being eaten, I guess. But it, so it is a little bit abstracted, I guess I would say, or like what we were talking about before is it even, it almost makes it like more eerie and creepier.

Quinn: And really important note of this painting as well is that the facial expression on the larger figure who is eating the smaller figure… it’s wild. And I say that not as in like the slang way that I use the word wild constantly, but I mean like a wild animal. It's feral.

Betty: Yeah, like I was going to say like deranged or something.

Quinn: Yep, yep.

Betty: The eyes are really wide and you can see the pupil as if like the eyes are gonna pop out of his head.

Quinn: Yeah. He looks both horrified by what he's doing and also rabidly into what he's doing, which is eating a person.

Betty: And the way his hands are squeezed around the person is it seems like it's, the grasp is so tight. It almost looked like there's blood from his hand, like, the figure is being squished. Like in first year of university, I took an art history 101 class. So when I say I didn't go to art school, I did take some classes in art history. So, you know, anyway, not totally a lie, but it was like a very basic, you know, just intro to art history class and the very first day, the very first class, the very first image our professor showed us was this. We just walked in, sat down, she’s like, hi, welcome to art history 101. Oh, it was a PowerPoint. So it's this projected onto this theater wall. Everyone is like, what is this?

Quinn: Good morning class, it’s 8:00 AM. Here's cannibalism. 

Betty: Exactly. So it is definitely… So yeah, my kind of introduction to art history was this image.

Quinn: Perfect. This is a pretty famous image at this point, but I’m gonna back up now and explain just how this painting got painted on the wall of a man's home. So like I said at the beginning, this was painted by Francisco Goya. He was actually quite a successful painter and a lot of his work that was in public display were much more cheerful. It was like a lot of portraits. It was religious paintings. He was popular among like Spanish nobility. And so he was like this forward facing like portrait artist. And then meanwhile, he actually lived through a lot of really hard times. The French Revolution happened when he was like in his forties which really affected the peace of Europe. And then like led to other wars including Napoleon overrunning Spain which is where he lived of course. In the meantime, even before that, Spain was ruled by this monarchy and the Catholic church, that was not a super great place to live and a super great time to live in terms of personal freedoms. And also Goya himself, like since his forties he actually was ill and was left deaf after a fever when he was 46. And he also had bouts of severe depression. And so just sort of like personally, politically, health-wise, he was dealing with a lot. He was carrying a lot of struggles with him. And he was not thrilled about the state of Spain and what was happening overall in Europe. And so in 1819, he bought this house, which is called Quinta Del Sordo. Which actually translates to Villa of the Deaf Man, which was named after a previous deaf resident. But then Goya was also deaf at this time. Just kind of worked out. I don't know, I don't know if he bought it because of that, or if it was just a coincidence, but I did think that was interesting. And then in the next four years, when he lived at his house, he spent that time painting these 14 oil paintings onto the walls of this house. Apparently at first he did like some more cheerful ones. And then he just like got more and more upset. He had struggled with already two brushes with death from like very serious illnesses at this point. He was in his seventies at this point. And so he painted over the more happy images to be these Black Paintings, which is what they're called. It's also very important to note that these paintings, including Saturn Devouring His Son, were never named by him. He never left any notes about their interpretations and he never intended them to be for public consumption. This was inside his private residence. This is basically like his way of dealing with stuff and processing strife. And he never left anything that indicated he ever wanted anyone else to see these.

Betty: Actually, that's really interesting. I had heard that this painting may have, there may have been some other, something else underneath before. So would this have been one where there might've been something happier underneath and he painted it over?

Quinn: Yeah, that's what it sounds like. I don't know how much of his house he had covered in happier paintings before he gave up and just like went full emo on it. But it certainly seems likely that this was one that like, if you remove this, which you shouldn't, but if they had removed this, it would be like a nicer thing underneath.

Betty: I don't know too much about Goya, but I do know about one of his paintings, which probably would have been maybe like… definitely was before this time. And it's called the 3rd of May. It's probably one of his other examples of something that's like, kind of gruesome and gory. It's about the Napoleon invasion of Spain. And basically it's this depiction of soldiers shooting people and there's already dead people on the ground and there's somebody who's about to be shot. And it's, it's also like quite a shocking image. I guess he already ha definitely experienced with painting stuff like this. But I believe that one was actually like meant for, you know, other people to be seen—or meant to be seen by other people. Whereas this is not.

Quinn: Yeah, this was at an 1814, so it would have been just a couple years before he moved into this house and started his own private painting situation. But yeah, definitely similar kind of themes and the darkness. And it is interesting what you, you mentioned something about like the precision of brushstrokes and you can tell the difference, even just comparing these two paintings, it's not surprising that they're done by the same artist. I think you can definitely see the similarities, but you can see, like, there is just a lot more detail dedicated to this. And it's hard to say how much of that is what's been lost of time and how much of that was he was painting on a wall at his house and he didn't care that much. I should back up for a moment and say that this painting itself is—this didn't just come whole cloth from his brain. Thank God. This is inspired by a Roman myth, which was in turn inspired by the original Greek myth of the story of Saturn, who was like a great Titan of the world who was told a prophecy that one of his sons would overthrow him. So every time one of his children would be born, he would immediately eat them. So that's not cool. I believe he ate five of his children before his wife hid the sixth child away and didn't let him eat him. That sixth child was Jupiter or Zeus and did eventually grow up to defeat his father. That's what happens when you eat your children. It’s not great.

Betty: Yeah. [laughing] Eventually someone's going to be like, we have to put a stop to this guy.

Quinn: It is worth noting that in most kind of interpretations of the myth and depictions of the myth, the idea is that he swelled his children whole because they're gods. And so the idea is like they continued just growing as gods in his stomach. And then like when Jupiter defeated Saturn, you know, the rest of the gods just like sprung fully formed from his stomach because they can't be killed. So this depiction of this as this like animalistic bloody ripping to shreds, active eating is a deviation from the original conception of the myth. It's also, I guess we'll start with this here. This was named Saturn Devouring His Son by someone else. That was the interpretation of what this was. But beyond the, the ripping apart of this figure, that deviates from the original myth, it's also seems—it’s hypothesized is actually first of all this is a daughter. Because parts of her figure do seem to indicate like, like rounder hips and what might've been supposed to be indicating female anatomy, not male anatomy. So that's one feature is like, was it named Saturn Devouring His Son just because of like a sexist assumption of the time, like quite possibly. And also they were like, I dunno if this is Saturn at all, because this is like—the Saturn in this figure is eating in an adult, which is very different from the original myth where they were eaten as babies. So if it is supposed to be directly an interpretation of that myth, it is a very different interpretation than the traditional myth. 

Betty: I guess because this was found after he died, presumably, and other people named it, for all we know this could be something totally different. Like, I mean, it most likely is inspired by the Saturn story, but technically Goya never said, this is exactly what the story is, or what my inspiration was. So it's just kind of an educated guess of what he probably was referencing. Would that be correct to say?

Quinn: Yeah. And there are a lot of general theories on what he may have been trying to symbolize with this because considering everything that he had going on and his previous body of work, it’s pretty safe to bet that he was intending to symbolize something with this. So some theories include like Napoleon is Saturn, the French Revolution is Saturn, the autocratic Spanish state is Saturn and it's eating its own citizens. It's just the whole idea of war. It's the idea of the wrath of God. It's the idea of old age devouring everyone with time. Like there are so many possible interpretations for what this could mean and what Goya originally meant, which of course we will never know.

Betty: I wonder if he would have been inspired—or he might've, he might've known about this painting. Cause there is a painting I just put in the show notes by the artist Peter Paul Rubens. And this was probably done in like the 1600s, which is also called Saturn Devouring His Son. And in this one the son is actually a baby, but in this one, the Saturn figure is also kind of like ripping the baby’s flesh a little bit. But this picture is definitely less gruesome than the Goya one. It's still pretty creepy. But it’s way less like, you know, bloody and terrifying.

Quinn: Yes. One of the articles I read did talk about this painting and pointed it as a probable inspiration for Goya's interpretation. So good eye there.

Betty: Oh, thank you.

Quinn: So that's the basic overview of this painting. There are so many different ways that it can be interpreted and perhaps was intended to symbolize potentially lots of different things at the time. Unfortunately, we'll never know if there was a specific artist intention and what that was. However, as evident by the way that you talk about this was your first image in your art history class, it's an incredibly famous painting that has very much stood the test of time. Partly because it's so striking and evocative. And there's so much to analyze in terms of what its place in history and what Goya was trying to symbolize and what it, how it rings to the viewer. And also because in the past decade, decade and a half, it has become an incredible meme. [laughs] So this is what I'd like to talk about for the last section of this podcast here is why—I guess not why, because I don't know why, and I don't think anyone knows why anything becomes a meme, but I guess just the ways that Saturn Devouring His Son has been interpreted in meme form. Have you seen this as a meme?

Betty: I have, but I would say, I don't think it’s often.

Quinn: Okay. It's definitely not like, the interesting thing of this as a meme status is it's not like a normal meme where like, it gets extremely popular and it's everywhere. I think it's just kind of been like a low level thing where it happened—like the Simpsons have done a version of it. Parodies pop up everywhere. It's like everyone has put their own little spin on it because at this point it's referenced so often that people get like, oh, they're referencing like the giant man eating the little man, even if you don't necessarily know the original painting that well. But I want to talk about two very recent examples. Because the meme had a bit of a little popularity jump it seems in kind of late 2020. And so I would like for you to click on that first link right there that I've sent you. And let me know what you think it is.

Betty: [both laugh] Okay. I will describe this for the viewers. I actually have not seen this. So I… yeah, so, okay. So it is a parody of this painting. So it looks like—is this person called Mr. Peanut?

Quinn: Yeah, he sure is. [laughs]

Betty: Okay. Yes, that's what, okay. It's Mr. Peanut, who is a peanut. With arms and legs and the top hat and, spectacle or… what is that called?

Quinn: Monocle.

Betty: Monocle, yes. Wearing a top hat and a monocle. And with his mouth open, similar to the Saturn in Goya's painting, but he is eating a smaller peanut and he's holding that smaller peanut in a similar way as Saturn is. The smaller peanut is also wearing a top hat and it seems he’s drool—there’s, so what would have been the blood is replaced with, I want to say peanut butter, and then and it's like dripping out of his mouth and onto the ground.

Quinn: I really liked that this artist has captured the horror in the eyes. I think that's done very well.

Betty: Yeah, for sure. It's got that same creepy, wild look. And in both paintings it's like the person who is doing the eating itself, like he's horrified with the action, but it seems like he can't stop.

Quinn: So do you ever remember the Mr. Peanut Super Bowl ad from 2020?

Betty: Oh, probably—so the reason I don't is because I don't get any, I don't think I have any channels that can watch the Super Bowl. I'm sure you can stream it now, but I don't watch the Super Bowl, which is probably why I do not know about this.

Quinn: Okay first of all, let me be really clear. I've never seen the Super Bowl. But so the, the reason I asked is because this particular ad, not—it didn't go viral for good reasons, but it was like very, it was like the main character of the internet for a week because—[laughing] I don't even know how to describe this. I'm not, I'm just doing this from memory because I don't care enough to look at the actual details, but basically the company that owns the character Mr. Peanut, Planters, like the nut company, did this whole ad campaign where they were like, Mr. Peanut is dead. They were like, Mr. Peanut’s going to die. And then the Super Bowl ad, I guess, like he got reincarnated as a tiny baby peanut who's like cuter than the old Mr. Peanut. It was very dystopian. And they were like, why did you kill a peanut?

Betty: I just Google image’d it. I'm not, I'm not watching like the video yet, but this baby peanut looks really creepy.

Quinn: Yeah. It's so creepy. So, and he's still wearing like the top hat! Anyway. And so the point, and so right after this ad went out this artist whose name is Nina Matsumoto, she saw everyone talking about the ad and she was like, alright, I gotta do this. And so at like two am she whips up this digital painting of this, throws it up. She's literally said that she posts “low quality: stuff late at night, so that not as many people will see it cause she doesn't want to lose followers. And then it went really viral because everyone is like, that's so funny. And so it got really popular on Twitter and then there's this whole Insider article, which will be in the show notes, where she talks about this inspiration. And she was like, I just had this idea in my head of the older Mr. Peanut eating the younger Mr. Peanut. And I know that's not what happened in the ad, but I still think it's so fascinating that they killed a mascot in this really weird way. And she was like, also it's interpreted that Goya painted this as an allegory for the Spanish autocracy devouring its citizens. And then she said, “Mr. Peanut is clearly part of the wealthy elite. I mean, look at how well dressed he is. So there's something to be said about that too.”

Betty: That’s great.

Quinn: So that's Mr. Peanut devouring his son.

Betty: Very disturbing as well.

Quinn: So disturbing. And then the last one I have to show you today, what I would like to end this episode on is in one way, a lot less creepy and another way, much more disturbing. So can you click the last link for me?

Betty: So this one also a parody of the painting is what appears to be a woman. She's got long black hair. Oh I guess before I describe the contents, it's painted in a, like a flat cartoon-y 2d artwork type of style. So the woman is holding what seems to be a similar figure as the person in that Saturn painting, except this one, it seems like the person is clothed and doesn't have like the curvy hip shape as in the other painting. And she's also chewing on like the side, what seems to be the arm and there’s red splotches, which presumably is blood. And yeah, she's also got that similar expression on her face, except this is in like a more, much more minimalist 2d type of way.

Quinn: Yeah, so does this kind of design style look familiar to you at all? 

Betty: It kind of reminds me of like YouTube videos that are like, I don't know. Kind of like a Kurzgesagt YouTube video style art style. Maybe. I know they're not the only one who do this type of style, but that what I think of.

Quinn: This was a digital art piece that circulated in like late 2020. I tried to track down the original artist and it does appear to be from an artist who now has a private Twitter account. That's the only link I could find to any original poster. And I can't confirm it because they're private now. And because they're private now, like I'm not going to link to them. Like if they're private, they want to be left alone for some reason or another. But suffice it to say this got out there on the internet, it quickly became incredibly circulated. Because it's the whole, I think the original caption was something like “soulless corporate mother devours her son” or something like that. Like, it's this whole idea of parodying this art style and using it to depict this gruesome thing. But in this very flat, colorful, soulless art style that everybody uses. Facebook, Airbnb, Hinge, Google, YouTube, like everyone uses this art style. I think it's technically called Alegria. Lots of people have lots of different names for it, but that's like the official name that people who illustrate in it call it is Alegria. It's based on “organic shapes, vibrant colors and exaggerated forms.” And the whole thing is like every person depicted in this art style was like made a pretty simple shapes. And they're all tend to be very much in motion. They're all very flat and scalable. It’s very easy to make these kinds of fill into whatever space you need for them. And they're also often not human colored and not human shaped. They'll have like extremely long legs and arms. They'll all be blue or purple or orange, because if you want to just sort of share the vague idea of diversity, you just make everyone look not human. And then everyone's diverse.

Betty: I think a while ago I had mentioned graphic design is kind of at a stage right now, or in the last few years… You know, designs trends swing back and forth all the time. And it just seems like right now there's like a really big push on like minimalism. Like everything has become geometric and simple and just distilled into simple shapes. And I think definitely there, like a lot of people just hate that because it's, you know, minimalism is just—a lot of people just hate it a lot. But, and there's definitely a sense of, I guess blandness to it. But it's just interesting how this art style is usually associated with like cutesy corporate figures. And this artist is just like, it is gruesome.

Quinn: I think that's why it got so popular. And that's why I love it too, is because all of these corporations that use this cutesy little art style are almost universally horrible, like incredibly exploitative in a hundred different ways. And yet they use this little art style to be like, we're so diverse and approachable and cool. We're not like other companies, we're a cool company. It's like, okay, well, you’re union busting for the 10th time this week and you exploit international workers. And like, you're horrible

Betty: But everything can be solved with a cartoon!

Quinn: Exactly! It’s like, we're not big tech, we're colorful tech. And it's like, okay. But I love the idea of like taking that art style and being like, yeah, they're eating you alive.

Betty: Wow. Yeah, I think that that's great. And I can see how a lot of people who kind of hate this, you know, corporate crap, I guess, wouldn't really find that relatable.

Quinn: It's just so funny to toggle between these, because I feel like they are representing like the two types of modern humor where it's like both ideas are taking something very silly and very serious and smashing it together, but one is doing it in like, this is a peanut in this kind of realistic, gruesome image. The other one is like, we have made the gruesome image two-dimensional and it's ironic now.

Betty: Yeah. I really liked that this artwork has kind of inspired—well other artworks, but just other interpretations that could be like vastly different. But still embody this horror, this subject matter is like evoking in people when I see it.

Quinn: Yeah. I think that if he did originally mean that as an allegory for how Spain treats its citizens, I think that this tech art thing is the perfect, it's the perfect modern interpretation.

Betty: A thing actually I was going to ask you about this painting is have you ever seen or heard of the show Attack on Titan?

Quinn: I've heard of it. I haven't seen it.

Betty: Oh, okay. For those who haven't heard—either haven't heard or haven't seen it, it's an anime show, but it's real, like it's really popular. It's become like so popular, I don't know, it's like Game of, Game of… what was it called, it’s like Game of Thrones or something, except I think probably better. [laughs] But anyway, so it's a show about these giants called Titans who eat people. And I am actually not sure, so people can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe the creator of Attack on Titan was, if not overtly like inspired by this painting, would have been inspired in some way. So I put a couple of pictures—put some of the less gruesome versions of pictures from the show. Cause it is a pretty violent show. Of some of the images of the Titans eating people, but like when I first watched Attack on Titan, cause in the first episode they—spoilers—they start eating people, I immediately thought of this painting because it just reminded me of this. And the show also, you know, is known for really horrifying imagery. I'm pretty sure like there would have been at least some inspiration from the creator for Attack on Titan. And I just think it's interesting that, you know, again, like hundreds of years later, it’s inspiring artworks by contemporary artists and TV shows.

Quinn: Well, there you go. If you want just a full television show version of Saturn Devouring His Son, you can go find it. I would like to end this on a fun little question. If someone was to do an artist rendition of you devouring your son, who would your son be in the picture?

Betty: [laughs] Oh my god. I’m so glad I don't have children because then I would, this question would be so much worse. But I would think… I probably would, it would be one of my older YouTube videos that I hate. 

Quinn: Okay I want to clarify, you don't have to actually eat the thing. I'm saying that an artist's rendition, if someone was to depict you eating it, what would you be eating?

Betty: Yeah, please take any one of my older YouTube videos and rendition as me devouring it. Cause I hate so many of them. I just kind of want them to go away. I mean, I could, you know, delete them or make them private, but I just feel like, you know… Anyway, that's the only thing I can think of, cause it's like the videos I make are kind of like my babies. And at some point, like when I first made these videos, I was like, oh, this is so great. But then like usually three months later I look back at it and I'm like, oh, this is crap.

Quinn: See, there you go. See you're doing the full Saturn Devouring His Son, where it’s an interpretation of like your child's an adult now, and now you hate him. And so you have to eat him.

Betty: Oh, well, if I have children in the future, I hope they don't listen to this. 

Quinn: [laughs] It’s fine. You didn't get a prophecy they were going to defeat you. Nobody has to eat anybody. For the record, mine would be my cat. I love her very much and no harm shall ever befall her or I'll immediately die. But I think it would be so funny if it was like a painting of me eating my cat. Because she's my baby.

Betty: Well you know, I've always heard about like, you know, cats might eat their owners if they die, but it would be funny if it was the other way around.

Quinn: Oh wait, I didn't even think of that. That's funny. That's like ironic then, so. Thanks everybody out there for listening to this episode of Pictorial. Please don't eat your children. You can find our show notes and links to all those things that we talked about today at relay.fm/pictorial. Click on things at your own risk, I guess. You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. And you can find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsV. And I am also on YouTube as ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, we also have a YouTube channel Pictorial Podcast where we upload video versions of our audio episodes. Usually a few weeks after the audio version has come out, it's a little bit behind, but we are slowly catching up. So you won't see this one on the YouTube channel for awhile, and that might be a good thing.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!