Perhaps one figure is offering an infant for sacrifice. Witches’ Sabbath (1789) depicts a horned devil-goat, garlanded and attended upon by a coven of witches. In the 18th century, an artist like Goya took it to be the guiding light of ‘the other,’ the celestial ceiling under which supernatural entities took form and thrived. In Western art the moon as a symbol has developed interestingly. Though it is an unforgiving environment, Lucian was unique in his time in imagining the moon as a ‘destination.’ Broadly speaking, until the most recent stages of human history, the moon was an inherent symbol of an unreachable unknown, the lord and herald of night - which meant cold, darkness, danger and, in the quiet oblivion of sleep, an intimation of mortality. Lucian’s moon is populated by threatening creatures and armies of hybrid lifeforms engaging in colonial warfare between planets. Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley from 1894 edition of Lucian's book Thanks to Lucian, as lucid as he was ludicrous, space travel had been invented. As so often proves the case throughout the history of art, philosophy, literature, and even science (we should all remember that Schrödinger was trying to ridicule, not explain, quantum theory with his cat-in-a-box), the impulse to exaggerate in order to satirize prompted leaps of imagination and faith, which changed the actual fabric of the human experience. It’s by far the earliest known story to include such things as interplanetary travel, alien creatures, and space warfare. But then, in Lucian’s narrative, something happens which is entirely unprecedented in the human imagination up until that point: the travellers are caught up in a whirlwind, and journey to the moon. The events are tweaked to seem ridiculous, but the opening episodes are recognizable fair for a gung-ho hero. ![]() In the ironically titled book, Lucian tells of his travels to strange islands with rivers of wine and anthropomorphic tree-women, sending up the exploits of Heracles and Odysseus. Lucian was an excoriating satirist, and A True Story was intended to skewer the Classics, denouncing storytellers like Homer for presenting fantastical events as though they were factual. Some time in the 2nd Century AD, the Greek-Assyrian author, Lucian of Samosata, wrote what is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel. Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night (1889) To mark the occasion, MutualArt looks back on the moon’s presence and significance in art throughout history ![]() 50 years ago this month, human beings first set foot on the Earth’s moon.
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