拍品专文
Leonora Carrington's monumental Are You Really Sirius? is an extremely complicated and multileved image. In it lies the belief that the highly advanced dynastic Egyptian culture may have been inherited from an older and deeper tradition, without a period of development. This interconnected knowledge of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and the nature of consciousness, confirmed with today's scientific knowledge, is believed to have been brought to them by visitors from the Sirius Galaxy. Are You Really Sirius? also refers to the African Dogon tribe of Mali's possession of accurate knowledge of the binary star Sirius, prior to 3000 B.C.
Carrington's introduction to the stars begins at age four, when Father O'Connor, an amateur astonomist, is hired as religious instructor to the Carrington children. Lessons learned by the young Leonora would not be forgotten. As an adult, her continued interest in the star Sirius sparked many related works, including Pilgramge to Sirius (1946), painted for her first one-woman exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1948, Dog of Dog Star (1950), and Lupe Australis (The Dog Star) (1965).
Sirius was also known as the Dog Star for being at the tip of the constellation Canis. Egypt's name for Sirius was Sothis, and its Sothic Calendar was almost identical to our Julian year of 365.25 days. Ancient Egyptians, enthralled by the stars, discovered that Sirius is the only fixed star that follows this cycle. The arrival at this conclusion, around the early third millenium B.C., suggests their exceptional knowledge of the heavens. Before sowing and harvest took place, the New Year was heralded by the rise of the Nile floodwaters. It began with the arrival of Sirius at dawn, in advance of the sun on the eastern horizon. The festival of the New Year was called the heliacal rising of Sirius, and days that followed were identified as "the Dog days." Temples, such as the one dedicated to Isis at Denderah, with which the star was identified, were built with their main aisle facing Sirius so its beam of light would illuminate the dark altar. Monuments were engraved in hierogliphics such as the red and black Anubis and two columns in the inner sanctum of Are You Really Sirius?. Sirius was personified as a woman with a star poised on her head, not unlike Leonora Carrington's portrayal of her; or depicted as a five pointed star. Four points represented the metaphysics' primary four: earth, wind, fire and water. Time stood for the fifth point. Animals were venerated as abodes of the gods. Dogs, in Are You Really Sirius? are used as puns for Anubis, the jackal god and for the Dog Star. Anubis travelled between this and the Underworld, taking the departed souls to Sirius, their new home. Priests of Anubis wore jackal masks, as Leonora Carrington depicted them, flanking a column. The warrior goddess Neith is portrayed weaving. Her weaver's shuttle identifies her other role in Egyptian creation myths, as weaver of the world cloth.
In 1976, Robert K.G. Temple published The Sirius Mystery, a carefully documented treatise tracing the link between Dogon tradition to Sumer and Egypt, going back five thousand years. The Dogon's specific knowledge and understanding of the Sirius galaxy, known to us through modern science, came to them, they claim, directly from Sirius. It is noteworthy that the key player that unlocked this mystery for Temple, was a friend and early patron of Leonora Carrington's. Arthur M. Young, inventor of the Bell helicopter, author and philantropic founder of the Foundation for the Study of Consciousness, brought to Temple's attention obscure data gathered by anthropologists on cosmological theories of the Dogon tribe.
Why is the title of the painting Are You Really Sirius? a pun? Because puns refer to Egyptian's mythological code language, which is based on the theory of correspondences. For example. the hieroglyph for 'goddess' also means serpent; and the hieroglyph for Sirius also means 'tooth.' Hence, the 'serpents tooth' is a pun for 'the goddess Sirius.'
We are grateful to Dr. Salomon Grinberg for his assistance in cataloguing and writing the above essay for the present lot.
Carrington's introduction to the stars begins at age four, when Father O'Connor, an amateur astonomist, is hired as religious instructor to the Carrington children. Lessons learned by the young Leonora would not be forgotten. As an adult, her continued interest in the star Sirius sparked many related works, including Pilgramge to Sirius (1946), painted for her first one-woman exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1948, Dog of Dog Star (1950), and Lupe Australis (The Dog Star) (1965).
Sirius was also known as the Dog Star for being at the tip of the constellation Canis. Egypt's name for Sirius was Sothis, and its Sothic Calendar was almost identical to our Julian year of 365.25 days. Ancient Egyptians, enthralled by the stars, discovered that Sirius is the only fixed star that follows this cycle. The arrival at this conclusion, around the early third millenium B.C., suggests their exceptional knowledge of the heavens. Before sowing and harvest took place, the New Year was heralded by the rise of the Nile floodwaters. It began with the arrival of Sirius at dawn, in advance of the sun on the eastern horizon. The festival of the New Year was called the heliacal rising of Sirius, and days that followed were identified as "the Dog days." Temples, such as the one dedicated to Isis at Denderah, with which the star was identified, were built with their main aisle facing Sirius so its beam of light would illuminate the dark altar. Monuments were engraved in hierogliphics such as the red and black Anubis and two columns in the inner sanctum of Are You Really Sirius?. Sirius was personified as a woman with a star poised on her head, not unlike Leonora Carrington's portrayal of her; or depicted as a five pointed star. Four points represented the metaphysics' primary four: earth, wind, fire and water. Time stood for the fifth point. Animals were venerated as abodes of the gods. Dogs, in Are You Really Sirius? are used as puns for Anubis, the jackal god and for the Dog Star. Anubis travelled between this and the Underworld, taking the departed souls to Sirius, their new home. Priests of Anubis wore jackal masks, as Leonora Carrington depicted them, flanking a column. The warrior goddess Neith is portrayed weaving. Her weaver's shuttle identifies her other role in Egyptian creation myths, as weaver of the world cloth.
In 1976, Robert K.G. Temple published The Sirius Mystery, a carefully documented treatise tracing the link between Dogon tradition to Sumer and Egypt, going back five thousand years. The Dogon's specific knowledge and understanding of the Sirius galaxy, known to us through modern science, came to them, they claim, directly from Sirius. It is noteworthy that the key player that unlocked this mystery for Temple, was a friend and early patron of Leonora Carrington's. Arthur M. Young, inventor of the Bell helicopter, author and philantropic founder of the Foundation for the Study of Consciousness, brought to Temple's attention obscure data gathered by anthropologists on cosmological theories of the Dogon tribe.
Why is the title of the painting Are You Really Sirius? a pun? Because puns refer to Egyptian's mythological code language, which is based on the theory of correspondences. For example. the hieroglyph for 'goddess' also means serpent; and the hieroglyph for Sirius also means 'tooth.' Hence, the 'serpents tooth' is a pun for 'the goddess Sirius.'
We are grateful to Dr. Salomon Grinberg for his assistance in cataloguing and writing the above essay for the present lot.