Off the shore: Marc's hidden images

"The Dream", Franz Marc, 1912

Franz Marc was a German painter of the early 20th century, and he was one of the main promoters of the changes that were taking place in Art in those years. He founded the movement "The Blue Knight" along Kandinsky and Macke, attempting to declare new values, forms and intentions to move away from obsolete academicist rules and traditions. Unfortunately he died at the Verdum front in 1916.

"The Dream" is one of the most popular Marc's works. I have a fridge magnet with this image. One day, while looking from some distance to it, I realized that there were two faces hidden in this painting.

The first one I saw is the face of a woman looking left, eyes closed and open mouth.

The other face is that of a man looking right:

Thinking that I would be possibly confused by just an interesting series of coincidences, I checked other Marc's works looking for hidden images. I was shocked to find at least 10 other painitings in which there were images more or less hidden, some of them in sarcastic or ironic moods.

The one that shocked me most was "The Waterfall"-

There are two faces yielling and menacing to each other. On the left there is a face with hat, bluish skin and closed fist, while on the right there's a red-skinned face with a dagger in his right hand ready to strike.

The fact is that Marc's real message was not in the dream-like scenes. Actually he was expressing his deep beliefs, fears or emotions through those images that for some reason he buried behind a beautiful sight. I dare to think that he wanted to express in this last painting the deep differences, and even hate, between social classes, a very important political and social issue in those days in the Western world, and that finally would drag him too and take his life.

There's a long tradition of hidden images on pictorial art in Europe. Marc probaby knew about it and decided to use this technique in quite a number of his works. Here's some examples of all-time hidden images, where a somewhat innocent appearence hides a much deeper meanning...