Centaur

Centaur (pronounced sen-tawr)

(1) In classical mythology, one of a race of monsters having the head, trunk, and arms of a man, and the body and legs of a horse (modern depictions in the age of the internet seem to prefer the upper body of a woman).  The synonym is hippocentaur.

(2) In astronomy, the constellation Centaurus (initial capital letter).

(3) In astronomy, any of a group of icy bodies with the characteristics of both asteroids and comets, orbiting the Sun in elliptical paths, mostly in the region between Saturn & Neptune.

(4) In modern slang, a skillful (male or female) rider of a horse.

(5) In rocketry, a US-designed and built upper-stage (with re-startable liquid-propellant engine), used with an Atlas or Titan booster to launch satellites and probes.

(6) In chess, team comprising a human player and a computer.

(7) By extension, in AI (artificial intelligence), a human and some form or AI, working together.

1325–1375: From the Middle English, from the Old English, from the Latin centaurus, from the Ancient Greek, from Κένταυρος (Kéntauros), thought to mean “a member of a savage race from Thessaly” although some etymologists are sceptical.  Historically, Thessaly was known as Αἰολία (Aiolía (Aeolia in modern use)) and that’s how it was referred to in the Odyssey (Homer’s epic poem from the eighth or seventh century BC); the gentlemen in Athens were quick to describe those from elsewhere as savages or barbarians, .  The half-human, half horse Centaur from Greek mythology belongs in the class of mixtumque genus, prolesque biformis (a mixed or blended race, offspring of two forms), the phrase made famous when it appeared in the Roman poet Virgil’s (Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC)) Aeneid (29-19 BC) description of the Minotaur, the mythical creature with the head of a bull atop a human body.  The most common use of the adjective centauric was a reference to the mythological creatures (resembling or of the nature of a centaur) but in the sometimes weird world of spiritualism it was defined as "characterized by an integration of mind and body for consciousness above the ego-self" (whatever that means).  When the adjective is used in SF (SciFi or science fiction) it's with an intital capital if referring to the residents or natives of the constellation Centaurus.  The case difference matters because there no reason why in SF half human, half-horse beasts can't be part of the ecosystem in Centaurus and they would have to be described as Centauric centaurs.  In fantasy fiction, a centauress was a female centaur (a she-centaur) and the term centaurette has also been used; it does not (as the -ette prefix might be thought to imply) mean a “a small centaur”).  Presumably, a centauress, while possessing the secondary sex characteristics of a human female could, anatomically, in the hind quarters either colt, stallion, filly or mare so it could be helpful if authors differentiated centauress & centaurette thus.  Centaur & centaurdom are nouns, centaurian is a noun & adjective and centauresque, centaurial & centauric are adjectives; the noun plural is centaurs.

In the sky

Judy Volker’s annotation of Sea & Sky’s sky-chart of the Centaurus constellation.

Centaurus is one of two constellations said to represent Centaurs and is associated primarily with Chiron (Cheiron), a wise, immortal being who was king of the Centaurs and said to be a scholar & prophet skilled in the healing arts.  In some of the myths, from his cave on Mount Pelion, he is said to have raised, tutored, or counselled several figures prominent in Greek mythology, including Jason, Heracles and Asclepius.  Of Chiron's association with the constellation, there are several tales.  In one legend, Chiron was the first to identify the constellations and teach them to mortal humans, placing an image of himself in the sky to help guide Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece.  A different story has Chiron placed in the sky by Zeus and of this telling there are variants but the most common element is Chiron being accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow and giving up his immortality as a way to escape the never-ending pain.  A twist on this has Chiron simply bored with life and wanting it to be over and this came to the attention of Prometheus, the Titan undergoing permanent torture for stealing fire from the gods to give to humans.  For Prometheus to be released from his torture, an immortal had to volunteer to renounce eternal life and go to Tartarus in his place.  Someone (Zeus, Heracles, or Chiron himself depending on the author) suggested Chiron's offer be used to release Prometheus and for this Zeus honored Chiron with his place in the sky.  There’s even a tale in which the constellation represents the Centaur Pholus, honoured thus by Zeus for his skill in prophecy.

Centaurus, copperplate engraving by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687) from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia (1687), his atlas of constellations.

In English, the southern constellation of Centaurus has been so described since the 1550s but was known by that name to the Romans (to the Greeks it was Centaur).  The ninth largest constellation, visible in the far southern sky in the months around March, since classical times, it has been confused with Sagittarius.  In astronomy, a centaur is a small, icy celestial body orbiting the Sun in an in elliptical paths, most tracking between Jupiter and Neptune, the name gained from them typically having the characteristics of both asteroids and comets, that dual-nature the link with the half-human, half-horse from mythology.  Centaurs are considered transitional objects that may originally have been KBOs (Kuiper Belt Object) and often have unstable orbits due to gravitational interactions with the giant planets.  Orbiting mostly between 5.5-30 AU (an “astronomical unit”, the average distance between the Earth and Sun (about 150 million km (93 million miles)) from the sun, such is the gravitational effect of the big planets that most centaurs (which range in diameter between 100-400 km (60-250 miles) are expected over millennia to be sent into the inner solar system or even ejected into interstellar space.  Astronomers first became aware of the objects in 1977 with the discovery of Chiron but the technology of the time didn’t permit the structure fully to be understood and the body was thus initially classified both as a comet (95P/Chiron) and minor planet.  It was improvements in observational hardware which demonstrated that while appearing as asteroids, when closer to the sun the comet-like behavior of developing a coma or tail will manifest.  The largest known centaur is 10199/Chariklo.  Listed as a minor planet, it orbits the Sun between Saturn and Uranus and in 2014 it was announced it possessed two rings (nicknamed Oiapoque and Chuí after the rivers that define Brazil's borders), the existence confirmed by observing a stellar occultation.  One implication of the rings is it's likely it also has at least one shepherd moon and infrared images indicate the Chariklo is named after the nymph Chariclo (Χαρικλώ), the wife of Chiron and the daughter of Apollo.

On four hooves

Front (left) and rear (right) of the gatefold cover of the album Ride a Rock Horse (1975) by The Who's lead singer Roger Daltrey (b 1944).  The artwork was the work of his cousin Graham Hughes who produced a number of album covers during the 1970s.  Until the early 1980s when the CD (compact disc) reduced the size of packaging, the album cover was the most distributed form of pop-art. 

Things rarely were consistent in the evolution of the myths from Antiquity and the mythical centaurs were described variously as being wholly equine from (human) torso down or with the from parts of the legs also human, the latter a popular depiction during the Medieval period while in Classical era, they had four horses' hooves and two human arms.  Living on raw flesh and inhabiting mountains and forests, they were descended either from Centaurus (the son of Apollo & Stilbe) or of Ixion & Nephele although the Centaurs Chiron and Pholus were of a different descent lineage: Chiron was the son of Philyra & Cronus while Pholus was fathered by Silenus and born of an unnamed Nymph; what distinguished that pair was that unlike the other herds, they were hospitable and non-violent.  The cooking of food being a marker of civilization, it was recorded that when Heracles was hunting the Erymanthian boar, he visited Pholus who received him hospitably, giving him cooked meat whereas Pholus himself ate exclusively raw food.

When Heracles asked for wine, Pholus told him that there was only one jar, which either belonged communally to the Centaurs or had been a gift from Dionysus who had told them to open it only if Heracles should be their guest.  Telling his host not to be afraid, Pholus broke the seal but when the Centaurs smelled the wine they galloped from the mountains, armed with rocks, fir trees and torches to attack the cave.  The first two Centaurs to attack were Anchius and Agrius (killed by Heracles) but Pholus was killed in the aftermath of the fight: while burying a fallen Centaur he drew one of Heracles' poisoned arrows from a wound but it fell from his grasp, piercing his leg and almost instantly he died.  Heracles drove off the remaining Centaurs and pursued them to Cape Malea where they took refuge with Chiron.  In the ensuing battle Heracles shot Elatus in the elbow, but Chiron either dropped one of Heracles' arrows on his foot or was shot in the knee by Heracles.  The wounds of Heracles' arrows could not be healed and the immortal Chiron begged the gods to make him mortal.  It was Prometheus agreed to take on his immortality, and Chiron died, leaving most of the Centaurs to take refuge in Eleusis.  Their mother (Nephele) aided them by summoning a rain storm but that didn’t deter Heracles who slaughtered a dozen including Daphnis, Argeius, Amphion, Hippotion, Oreius, Ispoples, Melanchaetes, Thereus, Doupon, Phrixus & Homadus.

Wedding reception gone bad: Rape of Hippodamia (The Lapiths and the Centaurs) (1636-1637), oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain.  The painting was one of a large cycle of mythologies by Rubens for the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV's (1605–1665; King of Spain 1621-1665 and (as Philip III) King of Portugal 1621-1640) newly built hunting lodge on the outskirts of Madrid.  One of Rubens’ oil sketches for the work is on display at Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, Belgium and is of interest to art students and critics because of the detail differences in the final composition.  On the basis of content shared on the internet, wedding receptions these days are sometimes torrid affairs. 

Lindsay Lohan AI generated as a centaur by EnjoyLingerie on DeviantArt.

The Centaurs also fought a legendary battle against the Lapiths (a Thessalian people who originally inhabited Pindus, Pelion and Ossa; they drove out the native people, the Pelasgians).  Pirithous invited the Centaurs (who regarded themselves as his parents) to his wedding feast and it went well until, unaccustomed to the effects of wine, the Centaurs became drunk and one of them tried to rape (in the classical sense of "abduction") Deidamia (Pirithous' bride and more commonly known as Hippodamia), resulting in a violent brawl which ended with the Lapiths driving the Centaurs out of Thessaly after killing many.  Containing so many wonderful subjects (Centaurs, a feast, a rape scene, a brawl), the disrupted wedding reception (which came to be known as “the Centauromachy”) for centuries drew artists to the theme.  In Antiquity, the Centaurs got a bad press because they appear in so many legends involving rape, abductions and violence.  In many ways the myths can be deconstructed as violent soap operas with an undercurrent of licentiousness, typified by the tales of Eurytion attempting to rape Hippolyta or Mnesimache, the daughter of Dexamenus.  In one version Dexamenus had betrothed his daughter to Azan (an Arcadian) and Eurytion (again as a guest at the wedding feast) attempted a kidnapping but she was saved by the hero Heracles arrived in time to kill him, returning bride safely to groom.  Most scribes were members of the Heracles admiration society and there also the story of how Heracles, on his way to Augias, seduced the girl, promising to marry her upon his return.  While he was away, forcibly she was betrothed to Eurytion but just as the wedding ceremony was about to begin, Heracles stormed in, killed the Centaur and had himself declared her husband.

Cupid and Centaur (1992), photograph by US photographer Joel-Peter Witkin (b 1939).

Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, recurring themes in Mr Witkin’s work includes death and corpses (or dismembered body-parts), often artfully arranged for staged photo-shoots, his subjects including dwarfs, transgender and intersex persons.  As might be imagined, his images sometimes attracted controversy although some in the disabled community did praise his depictions of those living with a range of physical features not often documented in art.  Witkin claims his elaborate creations are not at all exploitative and are intended to “honor and elevate” those often neglected and “hidden from view”, rarely presented in an artistic context, motifs sometime drawn from paintings in both the sacred and secular traditions.  In an interview, Mr Witkin recalled his interest in what would many would think macabre was trigged when, as a child, he saw the decapitated head of a young girl killed in an automobile accident.

On four wheels

1976 Chrysler Centura GL.  Despite the visual resemblance, the (optional) styled steel wheels were unrelated to those used on Oldsmobiles between 1966-1987.

Whatever processes led to Chrysler Australia adopting the name “Centura” for their local version of the European Chrysler 180 (1970-1982) may still exist in the corporation’s archives but it seems the details have never been published though it can be assumed it was not an Anglicized adaptation of the Romanian centură (belt, girdle).  In Latin centum meant "one hundred" and the term centuria referred to (1) a unit of the Roman army, nominally consisting of 100 soldiers (historians suggest in practice the establishments varied between 60-160) and headed by a centurion, (2) in real estate a unit of area, equal to 100 heredia or 200 iugera (circa 125 acres (50  hectares)), (3) a group of citizens eligible to vote, the system apparently one of the reforms introduced by Servius Tullius (king of Rome 578-535 BC) and based on the ownership of land, one of the many systems which, over millennia, have codified a relationship between ownership of property (usually land) with a right to in some way participate in the polity (usually by voting) and (4) figuratively or literally, things in some way related to "100".  In modern Romance languages, things of course evolved: the Romanian centura (belt or girdle) was from the French ceinture (belt), from the Latin cinctura (girdle, belt), thus by extension used also to refer to the to beltways (ring roads) around cities.  In Spanish & Portuguese, the related cintura (waist; belt) is from the same Latin root cingere (to gird; surround).

The name of the short-lived Chrysler Centura (1975-1978) may have been an allusion to the Centaurs of myth because, like them it had a dual nature, combining the platform of a European four-cylinder with a much more powerful (and heavier) Australian built six.  That had been a concept Holden (GM's (General Motors) Australian outpost) in 1969 introduced when they installed their six-cylinder engine in a modified Vauxhall Viva and called it the Torana.  It proved a great success and Ford Australia in 1972 responded by fitting still larger displacement sixes to the Cortina which, being longer than the Viva, didn’t need the four inch (100 mm) stretch of the wheelbase required for things (tightly) to fit in the Torana.  Given the way local journalists would within a few years decry the inherently unbalanced Cortina six, it is remarkable how well the press received the thing upon debut.

1975 Chrysler Centura brochure shot (GL left; XL right).

Had the Centura been released in 1973 as planned, it might have found success but the timing was unfortunate, the decision by the French government of Georges Pompidou (1911–1974; President of France 1969-1974) to conduct tests of nuclear weapons in its South Pacific territories, prompting the leadership of Australian trade unions to blacklist French goods arriving in ports (Australian trade unions in those days running an independent foreign policy and the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) a kind of co-government).  As a consequence, it wasn’t until 1975 the Centura arrived in showrooms and by then the market had moved on, competition rather more intense.  Although the Centura offered class-leading performance (indeed, in a straight line it was quicker than many V8s) by virtue of its optional 4.0 litre (245 cubic inch) straight-six (even the 215 (3.5) version could run with the 4.1 (250) Cortinas), increasingly buyers were more tempted by the equipment levels and perceptions (sometimes true) of superior build quality and economy of operation offered by vehicles with origins in the Far East.  As it was, Chrysler in 1976 began local production of the Japanese Mitsubishi Sigma and it proved a great success, even without the six cylinder engine once thought such a selling point.  Tellingly, although a prototype Centura with a 5.2 (318) V8 was built, the project rapidly was abandoned.  Officially, the explanation was the body lacked the structural rigidity to handle the additional torque, the same reason Ford never contemplated their V8 Cortina entering production; engineers familiar with the structures of both platforms agree that was true of the Cortina but maintain the Centura was robust enough and suspect both companies, having observed the subdued demand for the V8 Holden Toranas (1974-1978) decided Holden was welcome to its exclusive presence in the niche sector.  Fewer than 20,000 Centuras were built during its dismal three year run, a fraction of what was projected as its annual production.

On three wheels

Rupp Super Sno-Sport, 1969.  If an object moves (or can be made to move), the chances are high an American will at some point have installed a V8.

Although it seems now the company’s best-remembered product, the Rupp Centaur was built only during 1974-1975 with production reaching barely four figures.  A fibreglass-bodied, wheeled tricycle available in red, white, blue, and yellow, the Centaur was something of a departure from Rupp’s traditional lines and its existence was a product of (1) climatic conditions, (2) a downturn in the economy and (3) the sharp increase in the price of gas (petrol), induced by the first oil-shock of 1973-1974.  Rupp Manufacturing had in 1959 been founded in Mansfield, Ohio by Herbert Edward “Mickey” Rupp (1936–2023), initially as a small-scale operation producing Dart Go-Karts but the venture proved successful enough for the company to expand and in 1960 a line of mini-bikes was introduced.  Simple to manufacture and sold with an attractive margin, the cash–flow enabled further development and by 1964 Rupp’s prototype snowmobiles had been sufficiently refined to be suitable for mass production, an encouraging 500 sold the following year, demand steadily increasing.  By the end of the decade, Rupp Manufacturing had a staff of over 400 and a catalogue of RVs (recreational vehicles) including mini-bikes, small ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) and a signature range of Sno-Sport snowmobiles, by then available in five models.  This being the US, there was also the sport of “snowmoble drag-racing” and Mickey Rupp fabricated the “Super Sno-Sport”, a genuinely exotic entrant using a special 308 cubic inch (5.0 litre) V8 from Ford’s racing research department with braking provided by a combination of disk brakes on the drive axle and a parachute, activated by a cable-release mechanism.  Whether it ever attained its theoretical maximum speed (150 mph (241 km/h)) isn’t clear but, in 1969, it was recorded at 95.5 mph (153.7 km/h) during a run at West Yellowstone.

Rupp advertising, 1970.

While the V8 Super Sno-Sport was a useful publicity tool, Rupp Manufacturing’s core business was more modestly powered snowmobiles and the company entered the 1970s as one of the industry’s most successful, annual production in 1970-1971 reaching almost 40,000 units.  However, while the economy was beginning to slow, what really affected things was two successive seasons of poor snow conditions, Rupp especially suffering because it had borrowed money to expand production and built up a large inventory of product to meet an anticipated strong demand,  With falling sales and rising debt-servicing costs, the rapidly dwindling profits of 1972 quickly became unsustainable losses and, in 1973, facing imminent bankruptcy, a controlling interest was sold to a investment group (what would now be called a PE (private equity) company).  The takeover provided the necessary injection of cash but of course involved also the inevitable “restructuring” (lay-offs and cost-cutting), leading to a market perception was of reduced quality and the possibility of Rupp being closed once the new owners worked out an asset-strip would likely be more lucrative than on-going production.  However, defying expectations, product development continued and in 1976 Rupp introduced its “Nitro” line of snowmobiles, now with liquid-cooled Xenoah power-plants.  These were a considerable technical advance and reviews were glowing but development costs had been high and the sector had become crowded; although sales were encouraging, profits became marginal as the machines often had to be sold at a discount.  In 1977, despite the publicity generated by the Rup 440 Nitro being capable of a genuine 80 mph (130 km/h), the company filed for bankruptcy, even a joint venture with the more stable Arctic Cat operation unable to stave off the inevitable.  In 1978, Rupp was wound up.

1974 Rupp Centaur (single seater).  Based on the photographic record, most buyers seemed to have chosen red.

The change in ownership and troubled history of the early 1970s explains the existence of the Centaur.  With an existing product line rendered unsuitable by the sudden decline in the snowmobile market, Rupp needed a new offering that could (1) quickly be developed, (2) be produced using existing assembly lines and (3) be sold at a price acceptable to its market segment and for that roll of the dice, planners settled on a powered-tricycle, a configuration familiar to customizers and specialist applications (police forces, postal services etc).  Rupp was targeting not commercial operators but the recreational market and that the machine would offer better fuel consumption than even small economy cars was an attraction, the project conceived when gas  had become not only suddenly expensive but also often scarce.  Unfortunately for Rupp, the scarcity didn’t last and in retrospect, even if it had, the Centaur’s many impracticalities might anyway have been enough to see it doomed (it was very much a “fun machine” for fine weather and the original version was strictly a single seater; in the recession year of 1974, it was not a compelling formula).  Although priced at US$1,700, for what one got, the cost-breakdown didn’t make sense for most because a small Toyota or Datsun could the leave the showroom for as little as US$2,800 and for that buyers got something that could seat five under a roof with a radio and heater.  Fun came at a cost and too few were prepared to pay the price.

1975 Rupp Centaur (two seater).

There was also the Centaur’s mechanical specification.  Designed originally to use the Volkswagen Type 1’s (Beetle) 1,285 cm³ (78 cubic inch) flat-four engine & transmission, the two companies couldn’t agree to terms so the tricycles were released with a 336 cm³ (21 cubic inch) two-stroke Kohler twin from the snowmobile line.  The fuel consumption certainly was low but while in the lightweight Centaur the VW engine would have delivered sparkling performance with an entertaining ability to cruise at 75 mph (120 km/h and by 1974 anyway unlawful because of a 55 mph (88 km/h) speed limit imposed nationally in as a “fuel-saving measure” by Richard Nixon (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961 and POTUS 1969-1974)), with the little two-stroke, only (a claimed) 55 mph was possible and at that speed the engine was very busy (and noisy), one reviewer remaking “one can almost hear it wearing out”.  Compounding the problem, the centrifugal clutch for the automatic transmission (an apparatus that had been a paragon or reliability in snowmobiles) proved troublesome when handing the greater weight and forces transmitted by the relatively wide contact area of the tyres.

Elvis Presley with 1975 Rupp Centaur, Memphis, Tennessee, 1975.  Keeping a cigarette burning while riding a motorcycle is a reasonable achievement.

Additionally, despite the minimalism of the body structure, flaws in the design (apparently a miscalculation of lateral loadings) meant the fibreglass had a tendency to crack, leading buyers unhappy and Rupp with expensive warranty claims.  It took not long for Rupp to work out the Centaur was not going to be the company's saviour but while a re-design was impossible and Volkswagen refused to lower the price of its engines, some adaptation was possible and in 1975 a two-seat version was released, obviously doubling the seating capacity but further adding to the weight and thus the load on the anyway hard-working engine and its vulnerable clutch.  Given all that Rupp probably did well to sell some 1,200 of the things over two years (although some are documented as lingering (discounted) on dealers’ lots as late as 1977).  One discerning buyer with a taste for the unusual was Elvis Presley (1935-1977) who purchased his in the summer of 1975 (it’s on display at Graceland) but he found the performance unsatisfactory (he was by then quite bulky which wouldn’t have helped) and after a few weeks replaced it with Super Cycle Stallion tricycle, powered by a Volkswagen flat-four.  It’s not known whether Elvis’s dissatisfaction with his Centaur was ever so intense he shot the thing (as he did when his De Tomaso Pantera refused to start) but his feelings were not unique because a number of the surviving Centaurs have been re-powered with Volkswagen engines and at least two have been converted to electric propulsion.

In art

Stormy Daniels (2019) drawing in ink, correction fluid & graphite on paper, by Robert Crumb (b 1943).  The image is available on the “Stormy Tee Shirt” (in black or pink) from Platform Art with 10% of sales revenue going to Safe Horizon, a New York-based organization supporting victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. 

It’s not known if  Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 & since 2025) is a student of Greek mythology (stranger things have happened) but he did provide us with his unique vision of the half-horse, half-human beast, labeling content provider, actress & director Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Gregory Clifford; b 1979) “horse face”.  In May, 2024, the memorable phrase returned to the news as matters came before court related to “hush money” allegedly paid to Ms Daniels (on behalf the of the President) in exchange for her maintaining a silence about a certain “intimate encounter” they had shared, their apparently brief tryst including her spanking him on the butt with a rolled-up magazine featuring his picture on the cover.  Mr Trump denies not only the spanking but the very encounter, claiming it never happened.  To give a flavor of the proceedings, at one point counsel asked Ms Daniels: “Am I correct in that you hate President Trump?” to which she replied: “Yes.”  No ambiguity there and although not discussed in court, her attitude may not wholly be unrelated to Mr Trump’s rather ungracious description of her as “horse face”.  Really, President Trump should have been more respectful towards a three-time winner of F.A.M.E.'s (Fans of Adult Media and Entertainment) much coveted annual “Favorite Breasts” award.

Death of a Centaur (1912), oil on canvas by Arthur Lemon (1850–1912).  For Lemon, the Centaur was what would now be called his "spirit animal" and the work was painted when he was close to death. 

Born on the Isle of Mann, Arthur Lemon spent his childhood in Rome before moving to California to work as a cowboy; there he became a devotee of what he would call en plain air (by which he meant “an outdoor life”).  Later he would return to Europe to study art and for the rest of his life he would travel between Italy and England where regularly he staged exhibitions at London's Royal Academy; his work most associated with scenes of the Italian countryside and the daily lives of the rural peasantry.  Lemon's fine eye for painting a Centaur was a thing of practice.  He became close friends with English artist Henry Scott Tuke (1858–1929), noted for his prolific output of works in the Impressionist tradition focused on nude adolescent boys and during the 1880s the pair for a time lived Florence where they “spent time sketching male nudes in the Italian sunshine.”  

The Wooing of Daphnis (exhibited 1881), oil on canvas by Arthur Lemon.

Daphnis possessed the youthful beauty of the kind idealized by Tuke and the many nymphs who so adored him.  A victim of that beauty, his life ended badly.  The artistic approach of Lemon and Tuke was interesting in that their nude youths often were shown in a contemporary setting and in that they differed from the many paintings and sculptures of Ancient Greek gods and mythological which, historically, enabled an exploration of the male nude without upsetting public decency; what Lemon and Tuke especially did was eroticise their young subjects.  From his time as a cowboy, Lemon was well acquainted with the physicality of the horse and knew from his studies that in Greek art Centaurs often were depicted as highly sexed figures; being not wholly human, Centaurs could be treated as creatures able to ignore the strict moral expectations of society and accordingly, formed their own community.  Lemon and Tuke in their own ways noted this and both took the Centaur as something of a model although while Lemon devoted much of his energy to painting horses, Tuke’s attention on the nude male youth was obviously his obsession.  After decades of little interest, in the more permissive atmosphere of the 1970s, Tuke emerged as a cult figure among those collecting gay-themed art but Lemon remained a footnote as a minor artist of rural life.

Eidetic

Eidetic (pronounced ahy-det-ik)

(1) Of, relating to or constituting visual imagery vividly experienced and readily reproducible with great accuracy and in great detail.

(2) In anthropology, political science, sociology etc, of or relating to eidos (the formal content of a culture, encompassing its system of ideas, criteria for interpreting experience, etc).

(3) In psychiatry and neuroscience (as eidetic memory), of visual (or sometimes auditory) images, exceptionally vivid and allowing detailed recall of something previously perceived (most common in young children, the capacity appearing to diminish as language develops).

(4) Relating to or subject to such imagery.

(5) The (1) essence or (2) perfect, vision of an object or concept.

(6) In psychoanalysis (of dreams), as “eidetic memory”, a dream that can be “seen in the mind” so vividly it appears to be “movie-like”.

(7) In philosophy and phenomenology (as “eidetics”), the study of eidetic reduction (a technique used to help identify the essential components of a phenomenon by attempting to reduce it into its necessary essences).

(8) In literary criticism, writing sufficient evocative as to create in a reader’s imagination a “photo-realistic image” of what’s being described or discussed.

(9) In visual art (painting), a technique used to produce a work close to indistinguishable from a photograph (literally possible before advances in photography and photographic reproduction); the work so painted.

1924: From the from German eidetisch (pertaining to the faculty of projecting images), from the Ancient Greek εἰδητικός (eidētikós) (pertaining to images and used also in the sense of “pertaining to knowledge”), from eidesis (knowledge), the construct being εἶδος (eîd(os)) (form, shape) + -etic.  The -etic suffix was from the Ancient Greek -ητικός (-ētikós), from -έω (-éō) + -τικός (-tikós).  It was used to form adjectives meaning “pertaining to”, derived from nouns, most of which end in -esis and -esy.  Most English words formed with the suffix were from words formed in other languages (sometimes mixed), including Old, Middle and Modern French, Italian, Latin, and Ancient Greek.  Eidetisch was in 1924 coined by German psychologist Professor Erich Jaensch (1883-1940).  The back-formation dyseidetic refers to an individual found to be dyslexic (with regard to the visual aspect of written words) while the adjective “noneidetic” (not eidetic) seems one of English’s most significantly pointless words but presumably it’s useful for clinicians making case notes.  The now obsolete alternative spelling was edetic.  Eidetic is an adjevtive, eidetiker is a noun and eidetically is an adverb; the noun plural is eidetikers.  The special case of eidetics (in philosophy the study of eidetic reduction) is an example of a noun plural existing without a base noun

The term “eidetic memory” is used as a synonym of the popular “photographic memory” and an individual possessing the characteristic can in clinical use be described as an “eidetiker” (one with an “eidetic memory”); the medical literature however makes clear there is no evidence of any subject ever having exhibited a true “photographic memory” in the way the condition of “total recall” has been depicted in fiction and elsewhere in popular culture.  Sometimes, a subject may seem to have a “photographic memory” but, upon investigation, it has always been found to be something less impressive.  In the 1980s, one US television comedy had the governor of a state astonished by his secretary’s memory:

Secretary: “I’ve memorized the telephone numbers of the entire US Senate.”

Governor: “What?  All of them?”

Secretary: “Well, there are only two.”

That worked also as a “blonde joke”, a breed now proscribed under threat of cancellation.  In general use, what “photographic memory” usually indicates is “an exceptionally good memory” but often this manifests in specialized fields of learning rather than general experience.  As something more generalized, it’s most common in young children who have, by definition, a limited length of memory from which to draw and the capacity appears usually to diminish as language develops.  In adults, it definitely is a spectrum condition so the adjectival senses (the comparative “more eidetic”, the superlative “most eidetic”) can be used and in neuroscience publications “semi-eidetic (partly or partially eidetic) does appear.  That said, in the literature, there are cases of patients who suffer from being “unable to forget”, a genuinely disturbing condition for those with memories of traumatic events.  Even then however, that is an instance not of “total recall” but rather the recollected events being ones they’d prefer to forget but cannot. 

The legacy: Zur Eidetik und Integrationstypologie: Arbeiten aus dem Institut für psychologische Anthropologie an der Universität Marburg/Lahn (On eidetics and integration typology: Works from the Institute for Psychological Anthropology at the University of Marburg/Lahn, 1941) by Professor Rudolf Jaensch, Barth, Leipzig, Germany.

Although at times one of the most cited and influential psychologists of the inter-war era (1919-1939), Rudolf Jaensch is now remembered only for his work on eidetic analysis, his “eidetic hypothesis formation” still one of the standard models in psychology.  His other work in the theories of constitutional types are now little studied, largely because his reputation was sullied by his enthusiastic commitment to and prosecution of the National Socialist Gleichschaltung (coordination) and restructuring of professional & academic life in Germany after the Nazi Party gained power in 1933.  Although Jaensch joined the party only some months after Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) was appointed chancellor (the oft-quoted reference to the Nazis “seizing power” is misleading, the political & military elite miscalculating in thinking having Hitler as head of a government in which the Nazis were in a minority would leaving him “manageable” and thus “handed him” the office)) and was thus susceptible to being derided by the “old fighters” as one who joined the movement only for career advancement, he’d been affiliated with a number of the party’s organs since mid-1932.  However, he certainly made up for lost time and in March 1933 was one of several hundred professors to sign a declaration of support for the new regime but unlike many of them who genuinely were seeking only to protect their careers and families, Jaensch was an activist, denouncing those who dissented from the party’s new orthodoxies and was particularly interested in excluding Jews from academic life, seeking not only to secure their dismissal but also discredit their work.  That of course resulted in the migration of many Jewish and engineers and scientists, something that at least partially realized Hitler’s core ideological obsession but greatly would come to disadvantage Germany during World War II (1939-1945).  Hitler may have disdained “Jewish physics” but the British and Americans did not as the Irish-born UK journalist & politician Brendan Bracken (1901–1958) would later (and not wholly facetiously) explain: “We won the war because our German scientists were better than their German scientists”.

Portrait of Martin Heidegger (2017) by Mathieu Laca (b 1982).  A painter can use a retreat from photorealism for reasons that may be artistic or political.

Jaensch's involvement with the Nazis so tainted to his reputation that in the post-war years only his seminal work in eidetic theory remained “acceptable” although the “guilt by association” paradigm was never much of a feature of post Nazi Germany and that he wrote a forward to the published version of Hans Bender’s (1907-1991) revised doctoral dissertation Zur Experimentalpsychologie des Unterbewußten und der außersinnlichen Wahrnehmung (On the Experimental Psychology of the Subconscious and Extrasensory Perception) seems not to have affected Dr Bender’s flourishing career in the 1950s.  There may also been some appeal in the English-speaking world, it being hard to think of a better name then “Bender” for a psychologist working in the field of extrasensory perception.  Unfortunately, in Germanic use, while the name “Bender” was from the Middle High German benden (to bend; to twist), use was typically occupational and applied to (1) a cooper (barrel-maker), with Bender a clipping of Fassbinder or Fassbender (a cooper (ie someone who builds and repairs wooden barrels or casks by bending staves) or (2) a craftsman or metalworker (the artisans and smiths who shaped materials like wood or metal using techniques of bending and curving.  Less commonly, it could be topographic (someone who lived near a sharp curve or bend in a river or a road).  Whether, had Professor Jaensch lived to undergo the de-Nazification process of the post-war years, had he apologized for his conduct, he’d have been “sort of forgiven” in the mood of selective generosity that has seen figures like conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) and philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) to one degree or another rehabilitated is unlikely; Karajan’s association with the regime was pure careerism while Heidegger’s flirtation was brief and soon abandoned whereas Jaensch died an unrepentant Nazi and his only legacy is eidetic theory.

Eidetic memory has never appeared in the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), either as a diagnostic term or disorder, presumably because it’s regarded as a natural variation in the human condition.  Although an acknowledged psychological phenomenon, the DSM does not regard an exceptional memory (however described) as pathological, even when discussing the functioning of memory in the context of neuro-cognitive or dissociative disorders.  Despite, that, the term “eidetic” is far from unknown in the psychiatric & psychological literature (professional & popular) but many publications cast a much wider net than the DSM that focuses on the diagnosis of metal disorders rather than reviewing the range of “normal” human characteristics.  So, while there are books devoted to discussing eidetic memory (and related topics) and the “self-help” shelves in bookshops often have volumes on “improving memory” or “developing a photographic memory”, that’s very different from “eidetic memory”.  For example, psychiatric teaching material describes eidetic images as visual memories of almost hallucinatory vividness but the DSM’s editors applied the same rationale when not including Aphantasia (an inability voluntarily to recall or form mental images) in their editions, the DSM being concerned primarily with phenomena insofar as they constitute clinically significant dysfunction or form part of a recognized disorder.  The eidetic memory spectrum does though remain a recognized psychological phenomenon and for clinicians that’s helpful because of the need to differentiate instances from hallucinations, a very different symptom.

In painting, there is a long “eidetic” tradition of works so photorealistic that, unless closely examined (and certainly when reproduced photographically) can be assumed to be photographs, some artists in recent years even adopting the technique as a signature.  Those still able to view art for pleasure can enjoy the perceptual ambiguity (and maybe even enjoy being fooled) but art critics know paintings are there to be criticized and while the sheer technical prowess of the artist can be acknowledged, photorealistic painting often has been treated with hostility.  It wasn’t always so because photorealism predated photography as some artists sought to achieve what would later come to be called the “hyper-realistic” and, in a nice linguistic paradox, it would be decades (well into the twentieth century) before technology had improved to the point at which a developed photograph could match the “realism” achieved by the most skilled artists, a group working not only in paint but also with pencils and, remarkably, even charcoal, a substance uniquely suitable for emulating monochromatic images.  The objection of latter-day critics was not only the predictable: “Why not just take a photograph?” but also it being known many artists actually took photographs and copied these to create their paintings.  To many critics, that meant it was less “art” than “drafting”.

Telephone Booths (1967), acrylic on Masonite by Richard Estes (b 1932), Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid, Spain.

The classic exponent of the technique was US artist Richard Estes and Telephone Booths is his best-known work in this vein.  At the technical level, the piece was most accomplished because for a painter, intrinsically, a tree in a park is a less challenging subject than some Manhattan telephone booths in their surrounds, the work demanding the rendering on a two dimensional surface, glass, shiny metal, reflections and transparencies, a grab of multiple overlapping optical images of simultaneous movement.  Now on permanent display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the exhibit’s curatorial notes detail the production process, the composition beginning with several photographs taken of a row of telephone booths at the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Avenue, and 34^th Street, subsequently combined as a montage.  The hyperrealism inherent in emulating photography owes something to the tradition of trompe l'oeil (deceives the eye) in that the works often were a deliberate attempt “…to confuse and disorient the viewer.  Despite depicting a recognizable scene, the complexity of the framing and the blurring of reflections require an additional effort of concentration, since nothing can be grasped at a single glance.”  The choice of setting does though hint at the way artists are selective to make the effect work, glass having the necessary characteristics to create ambiguities, the stuff simultaneously reflective and transparent.  What Estes did was use the accumulation of reflections as a “device of distortion”, some images sharply defined on the glass while others appearing on metallic surfaces slightly were warped while still allowing concurrent recognition of the booths before the eye and the buildings “behind us”, cues such as the signs of the Macy's and Woolworth there as markers of familiarity.  Making a painting from a photograph may sound simple (for those with the skill and time) but what Estes did was not mere transcription for he took his montage and rearranged it, Telephone Booths depicting a scene no single photograph recorded.  That didn’t exactly mean “montage beget collage” but it was an interesting take on “appropriating and reconstructing reality”.  For those who like the idea of telephone booths as subjects there are now fewer from which to choose but in many cities there are survivors (some re-purposed as Wi-Fi hotspots) and in Australia, one that provided vital communications when cellular (mobile) services were disabled by bushfires has been granted “Protected Heritage” status.

Central Savings (1975), oil on canvas by Richard Estes.  Reflected images were a feature of the photorealists, the scenes providing a useful layer of “pre-distortion”.

Tellingly, while Estes usually left his cityscapes devoid of human presence, in Telephone Booths there were four figures, each partially visible in the temporary sanctuary of their booth, backs to the viewer.  As a trick on the path to photorealism that was a wise choice because the almost flat expanses of a trench coat’s fabric makes the effect easier to achieve than the contours and colours of a human face.  However, for professional critic and ultracrepidarian alike, the meaning beneath (or perhaps “beyond”) is there for the viewer to take from it what they will, those better-versed in critical theory, tending sometimes to impart meaning, seeking to “know the mind of the artist”.  The Italian art critic Sandro Parmiggiani (b 1946) described those “on the phones” as “metaphors for broken voices and a faceless humanity, remaining unknowable within those impenetrable spaces, to which the stains that border their metallic edges allude as a visual rhyme, increasing the mystery and the visual bewilderment.”  Now we know.  The author John Updike (1932–2009) was no less a deconstructionist, declaring: “We know nothing about the two people on the far right, nothing except that their clothing is light-colored; we know even less about the couple on the left—they seem transparent in their oblique reflections. Thanks to the label of metropolitan crowd, these people have been reduced to mere signifiers affixed to telephone booths; like bytes.  The sounds of a computer or the strokes of a typewriter take their place and convey information. The emptiness of this information contrasts with the visual richness that the painter has imparted without sparing any effort, constructing a profoundly tender artistic irony.”  It was the Anglo-Irish satirist & Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) who in the poem On Poetry: a Rhapsody (1733) included the lines:

Or else perhaps he may invent
A better than the poet meant;
As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.

That pair of couplets became famous as a critique of overly obsessive literary critics & scholars anxious to find in texts hidden meanings and profundity, the objective perhaps not to inflate the esteem in which the author was held but enhance their own reputations; wisdom displayed by pointing out what the professor down the corridor failed to notice.  Swift may have made a famous point but mostly he was ignored and has of late been steamrollered by the post-modernists & deconstructionists able to construct “meanings in the meanings” although, unfortunately, so jargon-laden are some of their texts the meanings these formalist's documents sometimes barely are decipherable to all but fellow semioticians.  The industry has of course moved on from Homer and the words of figures like Bob Dylan (b 1941) and Jonathan Swift’s now more famous namesake (Taylor Swift (b 1989)) have been analysed as closely as any theologian has studied the Scriptures.  Dylan presumably was on occasions amused by finding out what “he really meant” and was modest, telling one interviewer he was “just a song & dance man” and another that those who “…called his lyrics poetry, probably hadn’t read much poetry”.  Still the critics clearly prevailed because in 2016 the Swedish Academy awarded Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him one of the more publicized laureates of recent decades.  Of Ms Swift’s oeuvre, meaning may be easier to find: she’s of her generation so the songs are “all about her”.

Hot Fudge Sundae (1972), oil on canvas by Ralph Goings.

The US painter Ralph Goings is sometimes said to have made photorealism “his signature” but it seems to have been more “his calling”, drawn to the technique because of a genuine “aesthetic objection” to the way pop-art artists of the 1960s were tending to expressionism (and even mannerism) in their depictions of simple, mundane objects.  Those approaches were of course “just another path to meaning” but for his bank buildings, diners (condiment sets very much a theme) and pick-up trucks, Goings emulated the camera’s objectivity although, without the original photographs, it’s not known if some licence was taken although almost certainly that happened.  While a dent in the tailgate of a parked pick-up truck is unexceptional, maybe it was added for some optical verisimilitude.  Estes’s Telephone Booths was admitted not to be a “pure” piece of eidetic imagery but a compositional piece that was a construct of what such an image might have been; Goings by contrast claimed always to be “true to the original”.

That should be treated as a statement of intent but Goings never exhibited the 35mm color slides that were his “intermediate tool” but he admitted going “beyond the photographs” in tweaking details such as light and color saturation or adjusting an inconvenient shadow.  That he used slides was also of significance because frequently, in a darkened room, he would project the images onto a primed, blank canvas, enabling him to bypass freehand drawing, instead with a pencil “tracing the grid”, meticulously rendering every the edge of every shape, contour or shadow.  That done, what’d he’d have was a kind of “paint-by-numbers” set, the canvas now an assembly of outlined shapes awaiting paint, the original photograph a legend of the color scheme.  So it could be called “craft” and the much skill and patience was demanded but whether that meant it should be called  “art” divided critics.  However, an artist’s relationship with the critics is just one aspect of life and there’s also the relationship with the auction houses and the customers; the current record sale price for a painting by Goings was some US$700,000 and his stuff definitely is now part of the “art market”.

Airstream (1970), oil on Molino by Ralph Goings (1928-2016), Mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Museum of modern art, Ludwig Foundation), Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria.  Molino is a fabric-based support, often a plain-weave or un-primed textile material akin to the specialized canvas or heavy cotton & linen weaves used in Europe.  It's known also as “cotton duck canvas” but that has nothing to do with Anatidae feathers, "duck" from the Dutch doek (cloth). 

More eye-catching still was Airstream.  Still in production after 90 years, vintage Airstreams are a collectable, distinguished by their polished aluminium skins, a dramatic look that has at times been controversial because, on sunny days, the reflections from the large surface area were thought to be “distracting” for other road users.  Some owners of latter-day Shelby American Cobras (the originals (1962-1967) all painted) who opted for the expensive option of polished aluminum bodywork also came to rue the decision, the seductive curves showing every fingerprint.  The big Airstreams did however make a great photograph and, as Ralph Goings knew, a great photo had the potential to be a great painting though in his genre, it had to be the right photo.  Airstream was one of his favourites because he thought it best represented the possibilities in his technique and although what he did was in a sense “mechanical”, it could also be exacting, a few square inches of canvas sometimes taking days to complete.  For Goings, the paintings are best thought of as his “love affair with America”.

Lindsay Lohan rendered in the style of nineteenth century Impressionism (right) by Gemini.ai.  The digital version was based on a photograph (left) of her in a Jill Sander (b 1943) gown in light chartreuse from the Spring 2023 collection (with a Tyler Ellis (b 1984) Clutch, Joseph Saidian & Sons Vintage Marquise & Baguette Cut Diamond, Anabela Chan Orchid Diamond Cascade Earrings and Piferi Fade Sandals by Alfredo Pīferi (b 1987)) while attending the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, California, August, 2024.  On the day, although the environment was not optimized for photography, the light and breeze cooperated, the gown’s fabric swishing in a way the Impressionists would have painted, even had the air been still.  In the 2010s, as video cards became more powerful, software emerged to allow users to take photographs and re-create them in a wide variety of modes including pencil sketches, water colors, oils and even styles such as cubism.  This was the opposite process from that used by hyperrealists such as Estes and Goings; now generative AI makes possible just about anything able to be displayed on a screen.

The paradox of course was that Airstream was the exemplar of a painting functionally indistinguishable from a photograph thus illustrating the usual critique: What’s the point?  Why not just produce prints of the photograph, something able to be done in limitless quantities and at marginal cost?  That’s a classic utilitarian question and one that ignores a concept like l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake) but then, other than as generators or economic value, utilitarians likely thought society gained little benefit from movements such as vorticism, cubism, abstraction, expressionism and such.  There was also elitism in the disdain; photorealism associated with craft, folk-art, advertising, ordinary consumer objects and other fields tainted by commercialism (although the art-mafia was untroubled by their business being focused on money like few others).  Still, contemporary conceptual and abstract art was thought intellectually sophisticated in a way “copying photographs” could never match, the technical virtuosity less valued than the imagination of the “true artist”.  Despite all that, photorealism did find a niche and is now an accepted part of the industry.

The Hay Wain (1821), oil on canvas by John Constable (1776–1837), National Gallery, London (left) and Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour (circa 1811), oil on canvas by John Constable, Royal Academy of Arts, London (right).

John Constable was among the last generation of painters to live before the age of photography and although now regarded as one of the greatest of Britain’s landscape artists, in his lifetime he enjoyed only modest commercial success; not until the age of 52 was he elected to the RA (Royal Academy of Arts).  The two paintings above are examples of the different ways he painted, the high Romantic Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour noticeably less “realistic” than The Hay Wain, a work among his most elegiac.  Viewed retrospectively, as the technology of photography improved, there would have been times when each of these paintings could be deemed photorealistic (if, for purposes of comparison, rendered in gray-scale or sepia) but that was not the dominant artistic measure of the era.  It’s not known when Constable made his remark: “My pictures will never be popular for they have no handling, but I do not see handling in nature” (the quote appearing (undated) in Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq (1843) by the UK-based US genre painter Charles Robert Leslie RA (1794–1859)) but it’s tempting to think it might have been before painting Flatford Mill, a work executed with notable “handling”.  Constable used “handling” (then trade jargon among the critics) to describe the painter’s visible manner of applying paint, the brushwork, facture, finish and characteristic “touch” by which a viewer could see how the artist worked their brush.  The comparison was something like the difference between watchmakers who took care to conceal their creations’ movements and those who made visible the wheels & cogs, Constable in effect saying “nature shows no painterly technique, so why should an artist?”  Time of course doesn’t display the mechanism of how it works any more than do the clouds in the sky: both just are.  The critics though were society’s opinion-makers (especially among those who actually paid arts for their work) and in Constable's time, an academic landscape painter of renown was expected to demonstrate skilful, controlled brushwork that made visible the mechanics of the action.  Not all did it in the same way but the most commercially successful had their ways of making obvious how the oil was blended and modulated, clouds, rocks, foliage and all the elements of landscape rendered through established conventions.  As well as the beauty of what was being depicted, the artist's execution was there to be admired.

The Opening of Waterloo Bridge seen from Whitehall Stairs, 18 June, 1817 (circa 1832), oil on canvas by John Constable, Tate Britain, London.  In the industry’s classification system, Constable is listed as a painter of landscapes, in the Romantic tradition but as much as anything, he was a painter of skies and cloudscapes.

Constable made no secret he thought these conspicuous displays of artistic virtuosity as “bravura”, preferring to be what he called a “natural painter” depicting the “natural environment”.  Discarding, the bravura taught during his student years, he eschewed “showing off” and let nature do the talking; nature having no brushstrokes and trees, clouds and sunlight without “handling”, manifesting only as optical phenomena.  That was what Constable wanted to paint.  He was though a realist and in some of his work there is much of his signature “handling”, rough, broken, apparently (though doubtlessly not) spontaneous brushwork applied in flecks, dabs, flecks, streaks and thick impasto (paint applied thickly to create a topography of peaks and crests that, in physically extending from the surface, lends something of a 3D (three-dimensional) effect), sometimes obviously using paint unmixed and straight “from the tube”.  Constable didn’t change his view that he wanted viewers to focus on the painting rather than the independent performance of the painter but whether “Constable 2.0” was an evolving artist or one adapting to commercial reality in “surrendering art to artifice” can be debated but what no historians dispute is that the later impressionists owed a debt to this exemplar of the Romantic movement.  Constable now is more highly regarded than ever he was in his lifetime.