The Fate of the Animals

On Horses, the Apocalypse, and Painting as Prophecy

Morgan Meis

• Publisher: Slant Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781639821204
• eBook ISBN: 9781639821228
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Modern Art

In 1913, Franz Marc, one of the key figures of German Expressionism, created a masterpiece: The Fate of the Animals. With its violent slashes of color and line, the painting seemed to pre-figure both the outbreak of World War I and, more eerily, Marc's own death in an artillery barrage at the Battle of Verdun three years later.

With his signature blend of wide-ranging erudition and lively, accessible prose, Morgan Meis explores Marc's painting in depth, guided in part by a series of letters Marc wrote to his wife Maria while he was a soldier in the war. In those letters, Marc explores the nature of art, the fate of European civilization, and the inner spiritual nature of all life.

Along the way, Meis brings in other artists such as D.H. Lawrence, Edgar Degas, and Paul Klee to flesh out his argument. The Fate of the Animals also explores the darker undercurrents of German apocalyptic thinking in Marc's time, especially Norse mythology and the ancient Vedic texts as they influenced Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.

The Fate of the Animals is the second volume of Meis's Three Paintings Trilogy, the first volume of which, The Drunken Silenus, examined a painting by Rubens. The third volume (forthcoming) will consider a painting by Joan Mitchell.

Table of contents

• Preface
• 1. The discovery of a book of letters written by a soldier and artist to his wife during World War I, and the recognition that this book of letters drives us into a consideration of The Great War, which was a kind of Apocalypse.
• 2. The horror and grief of World War I bring us closer and closer to a specific painting, a painting made by Franz Marc just before the outbreak of the war, a painting that we’re desperate to understand but don’t yet know how to.
• 3. We learn that Franz Marc, the soldier and painter, was also a lover of happy, joyful cows and that, additionally, he was not a pacifist. We learn, in short, that happy cows and war all fit together somehow in the mind of Franz Marc.
• 4. We delve deeper into Franz Marc and his gratitude for war and also explore his desire to paint even though, for most of his life, Franz Marc was a shitty painter.
• 5. A painter discovers color, really discovers it, really embraces the power and mystery of color, and also, perhaps by extension, discovers the power of fate, of destiny, which is a dangerous power indeed. Heidegger, the Nazi philosopher, makes a brief appearance.
• 6. More is learned about Franz Marc’s love of war and color. It’s a bit redundant but necessary to my style of writing, which is prolix and doubles back on itself to a fault.
• 7. What is an annus mirabilis? (Hint: It is not about having a nice time; it is about suffering. Marc suffers and then surrenders to his fate. And then the Spirit comes to him in the form of a horse.)
• 8. We encounter in Philadelphia a strange man in a bookstore who is probably an angel (or demon) and who introduces to us a book. That book brings D.H. Lawrence into the picture, and that’s a problem.
• 9. We’re in the midst of a battle now, between D.H. Lawrence and Franz Marc, around the question of what it means truly to be alive. Who will win? It comes down, as it so often does when you get into it with Lawrence, to the question of fucking and how to do it right.
• 10. More on fucking (I don’t seem to be able to let it go) and then on to pissing (the vulgarities multiply) and then finally on to Jesus Christ.
• 11. In which we contrast painting that tries to copy how things look, and is therefore mostly silly, and painting that tries to reveal an inner truth about how things really are, which is getting somewhere.
• 12. We bring up Edgar Degas, for a reason that probably has to do with horses.
• 13. We continue burrowing into the horse paintings of Degas, his love of bourgeois civilization, and his deep feeling for the absurdity and necessity of that civilization.
• 14. We finally let Edgar Degas go, his confrontation with human civilization having exhausted us, and we turn back to Franz Marc, who developed a form of painting that takes over from the exhaustion of Edgar Degas.
• 15. What, exactly, is a prophet? What does it really mean to exist in a prophetic mode, to bring prophecy, to see the future, or the past, or the present? What is a prophetic painting?
• 16. A prophetic painting is an apocalypse. A revelation.
• 17. In which we explore some of the other names, the hidden names, of the painting The Fate of the Animals, and in which Paul Klee, the great and beloved foil to Franz Marc, enters the picture, figuratively and literally.
• 18. The drama of Paul Klee and The Fate of the Animals becomes even deeper and more surprising, and we begin to realize that the painting The Fate of the Animals is itself an object of fate, with perhaps also a little dash of grace.
• 19. We discuss the third title of The Fate of the Animals, which is the most secret title of all, and which brings us to the heart of the matter, perhaps the heart of everything, if we can be a little portentous about the matter.
• 20. If The Fate of the Animals is a revelation, what does it reveal? Can this revelation be spoken? Should it be spoken?
• 21. Really to look at The Fate of the Animals would be to have your life changed, to have everything changed.
• 22. Franz and Maria Marc dream of building a garden.
• 23. The Fate of the Animals has one last trick up its sleeve.
• 24. The mad ravings of Odin meet the earth shaking of the God of the tetragrammaton.
• 25. The last drawings. A surprising vision. The end
• Further Reading
• This book was set in Adobe OFL Sorts Mill Goudy, designed by Barry Schwartz and published by The League of Moveable Type, the first open-source font foundry. Based on the classic Goudy Oldstyle, this ...