Today was one of the most inspiring days ever for me in my art class. A few days ago my professor told the class to bring in something for "Show and tell" (Extra Credit).
I decided to bring in the opening art of Elfenlied (As seen bellow) and she displayed all of the pictures on a HUGE projector in front of the class for over 20 minutes talking about Gustav Klimt's artwork and what japan had transformed it in. Yes, everyone was laughing and loving the boobs on the big screen (Including me!) but besides that, I learned alot about Gustav Klimt and what the REAL meaning behind those opening art scenes show us for elfenlied.
Gustav Klimt's artwork was highly criticized to have a lot of pornographic content. For example. #4 (The last one) the woman (Lucy) is actually masturbating. Now I don't know if japan knew that about the picture they transformed, but effectively, thats a picture of Lucy masturbating. (This is NOT a horrible thing, its art, its what it is, and its great).
Lucy (The woman he painted) also jumped into a river and killed herself because she couldn't love the man she loved. Now, this is a huge coincidence and maybe a likely occurrence between the lucy/kohta/yuka situation (If the series went further). Again, not sure if Japan made that connection.
Below are the images i'm talking about:
Three important things learned from this:1) Lucy is displayed masturbating on the fourth image, effectively the only soft core pornographic material displayed on elfenlied (Whether it was intentional or not).
2) Gustav Klimt the author of the inspiration on the elfenlied artwork, was considered a pornographic artist that was no so well in his head.
3) The woman Lucy is based on in the drawings kills herself because she cant love/be with the person she loves. Almost sound like a familiar foreshadowing with the lucy/kohta thing?
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