Focus on Monkey Before Skeleton and explain the Classification and literary models.
Exploring the origins of man is a crucial component in Gabriel von Max's oeuvre. However, this backward-looking search is associated with a belief in the future that is based on technical innovation, such as the discovery of X-rays in 1895, and Darwinian theories. Various publications by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley and the German zoologist Ernst Haeckels serve as literary sources . The latter creates a lively exchange of letters to discuss current studies, which also expresses mutual respect and admiration. Ernst Haeckel received the painting on his 60th birthday Pithecanthropus alalus, which finds its place in its private rooms.
As far as visions and visions of the future are concerned, however, the artist's interest in occultism and spiritualism should also be pointed out, which particularly determines the artist's first creative phase. As a strict opponent of vivisection, he continued to write down his observations and studies on the basis of notes throughout his life. The artist wrote in a letter to his youngest son Corneille Max on September 5, 1899 : "Now the natural scientists and vivisectors are meeting in Munich - these materialists all have a lot to answer for: the miserableness of Christianity is the result." The artist's aversion to epistemological materialism is clear here and expressing pure rationality. The monkey paintings are therefore on the one hand to be understood as documentation of his scientific work, which serves the continuation of the research topics, but on the other hand also illustrate psychological and spiritual ideas.
The relationship between humans and the environment is characterized by great advances in the area of zoology and the keeping and protection of animals in the 19th century . Gabriel von Max therefore proclaims, among other things, a closer relationship to nature and the animal world, which puts the existing hierarchical thinking of people behind, but does not inhibit scientific progress. Arthur Schopenhauer's writings are therefore also groundbreaking. In 1841, in his essay On the Basics of Morality, he formulated a new compassionate understanding of values towards other living beings.
Gabriel von Max