The Whispering Gallery Whispering Gallery Podcast

There’s Admiral Byrd’s strange stories with a lot of ties to sci fi and politics of the time, and then the imaginings of John Symmes drawn as a kind of diagram of the workings of his “Symmes holes” and the subsequent five “liveable” or inhabitable concentric levels of his fictional version of planet earth. Was he trying to put his stake in the ice to be involved in the race to explore the poles? The great polar adventure?

Welcome to the Whispering Gallery podcast! I’m Suzanne Nikolaisen and if this isn’t your first rodeo - er, time listening, you know that together we seek out the spooky, unusual and fascinating stories from the art world—to understand the art and the related “unknown” a little better, and boy—howdy, did I find another “strange” doozy of a pseudoscience story for you today! Im all researched out and can give you the downlow on unreal hollow earth drawings!

Continuing our story about the labyrinth at Knossos and other labyrinths including the one in the movie The Shining.

...On the island of Britain, between the Atlantic ocean and the North Sea, lies a haunted castle. Okay, yes—technically there are probably a bunch of haunted castles on -this- island. We’re looking for Alnwick Castle in Northumberland in northern UK, in particular.

So, what about the ghosts in the depths of the legendary labyrinth, in the deep dark, below the palace?—The place where Theseus and the Minotaur had their showdown? Where does myth end reality meet? Was there really a labyrinth?

The Minotaur has been an easy target over time as a bad guy capable of cannibalism, taken out of context and conveniently used as a symbol of a monster of some really horrendous human behavior as in George Fredrick Watts 1885 painting the Minotaur (oil on canvas at the Tate museum in London England titled: The Minotaur. He is standing maybe by an ocean wall, looking out over the ocean awaiting his victims. Which the artist tied to evil human behaviors.

Can’t we just have a good, old fashioned monster painting? Of course not, it’s gotta be twisted to something even worse. Be the light you want to see in the world George, be the light.

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We left off with two abandoned ships (from the Franklin expedition), no survivors and the terrible story that the officers and crew of the ships had perished in the hostile environment of the polar desert —some were never accounted for. Now we explore where the painting title came from, coming to understand Edwin Landseer and a bit about how melancholia (depression) was treated during Victorian times.

Before I go any farther, there is a painting of a scene of one of the ships from the Franklin expedition. The ship is deserted, polar bears are scavenging, it’s gross. We’ll get into the painting a little later on. It is this painting “Man Proposes, God Disposes” painted by Sir Edwin Landseer (known for his paintings of animals, Lions, Dogs, Stags). This painting of the polar bears doing their thing is said to be cursed.