When Tolkien met Cthulhu – the blurring of reality and fantasy and a cautionary tale about how not all you find on the internet is true
A chat elsewhere, around Inklings
and Horror, prompted a memory of a picture I came across on the internet,
perhaps a few years ago now. As soon as I viewed it, I was already sure it was
a fake, but on many places, Pinterest included, it was being passed around
without any rebuke or further information. The image gripped me, that was the
artistic intention, as something I wished was real. It took a little time, but
I got to the bottom of just how the image came to be.
The image in question is what appears to be a black and white photograph of a
young J.R.R. Tolkien stood next to sculpture/relief, towering over him. The
relief is quite extraordinary, a (female?) figure with branching arms, very
tree-like but also harking back to Cernunnos/Horned God on the Gundestrup
Cauldron (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen).
The image, across the internet,
often comes with a label – “Tolkien, 1911” so it is five years before Tolkien
is married to Edith Bratt, heads to the Western Front and falls ill during the
Battle of the Somme. The image of Tolkien (sans relief) within this larger
photograph actually is from January 1911, as shown in Catherine Mcilwaine’s
book, ‘Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth’, to accompany the wonderful exhibition in
Oxford back in 2018 – source: Mcilwaine (2018, pp. 140-141).
Tolkien is nineteen in that photograph, taken in the studio of H.J. Whitlock & Sons.
So, we have a provenance for the image of Tolkien within the larger “Tolkien, 1911” fake. But who created it and why? The answer took some searching on the internet, using Google image search and other methods.
The relief/sculpture behind Tolkien in the fake photograph is a real physical object. It was created by an Italian mixed-media artist in 1999 and has the title “Ramifications.” Andrea Bonazzi, residing in Genoa, is a translator, non-fiction writer, artist (mixed media) and Cthulhu mythos prop-maker. He also creates photomontages of his favourite writers together with his sculptures. He created the prop “Ramifications” in 1999 and some time after (2002) he created a photomontage with a young (19 year old) J.R.R. Tolkien stood next to the sculpture. Bonazzi added the “fake date” of 1911 to the photomontage on his website. It is clear Bonazzi is not trying to create a forgery to deceive anyone. He has made many Cthulhu-based props and done photomontages based on other writers he appreciates.
Bonazzi calls the reliefs/sculptures “tablets.” “Ramifications” (below) is described as “modelling paste” and gives the size as 30x23 cm.
In a 2010 interview for the “Swords against the Outer Dark” (Mangus, 2010), Bonazzi talks about being influenced by Clark Ashton Smith, but he only saw Smith’s own artwork later. He also explains how he was introduced to Tolkien through his older brother, something I can relate to, which led to interest in medieval literature and other cultures.
The sculptures are one-off pieces. According to the 2010 interview, Bonazzi’s last “Cthulhu piece” was created in 2007 and most of his work has been given away or sold. The photomontages were created for “friends’ publications.” Looking at his blog, it looks like he has found his muse again and is creating more sculptures and photomontages.
If for anything else, this whole episode leaves a tantalising “What if?” to Tolkien’s past. Looking through Bonazzi’s work, there are some great author/Cthulhu sculpture “mashups” and a small part of me wishes Tolkien had encountered such a thing. But his real history is just as fascinating.
What is clear though is that an image will be shared across various social media platforms without clarification of provenance or declaration of digital manipulation, quite possibly unknowingly to the artist who created it. I remember an image erroneously said to be of Tolkien in his greenhouse was posted on several places (Aubron-Bülles, 2013) including more recently the Tolkien Society Facebook group which was quickly debunked by Society regulars. It should be noted that the moderators allowed it through exactly for the purpose of it being debunked so anyone who had not come across it previously would know and not unwittingly further the misinformation.
The image of the “Tolkien, 1911” Cthulhu-style relief is one such case, where though it was not quite misinformation, no further information is provided. And yes, it was an act of creation to make a forgery, but the original intention was not to maliciously deceive but to create something interesting for friends and potential clients. Then the internet happened, as it always does.
I am looking forward to the thing
that sparked this tour into my memory (how poor it can be, alas!) being announced
in the near future.
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Reference
Aubron-Bülles, M. (2013) How to
misappropriate a gardening picture. Enter: Clarence Elliott. Exit: J.R.R.
Tolkien. [Weblog] The Tolkienist. 27 February. Available from: https://thetolkienist.com/2013/02/27/how-to-misappropriate-a-gardening-picture-enter-clarence-elliott-exit-j-r-r-tolkien-tthnsdwohatdw-part-1/
[Accessed 02/08/2021]
Mcilwaine, C. (2018) Tolkien:
Maker of Middle-earth. Oxford: The Bodleian Library.
Mangus, S. (2010) Interview: Andrea Bonazzi, Master of the Weird. [Weblog] Swords against the Outer Dark. 30th September. Available from: http://swordandsanity.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-andrea-bonazzi-master-of.html [Accessed 02/08/2021]
Websites
Andrea Bonazzi
http://in-tenebris-scriptus.blogspot.com/
http://web.tiscalinet.it/sculptus/
Tolkien timeline on the Tolkien
Society website
https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/timeline
Gundestrup Cauldron
https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-gundestrup-cauldron/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundestrup_cauldron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernunnos
Puts me in mind of that fake Terry Pratchett quote that was mistakenly spread around the internet.
ReplyDeletePratchett and Tolkien, so often misquoted and even fake quoted :(
Delete