From the Chiasmus Archive: MOODBOARD: Robert Forster cover art for “New Writings in SF4” (1968). July 27, 2021. CHIASMUS MAGAZINE BLOG

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The image was heavily influenced by Gustav Klimt’s Medicine (1901), which was mirrored in controversy when it was first exhibited in 1901, deemed explicit by the press, the painting included a naked pregnant woman (upper right hand). Unheard of at a time when right wing conservatism in Germany was revealed briefly before the more open 1920s Weimar period occurred, it was when the Nazis took control in the late 1930s and deemed all Jewish modernist painters as “degenerate” artists. Thus, the image was hidden away for most of World War Two, until in 1945 after Hitler’s death, a lone fanatical German soldier started a fire in the Austrian mansion where the painting was kept amongst other rare Klimt works, damaging the painting almost beyond recognition.

For a detailed analysis of Klimt’s Medicine by Polina Advolodkina, MD of Emory University School of Medicine, please refer to: https://in-housestaff.org/klimt-modernism-arts-relationship-medicine-739