Superman Lives: Sylvain Despretz' biomechanic Skullship concept art for the unmade Superman Lives References the Mondoshawan design from Fifth Element?

 

 

leading from 

Superman Lives: Sylvain Despretz' Skullship concept art for the unmade Superman Lives

and 

The Fifth Element: The design of the Mondoshawan

 

 


a. References the Mondoshawan design from Fifth Element?

Making the Henu Barque/Mondoshawan connection on Monday 7th of May 2017, I see the images of this creature next to the Skullship designed the same year as the release of The Fifth Element and I make another connection. 

Sylvain would have been familiar enough with the design of the final suit whether he wanted to be or not.

Perhaps in years to come, people will start making up their own stories about how it got there. 

 

 

See: Mondoshawan from The Fifth Element (1997)

 

Mondoshawan/Sheridan upside down and Sylvain Despretz's Skullship

Mondoshawan/Sheridan next with Sylvain Despretz's Skullship upside down instead

b)  Closer comparisons to the Mondoshawan upside down

The Mondoshawan shown upside down for comparison because the light on its groin seems to have become the eye window, and the arm has become the sets of teeth, with the eye like oval on the shoulder in near enough the corresponding place with the shoulder spikes becoming the chin spikes. 

Having said this my next thought was that Sylvain may well have been looking at this design from different angles as well.

The Skullship's eye socket window and the upsidedown Mondoshawan's groinlight

 

 

Skullship's jaw and the upside down Mondoshawan's arms and shoulders

 

c) Thoughts about these comparions
Having made these comparisons, I don't mean to say that Sylvain Despretz necessarily deliberately based his space ship on all of these different paintings and illustrations, but at least features from each have found their way into his work because he would have been familiar with them.

Adding to that I am curiously connecting the three sources of reference with the Henu Barque in different ways, and once you start getting close to things connected with Ancient Egyptian imagery, it can start playing very creative curious games with the mind.

Slightly a later realisation came to that for me , all three of the things hat I chose connected up with Henu Barque in some way, and so in my exploration it's a form of a convergence and quite honestly, one could choose a number of things in art,

I would be pointing out a connection with the Henu Barque mostly because of what seemed to be happening with Surrealism in the earlier part of the 20th Century.

Of course I would assume that there are other things to add to the list of things possibly referenced one way or another even if it's from the back of the mind.

Looking also as the fact that there it's happening in an artroom with other people coming in to tell him to do this and do that, one might jump to the next point and suggest that on some level, their minds were in on it too, drawn to think about similar things.