This paper uses aspects of the type of Nachträglichkeit, or deferred action, as described by Hal Foster in “The Return of the Real” (1996) to recover Franz Marc’s utopian visions of Eden as shown in the mural Marc made with August Macke called “Paradies”. Traces of Marc’s ideas about animals and utopia can be found in Joan Jonas’s 2009 “Reading Dante,” an installation from the 2009 Biennale di Venezia, and in the video “Girl and the Sea,” directed by Lee Lennox to accompany the 2004 song of the same name by the Presets.