Garden

Garden of Earthly Delights, 1500-1505
Hieronymous Bosch
oil/wooden panel
220 cm x 389 cm
Museo Nacional del Prado


I recently read an essay about one of Bosch's drawings which focused on the "Treeman" that you can see in the right panel of the Garden triptych. (Koerner. "Bosch's Equipment" Things that Talk) There is more than enough to keep one occupied engrossed in Bosch's incredible painting, but I recommend spending time with sections at a time. This is the triptych open, each of the panels with a different focus. The left, paradise, the right, hell, with the center lending the work its name, Garden of Earthly Delights. "Between paradise and hell, these delights are nothing more than allusions to sin, showing humankind dedicated to diverse worldly pleasures. There are clear and strongly erotic representations of lust, along with others, whose meanings are more enigmatic. The fleeting beauty of flowers and the sweetness of fruit transmit a message of fragility and the ephemeral character of happiness and enjoyment." (Prado entry) When the triptych is closed it shows through a grisaille view of the world during creation (the third day)

Bosch was one of the first artists that fascinated me as a kid. Admittedly I was intrigued by the strangeness, the grotesque and was psyched when I was able to see the work in person at the Prado when I was studying abroad. Now that I've learned a bit more, I hope to get the painting again some day. One of the things I was most curious about was the date of the painting, I was startled to see that it Bosch worked in the late 15th/early 16th century. I had no idea that a German painter then would produce such work (and Bosch was wholly unique in his time). Until then, the digital versions are pretty fantastic. Check out the masterpieces at the Prado on Google Earth! Just fly to Prado Museum Spain and click on Masterpieces.

This took me much longer than it should have because of, you guessed it, Google Earth!

The Librarian

Librarian, 1570
Guiseppe Arcimboldo (Italian, 1527-1593)
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorische Museum
Image courtesy of wikimedia commons

I am indulging myself a little bit today. Guiseppe Arcimboldo is the brilliant painter of an array of bizarre heads concocted of oodles of gorgeous fantastically rendered objects, usually from the natural world. He is famous for his anthropomorphic paintings, when I hear his name I always think of a head made of fruit.

His work The Librarian "would have been recognised by its first audience as a cruel portrait of Wolfgang Lazius, court historiographer to Maximilian and a passionate book collector."(Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, Saturday April 26, 2007) His work is witty, but in order to be taken seriously it could not simply be an assemblage of objects. These paintings live as portraits, with a depth and interest one might not perceive at the outset.

Arcimboldo was embraced by the Surrealist movement and appears surprisingly modern when remembering that he worked out of the 16th century (same feeling I've always had about Hieronymous Bosch as well). I am only just learning about Arcimboldo but I highly recommend The Guardian article as it touches upon his variety of work, the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and the affect of the history of scientific discovery.

Check out a gallery of his work.

The Lady on the Horse

The Lady on the Horse, ca. 1900-01
Alfred KUBIN (1877-1959), Austrian

Pen and ink, wash, and spray on paper.
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kubin-Archiv

I discovered a new artist yesterday. Alfred Kubin, in the ranks of the odd and strange (Dali, Bosch, Goya, Ernst...) Currently, the focus of a show at the Neue Galerie in New York, Kubin's drawings are nightmarish, creepy, symbolic, intriguing and fantastical. Created predominately with pen and ink and wash, they elicit the strangeness of the psyche (Kubin began his career soon after Freud's Interpretation of Dreams was published)

Thematically linked to Odilon Redon and Max Klinger, all were heavy into literature which infused their creative work. Kubin also did illustration for works by Poe and more.

NY Times slide show of some of Kubin's drawings

Have a fantastic weekend! Christmas is coming!