| Hieronymus Bosch Advertise This Page Search Site Hieronymus Bosch Dvds @ amazon.com (direct link) Hieronymus Bosch Books @ amazon.com (direct link) A journey into the sublime. A gallery of the most important works by Bosch. Certainly, for me, The Garden of Earthly Delights is the summit of the body of work - everything before and after was an ascent and descent - but that doesn't detract from the remaining pieces: they are important works in the history of art because of their originality and beauty. It's just that Delights is so good it eclipses anything by any artist, ever. Bosch is an ethereal genius, his meaning, thankfully, lost in the midsts of time. Why do we have to understand everything? Why can't we let things be, not try to understand a meaning but simply marvel at the work. Modern life is rubbish: we know everything but understand nothing. A medieval surrealist is how I think of him. A pioneer with patrons on LSD x 100. Of course, history won't back me up on that one but you get my drift. The godfather to Dali, Ernst and the writer Lautreamont, The creator of modern art. Do not understand it; let the work wash all over you. The Best Bosch Book: Hieronymus Bosch. The Complete Works This is the big one. The most important work in an oeuvre of monumental works. When the panels are closed, the painting on the outer wings shows the Earth as a disk floating obliquely within a larger circle (see below). When the triptych is open the lateral wings show a form of Eden and Hell. The triptych takes its name from the central panel (a modern title). Tis The Garden of Earthly Delights. The whole piece is a form of beautiful Surrealism nearly five hundred years before Andre Breton was even born. Relish the obscure. This is as obscure as it gets: we do not even know the original title of the piece. The Garden of Earthly Delights takes us to the outer reaches of the imagination - it's a one-way ticket and it's a paradise without earthly sin or a Christian Heaven. It's just an imaginary, luminous world. It is erotic beyond words. What makes the piece, for me, the ultimate in surrealism, is the fact that we just do not know enough about the piece and why it is what it is. Art critics can give opinions but no-one can nail Bosch's work down because there is not enough hard fact. Books have been devoted to it but read them at your peril: they took me further away from the work than before I read them. All I can say is the work moves me in a primeval way that Dali, Magritte or Ernst never have. Just look at it and don't think: just let it wash over you. It will all hit the subconscious or bits of it will. Beautiful The Garden of Earthly Delights Canvas Print But for me it. Is the reaction of the child that makes the picture or gives it its raison d'etre. The child is not interested in the conjurer; he's fascinated by the stupidity of the gullible man more than anything else. The child has all the wisdom of the world. This is a Bosch picture where you will find almost no obscure symbolism. It is what it is. Beautiful The Conjurer Canvas Print The Seven Deadly Sins is one of Bosch's earliest paintings. In it, he shows scenes of village life that describe the effect of each sin on human behaviour. The use of a small round medallion in each corner and, in the center, a sequence of scenes combined in a large circle had been common since the 14th century. It is the disk at the center which is the crux of the piece. The Seven Sins come at us from a circle around an eye. Anger, Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust or Excess, Pride and Vanity. Bosch was a devout Catholic and feared for the fate of the soul at the Final Judgement. The medallions at each corner of The Seven Deadly Sins are Death, Judgement, Hell, and Heaven. Beautiful The Seven Deadly Sins Canvas Print Hieronymus Bosch Dvds @ amazon.com (direct link) Hieronymus Bosch Books @ amazon.com (direct link) Advertise This Page Search Site Top of Page |
