What if Bosch and particularly the anonymous artists who created drolleries were just simply letting off sexual steam so to speak? What if they were filled with lust, their minds adrift in sexual imaginings that could not be the theme of otherwise 'serious' art? Especially since most art was commissioned for religious/pious reasons to begin with.
What if it were all just a sort of Medieval graffiti or tagging? With Bosch being an exception like Andy Warhol who made a point out of elevating kitsch into art?
Modern art critics take things too seriously too often. I'd really like to see them with egg on their face on this particular subject.
I always thought it was a condemnation of hedonism, and of the hierarchical illusion of the afterlife reflecting a terrible reality: the privileged “forgiven” living in sinful decadence, and the “condemned” masses languishing in hellfire (cold, so I’ve heard).
Consider that this was also the time when Papal Indulgences were still bought, where “Salvation” was just a coin purse away. We think of our institutions as decrepit and corrupt then; imagine how it must have felt 400 years ago, 100 years into the Renaissance, still under the Feudal boot of Post-Roman Europe.
I've stared at this painting several times. It might be the artist's version of heaven and hell, or perhaps he ate some mushrooms before sitting down to paint.
Very likely Joen van Aken's paintings are the products from his own imagination. Nothing of course is so grateful as depicting "hell" , whatever that for him might have been. And whoever saw hell? So, his imagination is no less than ours. It depicts many vices and probably not yet all recovered small or great riddles. Fact is, that his commissioners were highly impressed by his painting. No one before ever dared go this far.
Funfact: do you know that Bosch is the father in western history of the pictures and expressions of the "light at the end of the tunnel"? In his painting of paradise after purgatorio, we see a large tunnel with white light at the end, to which the angels bring the righteous to heaven. Its his invention.
What if Bosch and particularly the anonymous artists who created drolleries were just simply letting off sexual steam so to speak? What if they were filled with lust, their minds adrift in sexual imaginings that could not be the theme of otherwise 'serious' art? Especially since most art was commissioned for religious/pious reasons to begin with.
What if it were all just a sort of Medieval graffiti or tagging? With Bosch being an exception like Andy Warhol who made a point out of elevating kitsch into art?
Modern art critics take things too seriously too often. I'd really like to see them with egg on their face on this particular subject.
I always thought it was a condemnation of hedonism, and of the hierarchical illusion of the afterlife reflecting a terrible reality: the privileged “forgiven” living in sinful decadence, and the “condemned” masses languishing in hellfire (cold, so I’ve heard).
Consider that this was also the time when Papal Indulgences were still bought, where “Salvation” was just a coin purse away. We think of our institutions as decrepit and corrupt then; imagine how it must have felt 400 years ago, 100 years into the Renaissance, still under the Feudal boot of Post-Roman Europe.
I wonder if morphine was somehow involved...
If this is hell on earth then I choose to go to heaven.
I've stared at this painting several times. It might be the artist's version of heaven and hell, or perhaps he ate some mushrooms before sitting down to paint.
Eating mushrooms do cause this type of imagery.
Hell is the ultimate humiliation.
This is not it.
I would be willing to talk to him about it.
Very likely Joen van Aken's paintings are the products from his own imagination. Nothing of course is so grateful as depicting "hell" , whatever that for him might have been. And whoever saw hell? So, his imagination is no less than ours. It depicts many vices and probably not yet all recovered small or great riddles. Fact is, that his commissioners were highly impressed by his painting. No one before ever dared go this far.
Funfact: do you know that Bosch is the father in western history of the pictures and expressions of the "light at the end of the tunnel"? In his painting of paradise after purgatorio, we see a large tunnel with white light at the end, to which the angels bring the righteous to heaven. Its his invention.