Death.
Dystopic.
Fantastic.
Profane.
Sublime. And most certainly
surreal.
The "Garden of Earthly Delights" is a
triptych and incidentally, debatably Bosch’s most famous work. It expresses many of the above themes to
fierce consequence. It is an
enormous work of
genius which was completed in 1500 and is now housed at the Prado in
Madrid.
It is a very peculiar painting which tells three stories, the first reflecting on the days of Eden the second presumably earth as it appears now (or back in 1500), and then lastly it depicts rather hellish damnation. It's quite astonishing when we think that this would have of gone up in some Church, it's an act of heresy so large, you honestly cannot see why they would not have burnt the thing back then. The picture has a fascinating mystery as to what it means; you think in fact it's going to be rather erotic in the modern sense. That is probably a fraction of its appeal, people look at all these naked figures thinking there must be something terribly dirty or depraved going on, and essentially there are a lot of curious things going on, there's a man sticking flowers up somebody else's bottom for example but there's nothing prurient about it, in its context it’s a rather lovely thing.
Bosch uses the metaphor of the garden, to create study in lust. The canvas is engaged with exquisitely rendered images of frolicking, naked women, nude men straddling spectacular mutants, winged figures hauling succulent red fruit, and lots of touching, stroking, kissing, and fondling.
The painting has been described as somewhat like Fantasia, or more accurately, Disney on acid!
Upon closer examination, Hieronymus Bosch's riotous images and colours expose themselves not as what we would imagine to be haphazard and chance but instead as precise, carefully selected symbols, meting out sobering parables and whips. An example of this precision is found in the left section of "Garden of Earthly Delights". It features an enormous glass bubble containing a pair of lovers. The motif of the glass sphere was associated both with the implements of the alchemist and with an ancient Flemish proverb that says: "Happiness is like a glass, which soon breaks."
The illogical use of space in the triptych comes to light as an expression of pure, undiluted dreams and fantasies. This lack of proportion in Bosch's panels has led critics to suggest that he trained as a book illustrator rather than a painter, and this background gave him the freedom to express movement and invention through his curious array of grotesque, gargantuan animals and madcap human figures.
If I can give you one last, defining word, for the Garden of Earthly Delights, it is:
luscious.