Heironymus Bosch's is a painter that went overlooked
for centuries after his days in Europe in the 1400's. Not until Freud developed his
theories on the unconscious mind did art historians and viewers draw
their attention to Bosch's work and the symbols it could contain. His life is almost completely
undocumented and his reasons, motives, and subject matter is still a
mystery. In my three dimensional design class we were assigned to pick
an object or creature from the painting to construct. Here is my step
my step process and a brief artist statement.
Behind adam and Eve, my creature is crawling out of a lake with other ancient squirmy animals.
here is a magnified look.
Stirring up the mysteries of Bosch’s Garden of earthly
delights with the simple and abundant material that is cardboard encouraged
thoughtful creativity and pushed one to self educate on how to go about
constructing such strange creatures.
There
is only speculative information on Bosch to be read, and in doing so further
interested me in developing my own ideas and conclusions about the meanings
behind his painting. In the left
panel behind Adam and Eve is a lush and fertile landscape abundantly populated
with plants and animal creatures.
The egg Lizards and sperm like frogs are climbing out of primordial goo,
soon to walk the land. It seems in this scenario, the creatures of the earth do
in fact rule the land. Perhaps it represents Bosch’s idea of the earth before
humans became widespread. I chose
one of these primitive creatures because of the attraction to this theory. The
juxtaposition of the white egg like body and the black, reptilian head speaks
of life and death as one; the white egg represents fertility and the snake
represents death and mortality. A
unifier of opposites, this black creature is almost crawling out of the life that
gave way to him.
Jerome is the name of my constructed
creature which is the Latinized version of Heironymus and the name in fact that
Bosch preferred to go by.
Engineering an oval form was a
challenge and a learning process. Trial and error, sharp blades, models, and
music where the key tools for the process. Artists who inspired me were as follows, Anne Lemanski’s sewn
animals, Daniel Agdag’s perfectly intricate cardboard structures, as well as
Alex Uribe’s simple and aesthetic abstract cardboard forms. These artists encouraged me to be decisive,
work hard to achieve my idea, explore opportunities in texture, and remember
the importance of contrast to draw in the viewer and hold them with the piece
for a couple of moments.
Once the armature of the main body
was formed, I knew I wanted a unique look that would be pure and white. The
most challenging step was covering the obscured planes the armature posed and
trying to keep a consistency with the skin.
The lizard emerging from the blank
vessel I kept skeletal in design to enhance the contrast even more, giving the
stark differences of texture, form and color a voice that pronounces
opposites. I feel the piece is
successful in representing a long lost idea of a mysterious artist. By provoking thoughts of creation and
darkness at once Jerome, is a fine
candidate that speaks for all the strange happenings of The Garden of Earthly Delights.
-Leah Rich