Early Netherlandish and Surrealist Art

Today the Art History AP class studied a favorite artist of mine--Hieronymus Bosch, an Early Netherlandish painter who lived from 1450-1516. Though Bosch is often studied with other contemporary Flemish painters, he is remarkably individualistic. Of course, he shared his interest in religious subjects with his peers but his approach--both the technique and specific subject matter--was very much his own. The most famous of his works is undoubtedly The Garden of Earthly Delights from ca. 1490-1510.


It is an oil-on-wood triptych meant to be read from left from right. It begins with the left panel, which shows the creation of Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden, moves to the central panel of a... well, an orgiastic paradise... and ends with the right panel, which shows a fantastic imagining of Hell. Let's see some close ups of Hell!


















And, let's not forget to look at the front of the triptych, which can only be seen when the two side panels are folded shut. It depicts the scene from the Book of Genesis in which God creates the earth and Hieronymus Bosch executes it in ghostly grisaille--a style of monochrome painting usually done in shades of gray.


All of these images lead me to the real point and purpose of this post: Man Ray, a modernist artist primarily known today for his surrealist photography and his loose ties to both the Dada and Surrealist movements of the 1930s.


Below: Man Ray, photographed by Lothar Wolleh
1975
After meeting and befriending well-known readymade devotee Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray made a brief foray into such Dada sculptural experiments and created one of his most famous pieces Gift (1921), a flatiron studded with nails. In addition to their exchange of artistic ideas, Ray and Duchamp collaborated on the creation of the Société Anonyme, a portable collection of contemporary art objects, which is now considered to be the first museum of modern art in America. Years later, Ray would work with his assistant and lover Lee Miller to recreate the photographic technique solarization and created a new eponymous technique called rayograms.

Anatomies, 1929

Woman with Long Hair, 1929



Natasha, 1931

And perhaps his most famous photographs:

Le Violin d'Ingres, 1924

Tears, 1930-1932

The dreamlike works of Hieronymus Bosch preceded the works of Surrealism by almost 500 years but his refusal to be bound by the real, tangible world persisted in a way that few artistic trends have in the past. Perhaps their is something universal and timeless in the intrigue presented by the images of the subconscious. Man Ray seems to have thought so for his photographs capture beautiful and ever-elusive realities that intersect with our own in a distant or barely tangential way.

What do you think? Will there be surreal or oneiric art 500 years from now? Why or why not?