Bosch A&I (Art & Ideas)
by Laurinda Dixon
from Phaidon Press
Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516), one of the major artists of the Northern Renaissance, had a seemingly inexhaustible imagination. Known as the creator of disturbing demons and spectacular hellscapes, he also painted the Garden of Earthly Delights, where gleeful naked youths feast on giant strawberries. Little is known of Bosch's life and his art has remained enigmatic, variously interpreted as the hallucinations of a madman or the secret language of a heretical sect. The Surrealists claimed Bosch as a predecessor, seeing in his work the imagery of dream, fantasy and the subconscious. Laurinda Dixon argues, however, that to understand and appreciate Bosch's art we must return to the era in which he lived.
Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights (Prestel XL)
by Melanie Klier
from Prestel Publishing
Brilliant reproductions and magnified details of the newly restored Garden of Earthly Delights let readers enter Bosch's fantastic worldand leave with a beautiful poster.
This poster-and-book combination provides clear evidence of why Bosch's triptych continues to fascinate and intrigue us nearly five hundred years after its creation. The book offers stunningly close examination of the work after its recent restoration. Accompanied by a brief, fascinating essay that offers cultural and historical background on Bosch and his art, these numerous details allow readers to appreciate fully the breadth and magnificence of Bosch's achievement. A detachable poster of the painting, suitable for framing, makes this package an extraordinary gift for the artist's many devotees.
Hieronymus Bosch
by Larry Silver
from Abbeville Press
Four hundred little people frolic au naturel with overgrown songbirds and raspberries; a pudgy blue demon serenades a fashionable young couple with a tune piped through his own elongated nose; a knife-wielding set of disembodied ears stalks the damned through hell. The phantasmagoric imagery of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) has been the source of widespread interest ever since the painter's lifetime, and is still so enigmatic that scholars have theorized that it contains hidden astrological, alchemical, or even heretical meanings. Yet none of these theories has ever seemed to provide an adequate understanding of Bosch's work. Moreover, the considerable professional success that the artist enjoyed in his native s'Hertogenbosch, not to mention his membership in a traditional religious organization, suggests that he pursued not a sinister secret agenda but simply his personal artistic vision.
This intriguing new monograph by noted art historian Larry Silver interprets that artistic vision with admirable lucidity: it explains how Bosch's understanding of human sin, morality, and punishment, which was conceived in an era of powerful apocalyptic expectation, shaped his dramatic visualizations of hell and of the temptations of even the most steadfast saints. Silver's account of Bosch's artistic development is one of the first to benefit from recent technical investigations of the paintings, as well as from the reexamination of the artist's drawings in relation to his paintings. Hieronymus Bosch is also unique in how securely it places its subject's work in the broader history of painting in the Low Countries: Silver identifies sources of Bosch's iconography in a wide range of fifteenth-century panel paintings, manuscript illuminations, and prints, and describes how, despite their own religiousness, Bosch's pictures helped inspire the secular landscape and genre scenes of later Netherlandish painters. Augmented by 310 illustrations, most in color, including many dramatic close-ups of Bosch's intricately imagined nightmare scenes, this is the definitive book on a perennially fascinating artist.
Hieronymus Bosch: Garden Of Earthly Delights
by Hans Belting
from Prestel Publishing
Few paintings inspire the kind of intense study and speculation as Garden of Earthly Delights, the luminous triptych by Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch. The painting has been interpreted as a heretical masterpiece, an opulent illustration of the Creation and a premonition of the end of the world. In this new flexi-cover edition of the book, renowned art historian Hans Belting offers a radical reinterpretation of the work, which he sees not as apocalyptic, but utopian, portraying how the world would exist had the Fall not happened. Taking readers through each panel, Belting discusses various schools of thought and explores Bosch's life and times. This fascinating study is an important contribution to the literature and theory surrounding one of the world's most enigmatic artists.
Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Paintings and Drawings
by Jos Koldeweij
from Harry N. Abrams
One of the most enigmatic painters who ever lived, Hieronymus Bosch (c.1453- 1516) is also one of the most enduringly popular. His fantastical scenes of grotesque creatures, devils, and monsters are open to many interpretations, keeping his art endlessly fascinating over the centuries.
This luxurious volume-published to coincide with a major exhibition in Bosch's native Netherlands-examines his art in the context of his times. With every Bosch painting and drawing superbly reproduced in full color, this beautiful book penetrates the mystery that has always surrounded the artist. His worldview, often seen as bizarre, is shown to correspond with that of his contemporaries, among them the scholar and humanist Erasmus. What makes Bosch unique, the authors show, are his unfettered imagination and immense talent.
250 illustrations, 190 in full color, 208 pages, 91/2 x 123/8"
Hieronymus Bosch: New Insights into His Life & Work
by Bernard Aikema
from NAi Publishers/Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
To accompany a major exhibition at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Amsterdam, 20 scholars and specialists on the 15th and 16th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch have been invited to contribute essays to this publication. Intended to cater to both a general interest readership as well as to art historians and researchers, the book includes significant new scholarship on the artist. The emphasis here is on objective, fundamental research so that the book will be of lasting relevance in the future, retaining its value amid diverse and evolving perceptions of Bosch and his work. Hieronymus Bosch was unique in creating works of symbolic fantasy using rich forms and colors in a way that makes him the ancestor, 500 years earlier, to the Surrealist painters of the early 20th century. This volume will help make his work accessible to a wide range of readers, as well as considerably advancing the scholarship.
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