Bosch And Bruegel: From Enemy Painting To Everyday Life

Product Description

In this visually stunning & much anticipated book acclaimed art historian Joseph Koerner casts the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch & Pieter Bruegel in a completely new light revealing how the painting of everyday life was born from what seems its polar opposite the depiction of an enemy hell-bent on destroying us Supreme virtuoso of the bizarre diabolic & outlandish Bosch embodies the phantasmagorical force of painting while Bruegel through his true-to-life landscapes & frank depictions of peasants is the artistic avatar of the familiar & ordinary But despite their differences the works of these two artists are closely intertwined Bruegel began his career imitating Bosch's fantasies & it was Bosch who launched almost the whole repertoire of later genre painting But Bosch depicts everyday life in order to reveal it as an alluring trap set by a metaphysical enemy at war with God whereas Bruegel shows this enemy to be nothing but a humanly fabricated mask Attending closely to the visual cunning of these two towering masters Koerner uncovers art history's unexplored underside the image itself as an enemy An absorbing study of the dark paradoxes of human creativity Bosch & Bruegel is also a timely account of how hatred can be converted into tolerance through the agency of art It takes readers through all the major paintings drawings & prints of these two unforgettable artists--including Bosch's notoriously elusive Garden of Earthly Delights which forms the core of this historical tour de force Elegantly written & abundantly illustrated the book is based on Koerner's A W Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts a series given annually at the National Gallery of Art Washington