Each person was a source of flavor, odor and color:
the ear, a tulip
the eyebrows, two crayfish
the eyes, two grapes
the eyelids, ducks’ bills
the nose, a pearthe cheek, an apple
the chin, a pomegranate
and the hair, a forest of branches.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, court painter, kept three emperors in stitches.They celebrated him because they did not understand him. His paintings looked like amusement parks. And that was how the pagan artist managed to survive and live in luxury.
Arcimboldo indulged in the mortal sin of idolatry, exalting human communion with wild exuberant nature.
His portraits, said to be inoffensive and playful, in actual fact were ferocious mockery.
When he died, art’s memory suppressed him like a nightmare.
Four centuries later, he was resuscitated by the surrealists, his belated children
stem: eduardo galeano
perspectief: a capsule history of the human race, in some 600 short entries, he travels from prehistory to the present, from the impressionistic to the brutally, precisely documented
titel: resurrection of arcimboldo
bron: mirrors, stories of almost everyone (2009, transl. mark fried)
mopw: meerstemmige encyclopedie / appel