BO Bosch 4C.qxp
12/8/2011
3:10 PM
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A More Prosaic View
F
rom the various discussions reviewed it would appear that there is still much disagreement concerning Hieronymus Bosch. Was this man mad or was he completely sane? Were these paintings the result of hallucinatory behaviour or were they the transmissions of completely rationalised formulae? Would not either of these extreme points of view nullify the man’s achievements as an artist? If he were insane, would his paintings be more than irresponsible products of interest primarily to a psychologist? If he were the transcriber of a cult’s sign language, would he then be any more than a distinguished craftsman? It seems to this writer that Wilhelm Fränger was on the right track when he began his study by attributing the confusion concerning Bosch to the historians who had approached the paintings from content alone. They considered the imagery, in Fränger’s words, “at best as illustration, i.e. as a pictorial representation subordinated to a ready-made idea, and never as a piece of imaginative creation in its own right, i.e. a pictorial realisation of a meaning”. It is interesting to note that Lotte Brand Phillips posited a similar idea in her article on Bosch’s Adoration of the Magi (p. 49), when she wrote that “it happens frequently in the art of Jerome Bosch that ideas taken from different contexts are amalgamated and find their expression in one single visual symbol.” (Prado, 274). Fränger also made an excellent point when he implied that the imagery should be considered as “imaginative creation in its own right”, but with his next words he subverted that definition. If the imagery is to be considered the “pictorial realisation of a meaning,” then it cannot be considered “imaginative creation in its own right”, for the word “meaning” implies an idea or association outside itself against which the pictorial image should be judged. Of course, the historian whose only concern is the outside meaning and not the pictorial image would be making a mistake. The formalist, looking only at the image with no thought to the meaning, would also make too limited a study. Even Fränger would have subordinated the image to the meaning. To explain, let us examine his further statement that: “Symbols are not a mere combination of distinct forms and ideas, they entail a perfect simultaneity of vision and thought”. This may be very true, but a visual symbol formed by this “simultaneity” cannot then be completely explained verbally, because it no longer exists solely in the realm of thought content; it is something new – in other words, “imaginative creation in its own right”. Fränger’s mistake was in not allowing these images to exist in their own right. He considered that whenever Bosch fused vision and thought to make an image, this image then embodied a new thought content which could be rationalised in verbal terms. His rationalisation led him to explain each image as having a precise relationship to the ritual formula of a cult. Actually, the scholar was studying the meaning, which he read into Bosch’s intention, and not the image for its own sake.
The Hay Wagon (detail, central panel), 1525. Oil on panel, 147 x 212 cm (triptych). Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
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