Whether paint­ing scenes of par­adise, damna­tion, or some­where in between, Hierony­mus Bosch real­ized elab­o­rate­ly grotesque visions that fas­ci­nate us more than 500 years lat­er. But no mat­ter how long we gaze upon his work, espe­cial­ly his large-for­mat altar­piece trip­tychs, most of us would­n’t want to spend our lives in his world. But a group of ded­i­cat­ed Bosch fans has made it pos­si­ble to live in it for three days a year, when the annu­al Bosch Parade floats down the Dom­mel Riv­er. Last year that small water­way host­ed “a sto­ry in motion, pre­sent­ed on 14 sep­a­rate tableaux. They shape a uni­ver­sal tale of pow­er and coun­ter­force, bat­tle and rap­proche­ment, chaos and hope. From the chaos after the bat­tle a new order shall emerge.”

All images © Bosch Parade, Ben Niehuis

In prac­ti­cal terms, writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert, that meant “a musi­cal per­for­mance played on a par­tial­ly sub­merged piano and a scene with two peo­ple strad­dling enor­mous horns,” as well as a dozen oth­er water-based vignettes that passed through the Dutch town of ‘s‑Hertogenbosch, Bosch’s birth­place and lat­er his name­sake.

Every­thing that rolled down the Dom­mel was designed by a group of artists select­ed, accord­ing to the parade’s web site, “on the basis of their com­ple­men­tary char­ac­ter­is­tics, the var­i­ous dis­ci­plines they rep­re­sent and their clear match with the Bosch Parade artis­tic ‘DNA’ in the way they work and per­form.” As you can see in the 2019 Bosch Parade’s pro­gram, the artists’ cre­ations draw on 15th-cen­tu­ry con­cep­tions of life, art, tech­nol­o­gy, and the human body while also tak­ing place unmis­tak­ably in the 21st.

Though Bosch’s paint­ings look alive even in their motion­less­ness, to appre­ci­ate a parade requires see­ing it in action. Hence the videos here of the 2015 Bosch Parade: at the top of the post is a short teas­er; just above is a longer com­pi­la­tion of some of the even­t’s most Boschi­an moments, which puts the painter’s images side-by-side with the floats they inspired. View­ers will rec­og­nize ele­ments of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, Bosch’s sin­gle best-known work, but also of The Hay­wain Trip­tych, The Sev­en Dead­ly Sins and the Four Last Things, and The Temp­ta­tions of St. Antho­ny. As art his­to­ry buffs know, some of those paint­ings may or may not have been paint­ed by Bosch him­self, but by one of his fol­low­ers or con­tem­po­rary imi­ta­tors.

But to the extent that all these images can inspire mod­ern-day painters, sculp­tors, musi­cians, dancers, and spec­ta­cle-mak­ers, they enrich the Boschi­an real­i­ty — a real­i­ty of water and fire, bod­ies and body parts, men and mon­sters, con­trap­tions and pro­jec­tions, and even video games and the inter­net — that comes to life every sum­mer in ‘s‑Hertogenbosch. Or rather, most every sum­mer: the next Bosch Parade is sched­uled not for June of this year but June of 2021. But when that time comes around around it will last for four days, from the 17th through the 20th. That infor­ma­tion comes from the parade’s Twit­ter account, which in the run-up to the event will pre­sum­ably also post answers to all the most impor­tant ques­tions — such as whether next year will fea­ture any live but­tock music.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Cre­ates Stun­ning Real­is­tic Por­traits That Recre­ate Sur­re­al Scenes from Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ings

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Liv­ing Paint­ings: 13 Car­avag­gio Works of Art Per­formed by Real-Life Actors

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Every good teacher must be pre­pared for the stu­dents who sur­pass them. Such was the case with Mar­tin Lewis, Edward Hop­per’s one­time teacher, an Aus­tralian-born print­mak­er who left rur­al Vic­to­ria at age 15 and trav­eled the world before set­tling in New York City in 1900 to make his fame and for­tune. By the 1910s, Lewis had become a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful illus­tra­tor, well-known for his etch­ing skill. It was then that he took on Hop­per as an appren­tice.

“Hop­per asked that he might study along­side him,” writes DC Pae at Review 31, “and Lewis there­after became his men­tor in the dis­ci­pline.” The future painter of Nighthawks even “cit­ed his appren­tice­ship with the print­mak­er as inspi­ra­tion for his lat­er paint­ing, the con­sol­i­da­tion of his indi­vid­ual style.” Messy Nessy quotes Hopper’s own words: “after I took up my etch­ing, my paint­ing seemed to crys­tal­lize.” Hop­per, she writes, “learned the fin­er points of etch­ing and both artists used the great Amer­i­can metrop­o­lis at night as their muse.”

Though he is not pop­u­lar­ly known for the art, Hop­per him­self became an accom­plished print­mak­er, cre­at­ing a series of around 70 works in the 1920s that drew from both Edgar Degas and his etch­ing teacher, Lewis.

“Hop­per eas­i­ly took to etch­ing and dry­point,” writes the Seat­tle Artist League. “He had a pref­er­ence for a deeply etched plate, and very black ink on very white paper, so the prints were high con­trast, sim­i­lar to Mar­tin Lewis…, Hopper’s pri­ma­ry influ­ence in print­mak­ing.”

A sim­i­lar series by Lewis in the 1920s, which includes the strik­ing prints you see here, shows a far stronger hand in the art, though also, per­haps, some mutu­al influ­ence between the two friends, who exhib­it­ed togeth­er dur­ing the peri­od. But there’s no doubt Lewis’s long shad­ows, for­lorn street-lit cor­ners, and cin­e­mat­ic scenes left their mark on Hopper’s famous lat­er paint­ings.

It was to paint­ing, after the mas­sive pop­u­lar­i­ty of print­mak­ing, that the art world turned when the Depres­sion hit. Lewis found him­self out of date. Hop­per left off etch­ing in 1928 to focus on his pri­ma­ry medi­um. In many ways, Pae points out, Lewis served as a bridge between the doc­u­men­tary Ash­can School and the more psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism of Hop­per and his con­tem­po­raries. Yet he “died in obscu­ri­ty in 1962, large­ly for­got­ten” notes Messy Nessy (see much more of Lewis’s work there). “His­to­ry chose Edward Hop­per but Mar­tin Lewis was his men­tor,” and a fig­ure well worth cel­e­brat­ing on his own for his tech­ni­cal mas­tery and orig­i­nal­i­ty.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Paint­ings by Edward Hop­per, the Most Cin­e­mat­ic Amer­i­can Painter of All, Turned into Ani­mat­ed GIFs

Sev­en Videos Explain How Edward Hopper’s Paint­ings Expressed Amer­i­can Lone­li­ness and Alien­ation

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness