Contemporary Adventures with The Garden of Earthly Delights: Open Worlds and Hieronymus Bosch

3.1 Fantasy

Hieronymus Bosch must have lived in two different worlds: the real one around him, and the universe of his imagination.

(Ilsink, Koldeweij 2016, 9)

The visual universe presented in The Garden of Earthly Delights is compellingly weird. Structures built of rocks, plants and alchemical glassware dominate landscapes populated by hybrid creatures, lithe bodies and grotesque demons. Proportion is reimagined, enabling naked couples to ride giant birds or play inside oversized fruits, while everyday objects such as knives or musical instruments take on new roles in hell. It is little surprise, then, that one of the most commonly used adjectives to describe Bosch’s work is ‘surreal’. Surrealism itself has long been associated with Bosch, and his ingenious fantasies continue to attract contemporary surrealists across a range of media.

Links with The Garden of Earthly Delights can be found in a number of works by pioneering artists of the early twentieth century. Miro’s The Tilled Field (1923), features stylized plant forms, birds and a huge ear which echo imagery from Bosch’s triptych, while Dalí appears to have borrowed the head-shaped rocks from Paradise (albeit turned on their sides) for The Great Masturbator (1929). Frida Kahlo repurposes a giant bird from the central panel in her dreamscape, What the Water Gave Me (1938) and Max Ernst included the Dutch master in his word-collage Favorite Poets Painters of the Past (1942).

However, as Tessel Bauduin has shown (2016; 2017), it was critics, curators and dealers who first linked surrealist artists with Bosch, so providing impetus for artistic appropriation. Alfred H. Barr Jr., in his exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism (9 December 1936‑17 January 1937, MoMA, New York) argued for a super-genre of ‘fantastic art’ which crossed chronological boundaries to reflect:

the deep-seated and persistent interest which human beings have in the fantastic, the irrational, the spontaneous, the marvelous, the enigmatic, and the dreamlike. (Barr 1936, 9)

In Barr’s view, Bosch was a groundbreaker, who: “transformed traditional fantasy into a highly personal and original vision which links his art with that of the modern Surrealists” (9).

Artists themselves apparently warmed to this interpretation. While André Bretón omitted Bosch from his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), his image essay for the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism (14 October-7 November 1942, Whitelaw Reid Mansion, New York) opens with the fountain from Paradise.

Fast-forward to Lowbrow – also known as Pop Surrealism – and Bosch appears again as the go-to reference for curators and commentators alike.⁴ Mark Ryden is one of the movement’s best known figures and in the curator statement to the artist’s exhibition Wondertoonel (Frye Art Museum Seattle, November 2004-February 2005; Pasadena Museum of Californian Art, February 2005-May 2005), Debra Byrne describes Ryden’s work as carnivalesque, identifying this genre as: “a strain of visual culture rooted in such works as Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights” (Byrne 2005).

The exhibition Within The Garden of Earthly Delights hosted by Outré Gallery, Melbourne, in 2019 (6‑24 April) brought together Bosch-inspired pop surrealist and fantasy works by over 30 different artists including Peca, Travis Lampe and Roby Dwi Antono. Gary Baseman – another figure often associated with the Lowbrow scene – had already referenced Bosch’s triptych back in 2005 with a collection of paintings entitled The Garden of Unearthly Delights. In these works, the artist humorously tackles Freud’s pleasure principle, depicting demons as cheeky cartoon figures which force our suppressed desires into action [fig. 3]. More recently, digital surrealists such as GIF artist Sholim or the animated video creators, Cool 3D World, have also responded to Bosch in Heaven x Hell Series (2020) and El rey de la vida (2018) respectively.

Most often, however, Bosch crops up in press coverage and descriptions of work by pop surrealists not because of direct visual or conceptual referencing but because he is popularly understood as a pioneer in envisaging the type of fantastical worlds these artists depict. A summary of this effect is provided by Davor Gromilovic, a Serbian artist whose offbeat pencil drawings have provoked comparisons with Bosch:

We could say that Bosch is the great-great-grandad of this kind of work. He opened a really important door for later generations, for artists who explore their inner world, their imagination and fantasy. (Rhodes 2021, 80)

3.2 Sex

Sex is everywhere in the central panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Erotic scenes unfold inside a giant mussel shell, a transparent sphere or on the back of an oversized duck. In the blue central fountain, a bearded man touches a woman’s genitals, while in the foreground, an upturned character masturbates.⁵ Numerous visual elements such as fruits, fish or birds make direct symbolic reference to sexual activity, as mentioned in Section 2, and some of Bosch’s scenes have been linked to erotic games played at court during the late-Medieval period (Falkenburg 2016, 146‑8). Lust is clearly punished in Hell: the toad – a symbol of impurity, connected to the Devil – makes various appearances, including on the standard of a fallen knight and the chest of a naked woman.

In contemporary approaches, sex is addressed by a number of artists who upend Bosch’s moralistic focus with erotic, celebratory and critical works. An outstanding example is the series Garden of Earthly Delights (2002‑05) by Raqib Shaw. Born in Calcutta, then raised in Kashmir and the UK, Shaw creates opulent paintings using materials including industrial paints, car enamel, glitter and semi-precious stones. His visual universe draws on a wide range of sources, such as Persian miniatures, Japanese decorative arts, Kashmiri prints, jewellery and textiles. Works from his Bosch-inspired series depict orgiastic paradises populated by hybrid creatures: Garden of Earthly Delights X (2004), held by MoMA New York, is set in an extravagant coral reef, while Garden of Earthly Delights VIII (2005) shows a Minotaur ejaculating into a cloud of brightly coloured butterflies. Alpesh Kantilal Patel (2012, 2) has explored how Shaw’s explicit carnivalesque “queers broad notions of South Asian masculinity”, while the artist himself points to a scene in Garden of Earthly Delights III, where a giant shrimp has sex with a man on a bed of seaweed, as a commentary on sexual preference (Daftari 2006). In an interview regarding this work, Shaw explains:

in this painting what I really wanted to deal with was the moment when we actually have an orgasm […] the work is made from a place of no inhibitions. There are no moral policeman [sic], there is no morality. It is what it is, and it is happy to be what it is.

A similar view is taken by the Canadian artist, Dave Cooper, whose oil painting Bosco Cooper (2018), depicts a cast of cartoonish oddballs enjoying a bizarre orgy. Nature itself seems to participate, with the landscape dominated by bulbous forms, penis-shaped plants and nipple-like flowers. Characters from Bosch’s original are humorously replaced: Adam is portrayed as a lascivious dog, Eve is a beaked bird with wide eyes and large breasts, while God, as described by the artist, is “just two giant cocks with eyes on the end” (Rhodes 2021, 26). In response to The Garden of Earthly Delights, Cooper presents a carnival of kinky sensuality and transgression. Like Shaw, he reworks Bosch’s moral tale as a celebration of sexual freedom, stating that:

As long as all those weirdos in my painting are consenting adults, then it’s all ok. In my mind, it’s not about good and bad any more. It’s just light, dark, cheerful, aggressive. (28)

A less permissive view was taken of Silvano Agosti’s, Il giardino delle delizie (1967) by Italian film censors, who initially cut more than 25 minutes from what is now regarded as:

a gem of modernist cinema […] a quintessential film of its age that can be viewed as a veritable time capsule, preserving the sizzling rebellious spirit of the Beat generation. (Petho 2014, 475)

Agosti’s debut feature borrows from Bosch in a work loaded with subtlety erotic imagery, which calls out the hypocrisy of bourgeois values and the Catholic church. The protagonists, Carla and Carlo, have married only because the former is pregnant; their honeymoon descends into physical and mental agony, translated on screen into a series of hallucinatory images. In the opening sequence, the bride gazes straight at the audience as she sensually takes a bite of a cherry – a clear reference to The Garden of Earthly Delights – before the camera lingers on equally suggestive scenes of a knife cutting into the wedding cake or the champagne glasses being filled. The circuit of bareback riders from Bosch’s central panel is quoted in a bizarre dance sequence in which fun-loving youths and a procession of altar boys appear in the same riverside setting. Less explicit than the cited works by Raqib Shaw or Dave Cooper, Silvano Agosti’s film translates Bosch’s innuendo-filled world into a series of elegant, lingering scenes and a searing indictment of marriage.

3.3 Space

In El jardín deshabitado (2008), Jose Manuel Ballester meticulously edited a digital reproduction of The Garden of Earthly Delights, erasing every character, animal and bird. The result is an eerie landscape, punctuated by the fantastical structures and organic forms of the original, which not only speaks of absence or memory but also serves as an invitation. In the viewer’s imagination, the question arises whether to repopulate or leave untouched this vacated world.

The notion of re-inhabiting Bosch’s triptych is common to various contemporary visions of the work. Lluis Barba’s Travellers in Time: The Garden of Delights (2007‑15) sees colour images of celebrities, tourists and brand logos invade a black and white reproduction of Bosch’s painting, while Carla Gannis harnesses the popular imagery of mobile messaging for The Garden of Emoji Delights (2014). Dan Hernandez reimagines the space itself: in the mixed media panel, GOED (2020), Bosch’s triptych is reworked as an open world game based on the map for The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo 1986). Populated by characters from video games, cartoons and late-Medieval paintings, this is literally a megadungeon. As the artist explains: “It’s an adventure story, a world that you would try to explore. […] In my mind, I think you could play it” (Rhodes 2021, 60, 64).

Cassie McQuater also recasts The Garden of Earthly Delights as a retro video game. In line with Hans Belting’s view of Bosch’s central panel as “a utopian vision of a world that never existed” ([2002] 2018, 54), in Angela’s Flood (2020), McQuater custom-builds a pleasure garden for three female characters. Angela Belti, Super Kurara (both Power Instinct, Atlus for Arcade, 1993) and Deliza (Dragon Master, UNiCO Electronics for Arcade, 1994) blow kisses, rollerblade and show off their muscles in a bespoke environment which subverts the violent, male-dominated narratives for which they were first developed [fig. 4].

Physical, not only digital, re-inhabitation of Bosch’s masterpiece is central to other contemporary iterations. In Lech Majewski’s film The Garden of Earthly Delights (2004), the protagonists re-enact erotic scenes from the painting, which are recorded, played and re-recorded to create a visual narrative of multiple layers. Audiences themselves shape Jeffrey Shaw’s, Going into the Heart of the Center of the Garden of Delights (1986), a site-specific piece created for Vleeshal, the Netherlands, in which visitors’ movements along a 30-metre pathway generate sequences of digitally processed images drawn from works by Bosch, Yves Klein and Nagisa Oshima. Martha Clarke, meanwhile, translated Bosch’s painting into dance in 1984 (re-staged in 2008), employing harnesses and flying techniques in a visceral adaptation, which is still revered. Theatre critic Charles Isherwood summarizes:

This singular work of dance theater is without doubt one of the most eerily hypnotic spectacles of flesh in motion ever put on a New York stage. (The New York Times, 19 November 2008)

These examples link with a view of Bosch’s work as an active experience, as outlined in Section 2. The Garden of Earthly Delights, however, has served not only as a world to inhabit or repopulate, but as an enabling space, a site for experimentation. In this respect, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981) by Stan Brakhage is the most remarkable example.

To make the two-minute film, Brakhage pressed leaves, grasses and flowers between strips of celluloid, creating 2469 frames which, in movement, translate into a unique synaesthetic experience for the viewer. The work is often seen as a partner to Mothlight (1963), the artist’s highly influential collage film made using moth wings and petals. In an interview with Scott MacDonald, the avant-garde filmmaker explained his feelings about Bosch’s original:

At the time I made The Garden, I was very annoyed with Hieronymus Bosch’s painting of the same name, which envisions nature as puffy and sweet, while the humans are suffering all these torments. After all, nature suffers as well. As a plant winds itself around a rock, in its desperate search for sunlight, it undergoes its own torments. We are not the only ones in the world. (MacDonald 2005, 94)

In a present-day shaped by climate crisis, Brakhage’s words seem prescient. In centring our gaze on nature, his work aligns with other environment-focussed approaches to Bosch, such as those brought together in the exhibition Garden der irdischen Freuden (Gropius Bau Berlin, 26 July-1 December 2019) and accompanying catalogue (Rosenthal 2019). Within the scope of this article, however, the most significant feature of Brakhage’s film is the artist’s ability to free the eye from perspective, logic or preconception; to take the viewer on what he describes as “adventure of perception” (Brakhage quoted in Petho 2014, 482).

A related adventure is provided by Enrique del Castillo, whose Umbráfono II (2021) is a machine which reads patterns on 35mm film and turns them into sound. For the exhibition The Garden of Earthly Delights through the Artworks of Colección SOLO, discussed in Section 5, del Castillo developed five compositions inspired by Bosch’s triptych and the polyphonic music of its time. Another “experiment about perception” (Rhodes 2021, 158), as the artist describes the piece, is The Garden of Ephemeral Details (2020) by Mario Klingemann. In real time, a suite of algorithms developed by Klingemann engages with a digital image of Bosch’s original, transforming its visual content through a continuous cycle of analysis, change and restoration. Artificial intelligence brings its unique ‘eye’ to Bosch, reworking the triptych into a fluid screenscape of abstract forms.

4.1 Microcosm

I don’t know if Bosch is saying, “This is bad, this is good”. He gives me many, many possibilities and, for me, this complication is very interesting. So when I make my video works, what I want to do is the same: I want to make very open artworks.

(R. Rhodes, Interview with Miao Xioachun, 24 April 2021)

As outlined in Section 2, The Garden of Earthly Delights resonates with present-day aesthetics explored in Kwastek (2015), Jagoda (2016) and Robson, Tavinor (2018), among others, as particularly appreciative of interactive, non-linear media. The layered, multiple-narrative, inhabitable character of Bosch’s original also fits with the concept of a megadungeon as “interconnected, layered, maze-like, procedural” (Berti 2022). It is perhaps for this reason that artists have found in the work a timely and attractive candidate for re-writing in digital media.

Reindert Falkenburg has argued (2011; 2016) that The Garden of Earthly Delights can be understood as a ‘princely mirror’, the visual equivalent of writings such as The Education of a Christian Prince (1516) by Erasmus or Castigliano’s Il Cortegiano (1528). This section highlights three works by contemporary digital artists which bring Bosch’s speculum into the present-day. In each case, the viewer is presented not with simple mirrors to reality but with open worlds to experience, inhabit and discuss.

The first of these digital reworkings, Microcosm (2008), actually comprises two pieces: a nine-panel C-print installation and a 16-minute video, generally exhibited together [fig. 5]. Directly inspired by Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, this digital project was developed over an 18-month period by the Chinese artist, Miao Xiaochun.

It forms part of his Renaissance Trilogy, together with The Last Judgement in Cyberspace (2005), based on Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel, and H20 (2007), after Cranach’s The Fountain of Youth (1546).

To create Microcosm, Xiaochun developed a digital 3D model in which all the figures in the original work are replaced, many with references to contemporary life. Adam becomes a robot, tirelessly coding a new future, and Eve is replaced by the Venus de Milo, unable to reach out for the forbidden fruit as she has no arms. The central fountain is a glistening mass of liquefied vehicles, while the riders carry plastic bottles, tins or kitchen utensils. Weapons, computers and mobile devices abound, plastic animals outnumber their wild counterparts and every character is exactly the same: a digital rendering of the artist’s naked body. As Miao Xioachun explains:

A body is more of a symbol. Once a body puts on clothes, there will be some sort of representation, for example, a certain time, a certain social class. If I only use the body, these representations do not exist. […] Then we can talk about abstract issues, like birth and death. (Du 2009)

In this respect, Bosch’s approach is similar. Hans Belting describes Bosch’s characters as “ageless”,“doll-like” and “devoid of individual traits” ([2002] 2018, 54), while Nils Büttner sees them as “flat figures that are almost pictograms” (2014, 283).

By using his own body in Microcosm, Miao Xiaochun literally inhabits the work. His creative process itself also involved journeying inside his version of Bosch’s triptych:

I build the virtual world and then I can walk inside. I can take photographs with a virtual camera and make video with a virtual video camera. All of this is virtual; it only exists in the software. (R. Rhodes, Interview with Miao Xioachun, 24 April 2021)

It is not only the artist who steps inside Microcosm. Each panel of the nine-part work offers three different scenes and the panels themselves are presented as a continuum of three triptychs, with the side wings at 45º angles from the wall. The effect is that when a viewer stands at any point in the installation, they are able to appreciate numerous other perspectives. The artist summarizes his aim as follows:

To see death from birth, and birth from death;

To see hell from heaven, and heaven from hell;

To see the end from the beginning, and the beginning from the end.

(Xiaochun 2008)

These multiple perspectives are further complemented by the video, whose sweeping shots lift the viewer above, below and into the action. Xiaochun describes it as “a river, flowing from beginning to end” (R. Rhodes, Interview with Miao Xioachun, 24 April 2021) and the viewer is hurled inside. As Huang Du explains (2009) the title itself refers to perspective and our limitations in understanding, playing on the Chinese idiom “looking up to the sky from the well” and the literary translation for “microcosm” as “looking down the well from the sky”.

Xiaochun builds a new world and brings the viewer inside it to meditate on the nature of progress, our relationship with technology and how we relate to our environment. In offering numerous perspectives on the same scene, Microcosm links with traditional Chinese paintings, in which the same character can appear at various different points.⁶

For the artist, this approach strengthens the work’s emotional impact: “It puts more emphasis on subjective feelings. […] When I see the scenes, I feel like I see the whole story” (Du 2009).

With Microcosm, then, Miao Xiaochun offers the viewer an open world not only to inhabit and explore, but to ‘feel’. A mirror to the present, in which the viewer is an active participant.

4.2 The Garden of Error and Decay

In The Garden of Error and Decay (2010) by Michael Bielicky and Kamila B. Richter, the spectator plays an even greater role. In this interactive work, an animated pictogram appears on the screen every time a disaster-related topic is discussed on Twitter. Using a joystick located in the exhibition space, viewers can shoot at these symbols, choosing to multiply each disaster or eliminate it from the ever-changing screenscape [fig. 6].

The pictographs themselves border on cute. There are simple stick-characters with large round eyes, comic-like skeletons and humorous references to historical figures, as well as geometric trees and animals reminiscent of those found in children’s books. Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights is referenced with giant cherries and strawberries. The inoffensive appearance of these pictograms contrasts with the hard data driving their presence on screen: behind each cartoonish figure lies an environmental disaster, terror attack, war, financial crisis or health emergency and the Twitter conversation surrounding it. This disjunction inevitably raises questions about the ways in which horror is depicted, discussed or even commodified.

It is worth noting that real events also feature in Bosch’s original, although most analyzes have centred on symbolism or abstract notions of sinful behaviour. One group of riders bears a porcupine standard, the personal device of King Louis XII of France, an image which would surely have resonated with viewers at a time of intense rivalry between the kings of France and the dukes of Burgundy (Falkenburg 2016, 154). Depictions of exotic animals such as the elephant or giraffe draw on fifteenth century travel journals, for example by Cyriacus of Ancona, and the dating of Bosch’s painting is hugely relevant in itself. The Garden of Earthly Delights is thought to have been completed in the late 1490s, with the European worldview upended as a result of Columbus’s voyages. Hans Belting sees a direct link between these real-world events and Bosch’s imaginative central scene:

The conquest and charting of the world irrevocably pushed the existence of a terrestrial Paradise into the realm of dreams. (Belting [2002] 2018, 99)

Contemporary events underpin The Garden of Error and Decay, described by the artists as “a real-time, data-driven narrative” (Bielicky, Richter 2011). Spectators are called not only to observe or reflect on the present, but to shape a new world on screen. However, when a viewer shoots to eliminate disaster pictograms, other data comes into play. Real-time stock market information is also fed into the piece, and it is this data – not the spectator’s actions – which ultimately dictates whether disasters proliferate or recede.

The Garden of Error and Decay, then, is an interactive allegory, addressing the relationship between the individual and global events. It reflects the abundance of data in our networked present, gamification, and the endless opportunities for online debate: speculatio transposed to and transformed by social media. At the same time, Bielicky and Richter highlight the impotence of the individual, unable to impact on world-changing events even if they choose to act.

4.3 Speculum

In line with the basic structure of Bosch’s original, Speculum (2016‑19) is a three-channel video installation developed using 3D digital animation [fig. 7]. In each scene, borrowings from The Garden of Earthly Delights are adeptly reworked and combined with references to popular culture, including celebrities, cartoon characters and memes. Mass behaviour, digital identity and ubiquitous technologies are all addressed in a moving triptych which employs brand-new symbolism to present a crude yet entertaining mirror of contemporary life.

The digital arts collective, SMACK (Ton Meijdam, Thom Snels and Béla Zsigmond), developed Paradise, the central panel of Speculum, as a commission for the exhibition Nieuwe lusten, held at the MOTI in Breda from 2 April to 31 December 2016.⁷ Described in a Jheronimus Bosch Art Center review as “the most successful part of the exhibition” (18 July 2016, https://jeroenboschplaza.com/recensie/nieuwe-lusten-2016/?lang=en), Paradise was widely covered online and later attracted the attention of Ana Gervás and David Cantolla, the founders of Colección SOLO Madrid. They acquired the work and subsequently commissioned SMACK to create Eden and Hell, so completing the digital triptych.

Mass behaviour is a central theme in SMACK’s artistic practice and Speculum contains numerous references to group dynamics and identity. All three scenes, for example, feature plants, structures or bulbous creatures formed of many different bodies or heads, some of which are recognisable celebrities. Visually, these clusters of heads recall the giant forest fruits in The Garden of Earthly Delights, yet as SMACK explain, their imagery speaks directly to the present: “The idea was to show how a community works, online or in the analogue world. It’s the crowd compressed into one creature” (Rhodes 2021, 116).

In a contemporary environment shaped by social media echo chambers and bot-enhanced misinformation, the relevance of this imagery is clear. Speculum’s population, however, does not operate exclusively in groups: each character in Paradise is trapped in an individual loop, a reflection of self-obsession, isolation or loneliness.

Pervasive technology is also explored through skilful borrowings and revamped symbolism. In the left panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights, an owl – often understood as a symbol for evil – gazes out from the central structure, a scene echoed in Bosch’s The Trees Have Ears and The Field Has Eyes (c. 1500), which references a Middle Dutch proverb on the idea that we are always observed (Ilsink, Koldeweij 2016, 80). In Speculum, SMACK update these same concerns for the Information Age: even in the pastel calm of Eden, plants sprout eyes, drones swarm overhead and tech-animal hybrids roam. In this artificial idyll – where God has been replaced by Newton, and real animals forced out by giant, pixelated cats – the tools of permanent surveillance are all in place. Camera-creatures also feature in Paradise, while in Hell a businessman is harried by CCTV apparatus.

The climate crisis is touched upon through nature commoditized and transformed: in Paradise, packaging grows on trees, chickens are pre-fried and a pig is but a walking mass of sausages. Ethical dilemmas around artificial intelligence are reflected in Hell, where robots are punished alongside humans. The plight of refugees is spotlighted too: a city burns in the distance, as in Bosch’s original, but in SMACK’s version, those trying to escape are even refused entry to Hell. Like The Garden of Earthly Delights, Speculum is a labyrinth of visual tales, which invites the eye to explore.

In Section 2, Bosch’s triptych was described not only as a visual journey but as a physical experience, an environment to step inside. The ‘immersive’ or ‘entertainment’ appeal of the original is underscored by the huge number of copies created in the sixteenth century, particularly in the large-format medium of tapestry (Büttner 2014, 296). The Duke of Alba, commissioning a textile version of The Garden of Earthly Delights, even ordered “Fait fere les personnaiges plus grant / the figures to be made still larger” (Belting 2018, 83). Speculum – like Microcosm and The Garden of Error and Decay, already discussed – is heir to this ‘physicality’ of Bosch. These digital mirrors of society are conceived not simply to look at, but to set foot inside and debate.