Hieronymus Bosch's work is remarkable and getting to see it in person was one of the most delightful experiences I've had. To convey beauty in the grotesque, the macabre and the unreal: what a genius he was!
(Also, visual art is not something that I used to enjoy for the majority of my life and I still know next to nothing of art but I just found his work spellbinding)
Back in 2016, the Museo del Prado, in Madrid, staged a sort of class reunion for the 500th anniversary of Bosch's death, with paintings coming from all over the world.
Only snag is that you can easily spend half an hour going over the details of a single painting, and viewer lines have to keep moving. Probably the optimal number of Bosch paintings in a museum is 1 ;-)
The books (e.g. Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Works by Stefan Fischer) have trouble showing both the whole picture (too small) and the details (too fragmentary).
Painting has deteriorated since the old masters, of whom Goya is sometimes considered the last. Why this happened is not something people have a good answer for, but the end of the 18th C brought increasing rationalisation, modernisation and division of labour which seems to have gradually killed the skills and ways of looking that produced previous masterpieces. It is sad.
Picasso is great, but in a very 20th C way, a lot of what carries his work is a feeling of his energy and charisma, rather than depth of technique of concept.
In contrast someone like Bosch was creating these very intensely realised fantasy scenes. Picasso couldn't have done that if he tried, nor can any movie concept artist working today. The same goes for any of the old masters. It's gone, somehow...
Pretty sure Picasso was trained in the "old master's way", his early works were more academic and following the painterly tradition, if I recall correctly.. Dali was deep into the techniques of the old masters, and more recently there's a movement sparked by Max Doerner, Ernst Fuchs et al, called Mischteknik that seems to breathe new life into the tradition.
Well, that is a matter of opinion. Picasso's early works are certainly realist/academic in style and technique but nobody gets excited about them.
Like I say, this is opinion, but as in architecture, where there is definitely no good classical building happening today, there is no credible 'old master" painting happening now. Even the whole category of figurative art is in question in the same way that ornament in architecture is effectively dead. There are still people who can carve classical architectural ornament but as a creative tradition, it's over.
I'd reiterate that the division of labour and the role of the artist means there isn't really any access to the "old master" position any more. Being an artist since about 1900 has been about ego/charisma, a largely self-selected group rather than talents discovered in obscurity and then elevated to greatness by patrons. The art business is structurally similar to how it was, in the sense that it still runs on patronage and prestige, but there is some kind of crisis in the formation of artists. Probably part of a wider loss of cultural direction and the general fact that there is now too much to know about the world and everything (paintings, careers) feels rushed. You still see flashes of intriguing visual ideas, sensitivity to colour, new combinations of different forms of art, but I don't think anyone would claim that even the best of today's art can compete with that from before modernisation took hold. It's a state of disenchantment that we can't wish away by going back to the old techniques.
I see, you were making a point about a bigger cultural and historical situation, while I was trying to find examples of artists who were/are (attempting to) keeping the old masters' techniques and the spirit alive.
Along with Ernst Fuchs and Dali, I would place H. R. Giger in that line - not in terms of specific technique, but "the skills and ways of looking" of an artist, if not a master.. That's a mere trickle though, and certainly not a tradition anymore, just individual exceptions. I agree with your point that "Painting has deteriorated since the old masters."
It rings true about the "crisis in the formation of artists", that in modern times, something essential has been lost in what it means to be an artist. The wider loss of cultural direction, the disenchantment - I wonder whether it's related to the loss of mythology and religion.
I agree with you. I think the old artists came through the tradition of artisanship. Many were also what we would call engineers.
Today art as a profession is the job of selling the person and the story. Real talent is often found in industrial design and advertising where the work is still more important than who made it.
Being a total art ignoramous but clearly interested in the technical aspects behind the site, I quickly googled the painting and learned that it was a triptych (had to google that) whose dimensions were 87 in x 153 in.
A few questions to anyone who can shed more light:
1. What would be the likely dimensions of the source image in pixels to reach such a zoomed level of detail?
2. What kind of camera equipment would I need to photograph such an image of similar size? Can I get away with a run of the mill DSLR such as Nikon D3400/D7500 or Canon EOS 80D?
3. What kind of lens is suitable? Macro?
4. What would be the process of photographing such an image? Taking a single high-res image or taking a series of high-res macro images under suitable lighting and stitching them together?
5. What would be the tools to host the image that would allow this kind of interactivity?
I have a project in mind that could make use of the same technology.
You should prefer to translate the image rather than rotate the camera. Rotation creates images that need to be spherically reprojected to get the rectangular image back out again. You end up losing resolution at the edges of the image, because they are further away from the camera than the center.
it's probably a number of carefully lit shots with a phase one camera/back. if you are very careful with positioning you could stitch a bunch of shots with a cheaper camera. definitely read up on lighting art for photography, that's going to be critical. macro lens is probably not necessary. there are a variety of javascript-y things for dynamically viewing large images, shouldn't be /too/ hard to find or set up.
I'm not sure if Dave's been active recently but he's best known for the use of his paintings as album covers for seminal UK doom metal band Cathedral.
I was fortunate enough to meet Dave in 2005 and purchase one his paintings. Chatting with him he confirmed my suspicion that he was heavily influenced by Bosch.
(Also, visual art is not something that I used to enjoy for the majority of my life and I still know next to nothing of art but I just found his work spellbinding)