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    ‘Maintenance Artist’ Highlights Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Radical, Caring Approach to Public Art

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    “Touch Sanitation Performance” (1979-80).
    Photo by Robin Holland, © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY, shared with permission

    ‘Maintenance Artist’ Highlights Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Radical, Caring Approach to Public Art

    June 5, 2025

    ArtFilmSocial Issues

    Kate Mothes

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    We don’t typically associate city government and public works departments with conceptual artwork, let alone lasting collaborations. But for New York City artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who has been artist-in-residence at the city’s Department of Sanitation since 1977, her core creative inquiry centers around a radical shift in how we perceive art, who gets to experience it, and spotlighting the labor that happens “behind the scenes” to keep society running.

    The focus of a new documentary, Maintenance Artist, which premieres this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ukeles’ remarkable approach to art-making centers ideas of upkeep and nurturing. In 1969, she published “MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART, 1969!,” a proposal for an exhibition titled CARE, in which she outlined parallels between her experiences as an artist and mother with those of sanitation workers. She asks, “…after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?”

    In the early 1970s, Ukeles performed a number of interventions drawing attention to labor and tasks that often go unnoticed in daily life, like “Washing / Tracks / Maintenance: Outside” (1973) and “Washing” (1974), the latter of which was staged outside of a former gallery in Soho. From 2 to 5 p.m. one June afternoon, she proclaimed that the area outside the front door was to be maintained as art, “normalized” again at 5:01 p.m. In a 1986 documentary short titled “Not Just Garbage,” she describes this early performance:

    I started to occupy the area through this sort of repetition of maintenance, of cleaning, and people watched me and were afraid to enter the space. When someone would enter, or go into the gallery and walk across, I would wipe out their tracks immediately. I would follow them on my hands and my knees and wipe out their tracks right up to their heels.

    In 1977, Ukeles was officially named the Department of Sanitation’s artist-in-residence, and her studio has occupied an office space within its building for decades. Maintenance Artist opens with historical footage of Ukeles introducing herself to sanitation workers as she began her more-than-four-decade tenure. The film then cuts to the artist and her studio manager, Catie J. Heitz, sifting through Ukeles’ archives to select work to send to the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.

    “Mierle is not a very typical artist,” Heitz says. “She works within systems, with people. Sometimes you can’t see the work because it was performance—it was an ephemeral thing—but what you can see now is the paperwork that represents it.”

    “Touch Sanitation Performance” (1980). Photo by Marcia Bricker, © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY

    Ukeles’ work aims to illuminate the labor—and laborers—who play an immanently crucial role in keeping the city functioning on a daily basis, even though work like trash collection or street-cleaning is rarely noticed or lauded. “I desire to create a new kind of utterly public art, not in sealed-off, special places for the few, but art injected right into the city’s bloodstream of daily working life,” she said in an early statement.

    Ukeles “has created art that deals with the endless maintenance and service work that ‘keeps the city alive’ — urban waste flows, recycling, ecology, urban sustainability, and our power to transform degraded land and water into healthy inhabitable public places,” Ronald Feldman Gallery says, which represents the artist. “Ukeles asks whether we can design modes of survival—for a thriving planet, not an entropic one—that don’t crush our personal and civic freedom and silence the individual’s voice.”

    The first piece Ukeles completed in her DSNY residency was a durational performance titled “Touch Sanitation Performance,” in which she shook the hand of every sanitation employee—all 8,500 of them—and said to each one, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive.” That gratitude proved profound in some cases, as the interaction had lasting positive effects for some of the workers, who expressed how they had been harassed or humiliated while on the job in the past.

    “The Social Mirror” (1983), New York City 20 cubic yard Department of Sanitation garbage collection truck covered in glass mirror and acrylic mirror, created in collaboration with the New York City Department of Sanitation. Image © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York

    Several of Ukeles’ works transformed the fleet of New York City trucks and equipment into moving artworks. “The Social Mirror” (1983) covered a garbage truck in a giant reflective glass surface, mirroring denizens of the city back at themselves. “Snow Workers Ballet” (2012) coordinated hulking machinery into a choreographed performance, positioning hard graft in the limelight through the unlikely merging of industrial vehicles and elegance.

    The Queens Museum was the first to present a major survey of Ukeles’ work in 2017, spanning five decades of her interrogations of feminism, freedom, crisis, and care. Beyond the conceptual or performative, Ukeles’ practice has always been social and community-oriented, prompting us to genuinely consider how we treat one another, recognize hard work, and, of course, define what art can be.

    Maintenance Artist is directed, written, and produced by Toby Perl Freilich in collaboration with writer Anne Alvergue, premiering on June 8 with additional screenings through June 14 in New York. Learn more on the film’s website.

    “Washing / Tracks / Maintenance: Outside” (1973), performance at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT. Photo © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY

    Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “The Social Mirror” (1983), installed at the Queens Museum in 2016. Photo by Hai Zhang, courtesy of ‘Maintenance Artist’

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      Mario Moore’s Oil Paintings Bridge Past and Present to Spotlight Black Resilience and Style

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      “Pillars” (2024), oil on linen, 84 x 96 inches. All images courtesy of Mario Moore and Library Street Collective, shared with permission

      Mario Moore’s Oil Paintings Bridge Past and Present to Spotlight Black Resilience and Style

      June 4, 2025

      ArtHistorySocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

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      In large-scale works in oil, Detroit-based artist Mario Moore taps into the legacy of European painting traditions to create bold portraits exploring the nature of veneration, self-determination, and the continuum of history.

      Moore’s work is currently on view in Beneath Our Feet at Library Street Collective alongside fellow Detroiter LaKela Brown. His new pieces nod to the Dutch and Flemish tradition of devotional painting, particularly religious garland paintings. Within elegant arrangements of flowers and foliage, he highlights Black figures relaxing or tending to gardens.

      “The Patron Saint of Urban Farming” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 48 inches

      In “Watermelon Man,” a stone altar is surrounded by hibiscus and watermelons, both symbols of resilience. Historically, the latter represented self-sufficiency and freedom for Southern African Americans following Emancipation, but whites flipped the narrative into a stereotypical exemplar of poverty. Moore reclaims the fruit in the spirit of refined 17th-century still-lifes.

      The artist has long drawn on the culture and legacies of both Detroit and the U.S. more broadly through the lens of the Black diaspora. Earlier works like “Pillars” position Black figures in elegant dress within the vast wildernesses of the American frontier, bridging the past to explore how racial divisions continue to shape the present.

      An exhibition last summer at Grand Rapids Art Museum titled Revolutionary Times took his series A New Republic as a starting point, revisiting the history of Black Union soldiers during the Civil War.

      Moore learned that one of his ancestors, who had been enslaved as a child, later enlisted in the Union Army, spurring the artist’s exploration of the seminal mid-19th-century period of conflict and Western colonization. He positions present-day figures in contemporary dress within historical contexts, interrogating political and racial segregations.

      “Watermelon Man” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches

      Through tropes of European painting like a self-portrait of the artist in mirrored reflections and poses in three-quarter profile, Moore renders individuals whose direct, confident gazes and elegant dress invoke Detroit style and pride.

      For Beneath Our Feet, Brown and Moore collaborated on a five-foot-wide bas-relief bronze coin. Each artist completed one side, with Mario’s contribution taking the form of a portrait of Brown. “Her profile echoes the conventional format of traditional American coinage, confronting the historic absence of Black women in national symbolism and positions of authority,” the gallery says. On the opposite side, Brown depicts a bouquet of collard greens symbolic of nourishment and community.

      For this exhibition, Brown and Moore “reflect on the wealth held in the earth beneath us—and the enduring question of who holds the rights to till, own, and shape that land,” says an exhibition statement. Detroit is home to ambitious urban gardening initiatives that aim for local food sovereignty, mirroring the resourcefulness of Black farmers throughout history. The artists “consider land not just as property but as history, inheritance, and possibility,” the gallery says.

      Beneath Our Feet continues through July 30 in Detroit. See more on Moore’s website and Instagram.

      “International Detroit Playa: Sheefy” (2022), oil on linen, 108 x 96 inches

      “These Are Not Yams But They Are Damn Good” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches

      “Creation of a Revolutionary (Helen Moore)” (2023), oil on linen, 76 x 52 inches

      “Black” (2023), oil on linen, 48 x 48 inches

      “Garland of Resilience” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches

      “Birth of Cool” (2023), oil on linen, 72 x 48 inches

      Installation view of ‘LaKela Brown and Mario Moore: Beneath Our Feet’ at Library Street Collective, Detroit

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      in Art

      Dr. Ella Hawkins Reimagines Ancient Artifacts and Prized Objects as Edible Replicas

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      William Morris Biscuit Set. All images courtesy of Ella Hawkins, shared with permission

      Dr. Ella Hawkins Reimagines Ancient Artifacts and Prized Objects as Edible Replicas

      May 31, 2025

      ArtDesignFoodIllustration

      Grace Ebert

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      Academic research is notoriously niche and often opaque, but Dr. Ella Hawkins has found a crowd-pleasing way to share her studies. The Birmingham-based artist and design historian translates her interests in Shakespeare performance, costume, and matieral culture into edible replicas.

      Hawkins bakes batches of cookies that she tops with royal icing. Decorating takes a scholarly turn, as she uses tiny paintbrushes and a mini projector to help trace imagery of William Morris’ ornate floral motifs or coastal scenes from English delftware. Rendering a design on a single cookie can take anywhere between two and four hours, depending on the complexity. Unsurprisingly, minuscule calligraphy and portraits are most demanding.

      Ancient Greek Pottery Sherds

      Hawkins first merged baking and her research about a decade ago while studying undergraduate costume design at the University of Warwick. She decided to bake cupcakes based on Shakespeare productions that her class examined. “It felt like a fun way to look back at all the different design styles we’d covered through the year,” she tells Colossal, adding:

      I carried on decorating cakes and cookies based on costume design through my PhD (mainly as goodies to give out during talks, or as gifts for designers that I interviewed), then branched out and spent lots of time doing cookie versions of other artefacts to keep busy during the pandemic.

      She has since published an academic book on the topic and is a senior lecturer at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. But she also continues to translate artifacts and prized objects held within museum collections into delicious canvases.

      There’s a set made in collaboration with Milton’s Cottage, a museum in the country house where John Milton finished his epic Paradise Lost. Anchored by a delicately crosshatched portrait evoking that of the frontispiece, the collection contains typographic titles and signs that appear straight from a 17th-century book.

      Delftware Tiles

      Hawkins ventures farther back in history to ancient Greece with a collection of pottery sherds inspired by objects within the Ashmolean Museum. With a bowed surface to mimic a vessel’s curvature, the irregular shapes feature fragments of various motifs and figures to which she applied a sgraffito technique, a Renaissance method of scratching a surface to reveal the layer below.

      The weathered appearance is the result of blotting a base of pale brown-grey before using a scribe tool to scratch and crack the royal icing coating the surface. She then lined these etchings with a mix of vodka and black food coloring to mimic dirt and wear. (It’s worth taking a look at this process video.)

      Other than a select few preserved for talks and events, Hawkins assures us that the rest of her cookies are eaten. Find more of her work on her website and Instagram.

      Medieval Tiles, inspired by The Tristram Tiles, Chertsey, Surrey, England (c. 1260s-70s)

      Milton’s Cottage Biscuit Set developed in collaboration with Milton’s Cottage

      Outlander Biscuit Set

      Elizabethan Gauntlet Biscuit Set

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    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      Vibrant Woodblock Prints Traverse a Bygone Japan in ‘Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road’

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      “Tōkaidō Autumn Moon: Restaurants at Kanagawa, Musashi Province” (about 1839),
      color woodblock print. © Alan Medaugh. All images courtesy of The British Museum, shared with permission

      Vibrant Woodblock Prints Traverse a Bygone Japan in ‘Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road’

      May 6, 2025

      ArtHistory

      Kate Mothes

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      Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was born in Japan on the brink of a national transformation. The Edo Period, characterized by the military rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, had seen economic growth and sustained peace since its establishment in 1603. But 200 years on, the government’s staunch policies, hierarchical structure, and isolation from the outside world was beginning to erode. In 1867, just nine years after Hiroshige’s death, a new emperor restored imperial rule.

      Hiroshige: artist of the open road, which just opened at The British Museum, traces the remarkable variety of locations the artist portrayed, from cherry trees and gardens to pleasure boats in the Ryōgoku district of Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to sweeping views of iconic Mt. Fuji. His woodcuts capture everyday life, landscapes, and culture in 19th-century Japan in vibrant color.

      “Pleasure Boats at Ryōgoku in the Eastern Capital” (1832-34), color woodblock print triptych. Photo by Matsuba Ryōko. © Alan Medaugh

      Along with his contemporary peers like Hokusai, the artist witnessed immense change throughout his lifetime, which he chronicled in thousands of woodblock prints. “As Japan confronted the encroaching outside world, Hiroshige’s calm artistic vision connected with—and reassured —people at every level of society,” the museum says.

      Hiroshige often assembled his prints into collections or folios, and artist of the open road includes examples from 100 Famous Views of Edo (1857), The 69 Stations of the Kiso Highway (late 1830s), and more. The exhibition also marks the artist’s first solo show presented by The British Museum and the first in London in more than a quarter-century.

      Hiroshige: artist of the open road continues through September 7 in London. You might also enjoy perusing this fantastic ukiyo-e print archive.

      “Awa: The Rough Seas at Naruto” from ‘Illustrated Guide to Famous Places in the 60-odd Provinces’ (1855), color woodblock print. © Alan Medaugh

      “Seba” from ‘The 69 Stations of the Kiso Highway’ (late 1830s), color woodblock print. © The Trustees of the British Museum

      “Evening View of the Eight Scenic Spots of Kanazawa in Musashi Province” (1857), color woodblock print triptych. © Alan Medaugh

      “Nihonbashi – Morning Scene” from ‘The 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō’ (c. 1833-35), color woodblock print. © The Trustees of the British Museum

      “Mt. Fuji and Otodome Fall” (about 1849-52), color woodblock print. Photo by Matsuba Ryōko. © Alan Medaugh

      “The Plum Garden at Kameido” from ‘100 Famous Views of Edo’ (1857), color woodblock print. Photo by Matsuba Ryōko. © Alan Medaugh

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    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      Explore an Incredible 108-Gigapixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer’s Most Famous Painting

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      All images courtesy of Hirox, Tuur, and The Mauritshuis

      Explore an Incredible 108-Gigapixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer’s Most Famous Painting

      May 5, 2025

      ArtPhotographyScience

      Kate Mothes

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      One of the inimitable joys of visiting an art museum is being able to view paintings up close—to see their textures, frames, and the way the surface interacts with the light. But even if you had the opportunity to step past security wires and get within inches of an original canvas, you’d still never be able to see the work quite like the new, 108-gigapixel scan of Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (1665).

      The Mauritshuis has documented its most famous acquisition in unprecedented detail with the help of lens company Hirox, which has produced a video microscope capable of capturing the tiniest speck of paint with astonishing clarity. The outfit was also involved in an earlier reproduction of the same painting, creating an image composed of 10 billion pixels.

      This high-tech collaboration brings a 17th-century masterpiece to life with an interactive site inviting visitors to examine every micro detail. The new image is more than ten times as large as its predecessor—108 gigapixels translates to 108 billion pixels. A standard computer screen ranges from around four to six million pixels in its entirety. As Kottke notes, the resolution is very high, too, at 1.3 microns per pixel. (A millimeter is 1,000 microns.)

      Hirox, in tandem with a company called Tuur, produced a beautiful video and virtual tour. A three-dimensional tool for exploring the topography of the surface highlights Vermeer’s mastery of light, like reflections in the sitter’s eyes, the folds of her head scarf, and the minimal dabs of white paint on the titular pearl.

      This virtual exploration offers art historians and enthusiasts alike a chance to experience “Girl with a Peal Earring” like never before, regardless of where you are. But if you’re in The Hague, it’s also on view in the permanent collection of The Mauritshuis.

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    • 163 Shares129 Views

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      In Elaborate ‘Textile Paintings,’ Anne von Freyburg Reframes Femininity in European Art History

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      “Sunny Side Up (After Fragonard, The Lover Crowned)” (2025), textile painting: acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 223 x 280 centimeters. All images courtesy of the artist and Saatchi Gallery, London, shared with permission

      In Elaborate ‘Textile Paintings,’ Anne von Freyburg Reframes Femininity in European Art History

      April 14, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      As if splashed onto the wall with a monumental brush, Anne von Freyburg’s installations visualize fabric and fiber as gestural splotches of paint. Colors bleed into one another and drips extend to the floor in what the London-based Dutch artist describes as “textile paintings.”

      Drawing on 17th and 18th-century European painting traditions like the still lifes of the Dutch Golden Age and the stylized exuberance of Rococo, von Freyburg reframes relationships between craft and fine art.

      “Fantasia (After Boucher, Venus and Cupid)” (2022), textile painting: acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 144 x 195 centimeters

      References to Rococo artists like Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher play prominently in von Freyburg’s solo exhibition, Filthy Cute, at Saatchi Gallery. Tapping into “the clichés of heterosexual romance and societal expectations of women…she explores the pressures women face, particularly the expectations of being ‘caretakers’ and ‘pleasers,’” says a statement. Von Freyburg turns her attention to themes of compassion, freedom, and women as sovereign individuals.

      Filthy Cute celebrates sensuality and the feminine while highlighting unexpected associations between materials. The artist’s abstract compositions often reference florals that are blurred, dripping, and verging on complete abstraction. Glossy fabrics in a range of colors swirl without fully mixing, resulting in sensual shapes that are beguiling and strange.

      Von Freyburg describes one undergirding theme as “commodity fetishism,” tapping into the 17th-century fashion for Dutch floral still lifes and the infamous economic speculation bubble that characterized Tulip Mania between 1634 and 1637.

      The show continues through May 11 in London, running concurrently Flowers: Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture, which also includes work by von Freyburg. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “Electric Feel (After Fragonard, The Pursuit)” (2025), textile painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 350 x 250 centimeters

      Detail of “Electric Feel (After Fragonard, The Pursuit)”

      Detail of “Electric Feel (After Fragonard, The Pursuit)”

      “Kabloom (After Jan van Huysum, Flower still-life)” (2024), acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 230 x 130 centimeters

      “Tuttifrutti (After Jan van Huysum, Flower still-life)” (2024), acrylic ink, synthetic-fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry-fabric, sequin fabrics, hand-embroidery, polyester wadding, and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas, 235 x 135 centimeters

      Detail of “Sunny Side Up (After Fragonard, The Lover Crowned)”

      Installation view of ‘Filthy Cute’ at Saatchi Gallery, London

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      In Hyperrealistic Oil Paintings, Chloe West Summons Magical Realism in the American West

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      “Gored Cowboy” (2024-25), oil on linen, 84 x 68 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and HARPER’S, New York, shared with permission

      In Hyperrealistic Oil Paintings, Chloe West Summons Magical Realism in the American West

      April 10, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      Set against mountains, desert plains, and the cobalt blue skies one finds at high elevations, Chloe West’s striking oil paintings merge Dutch Golden Age iconographies with both mythic and everyday motifs of the American West.

      West was born and raised in Wyoming, the peaks and pastures of which continue to influence her hyperrealistic figurative works. In her current solo exhibition, Games of Chance at HARPER’S, the artist draws on European portraiture and still life traditions in a series of self-portraits and tableaux challenging stereotypes of the West as a frontier molded by machismo.

      “Cowboy Philosopher” (2024-25), oil on linen, 84 x 68 inches

      “Cowboy Philosopher,” for example, portrays the artist in direct confrontation with the viewer, seated beside a mountain lion skull at a table covered with a celestial tapestry. The painting evokes Salomon Koninck’s “A Philosopher” (1635) and works by other Flemish artists of the 17th and 18th centuries, who often depicted alchemists and scholars in their studies accompanied by skulls, devices, and documents.

      West subverts our understanding of cowboy culture as predominantly masculine, juxtaposing her own body with bones, small weapons, and fabric backdrops that establish a tension between life and death, folklore and daily life, and the sacred and the profane. Animal bones, thorns, and knives nod to memento mori, a reminder of the impermanence of life, while also invoking the supernatural and a sense of cyclical time. Casting deep, dark shadows, the glaring sun reveals all.

      Portraying herself in western wear, West bonds to the continuum of the landscape and its customs and narratives while considering the way European attitudes and actions like Manifest Destiny shaped our understanding of the region. The artist taps into legend, history, and magical realism to blur distinctions between the past and contemporary experience. “Ultimately, throughout Games of Chance, West confronts the idealization of frontier heroism, dismantling its pre-established boundaries and expanding upon the legacy it left behind,” the gallery says.

      Games of Chance opens today and continues through May 10 in New York City. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “Hand with Opossum Skull” (2024-25), oil on linen, 24 x 20 inches

      Detail of “Gored Cowboy”

      “Trapper’s Still Life” (2024-5), oil on linen, 48 x 38 inches

      “Pearled Back” (2024-25), oil on linen, 58 x 46 inches

      “Portrait with Capped Skull” (2024-25), oil on linen, 58 x 48 inches

      “Pocketknife” (2024), oil on linen, 16 x 12 inches

      “St. Veronica at the Geyser Basin” (2024-25, oil on linen, 48 x 38 inches

      “Hand with Thorn” (2024-25), oil on linen, 24h x 20w in

      Detail of “Cowboy Philosopher”

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      Drawing on Religious Renaissance Art, Marc Padeu’s Paintings Monumentalize the Quotidian

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      “The Dreamers” (2019), acrylic on canvas, 230 x 360 centimeters. All images © Marc Padeu, courtesy of Larkin Durey, London, shared with permission

      Drawing on Religious Renaissance Art, Marc Padeu’s Paintings Monumentalize the Quotidian

      April 3, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      Foregrounding vibrant patterns, swathed in bright fabrics, and illuminated by the sun, the figures in Cameroonian artist Marc Padeu’s paintings are imbued with beguiling gravitas. His large-scale works stem from a fascination with the power of narrative, connecting the Western art historical canon—especially Renaissance titans like Caravaggio—with contemporary experiences of life in Cameroon.

      Padeu was trained by the church as a fresco painter. He draws on dramatic biblical stories to juxtapose momentous religious and spiritual accounts with quotidian moments that emphasize Black joy, leisure, family, and fraternity.

      “Au baptême 2” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 200 x 300 centimeters

      Through the immediacy of acrylic, Padeu renders figures in everyday yet memorable scenes, whether gathered outdoors to relax, witnessing a baptism, or solemnly coexisting amid vivid surroundings.

      Many of Padeu’s paintings take inspiration from Renaissance compositions, like “La réunion syndicale,” which bears hints of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” (1495-1498) or Caravaggio’s “The Supper at Emmaus” (1601). Portrayed nearly life-size, the artist’s tableaux immerse us in rites of passage and moments of togetherness.

      Find more on the artist’s Instagram.

      “La réunion syndicale” (2021), acrylic on canvas, 200 x 280 centimeters

      “La bague de Roxane” (2023), acrylic on canvas, 200 x 280 centimeters

      “All the light on me” (2021), acrylic on canvas, 200 x 338 centimeters

      “La Balançoire 2” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 200 x 230 centimeters

      “Au pique-nique” (2022), acrylic on canvas, 220 x 200 centimeters

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    • 125 Shares169 Views

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      Traverse Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ with Smarthistory

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      Hieronymus Bosch, “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (1490-1510), oil on oak panels, 81 x 152 inches. Image courtesy of the Museo del Prado, Madrid

      Traverse Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ with Smarthistory

      March 24, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      Have you ever wondered why two large owls sit on either side of the central panel in “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch? Or perhaps you’ve noticed the strangely fleshy, sculptural fountains rising from the bodies of water—or are they stone? Why is the right side so dark, and who are all these people anyway?

      Narrated by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, Smarthistory’s latest video tours the uncanny landscapes of Bosch’s famous triptych, which continues to “confound our expectations of Christian art of the Renaissance.”

      Smarthistory is a small nonprofit that collaborates with hundreds of art historians, curators, archaeologists, and more, who are committed to making art history as accessible as possible. Through essays, conversations, and videos, the organization presents scholarly information in engaging, digestible, yet analytically rigorous lessons.

      For Smarthistory’s video examining some of the motifs in “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Harris and Zucker dive into some of the most alluring details of Bosch’s historic painting, parsing mysteries that have persisted since its creation at the turn of the 16th century.

      The overarching narrative of Bosch’s masterpiece remains largely an enigma. “Although it is wonderfully playful and wonderfully inventive and just an incredible thing to look at, it would have been deeply troubling to Bosch’s generation,” Zucker says. “His society would have looked at this as sinful, even though the people that are being represented here didn’t understand sin.” (More on that in a minute.)

      An anomaly of its genre, the painting was commissioned by Engelbert II, a wealthy member of the court of the Duke of Burgundy, probably intending it for his palace. The work consists of three panels in the style of an altarpiece, with two half-size panels on either side of a central composition, which fold inward like two doors to reveal another painting on the exterior.

      Detail of the left panel portraying God introducing Eve to Adam

      In Bosch’s case, he depicted a crystalline sphere in grisaille, or all-gray, which portrays an overview of the earth with God perched in the upper left-hand corner, readying to make something of the lackluster orb. Two biblical phrases, “for he spake and it was done,” from Psalm 33, and “for he commanded and they were created,” from Psalm 148, reference Creation.

      Turning over the panels, as if opening the cover of a book, we enter an otherworldly realm where humans and beasts mingle with oversized animals, fruit, and surreal structures. On the left, Adam and Eve are introduced by a young God, before Eve was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit hanging in the Garden of Eden. In the center, dozens of nude figures frolic, eat, engage in sexual activities, forage, swim, and fly. On the right is hell.

      “One of the most compelling theories is that the central panel is an alternate story,” Zucker says. “What if the Temptation had not taken place? What if Adam and Eve had remained innocent and had populated the world? And so is it possible that what we’re seeing is that reality played out in Bosch’s imagination?”

      Exterior of “The Garden of Earthly Delights” shown with panels closed

      Two oversized owls, symbolic of the presence of evil, flank the central panel. While people appear unashamed of their selves or actions, a sense of uneasiness pervades the scene, balancing the dichotomies of paradise and hell; holiness and sin.

      “The largest figure is a figure which art historians call the ‘tree man,’” Dr. Harris says. “His legs look like the branches of trees with more branches growing from them. But where we might see his feet, we see two unsteady boats in the water with figures in them, suggesting that there’s an inherent instability to this figure who can barely balance in this way.”

      Smarthistory’s video illustrates compositional tools that provide clues to underlying narrative and metaphor, like the way the “tree man” appears to look back across space at Adam and Eve—specifically Adam’s lustful gaze as the representation of humankind’s origin. “In this representation, we don’t need the apple. We don’t need the serpent. All we need is Adam’s lustful gaze as he is introduced to Eve,” Dr. Zucker says. And the rest, so to speak, is history.

      Explore more from the world of art on Smarthistory’s website. You might also enjoy this fantastical parade in The Netherlands devoted entirely to Bosch and Roberto Benavidez’s Bosch-inspired piñatas.

      Detail of the central panel

      Detail from the right-hand panel depicting Hell

      Detail of the central panel

      Detail of the central panel

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