Hell 101: The Iconoclasm of the Chapman Brothers

This macabre diorama, central piece of The End of Fun exhibit and created by the Chapman brothers, is disturbing despite itself. It's highly evocative of Bruegels' The Triumph of Death, only with a modern twist: Holocaust meets Fucking Hell.

Bruegel's The Triumph of Death

It's WTF Art. This is dark, twisted stuff.

Recently displayed at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, it managed to offend just about everyone. The exhibit was NC-18: no one under 18 permitted. How often do you see that rating at a major international level art gallery?

More interesting than your neighbour's model train set, Fucking Hell uses 30,000 tiny plastic figures to recreate the Holocaust in 28 square feet.

Fucking Hell: The whole enchilada.

 It sold for half a million pounds. Not too shabby for a diorama.

According to Jake Chapman, "This is an event that's beyond representation. Using toy soldiers is a way of emphasizing the impossibility of that. Here are these little figures that are totally incompatible with the pathos they're supposed to support."

Or is the piece a McHolocaust? Ronald McDonald appears on a crucifix in the midst of it all.

In fact, there's a whole field of Ronald McDonalds, not to mention his buddy the police burger.

In one scene, poor Ronald sits atop a raft with a clutch of hamburgers while swastika branded sharks circle. Honestly, what drugs are these guys doing?

Fresh meat!

I used to think they were a happy marketing family, yet below they prepare Ronald for the cross.

Oh, what a cruel world.

Is no commercial icon sacred?

The diorama has been built twice; the first version, entitled Hell, burned down in 2004 in a warehouse fire. Undeterred, they took out three years and built it again, only this time called it Fucking Hell.

Zombie Nazi Astronauts torment Hitler. Hitler pets one on the head (far right).

Hitler naturally makes multiple appearances. Sometimes he's painting a hot babe, other times he's imprisoned by Nazi astronaut zombies. The scene is awesome in its lunacy.

Not likely to get his own cable TV painting show.

Is it puerile or profoundly provocative? Whatever you may think of their work, it's never boring. Editor and critic David Lee likens it to watching a car crash, and others have referred to them as 'court dwarves'. Mayor Giuliani of New York branded them perverts.

This is the very definition of macabre.

Connoisseurs of the bizarre, twisted, macabre, provocative, darkly funny, and offensive, this pair of devout iconoclasts consistently push the boundaries of good taste. In 2003 they were nominated for the prestigious and infamous Turner Prize.

Provocative? I don't know what you're talking about. 

Graduates of the Royal College of Art, they started collaborating together in 1991, mashing plastic models together into unholy creations. If little bits of epoxy, paint, and plastic can be unholy, that is.

Their art work frequently touches on topics such as war, torture, disaster, and commercialism. A strong (obsessive?) anti-fascist element runs through it.

The Rape of Creativity show at Modern Art Oxford displayed a mint collection of Goya's etchings that the Chapman brothers had defaced with funny faces. They titled the piece Insult to Injury.

It stuck a thumb into the eye of art criticism, and the brothers didn't stop there.

They've gone on to add 'hippie motifs' to Adolf Hitler's watercolours.

You get the impression they're trying to be provocative.

It's not all about McDonalds

They've created sculptures of children with genitalia instead of facial features. Death shows two blow up sex dolls (made of bronze but painted to look like plastic) in obscene, inverted embrace.

Their imagination is twisted in ways I cannot even imagine; no other contemporary artists are as fit as this pair is to do Hell's interior decorating. These guys were born for the task. Hell Lost is not even a tenth as disturbing. I could do with some of their choice narcotics.

Visit their website and sear your eyeballs.

Rock concert of horror

Jake Chapman had this to say to the Independent: "We've never pretended that our art is anything other than extremely elitist. It's not for Sunday afternoon gallery goers... We're not interested in the idea that museums or galleries are redemptible spaces for bourgeois people to come and pay their dues to culture. Just because looking at a work involves your eyes, there's this dumb notion that anyone with eyes can have a justified opinion about it."

Collector Coins from the Year of the Four Emperors

Otho

Snapped a quick pic of these in the British Museum. They're coins from the year of the four emperors: Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian.

I'm shocked they had time to mint them all. I have more vacation days than three did sitting on the throne. The Roman mint worked fast. And I mean fast. With emperors playing muscial chairs, they had to.

How'd The Game of Chairs get started?

Opportunism!

Nero, the original Elvis, was driven out (along with his fiddle) by the prefect of the Imperial Guard, Nymphidus Sabinus. On the run and without friends, he eventually committed suicide.

Back in Rome, Senator Galba saw an opportunity too good to pass up, bought off the Imperial Guard, and took the throne for himself.

This didn't sit well with ol' Otho, who wanted to be emperor too. He just happened to have enough petty cash on hand to bribe the Praetorians. Again. They double-crossed Galba, stabbed the old senator a few dozen times, and declared for ol' Otho. If the Roman Empire hadn't fallen, today the Praetorian Guard would have their own TV game show: Who Wants to be Emperor?

In the meantime, two governors in the provinces (Vitellius in Germany and Vespasian in Israel) both declared themselves emperor and marched on Rome.

Vitellius arrived first. Backed by the Rhine legions, he defeated Otho's forces at the battle of Bedriacum. The Praetorian Guard was much better at stabbing emperors and parades than actual fighting.

Once safely ensconced in Rome, Vitellius proceeded to party down, throwing lavish feasts, toga parties, wild banquets, and festivals so massive and bad ass they bankrupted the treasury. This emperor lived by the motto 'live fast and die hard'.

Nero and Galba

Vitellius and Vespasian

This turned out to be a very wise policy, for a few months later Vitellius' army was defeated by Vespasian, who'd finally arrived with his legions from the Middle East. Vespasian was the Roman dude who led the siege of Masada.

He knew how to fight.

And he stuck around for awhile and founded the Flavian dynasty.

Nero giving the thumbs down.

Remember Nero? He wasn't done. Not by a long shot. After his supposed 'death', he popped up all over the Mediterranean world. Or people pretending to be him. Unlike Elvis, he wasn't content to be a fast fry cook. He wanted his throne back. Or at least to rule an island of pirates. This didn't sit too well with Vespaian, and the Nero impersonators all came to a sad end.

The Histories by Tacitus make modern politics sound boring. Then again, boring politics is one of the things that makes Canada such a great place to live.

Happiness writes white on the page.

Demon Design 101: Hieronymus Bosch!

The Garden of Earthly Delights, Centre Panel.

When it comes to demons, Bosch is the best. Bar none. Hands down. Game over, man. QED. The biggest, the baddest, the best!

Bosch's imagination is rich and endlessly inventive, his combination and juxtaposition of incongruous elements ingenious.

Hours of eyeball enjoyment for the whole family!

His demons are, quite simply, the embodiment of sin. They hover over sinners like alcoholics at a bar, and guide their prey's spirtiual path to the pit. One beguiles the vain with a mirror on its ass.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Giant strawberries, bizarre animal hybrids, cherry head gear, man-eating oysters, pig nuns, scrotum ears armed with phallic knives, and man-trees (with Bosch's own face) pepper the landscape. Egg shells and fruit recur frequently. You can spend hours looking at The Garden of Earthly Delights and not notice everything.

Symbolism is everywhere: bagpipes stand in for penis and scrotum, animal hybrids for sin and demons, arrows for sexual intercourse, games and cards for gambling.

Music butt. I am so getting this tattoo.

The demon above seems to have written a music piece on the man's ass (Sex was described at the time as 'music of the flesh'). Everything, absolutely everything, is loaded with meaning.  

Dude! Don't sign that contract! It's eeeeeevil!

Above, a pig nun (an indictment of the clergy's corruption) fondles an uncomfortable looking fellow, while a horrifying (yet impossibly cute) helmeted demon looks on. The little bird headed critter has an arrow stuck in its leg, a human foot dangling from its helmet, and an ink pot in its beak, into which the nun dips her pen. She seems to be compelling the man to sign a contract for his immortal soul. The horrible fate of the wounded bird beast will soon be his. At least the bird fellow has been immortalized in a resin statue.

Bosch demon (in)action figures!

This demon deserves a statue, or perhaps a comic book, of his own:

I don't want to even know what his sin was.

A blue, bird headed man wearing an inverted cauldron crown consumes and shits out sinners (below). I've brought this demon into the comic, still with his mouth full.

Demon either eating or smoking a man who has black birds flying out his ass. Not even the Chapman Brothers are so bold. Yet something seems amiss with the demon's digestive tract as he's shitting out sinners whole. Beside them a vain woman looks at herself in a mirror mounted on a fallen angel's ass. Delightful!

Admittedly no birds flying out his butt. And it isn't on fire. I'm working up to it.

Not much is known about Bosch. His personal life is a mystery, filled in with conjecture; not much more is known about his paintings, many of which are only tentatively attributed to him.
His iconography is so rich and deep that much is still argued over. Bosch left no essays to be pegged beside his work, leaving future generations to ponder idly and speculate over his possible heresy.

His paintings are so dense, so populated with symbolism and meaning, they're like a complete graphic novel in only three panels. Each painting contains the essay, if only we knew how to read.

The Garden of Earthly Delights was first reviewed in 1605 by Jose De Siguenza, and described as "a satirical comment on the same and sinfulness of mankind." That's understatement. It's one of the most remarkable paintings in history.

Bosch was the first to really let loose. He created such a vibrant, no holds barred playground of moralizing absurdity it's never been surpassed. Bat shit insane falls short of describing it. This is lunacy on speed, moralism powered by crack, propelled by irrepressible creative genius and channeled by pitch black medieval symbolism. This is originality. Dreamscape surrealism five hundred years ahead of its time. He'd have made one hell of a comix book artist. Better than even Batman comics.

With the graphic novel Hell Lost I tried to harness at least a small fraction of his visual innovation. It's a satirical look at the infernal realm, revealing the terrible, absurd truth about hell.

Can you spot the Bosch character?

Surreal landscape in Hell Lost. A bit Dali, a bit Bosch.

Pieter Brueghel was heavily influenced by Bosch, and took up the mantel of moralizing phantasmagoria after Bosch's death.

How can you not love such wildly impressive work? He even has demon bunnies!

I knew bunnies were evil.

Bogleech has a fabulous look at the characters in Bosch's The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

So does Melissa Huang.

And Wikipedia is no slouch on the subject, either.

Temptation of Saint Anthony

Next up: Everything you need to know about Hell and more!
 

The Great Anti-Authority Graffiti Rampart (Otherwise known as Remains of The Berlin Wall)

The Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart, otherwise known as the Berlin Wall, went up in 1961. One hundred and eleven kilometres long, it kept East Germany safe from the Consumerist Hordes until 1990. Now, what remains of it is the Awesome Anti-Authority Graffiti Rampart.

Much better.

I took pictures. These are the panels that caught my eye:

 

Okay, the last picture (Change Your Life) is actually in London. Walls migrate to England, just like swallows.

Toronto needs one of these Graffiti Ramparts.

Demon Design 101: Louis Le Breton

Breton's Asmodeus

The Lesser Key of Solomon, MacGregor Mather edition, is graced with some truly macabre illustrations, courtesy of Breton.

Derived in part from the 16th century's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, the Lesser Key of Solomon is broken into five parts, the most interesting of which is the first, the Ars Goetia. It describes seventy-two demons that Solomon bound to service with magic symbols.

Each is given a rank, interests and expertise (natural philosophy, astronomy, rhetoric), method of seduction (laziness, vanity), powers (noisome breath, conciliates friends and rulers, finds hidden treasures, flight), and the number of demon legions at their command.

It includes illustrations by Louis Le Breton taken from the 1863 edition of the Dictionnaire Infernal. That's the best part. In fact, you can skip the whole Lesser Key and just go straight to the Dictionnaire Infernal. Just make sure it's the 1863 edition.

Asmodeus as he appears in the comic

Louis Breton was born in 1818 and spent much of his time doing bland marine paintings that disturbed no one.

Then he blind sided the world with the most bat shit insane demon designs ever created.

I've referenced several in the book: Asmodeus, for example, appears as Breton depicted. I wanted people to recognize Assman from his earlier 'portrait'. Albeit cruder and more graphic, as my humble abilities allow.

I also used Breton's Baal, only for Kurgoth, Hell's Justice Minister in Hell Lost.

Baal's actually the root of Beelzebub (Baal Zebub, 'Lord of the Flies', in rabbinical texts; a sly way of saying he's shit and his followers are flies); so I have some lee way with him, since he never existed in the first place. Or Beelzebub didn't. One of them. Whatever.

Next to Bosch's mad hybrids, Breton's demons are my favourites. They're unique. Original. Much more interesting than the typical buff or bodacious Hollywood demon with bat wings and horns. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but variety is the spice of life.

Baal and Justice Minister Kurgoth

The full set of Breton's inspired demon designs are below:

Add caption

Artist Ariana Osborne created a series of gorgeous cards using the illustrations.

Next up: The biggest, the baddest, the best: Bosch!

Warlord of Io Trailer

This is a trailer I did up awhile back for my graphic novel, Warlord of Io. A young prince ascends the throne and gets into all kinds of trouble. Available from SLG. It's very tongue in cheek. Retro-future Flash Gordon meets The Lion King by way of Animaniacs. Check it out, if you dare. Strain your eyes at its itty bitty awesomeness!