Tag: Dutch painter

Hieronymus Bosch: The Conjurer

A group of spectators watches a street performer at a table, displaying tricks with cups and balls, while a dog observes nearby.
The Conjurer [c. 1502] by Hieronymus Bosch.

I love delving into mystical, dark-themed artworks come Halloween season, and, this time around, decided to talk about the painting The Conjurer by Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516). In it, he presents an arresting scene: a street magician, dressed in a scarlet robe and reminiscent of the Magician from the Tarot deck, has gathered a crowd of onlookers and performs a trick using cups and balls. The crowd is engrossed in the proceedings, and while almost everyone fixes their eyes on the ball in the magician’s hand, a person dressed in black and white, and looking towards the sky, has his hand around another man’s purse. The distraction seems to be working, and the theft is almost complete. The thief’s dress suggests that he belongs to a religious order, probably the Dominican order, and Bosch’s aim was likely to point out the hypocrisy of authority figures by suggesting that the friar is working in tandem with the magician to steal.

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The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

I am sharing a few quotes from an amazing book I have finished recently – The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh. The artist wrote more than 2000 letters in his lifetime, principally to his brother Theo, and this Penguin edition reproduces some of them with commentary.

“The need is for nothing less than the infinite and the miraculous, and a man does well to be satisfied with nothing less, and not to feel easy until he has gained it…That is what all great men have acknowledged in their works, all those who have thought a little more deeply and searched and worked and loved a little more than the rest, who have plumbed the depths of the sea of life. Plumb the depths, that is what we too must do if we want to make a catch, and if we sometimes have to work the whole night through without catching anything, then we do well not to give up and to cast the net once more at dawn.“

“One should never feel secure just because one has no difficulties or cares or handicaps, and one should never be too easy-going. Even in the politest circles and the best surroundings and circumstances one should retain something of the original character of a Robinson Crusoe or of primitive man, for otherwise one cannot be rooted in oneself, and one must never let the fire in one’s soul die, for the time will inevitably come when it will be needed.”

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