Yes, I thought it would be worth the trouble. To fly all the way out from Sea-Tac airport to Amsterdam, with a momentary stop in Iceland, so I could view the original paintings of Hieronymus Bosch in a large exhibition hung in ‘s-Hertogenbosch—Bosch’s hometown– museum.

 

Overloaded with bizarre monsters torturing awful-looking humans in hellish scenes, Bosch’s work flipped my lid when I viewed it in schoolbooks at an early age. Since I loathe flying I got a sense of hell during my ten hour flight to the Netherlands to view Bosch’s trippy triptychs. The town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch found a way to publicize Bosch’s freakiness in a middle class shopping area, as my Iphone photo seemed to capture.

 

Bosch’s medieval freakiness has reminded me of the work of my long-time friend Joe Coleman. It did not surprise me to hear that Coleman’s paintings were hung in a European exhibition next to those of medieval freakazoid Breughel. On the way back home I stopped in New York City to visit Joe and his lovely wife Whitney where I was able to discuss Bosch and Breughel with them.

 

My recent aesthetic escapade also included a pit stop at the Booth Gallery in midtown Manhattan which is currently holding an Odd Nerdrum exhibition called “Crime and Refuge”.  Nerdrum is an accomplished figurative painter who is currently being held in Norway for committing tax crimes. The supposed crimes are difficult to comprehend. We’re quite sorry though that the state is holding such a great artist. Anyone in New York should not miss his spectacular Crime and Refuge show. Read about Nerdrum and his legal problems here: https://news.artnet.com/people/odd-nerdrum-solo-show-booth-gallery-479840

 

Odd Nerdrum – Cannibals

 

In NYC we also attended a sales conference held by our distributor, Consortium, where we discussed our Fall season’s releases—which will be seen in our new catalogue, which will be available online in the first week of June. There’s going to be some good stuff, we promise, and hope that our Feral friends find them fascinating enough to add to their collections so we can all carry on with this business.

People often ask me about what most influenced me to publish the kind of books we do. For example, what does Joe Coleman’s cover art for Apocalypse Culture resemble?  Nothing less than the work of Hieronymus Bosch I think. And when we heard of the one of a kind exhibition of Bosch’s work in his hometown museum, we made plans to fly to the Netherlands to see it in person. We’ll be sure to provide a first-hand report after attending the Het Noordbrants Museum later this month.

Being April, we just got past the birthdays of Feral House author Anton Szandor LaVey on the 11th, and my own on April 12. It’s a Church of Satan tenet that one’s birthday is the most important holiday for any particular personality… I also remember Anton speaking about the importance to him of Bosch paintings in addition to noir movies in his life. The evocative poster for the movie Nightmare Alley hung in the famous black house, and he named his children and grandchildren after the movie’s characters.  One shortcut to discovering the particular books that most influenced the Black Pope is the annotated bibliography seen at the conclusion of his Satanic Witch.

When people want to insult Anton they call him a “carny.” Frankly, his carny background elevated him in my eyes. Being a carny spoke to the way Anton could read human personalities, and  in addition spoke to his love for wild beasts.

I’m still sad that Anton passed on, as I would have loved to have spoken to him of our new titles, particularly the Priestess of Morphine, and then later about the fantastical paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. But we’ll do so right here in a later edition of Feral Friday.