Fine Art Special – the painting with the weirdest composition

Cafe Society
1

Just got back from a day spent at Scotney Castle in Kent, England.

When I go to National Trust properties like this, I always play a game: I have to decide which of the paintings on display I am going to steal. And today? No competition. When you come across a painting with the title Dwarves Gorging on Melons, and a Shipwreck - that’s the one for me.

— Come on Trep, you’re funning with us – you’re making it up, yeah?

Oh no I’m not. Here it is*. And, as you will see, the composition has, well, dwarves gorging on melons. And a shipwreck. (Very small dwarves, I’ll grant you).

Faustino Bocchi, creator of this – uh – thing, apparently had a bit of a rep.

Did he ever. This is, I think, the oddest composition I have seen (though if I investigate Bocchi a bit further I may change my mind). I rate it weirder than Bosch because, so far as I can see, it has no meaning - it just is what it is. (Does it have a meaning?) But are there other works you know of that exceed it in weirdness of composition? Fine art would be best, but anything from the graphic arts that’s up there with it (or near it) is certainly worth knowing about. And if you have one to share, please link to an image if you can.

j

    • click to enlarge
2

I thank you for bringing this example of extraordinary weirdness to my attention.

Me, I’m a big fan of garden-variety weirdness, like Hieronymous Bosch and Peter Brueghel the Elder. But I admit that I’ve never heard of Bocchi before.

3

Do an image search on his name - it just gets weirder.

j

4

Oh I quite like his work. Thanks for introducing me to him, Treppenwitz!

5

I am a big fan of this “Cats being instructed in the art of mouse-catching by an owl”. Circa 1700

The musical instruments and the character in the upper right give it some artistic flair.

6

This one puzzled me for a while after coming across it in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. A bunch of rabbits savaging a lion to death?

In fact, I eventually turned up the explanation that there’s a Latin proverb mortuo leoni at lepores insultant, or “The lion being dead, even hares can insult him”.

7

I was familiar with Bocchi because I’m a big fan of Arcimboldo and a couple of Bocchi paintings are similar illusion portraits that get referred to.
“Dwarf saves companions from the attack by a Shrimp” - I realise that’s the foreground action, but I find what’s going on in the background (by which I mean the giant enema) way more weird.

In a way, Bocchi reminds me of medieval illumination marginals, drolleries and grotesques. There’s the same sense of “WTF? Why is thatknight fightinga snail? What’s up with all the murderous rabbits?” to it. At least all thefart jokes still resonate.

8

William Hogarth did some extremely interesting paintings and engravings depicting the follies of 18th century Britain, but he also did some extremely weird stuff.

I give you “The Punishment Inflicted on Lemuel Gulliver”, showing the Lilliputians giving him an enema:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=336649001&objectid=1419707

Or “The Weighing House”, graphically showing how bright or stupid one is by how he’s suspended:

Or his Art of Caricature

Or this wacky piece where he throws the rules of perspective out the window:

Or The Bruiser, where he took a perfectly good engraving of himself and his dog, burnished out his image, and drew a satirical piece condemning someone who he felt libeled him. He had his dog urinating on his opponent’s works:

Here’s the original engraving: