Claude Verlinde: Les Marottes

Claude Verlinde, Les Marottes, 1989
oil on canvas mounted on wood
(posted on Facebook by The Macabre And the Beautifully Grotesque)
no copyright infringement intended

The English title of this painting is Jester's Baubles, the German one, Die Narrenstäbe. I found it on Facebook, also in a blog of eigene Lyrik mit ausgewählten Bildern (own poetry with selected images) - the blog of a Swedish architect and poet, whose name is Gerhard.

For Gerhard, the title of this painting should rather be Reisende (Traveler) and here is a small poem he created while meditating over the image - a poem that suggests in the last line one more title:

Wir alle sind nur auf Besuch
In unserer Welt
Für kurze oder längere Zeit
Bevor wir weiter reisen

Der Fahrplan ist uns unbekannt
Das Ziel verborgen
Den Reiseleiter hat man
Lange nicht gesehen

Man nennt es Fahrt ins Blaue

(http://gerhardsblog.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html)

Let's try an English version:

We are all just visiting
In our world
For a while, than can be short or longer
Before going further

The timetable is for us unknown
The goal is hidden
And the tour guide
is long unseen

It is called Ride into the blue

I tried also a Romanian rendering, here it is:

Suntem doar calatori

In lumea ast-a noastra

O vreme doar, mai scurta sau mai lunga

Si-apoi plecam, sa ne vedem de drum

Programul nu ni-l stim

Telul e-ascuns

Iar calauza, e mult de cand

N-o mai zarim

(Claude Verlinde)

Claude Verlinde

Claude Verlinde
(http://www.conservapedia.com/Claude_Verlinde)
no copyright infringement intended

Looking at the works of Claude Verlinde, the first name that came to my mind was Remedios Varo. Both can be considered as Magical Realists, while there is a difference between them, that lies, I would say, in the sense of enigma. Each work of Remedios Varo brings an enigma, and the same is true in the case of Claude Verlinde. At Remedios Varo the enigma is filled with a tension between myth and science. Her heroes (sometimes androgynous, sometimes not, always looking like beyond this world) can be only alchemists or astrologists. For Claude Verlinde the enigma is filled with a tension between moral and immoral, sacral and demonic. Of course, Hieronymus Bosch also comes to mind.

His often darkly themed works employ the dark earth tones of the early Renaissance, as well as some of the visual staging and precise rendering characteristic of that period. He sometimes uses a brighter palette, but his work always has a feeling of referencing another time, if not another world (Lines and Colors).

An undisputed master of visionary art and a Surrealist par excellence genius, really up there with Salvador Dali and René Magritte (Conservapedia).

(video by DistantMirrors)

• Les Marottes

(Contemporary Art)