Flemish Primitives Part 1, Hieronymus Bosch

 

I spent a week’s holiday in Belgium, which afforded me the opportunity to visit a number of important galleries and soak myself in the work of the so-called Flemish Primitives, the early Netherlandish painters who flourished between the 15^th and 16^th centuries. I say “so-called” primitives, as their work is anything but primitive, rather being a school of sophisticated masterpieces by supremely talented individuals on mostly Christian but sometimes classical themes.

Thinking back, the work of perhaps the best known of these painters, Hieronymus Bosch, was one of my ways into classical Art when I was in my teens. I haven’t had much opportunity to see his work in the originals, there being one solitary, albeit astonishing, Bosch in the National Gallery; I did see a number in the Prado in Spain a few years ago, including the surprisingly small Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. Virtually the first painting I encountered in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels was the Temptation of St Anthony triptych, a much bigger series. I’d known this painting from book reproductions for half my life (we even used the figure of the bird with the letter as part of the publicity for my play Groping in the Dark) but seeing it up close and personal like this was thrilling. The work teams with vibrant detail and writhes with a terrible life. All three panels show scenes from the life of the early Church desert father St Anthony, who was assailed by the world, the flesh and the devil as he attempted to put his mind solely to Godly thoughts in his wilderness retreat. Bosch is a mysterious figure about whom little is known; one theory has it that he leaned towards a Cathar outlook and saw the material world as a stenching (all those decaying fish creatures!) thing of evil. Certainly in Bosch nature is prodigious in its production of horrors; figures mutate between the human, the demonic and the bestial, as if the world were merely a breeding ground for freaks, each one of which has its own peculiarities and quirks. The freaks torment, torture and prey on each other; there’s a curious attitude towards generation which suggests that the act of sexual congress produces this carnival of horrors in which the revellers get off on their terrible antics. The Saint must resist the blandishments of this world, which despite being horrific hold intense fascination. Only contemplation of the person of Christ and His sacrifice can take the Saint away from the demonic world and it takes an enervating effort to achieve communion with Christ (one of my favourite images in the painting, on the left panel, has Anthony being carried away by his companions, utterly exhausted). Even when the Saint appears in meditation in the right panel, his gaze is fixed on a table under which naked sinners are lost in violent, somnambulant revels – but here he has learned some distance, perhaps linking the Saint’s gaze with that of the ideal Artist, who can look at these things as mere vision; for whom the earth itself is a passing vision…

In Ghent, Bosch’s third and last and greatest version of Christ Carrying the Cross assaults the viewer with a vision of intense violence and hatred carrying on around a Jesus who, His mind entirely elsewhere, has transcended it despite still being physically a part of it. It is telling that all but one of the figures around Christ are male, testosterone-fuelled products of a brutal patriarchy against which only withdrawal to an inner world and passivity towards the outer aggression are the only answers. The one female figure is Veronica, who holds her veil on which Christ’s face has been miraculously implanted; she holds this out to the viewer and so Christ looks at us. This has a curious effect, as if I think of the veil with Christ’s face as a mirror, I also must widen my view and take the entire painting as a reflection; I wonder how much I contribute to this hell of aggression portrayed and how I can free myself from it. The aggressive world is timeless and ever-present, no matter what temporal ephemera happen to be around at any given moment; whether Christ (whatever He signifies) is the answer is another issue – the painting certainly posits the question of aggression with unwavering force. It is blindingly obvious that Bosch, in this painting and others, does not see the Church as a means to Christ, as the representatives of religion are themselves a part of the aggressive world and offer no solace; the good thief in the upper right corner swoons in terror at the words of his grisly confessor, who couldn’t be less Christ-like if he tried. The painting is a formal triumph, with Christ at the centre of a cross and the two thieves, Veronica and the hands of Simon of Cyrene at its four corners. I rather admire the gumption and resistance of the bad thief at the right lower corner but clearly it gets him nowhere and only adds to the ugliness of the scene.

Also in Ghent, Bosch’s St Jerome at Prayer echoes the theme of the St Anthony triptych but in a calmer key. St Jerome has abandoned the things of this world – his fine cloak, his book, his hat; he lies abject at the feet of his object of contemplation, Christ on the cross. The world around him is a complete wasteland, an emotional and physical dead end. Yet this desperate natural world cannot harm the Saint, as evidenced by the lion who has been turned here into little more than a gentle lamb.

In Bruges, Bosch’s Last Judgement triptych shows the world’s end. The last days are a war zone, with cities on fire and rats the size of cows in the streets. As ever, the prodigious demons torture the damned. Most medieval Last Judgements confine hell to the right hand corner  and give most space to the righteous and the Heavens above. Not so Bosch, for whom hell is almost the whole scene; his left hand panel is a calm scene where a few naked innocents are taught by angels or frolic in serenity and a single Gothic structure stands (in contrast to the many destroyed buildings in hell); there is also a hint here that a more positive vision of sexuality might be possible. According to Bosch, few will find a way out of hell, punishment, retribution which – if I for a moment apply a Blakean reading – can be seen a mindset rather than a physical place (although of course the mindset creates the physical into the embodiment of hell). For me, Bosch’s work is a vision of the mind in action, for the most part a terrible, tormented mind full of violence, enmity, sometimes strange pleasure but finally disease and death; yet there is an alternative mind of calm, knowledge, contemplation. Yet it takes tremendous efforts of concentration to take oneself from one to the other, and that other is always waiting with its pinchers to pinch and pull.

Bosch is the most extreme of the Flemish Primitives and whilst he sums up their vision is also anomalous in the fever pitch of his imagination. Like most of them he was a master craftsman with an enviable sense of composition and a mean ability to colour his scenes in vivid, striking tones. He’s a great place to start as his figures are so utterly indelible that once seen they are never to be forgotten. In my next blog, I’ll talk about some of his fellow Flemish Primitives, who give him some context and not a few of whom are geniuses in themselves. Yet I suspect he’ll always be my first love, who torments me with the most terrible and profound of loves.

Note on Writing AI characters

It is quite unusual for me to write futuristic or science fiction works but a recent challenge I set myself – to tell a particular story three times in a single short play, each at different historical junctures – led me to set a piece in the future. As a consistent character in the story is a police officer, I got the notion (not original, I own) that law enforcement in a possible future may be the responsibility of AI machines.

I do not know very much about AI, so it behoved that as well as setting my imagination to work, I read a little into the science of AI. I am not unfamiliar with fiction around the area, especially in film, having viewed the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Westworld and Robocop a number of times. I chose to read Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide by BlayWhitby (Oneworld Publications, 2008). It’s a simple book and suits my purposes perfectly, as I don’t wish to stage the science, just have some idea that there can be a science behind what I have happening on stage.

I have become especially intrigued by a major problem in AI, in that it has proved particularly difficult, if not impossible, for programmers to get their AI machines to distinguish between objects – the robots cannot tell a mobile phone from a glasses case, for example. This set me thinking about how this might be solved (and I am not in the least bit a scientist!) – but surely the answer might well come from looking at the problem from the other way around? The cell phone and the glasses case will tell the machine what they are. This can be done very simply by having all objects microchipped. Machines entering any space will scan the space and collect data from the microchips in the space, so that every object will be distinguishable from every other and identifiable to the machine. The microchip might well include details of the dimension of the object and even dimension of each part within, so that objects packed or piled together will be distinguishable. The microchip could also include ownership information. There might be some objects –like match sticks or fresh food – which a machine might encounter without a microchip; these would be dealt with in the same way that computerised counters deal with “unexpected items in the bagging area” – people would have to help out the machine. People themselves would be microchipped alongside objects…

The initial microchipping will involve a large-scale project to ensure that all spaces are machine-friendly. Will people agree to this whole-scale adaptation of their environment for the benefit of AI machines? I think about the way my xBox kinect works and the way in which my partner’s nephews and nieces are happy to adapt where they stand in the room for the benefit of playing a game; humans have always been willing to adapt their behaviour for the benefit of technology as long as they believe they're getting a pay-off…

In solving, at least for myself, one of the issues of AI, I can see how my machines in my play might negotiate environments. I am not sure I need to explain this within the play, but I can happily write them moving through the world without wondering how they know what’s around them.

2012 and End Things

A number of people thought that 2012 was going to be the end of time. On a personal level, 2012 looked at one point as being the end of my time. The Mayan calendar offered signs of apocalypse for the superstitious-minded; my own demise was predicted by signs of a more concrete nature, although they evaded interpretation for a while.

In October 2011, I suffered from what I thought was a flu. I was feverish for a week or so and then it passed. Another flu-like episode a fortnight later and I cursed my bad luck at picking up another virus so quickly. When a third episode occurred at around the same distance from the second, I realised that this might be something other than bouts of flu. A first doctor’s appointment led to a rather rash diagnosis of a chest infection and a prescription of antibiotics. Another recurrence and an appointment with a different doctor raised rather more concern and I was counselled that it might be any number of serious things; given to me amongst the possible causes of the complaint were tuberculosis, lymphoma, malaria and lupus. I underwent blood tests and ex-rays. These were showing no positive results but the fevers were continuing in their fortnightly pattern, with temperatures up to 42° and soaking night sweats. I was spending more time off from my lecturing job than at work. Eventually, my doctor had me admitted to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel for observation, as the new tests they wanted to do would be done quicker as an inpatient. I hadn’t spent a night in hospital since I was 6 months old and had bronchial pneumonia, an event I predictably don’t remember. In the hospital, where the care and facilities couldn’t have been better (I even had my own room, even though I am an NHS patient without any extra cover), I was given a PET scan and a lymph biopsy. When I’d initially had blood tests, the doctor had told me that there was no sign of lymphoma in the bloodstream, which had lulled me into a false sense of security. My hospital consultant was pretty sure I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and the biopsy/scan results confirmed this.

I had cancer. To be specific, I had Stage 3B Hodgkin’s, meaning that it had spread above and below my diaphragm and I was experiencing systematic symptoms. I was handed over to a new consultant, Dr Sylvia Montoto at Barts, who told me very clearly that, if left untreated, the disease would kill me. Treatment would involve an ABVD chemotherapy regime. This may have adverse effects – hair loss, nausea, sore gums, etc. – but the prognosis was very positive and I was told that the treatment cures over 80% of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma patients, with over 70%+ of those cured experiencing no recurrence of the disease. Nevertheless, being told you have a potentially fatal cancer is, to say the least, sobering.

Our lives are lived behind glass walls. We know that what lies beyond those glass walls is called Death although most of the times he doesn’t come close enough to the glass that we can see him, so it is easy to forget him or at least tell ourselves he’s some distance away. Sometimes, though, we hear his noises penetrate the glass or getting a feeling of his shadow passing; now and then he even comes close enough to be seen, he can even push his face up against the window. Most of us rather hope that by the time he is so close, we’ll be tired of living in our little glass house, maybe it’s too decrepit and old to be a joy to inhabit, so we’ll happily open the a window wide and let him in. Yet all the time we hear tales of how he’s smashed through to someone as an uninvited guest. I can’t say that I saw his face in 2012 but I certainly felt his presence, out there, closer than ever, perhaps I heard him breath. His breathing’s increase is the decrease of one’s own…

I am not sure that I fear Death, although the pain that one knows he can bring in his wake is a scary prospect. The sorrow he’ll give to those left who loved me is also an awful thought. Most horrible, to me, is the thought that he’ll come before I’ve had time to do all I wish to do with my life. I am a writer, I don’t think I’m written out yet and I certainly haven’t yet seen my creations bedded down in the world for a certain life beyond me, the only children I am likely to have are not yet thriving, so the prospect of death coming to call at this time in my life causes me to sing along with old Dock Boggs, “Oh, death, oh, death, can 't you spare me over till another year?”

Chemotherapy ain’t easy. Its bad reputation is well-earned. What I didn’t reckon on is how stealthy its miseries are. My first couple of sessions were made difficult by one of the drugs, Dacarbazine, giving me a severe bout of rigors - but the effects of the drugs soon wore off, my hair stayed sturdily in place and I was able to get out and about a fair amount in the weeks off from treatment (which was fortnightly, for six months; I was signed off university work for the duration). The more the treatment went on, the more impact it had on my body; energy levels decreased, the hair eventually fell out (leaving me looking like a raggedy scarecrow before I shaved it all off), the gums got sore and a woozy feeling of nausea stuck around. Unluckily for me, the antiemetic drugs weren’t entirely effective and the later treatments were usually concluded with severe bouts of vomiting.

The treatment is given through a drip and the chemo called Dacarbazine particularly took a while to go in, around 2/2.5 hours. I grew to dread this infusion. Sitting in the treatment room, somehow unable to read or listen to music, as this helpful poison slowly entered my body – it’s the worst position I have experience of being in. It was as if in those hours my life and my actual self were suspended. I managed to sleep through some of it (especially as the antihistamine they gave me to prevent the recurrence of the rigors was quite somniferous) but it was a deeply upsetting experience, eroding of all identity and faith in its moment, although these would appear again outside of that dreaded drip-time.

The treatment is given in blood cancer-specific day-wards at the hospital, ghastly and secret rooms in which the ailing sit in armchairs getting themselves infused with what they hope are helpful poisons. Some of the patients are old and weathered by the long-term effects of prolonged treatment; others are young and their eyes tell of the question as to why their glass windows have become menaced by the figure beyond this early in their lives. The wards are for the most part staffed by angels who couldn’t be gentler and kinder, a mercy indeed as without considerate attention, these rooms would be torture chambers.

My own visits to the wards were also alleviated by the companionship of my partner, Andrew, who always accompanied me on treatment days. Our relationship is only a couple of years old but he been the epitome of faithful and true. I wonder if I could have got through 2012 without his love and presence. When I hear the self-proclaimed Holy crew condemning and demeaning same-sex partnerships, I simply feel sorry for people who, supposedly above all others, should be servants of love but yet cannot see love-in-practice when it wears a form they’re prejudiced against. Compassion is a word often improperly used in contemporary life; in Andrew’s devotion, I knew compassion to literally mean co-suffering and I believe him when he says that every time I underwent the soul-destroying treatment, part of him was destroyed alongside me.

In late-October I had the final treatment of the prescribed regime. Over the following weeks my vitality has been returned. I am easing back into my university work and also hard-at-it writing a trilogy of new short plays, a commission from some actors. I had another PET scan in mid-December and, a week before Christmas, got a telephone call from Dr Montoto telling me that the scan shows that there is now no sign of the disease and that I am in “complete remission”. I am seeing a life beyond the cancer now, although it’s been such an intense ordeal that it’s sometimes hard to believe that, for now, the figure living beyond the glass is not imminent.

All of this is not to say that 2012 has been an altogether annus horribilis for me. I have seen devotion in the form of my lover and many of my friends; I saw the premier, six years after I wrote it, of my play Coward by the splendid and extremely talented folk at Just Some Theatre Company, and the seeds laid by their short tour of the play in 2012 are to flourish in an audio release of the play early in 2013 and a longer tour/possible London run of the play later in the year; I have seen some wonderful theatre and opera, although regrettably have not had the energy to write about it other than in short tweets; there was a new Bob Dylan album to wonder at. I have also had time to consider my life and life in general in a way I haven’t perhaps had the leisure to do since I had periods of unemployment in the 1990s; illness does allow one a certain temporary decadent aristocracy during which one can pursue a life of mind and contemplation which daily work undermines. Yet the longing to create is strong in me and I wouldn’t want any longer an intermission of vitality, so I am glad that it looks as if the aristocrat has now been deposed.

It is hard to sum up an experience like this, and I am leaving a great deal out of this perforce short account. I am not going to preach any lessons – perhaps being ill has allowed me to let go of the need to proselytise and for that if nothing else, I am eternally grateful to the circumstance. Perhaps going through a very serious illness gives one a privileged vision of life, or at least allows one to put certain things into perspective; perhaps many do this anyway, without brushing with the Reaper. It certainly allowed me to focus on that which makes me the same as everybody else – knowing myself to be a being whose stay on this earth has limits, that at any moment I might suddenly be thrown from my hobby-horse and encounter that lurker in the land beyond the glass. I could now worry that my cancer will return, or that my body will betray me in some other way, or will be otherwise defeated; yet in my vulnerability I’m not any different from you or anybody else, no matter how apparently healthy a person has always been. We all breath a numbered series of breaths, have terminable heartbeats.

I will take a small liberty and encourage you, if you do not already, to acknowledge Death, as I surely now do. He is for all of us a certain future companion, the caller stealing through the window to be with us in the last dance of our earthly lives. Until then - God, the fates or medical science willing – we’ll have other companions and who knows how many other rounds to dance.