Frida Kahlo and Hieronymus Bosch

Graduate Student e725 correspondent Dan Barlow checks in with a cool posting:

Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:58:30 -0700 (PDT)

Subject: English 725: Blog material
From: "Dan Barlow"
To: bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu

In my post-Kahlo curiosity, I delved into the work of Hieronymus Bosch to seek out works that may have influenced Frida. While scouring Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights," I found a most interesting detail: Bosch appears to have discretely allowed for an inter-racial couple in the Garden of Eden (see "bosch" attachment and look closely at the upper left).




This immediately reminded me of Flor Garduno's "Eden" from Inner Light.



Then I went back to Frida's work and noticed the painting "Two Nudes in a Forest," once more a very edenic setting occupied by dark and light skin figures.



Interesting revisionist themes running through these works, I'd say. Also fascinating is the argument I've just read that Bosch symbolically inserted his own Catharistic views--then "heretical"--into certain works commissioned by his Catholic patrons. In any event, I found it extremely interesting to encounter these (postcolonial?) ideas from dates as early Bosch's painting of "Garden," which was c. 1505.