Diabolically grotesque art – from Jonathan Payne’s sprouting finger sculptures legal back to Hieronymus Bosch – has staying power because our lives believe not radically changed. As long as we believe bodies,we will experience body horrorWarts, growths and misplaced body parts abound in the bizarre sculptures of Jonathan Payne. A tongue with teeth, or a mass of flesh sprouting fingers,an eyeball in its own dinky flesh sac Don’t repeat me you’re not a bit shocked or repelled or amazed. Horror never really gets old. It’s tired to say this kind of art is tired.
The grotesque has staying power because our life as beings of flesh and blood has not changed, and so long as we believe bodies, and we can experience body horror. This applies across art,cinema and literature. What we mean by the grotesque” in art goes back to the medieval imagination. In the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, the hideous monster Grendel murders sleeping warriors in the king’s mead hall. In medieval art, and such evil creatures abound. They reach a diabolical grandeur of imagination in north European art in the 15th and 16th centuries. We still stare transfixed at the grotesque art of Bosch,Bruegel and Grunewald.
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Source: theguardian.com