Delights was Guy Colwell's new graphic novel this year - his first work created as a single book, as well. I knew his name from Doll (which I saw once or twice, I think, but never read seriously), but he was an underground cartoonist (both as a creator of comics and as a colorist/editorial worker on other people's comics) for a few decades and a painter as well. He's in his seventies now; he was part of the main wave of the undergrounds, which means he's a Boomer, born in 1945.
This is a historical story, fictionalized since the details aren't known but aiming to be realistic or plausible - this is how Colwell thinks things probably happened, mostly, or that it's most interesting for him to postulate how it happened.
The main character is the 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (real name Jheronimus van Aken), and it's about the year or so when he was working on his most famous painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights.
In Colwell's telling, Bosch was a visionary painter - literally, in that he saw visions of the strange creatures that populated especially his paintings of Hell - and that he was somewhat concerned about being pious and true to his religion, but even more concerned about propriety and not being seen by his neighbors as heretical or transgressive. This painting was commissioned by a local duke and his heir, and their agent (another painter) continually pushed Bosch during the preparation to be more fleshy and earthly in the painting - more nudes, more varied nudes, more activity, more titillation for the noble audience that would enjoy it.
Bosch worried about scandal as he sketched various permutations of naked people in his studio for months on end, and tried to keep them quiet form the local town - the models were mostly sent by his patron, being retainers or servants or whatever.
That's what the book is about: Bosch doing the work, and worrying about the work as he does it. Being pushed by his patrons in one direction, and then - in a major scene Colwell admits is entirely invented, but based on concerns that arose much later, when the painting was in Madrid and Bosch was dead - being pushed in the opposite direction by a representative of the much diminished but still potentially dangerous Inquisition.
It's a story about making art, on a scale and with a scope that clearly appeals to a maker of comics. A big painting - Garden is a tryptch, six feet tall and almost twice that wide - that takes a year to paint is not a million miles away from a graphic novel, say one of about 160 pages like Delights. Making something like that is not a single action, but sustained work over a long period of time - and art about painters often struggles with depicting the length of time it takes to make a painting, preferring to assume major works can be done in a day from a live model.
Colwell doesn't overdramatize the conflicts; they're mostly internal to Bosch himself, or worked out in conversations with his wife and models and patrons and neighbors and assistant. (Or, a couple of times, with the visions he sees, which talk back to him.) So Delights is mostly a quiet book, about a long period of sustained work. Colwell's art reinforces that: his lines are precise and fine, his faces and especially gestures feel more medieval than modern - a major benefit for this work - and his tone quiet and contemplative throughout.
Delights is not really a book to love; it's one to think about, to let simmer, to enjoy quietly and then go look at the painting it's about. It's a book to make you look at another work of art, to stare at it in depth, and think hard about what you see and what it all means. In a very real sense, it's a guide to appreciating The Garden of Earthly Delights, in an unexpected format.
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