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| Just don't expect it to roar, 2006 |
Horace, Ars Poetica, 20 BCE. "Painters and poets alike have always had an equal prerogative to dare anything," you say?—We know. This is a concession: we both ask for and grant the same license. But not so far as to unite the mild with the savage, or to couple snakes with birds, and lambs with tigers.
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Roman mosaic from Carthage, Tunisia
Bardo Museum, Tunis |
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| French Medieval Gargoyle |
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French gothic sculpture
A hybrid being, misericord from Rodez Cathedral |
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Hybrid being, detail from the Map of Hereford, 1310
Baltrusaitis: Réveils et Prodiges |
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Zebo da Firenze, Grotesque flutist, France, 1408
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 144, fol. 28v |
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| Rafael Sanzio, Grotesque motif, 1515 |
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Marco Dente, after Raphael
Grotesque, ornamental engraving, early 16th century |
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| François Desprez, Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel, 1565 |
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Vertumnus, oil (detail), 1590
Skokloster Castle, Sweden |
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| A grotesque motif from a mannerist engraving |
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| Christoph Jamnitzer, Neuw Grotteßken Buch, Nuremberg 1610 |
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Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Grotesques, sketches, 1786
BNF, Paris |
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| James Gillray, Excrecence, engraving, 1791 |
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Composition with Hybrid Beings, England, 1865
Painted porcelain panel, after a design by Lucas van Leyden
Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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Then Lilies turned to Tigers
Arts & Crafts Movement, England, 19th Century |
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| Philippe Wolfers, Dragonfly, jewelry, c.1900 |
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| Max Ernst, She looked slightly like a horse, collage, 1937 |
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René Magritte, La saveur des larmes, 1948
Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, Bruxelles |
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Francis Bacon, Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950
Oil and cotton on canvas, 139 x 108 cm
Stedelijk van Abbenmuseum, Eindhoven |
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| Roberto Fontanarrosa, "If there's something we should discard... that's sterility," c.1982 |
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| Mariano Akerman, Three Figures by the Window, 1989 |
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| Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2002 |
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| Santos Maschen, Dragon, Filete Porteño, 2005 |
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| A Flying Pig, c.2006 |
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| Carlos Nine, Hommage à l’arrière-cour, 2008 |
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Thomas Mangold
„Aus einer Mücke eine Elefanten machen”
To make an elephant out of a mosquito, 2010
photograph and computer graphic design
Artist's remark: "If you rearrange reality and/or approach it in a new and unfamiliar angle there are endless possibilities to create stunning stuff." |
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| Grotesque motif |
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Mariano Akerman
Plate relating visual motifs to Horace's lines in Ars Poetica, 2008 |
