portrait of Svankmajer
The Arcimboldo Effect
What is it?
What attracts me so irresistibly to Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s method that sometimes I am not even shy of imitation (otherwise so despised)?
What sort of force is it which always deafens all rational arguments against it?
Is it the evocative force of “Mannerist Prague” to which someone who has lived there all his life succumbs with intense pleasure?
Is it the message of Rudolf II himself, secretly crossing the centuries, this new “Hermes Trismegistus”?
Or is it a sublimation of memories of childhood masturbation, which psychologists say later manifests itself as a passion for collecting, the accumulation of objects, which is so particular to Arcimboldo’s method?
Did Arcimboldo ever masturbate in childhood?
[Jan Svankmajer]
