User:Jahsonic/I discovered Paul Rumsey in December 2005  

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Grotesque Head (c. 1480-1510) by Leonardo da Vinci, clearly the inspiration for The Ugly Duchess
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Grotesque Head (c. 1480-1510) by Leonardo da Vinci, clearly the inspiration for The Ugly Duchess
Adspectus Incauti Dispendium (1601), woodblock title page from the Veridicus Christianus.
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Adspectus Incauti Dispendium (1601), woodblock title page from the Veridicus Christianus.

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I discovered Paul Rumsey in December 2005, when I was researching The Waking Dream (1975).

I've always been an obsessive Googler and searching for certain terms from "The Waking Dream", I stumbled upon an essay by Rumsey in which he cited the book as a reference and quoted names partly already familiar to me:

"In the twentieth century this type of imagery has permeated culture, and is found everywhere, in diverse art forms including: the satiric installations of Kienholz, the drawings of A. Paul Weber, the cartoons of Robert Crumb, the animated films of Jan Svankmajer, photographs by Witkin, plays by Beckett, science fiction by Ballard, fantastic literature like Meyrink’s The Golem, Jean Ray’s Malpertuis, the art and writings of Bruno Schulz and Leonora Carrington, films by David Lynch, Cronenberg and Gilliam; all are part of a spreading network of connections, the branching tentacles of the grotesque."

This quote - as well as the preceding passages - were so dense with artists I admired that I decided to investigate further and to find out what it was that gave me a certain frisson in these artists which I found lacking in other artists admired by established art criticism; a frisson that could be summarized as fantastic, as in fantastic art.

Paul Rumsey's work fits squarely into this tradition: buildings growing on people's heads, people who have their faces on their bellies, horrifying animals, human-animal hybrids, polymorphous objects shaped out of breasts, imaginary structures are some of the themes to be found in his work.

Rumsey's work calls for a revisionist approach to art history. An art history which starts with Bosch rather than Da Vinci (born just two years later), with Odilon Redon rather than Monet (born in the same year) and which prefers Kubin over Picasso (born four years apart).

If you are interested in this kind of art history, here is a list of books that give an extensive overview of the field:

See also




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