Exhibition “Ein Leben lang” (“All your life”) at the NGBK Berlin

Here is a statement by Felix Pestemer on ‘Find Spot of the Horticulturist’s Grave (Rotten Arcimboldo)’, his own submission to the exhibition:

In his lifetime, Arcimboldo (1527-1593) missed out on the opportunity to relinquish his own lavish portraits, consisting of fruits and flowers, to decay. Maybe he was just glad that the dark times of the Late Middle

Ages, marked by the Black Death and recurring famines, were finally over and he had huge fun in capturing Vertumnus, the Roman god of transition and change, on his canvasses for all posterity. Not to belittle his Mannerist style, but as far as transition and change are concerned, his work leaves much to be desired. Had he been consequent, the end result (or even the starting point) of his works should have been decay and decomposition of every form, color, and structure, meaning entropy and soil. But Arcimboldo never composted the horticulturist. He died shortly before the vanitas still lifes with their allegoric objects and symbols of impermanence became popular during the Baroque period.