From the Last Judgement to Hokusai and Allen Jones

On the left wing of his triptych The Last Judgement, the Dutch painter Hieronymous

Bosch depicts the fallen angels as insects. The apostate angels plunge from a large

cloud into the Garden of Eden. As they fall, they transform more and more clearly

into opalescent insects that swirl around the battling archangel Michael. In Franz

Kafka’s alarming story The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to

find himself transformed into a dung beetle. In his new form, rejected by everyone, he

is mistreated and eventually dies. In his story Flypaper, the hyperrealistic writer

Robert Musil immortalised the gruesome death of the insects on the toxic sticky

flypaper called “Tangle foot”. But Kafka, Musil, Mickey Mouse, Fritz the Cat,

Rammstein, Baudelaire, Henoch, Huellebecq and Murakami are not my only

inspirations. I've also been inspired, above all, by the illustrators Janson, Stanton,

Grumb, Willie, Hokusai and Allen Jones.