Theatrum Imaginum: Andrew Bonneau

Excerpt from “Imagination and Allegory”

By Christopher Allen

Interior spaces are clearly important in Bonneau’s compositions, and indeed they were the starting-point for the conception of the pictures, not just as sketches but as fully-realised three-dimensional scale models. These spaces are theatres, as already suggested, but not simply in the sense of sets or backgrounds; they are rather conceived in the way the Renaissance thought of a theatrum with the full charge of meaning from its Greek etymology, as a place of seeing. Renaissance philosophers thus conceived of the ‘theatre’ not only or even primarily as a literal stage for performance, but as a virtual space in which knowledge could be conceptualised, displayed and remembered in a visual form. 

This is clearly how Bonneau too thinks of these spaces, which evolved in his imagination and in the process of their construction as places designed to evoke and summon up allegorical and philosophical figures. Each space has a distinct architectural character, appropriate to the scenes that are to take shape within them, but they are not purely architectural; they are also adorned with sculptural decoration, free-standing and reliefs or friezes, which are in turn modelled in three-dimensional form to take their place in the construction of the theatre. And the main figures too, the ones that will occupy the theatrical space, are also realised in solid form. For Bonneau looks back to the example of painters such as Tintoretto and Poussin who would also create architectural models of their interiors, but above allproduce miniature models in wax or clay of the figures in their pictures, dress them and set them up in the theatrical space to experiment with their grouping and experiment with the fall of light over the whole composition. 

[…]

But what is the meaning of these figures, and especially of the way that they have been so carefully assembled, sometimes in iconographically unconventional ways, and set against the reliefs and other decorative motifs elaborately set into their architectural framework? Perhaps the first thing that strikes the viewer is the artist’s combination of figures from Greek mythology, especially some of the most prominent Olympian gods, with others from the world of Hinduism, or more broadly the boundless religious universe of the Indian tradition.

There is clearly a syncretistic vision at work, like the one that inspired Renaissance artists and intellectuals to seek parallels between the Pagan, Hebrew and Christian spiritual traditions. But there is much imagery here that will probably seem unfamiliar, at least at first sight; for like the Renaissance thinkers again, Bonneau discovers affinities between the traditions of east and west through currents of esoteric thought that have relations with each. 

 […]

We can enjoy deciphering their complex and layered symbolism; but in the end the aesthetic and perhaps even gnostic effect they achieve will come from treating them as objects of meditation, and allowing their poetic and spiritual vision to impress itself upon our mind in a moment of contemplative quietness and receptive attention.