Matthew Hansel’s Hidden Demons
“What I am advocating for is a type of grace,” says Matthew Hansel. “Both in the way we see ourselves and in the way we see others. I am celebrating the impossible mix of contradictory things that make us human, including the parts of ourselves we hide from the world.” Hansel’s tour of our hidden selves finds that celebration by way of monsters, demons, and Boschian creatures. And yet he does not sink into the moroseness of this iconography. It is all part of a style which is equal parts Northern Renaissance and Norman Rockwell, deployed in hopes that we can understand the vastness of our inner lives.
He calls the project the Morbid Delectatio. The gruesome delight. Those aspects of ourselves and the lives we lead that repel and attract, disgust and seduce. That twinned aspect of living where ‘we know the hangover’s coming, so why not have just one more drink this evening?’ We are all decomposing all the time, but that shouldn’t stop us from enjoying the world right now. If we don’t relish the time we have, then what is the point?
“When we are seduced by things that should by all accounts repel us, we are made aware that enjoyment— taste, sexual, et cetera—is not rational. This decoupling is a subject that informs many of my paintings,” says Hansel.
Many of the most salacious and memorable figures in Hansel’s work take a cue from the history of grotesques. The term comes the Italian word grottesca, from the grotto. It references the fifteenth-century re-discovery of Nero’s Domus Aurea in the heart of Rome. Explorers found their way into the complex by hammering their way through walls and ceilings. This structure was long abandoned—forgotten. Dirt piled high by the centuries of neglect so that early explorers walked within arm’s reach of the tall domed ceilings, the tops of the colonnades. Their soft torch light numbly brushing aside the darkness to reveal the frescoes of mythic figures and strange creatures.
The grotesques went out into the world. They traveled into the Vatican where Raphael painted them in the famed Stufetta of the powerful, wealthy Cardinal Bibbiena. They waltzed northward by the impressions of the folk who dared to venture through the earth into the caves of Nero’s Domus, where they doubtless influenced the work of Bosch, Pieter Brughel the Elder, and others who used these agents of darkness to convince true believers that a difficult life of faith and good works outweighed pleasures of the flesh.
Hansel, however, wants people to “let their freak flag fly.”
WHEN WE ARE SEDUCED BY THINGS THAT SHOULD BY ALL ACCOUNTS REPEL US, WE ARE MADE AWARE THAT ENJOYMENT—TASTE, SEXUAL, ET CETERA— IS NOT RATIONAL.”
“When it comes to our demons, the call is coming from inside the house,” he says. “Our demons are with us twenty-four/seven. The question is how do we deal with them? I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. I think
our demons are far more dangerous when left unconfronted and would be far less harmful in a world where they were visible. It does appear to be a bit of a contradiction but how many times have we heard someone say, ‘If only they would have told me they were struggling, I could have tried to get them help?’ In a world where we replace the stigma of our demons was replaced with a celebration of them, I think we would alleviate a lot of our psychic distress and probably have more fun.”
Hansel employs a few symbols in addition to the grotesques which can help the viewer read what is going on in each work. For instance, he frequently depicts foodstuffs. Fruits, cheeses, wine and alcohol, sweets. His work often lays out a visual smorgasbord, a feast for the senses. We are immersed in a bacchanalia—a circus of sensations.
Cheese, he says, is a perfect symbol of the Morbid Delectatio. “Stinky, pungent lumps made from curdled milk laced with bacteria and aged with mold that is universally loved and devoured,” as Hansel puts it. The viewer’s mouth waters and stomach churns at the same time. So many delicacies around the world are foodstuffs that are allowed to go bad in just the right way. Yogurt, alcohol, lactoferments. But what dairy-loving soul would pass up a sumptuous cheeseboard? Hansel’s Morbid Delectatio focuses less on how much cholesterol is in that wheel of brie, or whether that spot on the bleu cheese is mold or rot. Instead he urges us to take a bite and see what we think.
When cheese makes an appearance in his work, it typically dominates. In “The Study,” a crown of cheese and salumi sits atop the headed of a prawn-bearded gryphon-man. The grotesque (although it seems almost more fitting to go with a term that has less baggage, perhaps we can simply call it a being) looks within the pages of a volume emblazoned with great, all-seeing eyes. The colors of the being and the book itself are reflected in the eye shadow of a young woman who reads along. But could be the mover in this scenario. There is a little mystery around which is the novice, and which is the keeper of this knowledge.
The work “The Studio Assistant” makes a tapestry of cheese, placing it behind a young woman and a fire-red devil. The painting is drenched in a Vermeer aesthetic. The young woman scrubs out a bowl of some kind—perhaps a chamber pot?—while the nude devil leans into frame. Like the gryphon-being in “The Study,” the young woman in this work has a crown of sorts made from cheese. Hansel seems to use this motif as a method for bestowing specific characters with special authority.
Fruit is omnipresent. Melons on dishes, grapes which dangle with Dionysian glee—mid-orgy. Fruit also adorns the bodies of characters. But where the cheese feels otherworldly, fruit seems to become part of a figure’s flesh. Compare the cheese crown in “The Study” with the gryphon’s nipple, which, upon close inspection, is a strawberry.
“The Bounty Of Our Love Grows Silent And Unseen” offers a particularly interesting case where cheese intersects fruit and other foodstuffs. We see a beach, often an Edenic or antediluvian vista for Hansel. A good place on the verge of contamination. You can find the painting twice on his Instagram feed. The first, from April 2022, is unfinished and focuses on a nude man and woman helping a grotesque to undress. The grotesque has the figure of a woman. Though her lower body is scaled, her stomach is a gaping mouth with beak and fang. Her breasts are a pair of gourds. Watermelon is in the gaping stomach-mouth, while grapes and a pomegranate grow beardlike.
I ALSO LOVE THE THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF NUDIST COLONIES. THEY CREATE A SMALL UNIVERSE WHERE SOCIETAL NORMS AROUND SHAME ARE UPENDED.”
The finished work finally appeared on June 16, 2023, with the same title but major changes to the subject. All three of the primary figures now build a tower of cheese out of the water. The cheese blocks the grotesque aspects of the central woman, although her gourd breasts now rest on a platter teetering on a cheese ledge, with one of the grape bunches and the pomegranate also remaining. The gourd and fruit thus disembodied somehow take on more of a
central role, shifting from genitalia to the crude outline of a face. Don’t get me wrong: There is a hot dog below the pumpkins, and it is still very genitalia-like, but it also looks more like a standalone face.
It should not surprise, then, that Hansel sees humor as a necessary part of the creative process. Many of his paintings display a wit for visual metaphor, the unexpected turn that can elicit a chuckle. But part of that is the tenderness that he brings to each work. The viewer can feel a real sense of empathy for the characters—their loves, their lusts.
And, of course: Joy! There is a genuine love for life that exudes from Hansel’s work. “Dancing on the Toes of Our Shadows” is a particularly tender example. Hansel will frequently allude to personal flourishes he puts in his work. Little touches that are not necessarily meant to connect with audiences, just for himself. In “Shadows,” the main figures dancing on the table are himself and his wife, imagined decades older than they are.
We fall in love with their love. We sense something deeper than the wine spilling everywhere, or the reverie on the face of the fiddler with pots stacked on his head. It is the way the dancers hold each other’s hand—their gaze lost and adoring. His work just as often hones in on these private displays of affection as the gaudy orgies, the seaside games. Their laughter and tittering are infectious. We want to be there. We want to feel that happy.
“A decent stand-in for the algebra of creativity could be Humor + Pathos + Virtuosity = Good Art,” the artist suggests. “Now, how much you let that humor show up in the end product is a matter of taste and temperament. However, I have always been open to letting it in when it doesn’t seem forced or arbitrary. Humor is so intrinsically human that it is hard to imagine art without it. Having said that, I remember when I first came to NY and thought that going to jazz clubs seemed like something that a sophisticated person would do. So I would frequent clubs in the village even though I (to this day) have never developed a real fondness for music. I remember there was a fairly frequent occurrence where a musician would end a two-minute-long free form solo with a stanza of a very simple and recognizable song. That might be ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ Then the audience would
look around and a faint rumble of knowing laughter accompanied some finger snapping. I hate this kind of humor in art.”
Another factor which helps Hansel to seduce us toward his Morbid Delectatio is the human characters. We might be most likely to remember the beasts and the grotesques, but their human counterparts allow us to venture inward to the painting. They allow us something grounded amid the grandiose compositions and allusions to the great works of Western art.
And there is a reason that they all seem of the same world. Hansel’s primary inspiration for the human figures come from nudist colony advertisements from the 1960s and 1970s.
A DECENT STAND-IN FOR THE ALGEBRA OF CREATIVITY COULD BE HUMOR + PATHOS + VIRTUOSITY = GOOD ART. NOW, HOW MUCH YOU LET THAT HUMOR SHOW UP IN THE END PRODUCT IS A MATTER OF TASTE AND TEMPERAMENT.”
“They are an amazing reference for when you need a group of people playing volleyball naked or a nude woman with a beehive eating a piece of watermelon,” he says.
The figures based on these advertisements retain a sense of history without being foreign or quaint. As L.P. Hartley wrote, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. But Hansel is wise to avoid this trap. Using figures with styles from our recent past is like the short hop on a diving board that precedes the great leap into our deep history.
“I wanted to incorporate some of what I get from history paintings into these works,” says Hansel. “That grandiose nature, the drama, the dynamic compositions. But I didn’t want that to create a disconnect between the work and the audience, who live in the here and now. For me, those advertisements being from the 1960s cleared the most minimum bar of being just old enough to be history painting without being foreign. I also love the theoretical underpinnings of nudist colonies. They create a small universe where societal norms around shame are upended. It is analogous to what I am attempting with the Morbid Delectatio and lucky for us, nudist colonies loved to be photographed and put those in advertisements.”
When your tour of Hansel’s small universe ends, you descend back into the real world. There may be an adjustment period. Withdrawal symptoms may linger. For one, we wear clothes. And the demons we face can be less than friendly. Grotesque is a bad word, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe you have a new appreciation for cheese and the parts of your body that it can balance on. Maybe you want to go to the beach more often, or wherever it is that makes you feel vital and centered. Life is gruesome enough. So go take joy in something delightful.*
This article was first published in Hi-Fructose Issue 70. You can still get a copy of the full issue in print here.
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