Humanity Peaked With Medieval Art
have you ever seen a rabbit riding a dog while proudly holding up his battle snail?
I’ll get right to it, my thesis today is this: Medieval art, and specifically Medieval marginalia, is the best art humanity has ever produced, and will ever produce.
Describing art, the literal kind of paints or pens on paper, has always seemed beyond my linguistic capabilities but I’d like to challenge myself and describe for you why I am so enamoured of Medieval art.
Firstly, I love anything and everything weird. Would the average human describe it as weird? Yes? Then I love it. And Medieval art is weird. Penises everywhere. Anatomically incorrect animals everywhere. To me, it is a wonderfully weird celebration of the weird parts of being a conscious living being on Earth.
(First-and-a-half: if you’re reading this in your email you’ll need to go to the Substack website to finish it. Don’t worry it’s not long in words but in images).
Second, before getting into the weird and hilarious aspects of the art, I would like to address my bold claim to its timelessness. A few months ago Tom and I were watching Crimes of the Future which is an intellectual sci-fi movie about how humans evolve to live in a world of synthetic materials, and how they use their evolution to create performance art. One of those pieces is a man covered in ears. Seeing that reminded me that I had been similarly uncomfortable with a similar visual from my favourite Twitter account:
11th century! Someone had the weird idea to put one body part in too many wrong places ONE THOUSAND YEARS AGO! To me this proves that humans will need to evolve into a different species (not even evolving to ingest plastic will do the trick) to create something better.
So, Medieval art’s timelessness being thoroughly established, let’s move on to why it is just. so. good. Why do I love it so much?
Do I love it because they have no idea how animals or humans are put together?
Do I love it because they are weirdly and wonderfully OBSESSED with rabbits?
Do I love it because they are weirdly and wonderfully OBSESSED with dick and balls?
Do I love it because sometimes it feels incredibly modern?
Do I love it because… LOL
After choosing and categorising these examples I’ve found the pattern behind why I love this art so much. It’s because it wasn’t supposed to be [read this breathlessly] Art.
I imagine a room full of monks copying manuscripts, their shaved heads bent down, silence except for the tapping of brushes into pots of paint. Every so often one monk nudges another and silently tilts his page up. He’s drawn a rabbit riding a dog while proudly holding up his battle snail. They giggle. The monk behind him who has also seen it says, “nice battle snail dude, but look at this hairy penis dragon!” That whole side of the room erupts in laughter and the boss monk shunts down the merriment with a stern shhh.
And now we make little jokes about it on the internet and thousands of people can laugh at the penises and the absurdity. I feel so strongly about this art that I’m actually getting emotional at the thought that I have not been able to convey the depth of my feeling. It’s probably best that I leave you with my absolute favourite image, one I’ve now teased you with twice:
Full credit to finding and sharing this art goes to the two accounts the screenshots are taken from. These people are making the internet a better place.
weird medieval guys on twitter, and on bluesky
medievalmarginalia on instagram
and a link to the tweet where I got the cover image for this post
Thank you for reading and I’ll see you later this week for a fun Christmas book wish list!