«Hedonism»

Hedonism, original painting

Around 306 BC the philosopher Epicurus opened a school in a garden in Athens, and it was known simply as the Garden. He called pleasure the highest good and lived on plain bread and water. By pleasure he meant calm and no pain, not luxury. Over the centuries the word hedonism drifted to mean nearly the opposite, and he would not have recognised the party.

That drift is the starting point of this hedonism pop art painting.

A low modernist house sits among autumn trees, its upper floor jutting out over a glowing orange interior. Along the balcony stands a long row of small figures, painted flat like a frieze, and many of them are naked. At the left a figure lies on a lounger. In front is the real star: a black, boxy off-road car parked on a stone driveway, its number plate turned to gibberish. The sky is thick, crinkled paint, almost like crumpled paper, and small black bars and colour squares hang in it like censor marks or dead pixels.

The old masters knew this scene. Bosch filled a garden with naked bodies in The Garden of Earthly Delights (about 1490-1500), a picture that is part invitation and part warning. In A Bigger Splash (1967) David Hockney gave us a modernist house and an empty pool. I took the house and the garden and added the car, because for many people today it is the car that stands for the good life.

I will not tell you what to feel. The colours are warm, the garden is lovely, and the glitches in the sky say that something is off. As hedonism pop art, it asks for a big wall and works as statement wall art.

This is an original pop art painting, 120 x 90 cm, made in 2025. Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. A hand-finished lithograph of it also exists; you can order that the same way.