Drunkenness was completed in less than two days shortly after the artist had recovered from a severe attack that nearly cost him his life. The work shows five extremely drunk people who together stumble forwards across a sumptuous flowery meadow. Happiness and misery seem to go hand in hand. A curving wreath forms an island in the meadow, a bottle having fallen across it. The fruit, butterflies, and fragrant flowers symbolize the transitoriness of life. For the grotesque erotic couple, Arosenius has taken his inspiration from the baroque painter Rubens and his painting of drunken Silenus, Bacchus’ companion. Woven into the theme of intoxication are also love and instinct, which Arosenius both celebrates and mocks. A classical motif he returned to often were ancient Bacchanalia: wild orgies in honour of Bacchus, the god of wine, notable for their depravity. In cartoons, ironic verses, and caricatures he mixed burlesque and melancholy, and in their constant struggle for ascendancy it is usually passion and gluttony that wins out over wisdom and virtue.
Johan Sjöström from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
