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<i>Art...</i>

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<i>ArtSleuth</i>

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A reviving meal

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Reapers in a cornfield

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Rolling countryside, as far as the eye can see,

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A picture by Pieter Bruegel

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Peasant life viewed with a sympathetic eye …

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…or a powerful land-owner’s lofty condescension?

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A question easily answered, one might think:

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since this picture belongs to a series

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painted by one city-dweller for another - a rich Antwerp merchant…

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… and the florid,

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haggard

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and toil-worn faces

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of the people in it hardly tempt one to join the club.

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So what do artist and patron want with these peasants, these minute worker ants?

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Do they enjoy looking down on them?

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And making fun of them?

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Or do they find them genuinely interesting?

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Episode 10 : Bruegel - <i>La Moisson</i>[br]<i>Le Bonheur est dans le pré ?</i>

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Part 1. Rustic joys

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Under a pale moon …

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… the golden corn…

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methodically cut …

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… bundled …

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… bound …

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… and carried off ...

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… in a near-geometrical pattern …

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… leads the eye in two directions:

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towards the village ...

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... with its houses clustered round the steeple.

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And … through a carefully ordered landscape to the castle

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with its dug-out pond,

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dependent hamlet,

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toll bridge

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and winding roads.

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This pear-laden tree

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is a perfect image of man’s and nature’s productivity,

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and these peasants are - literally and figuratively - at the root of it.

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while one of them sleeps , exhausted by his labours,

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the others settle down merrily to their meal.

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Stirabout comes first,

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then it’s out with the knives for bread and cheese,

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with fruit as dessert.

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A feast fit for a lord - almost!

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But this is no general, freeze-frame celebration of the rural life, with its immemorial rhythms and rituals.

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In fact, the whole picture is brimming with specifics, and time - the real time embodied in action and change - flows through and animates it.

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These strange suspended shapes, for example ...

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… are apples which this peasant has shaken from the tree …

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… and the children are gathering.

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And here, beside another fruit-picker, time speeds up

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, and we see a group of men in hot pursuit of others

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trespassers, perhaps, chased off by guards from the castle?

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For others, it’s time to relax:

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This scene of bathing monks is a full action sequence. We see them:

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- clothed,

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- stripped,

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- entering the water,

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- testing the temperature,

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- getting ready to dive,

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- going bottom-up

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- waving jubilantly.

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And these villagers are playing throw-the-stick:

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the one who kills the goose gets to keep it

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a game which Hogarth, two centuries later, attacked as cruel and barbaric

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Further on, this man - caught in the act of relieving himself in front of the best-kept of the peasants’ houses.

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This motif, which recurs in Bruegel’s Proverbs, is a classic expression of contempt

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- either for the world, as here,

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or for the authority symbolised by the gibbet.

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At first sight, this landscape painting seems to depict the three orders in society

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- as fixed and immutable as the seasons themselves:

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the nobles, who fight to preserve peace and order in this world,

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the clergy, who pray for everyone’s salvation in the next,

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and ordinary people, who work to satisfy their own and others’ worldly needs.

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But the castle here seems diminished and forlorn,

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the monks are not praying,

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and the only ones working are the peasants.

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The only ones? Not quite! The ships in the distance stand for maritime trade, which is booming.

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This is the fundamental change reflected in the picture

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- and it is taking place on the horizon, well beyond the confines of the old feudal system.

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So who is the picture’s real hero?

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The peasant working his smallholding, or the merchant who dominates him - and the world?

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Part 2. Remote - but riveting

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The merchant’s name is Jongelinck,

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and Bruegel’s seasons are to hang in the dining room at his country villa.

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How does he regard these peasants?

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They certainly don’t appear to put much trust in us

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- indeed, our watching presence seems positively unwelcome!

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…and this motif is ambiguous in Bruegel :

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In The Beekeepers, the well-equipped specialists outsmart the amateur and make off with the honey.

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In this scene, the jeering peasant, himself on the point of falling into the stream,

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is as much the butt of the joke as the rash birdnester in the tree.

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Theft itself can be a merry business - take this youthful peasant, who stands for the world,

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as he slyly snips the sinister misanthrope’s purse from his belt.

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Both Breugel and his patron habitually view ordinary life from a distance -

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and this may predispose them to regard theft lightly.

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The merchant, indeed, may see it in plain book-keeping terms:

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since fruit and sheaves can be counted,

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and also the people who need feeding -

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the surplus can be calculated too!

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But the distance between Bruegel and his subjects becomes most apparent

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in his physical treatment of people at work.

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Take this other summer scene,

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where faces are hidden by carried objects and pitchers

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women look like the sheaves they are binding,

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and a water jar takes on human shape -

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as if these people - otherwise strongly individualised

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- were fusing with the work they are doing.

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Work requiring physical effort and skill of a kind

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far removed from the intellectual agility required of men like Jongelinck:

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a passionate art-lover, he has commissioned two other series from Frans Floris.

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These engravings reproduce them:one celebrates the seven liberal arts - specially to be admired, since they approximate to pure knowledge,

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which serves no utilitarian purpose:

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four are linked with mathematics,

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- arithmetic,

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geometry,

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music

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and astronomy –

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and three with discourse

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– grammar,

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rhetoric

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and logic -

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The pictures in the other series trace the 12 labours of Hercules,

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which symbolise aristocratic might.

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The fact remains that these two series are infinitely more conventional and stereotyped than the Bruegel’s:

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they are wooden allegories of a kind which a self-made man,

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seeking to ape the style of some enlightened prince, might well choose to put on his walls.

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Why do we get the feeling that these rough peasants

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are the ones regarded with real interest?

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Part 3. Peasants to the fore!

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Before Bruegel, the peasants always seem to get mere walk-on parts.

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In these nativity scenes, they remain just outside the sacred space - a stable!

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Beside their dull, coarse faces, …

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… the Virgin is a radiant, pale and delicate vision.

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In this book of hours, their life is contrasted with that of the nobles,

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in a world whose limits are set by their lord’s majestic castle.

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Feasting, hunting and courtly love are for the nobles!

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Back-breaking labour for the peasants!

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A century later, Bruegel turns everything round: the work of the peasants is made to seem monumental …

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… and the life of the nobles frivolous and irrelevant.

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The other pictures in the “seasons” series confirm this impression:

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the world has expanded,

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the proud fortresses have receded

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and, paradoxically, the peasant world has become interesting.

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Why?

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Perhaps because the middle-class elite – totally absorbed in the world’s affairs –

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secretly envy the peasant’s narrow horizons.

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While storm-battered ships are lost at sea, and fortunes lost with them…

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… peasant life goes on quietly…

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… and even leaves room for game and role playing

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a paper crown, two thick cushions and a collar taken from a cow are enough

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to make this child feel like one of the magi,

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and a flute is all the adults need to parody the bucolic loves of classical mythology

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Here, two obviously urban visitors appear between this unselfconscious figure

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and the merrily cavorting dancers in front of the sinister gibbet …

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… which also turns up in another seasonal panel.

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The execution is a gri mly recent memory, …

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… but the dominant note in this scene is pleasure at the sight of the fat rumps of these contented cattle,

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…ambling home to the peaceful hamlet, with its playing children.

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This winter scene, finally, suggests a similar link between the playful instincts of the artist,

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who conceals the freezing dogs’ heads

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and gives us a near-abstract bouquet of corkscrew tails ...

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… and those of the skating villagers, who here display a far broader range of human reactions and feelings than they do when they are working.

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Between the two extremes - the watchers from the edge

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and the seasoned performers, we get:

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…cautious beginners…

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…those who help others…

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…mishaps...

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…disasters...

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…and surprises

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And so the difference between Jongelinck and the peasants is not a difference in their nature

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- like that between serf and feudal lord -

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but a difference in the breadth of their horizons.

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Jongelinck owned one more picture by Bruegel:

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The Tower of Babel,

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which the artist placed in a contemporary Flemish town.

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It certainly denounces human pride.

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But it also marks a new divide between the ambitious urban elite, who fix their eyes on the horizon,

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and who love to build

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and take risks...

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…and the great mass of the people, who stick to what they know,

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and never dream of stirring from their own small patch of land.

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The Seasons thus convey a sense of affinity and also remoteness:

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affinity of the man who sees in the peasant a living reminder of humanity’s childhood, …

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…with which it is good to reconnect;

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remoteness of the merchant displaying all the superiority of a far- sighted visionary

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and contesting the voluptuous, decadent nobles’ control of the land.

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This was the last episode of ArtSleuth season 1[br]Do you want more?

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Find more information on: www.canal-educatif.fr

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Written and directed by:

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Produced by:

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Scientific expert:

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Founding and public support:

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Voiceover:

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Editing & motion graphics:

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Post-production / Sound recording

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Music supervisor

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Music

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Special thanks[br]English subtitles: Vincent Nash

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A CED film