THUS FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR: PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER’S ‘THE FAT KITCHEN’ AND ‘THE THIN KITCHEN’ AS A METAPHOR OF SOCIAL MOBILITY

The engravings "The Fat Kitchen" and "The Thin Kitchen" (1563), based on drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (circa 1525-1569), immediately became very popular in the Netherlands and remained popular throughout the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries. They were copied and served as a source of inspiration; their composition and individual motives were borrowed both in graphics and in painting. The secret of their success was a combination of an original and vivid artistic program with already known motives, tackling urgent problems of society alongside with scenes from the everyday life of peasants and ordinary townspeople that were growing ever more popular then. In this article, I show that the iconographic analysis of engravings based on drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder enables us to interpret them as a metaphor for social mobility. The artist shows us how a person's actions affect his social status. The engravings were designed both for those who could identify themselves with those depicted (wealthy peasants or artisans), and for those who belonged to the new bourgeois elite of the Netherlands. By placing “The Fat Kitchen” and “The Thin Kitchen” in the context of the contemporary and subsequent visual tradition and identifying iconographic borrowings, allusions and innovations, it is possible to clarify the form in which the the mid-16th century Netherlandish art expressed the values and norms of the emerging middle class.

NÓS AINDA BRINCAMOS COMO VOCES BRINCAVAM?

Na pintura Children´s Plays (Pieter Bruegel, The Elder / 1525-1569) o artista renascentista fez o inventário de oitenta jogos. Este é um modelo da maior grandeza, ancorado que está na ancestralidade. A alegoria, tanto em suas manifestações iconicas quanto literarias traz um grande potencial para a construção de metáforas frente às crescents ameaças que assolam a humanidade. A abordagem através de procedimentos de caráter coral e natureza ludica pode abrir novamente uma vertente poderosa para a Pedagogia das Artes Cenicas. Os procedimentos de encenação serão sempre novos, na mesma medida em que identidades se constituem continuamente e as formas que os jogos teatrais assumem são polifônicas. O registro da encenação que descrevo almeja mostrar como foi o processo de ensino/aprendizagem, na esperança que esse patrimonio de cultura oral não seja esquecido no futuro que nos aguarda. Palavras-chavePedagogia das Artes Cenicas. Alegoria. Jogo Teatral.

“A work of art is an object that necessitates contemplation”. Latency of visual studies within the Vienna School of Art History?

This article investigates a research method of the so-called Vienna School of Art History, mainly its transformation by Max Dvořák around the First World War. The article suggests the possible influence of Georg Simmel’s philosophy on Dvořák in this time, evident mainly in Dvořák’s interpretation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s art, written by Dvořák in 1920 and published posthumously in 1921. This another view on the Vienna School of Art History is then researched in writings on Pieter Bruegel the Elder by Dvořák’s students Hans Sedlmayr and Charles de Tolnay when Tolnay extended Dvořák’s thinking and Sedlmayr challenged its premises – both Tolnay and Sedlmayr thus in the same time interpreted Bruegel’s art differently, even though they were both Dvořák’s students. The article then suggests a possible interpretative relationship of the Vienna School of Art History after its transformation by Max Dvořák with today’s approaches to art (history), mainly with the so-called visual studies.

Bruegel’s Dirty Little Atoms

The Scientific Revolution was dirty: ‘now [the sun] shows itself to us as partly impure and spotty,’ Galileo wrote after looking at that celestial body through a telescope in 1612. Like the telescope, the microscope revealed the generally mottled nature of things. This was an aesthetic problem. The revelation of spots, stains, and cavities turned perfectly whole bodies complicated and ugly. Meanwhile, the equally ‘impure and spotty’ theory of atomism began to take hold. But well before the popularization of the telescope and microscope or the admission of atomism to plausibility, the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder unfurled a ‘dirty’ atomism across panel and paper.