Bruegel in Words

As Above, So Below (2002), a novel by Rudy Rucker, gives us a lively if somewhat melodramatic fictional account of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The known details of Bruegel's life are few so Rucker layers his novel with fairly prosaic relationships, almost soap opera-esque, and colors the narrative with known historical detail of the Low Countries under the reign of Charles the V and Phillip the II of Spain. What the novel lacks in prose elegance and style it makes up for by conjuring the sights, sounds, smells, and day-to-day goings-on of life in places like Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen in the 1500s.

During Bruegel's short life (1525-1569) he no doubt witnessed the atrocities and persecutions perpetrated by the Spanish monarchy against the occupied peoples of the Low Countries. His Massacre of the Innocents, a Biblical theme, has been adapted to portray a village scene in his native country and depicts the depredations unleashed on the citizens by the soldiers and mercenaries of the Spanish Crown. Rucker includes various details and scenes that aptly illustrate life under occupation and weaves these into the imagined narrative of Bruegel's life.

Massacre of the Innocents, 1567

The novel begins with Bruegel as a young man traveling to Rome and encountering real mountains (the Alps) for the first time (a salient detail as Bruegel would become known as one of the greatest landscape artists of all time), and ends with his untimely death of an unspecified stomach condition in 1569. In between, Rucker uses Bruegel's masterpieces as jumping off points for creating the fictional details of his novel. It's a useful method and lends meaning, real or not, to the works themselves while allowing the author to sketch key periods of the artist's life.

For those interested in his research and process, Rucker has posted his notes on the writing of So Above, So Below.

Two other novels in which Bruegel plays a staring role are Bruegel, or A Workshop of Dreams by Claude-Henri Rocquet (1991), and Headlong (1999) by Michael Frayn, both worth reading.

Bruegel in Detroit

How did Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Wedding Dance" end up in the Detroit Institute of Art? It was purchased by the city for the museum, true, but whose idea was it to buy it? And what kind of discussions went on in the offices of city power over whether to buy it or not? I would love to know the back story of how it ended up where it did. Unfortunately, whether it stays in that beleaguered city remains to be seen.

Detroit is a broken city, buried in debt. Just yesterday, the New York Times reported on a federal ruling holding that the city could formally enter bankruptcy and that city pensions were "not inviolable." Now, the city's creditors and a host of economists, politicians, art world professionals, and lawyers are vying for a say in what happens to DIA's collection. They say the art collection is a city asset and selling it to raise capital to service the debt should be considered. If legally binding pensions are in jeopardy, is there any doubt the art is going to the auction block?

DIA's director, Graham W. J. Beal, thinks not. He stated so in a September 2013 post on DIA's blog, writing that the museum has "...no intention of breaching the most fundamental tenet of the art museum world: that art in the collection can only be sold to acquire more (and better) art." Unfortunately, when it all plays out, the director may be powerless in deciding what happens to the collection he oversees. And what happens in Detroit may have wider ramifications. Other cities across America will no doubt face similar dilemmas in the future. It's not too far a stretch to think that other major public collections around the country could one day end up being sold to pay down city or state debt.

What will happen to "The Wedding Dance" or to the great Diego Rivera murals that adorn the walls of the building itself?

The Wedding Dance, 1566

Bruegelian Doings

A new Bruegel. Odd to write that some five hundred years after the painter's death. But last week we received notice of the re-emergence of  "The Wine of Saint Martin's Day," a painting that becomes the forty-first authenticated and signed work by the great 16h century Dutch genius. And at 5 ft by 9 ft, the largest.

Apparently, "unidentified Spanish collectors" brought the unattributed painting to the Prado for cleaning (how connected do you have to be to have the Prado clean your art?). Conservators at the venerable Madrid museum were astonished to discover that the painting was actually executed by the hand of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. His signature, buried beneath centuries of glue, resin, and dust, gradually came to light in the restoration process.

The Wine of St Martin's Day, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560s