Friday 3 July 2015

Brueghel (July)


Pieter Brueghel’s populous canvases inspire finger-pointing. Boys play kick-to-kick, schoolgirls prove their dress sense, a circle of lonely hearts talk into cells. In a variation of Where’s Wally, we look amid distant trees for wise men. We strive to locate the Nativity in a back shed. But his landscapes are active moralities. In the panoramic ‘July Parables’ spenders rub note-motes from their eyes while the national leader lies weighed under billionaire-logs. Overweight peasants leave food lying about for foxes while refugees starve at opulent gates of an estate suburb. Men dig a coal mine deep enough to bury them alive.

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