Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter
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Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Details
From the Inside Flap "In Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson makes it abundantly clear that laughter is a key feature in many of Bruegel's works. He examines witty and humorous elements in Bruegel's paintings, prints, and drawings and creates a context for understanding them as part of sixteenth-century culture. The material Gibson brings to bear on Bruegel will be new to many. This book will appeal to art historians and anyone interested in sixteenth-century thought and culture."―John Oliver Hand, Curator of Northern Renaissance Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington"This book offers a much needed, and long overdue alternative to the primarily moralizing approach to Northern Renaissance and Baroque art and the works of Pieter Bruegel. Walter Gibson goes way beyond what art history has offered to date, giving a new, more balanced reading of Bruegel's art."―Alison Stewart, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln"In Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson offers a marvelously engaging antidote to the hermetic readings that have plagued the interpretation of Bruegel's works for far too long. The book provides an abundance of evidence for the importance of laughter in the responses these works were intended to provoke, illuminating not only the paintings and prints of this much misunderstood artist, but also the role of laughter in sixteenth-century culture as a whole."―David Freedberg, Professor of Art History at Columbia University Read more From the Back Cover "In "Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson makes it abundantly clear that laughter is a key feature in many of Bruegel's works. He examines witty and humorous elements in Bruegel's paintings, prints, and drawings and creates a context for understanding them as part of sixteenth-century culture. The material Gibson brings to bear on Bruegel will be new to many. This book will appeal to art historians and anyone interested in sixteenth-century thought and culture."--John Oliver Hand, Curator of Northern Renaissance Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington"This book offers a much needed, and long overdue alternative to the primarily moralizing approach to Northern Renaissance and Baroque art and the works of Pieter Bruegel. Walter Gibson goes way beyond what art history has offered to date, giving a new, more balanced reading of Bruegel's art."--Alison Stewart, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln"In "Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter Walter Gibson offers a marvelously engaging antidote to the hermetic readings that have plagued the interpretation of Bruegel's works for far too long. The book provides an abundance of evidence for the importance of laughter in the responses these works were intended to provoke, illuminating not only the paintings and prints of this much misunderstood artist, but also the role of laughter in sixteenth-century culture as a whole."--David Freedberg, Professor of Art History at Columbia University Read more About the Author Walter S. Gibson is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University and the author of several books, including Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael (California, 2000) and Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Two Studies (1991). Read more
Reviews
I sympathize with Kevin Sperka's review, as I too found the book somewhat tedious, although I was able to finish it. Kevin is not fair, however, in saying that Gibson writes what seems to be a historical narrative about festivals in the 1500s; that is true of just one chapter. The point of the book is to take issue with scholars who focus on, in Gibson's words, "the serious-minded, didactic Bruegel, whose paintings and drawings, like the allegorical dramas so popular in his life time, are assumed to be 'vol scoone moralisacien' (full of lovely moralizations)." Thus, when Bruegel painted a wedding dance or a wedding feast, his purpose was not to moralize about the sins of lust and gluttony, but to portray peasants having a good time. Admittedly, this does not make the book about "The Art of Laughter."Let me register two small complaints. One is Gibson's too-frequent use of Dutch, as in the quotation above. Gibson translates it, but the number of readers who benefit from the Dutch must be tiny. Second is Gibson's gratuitous use of his wide scholarship. He writes, for example, "We may also wonder if the bride in the Peasant Wedding Feast is like the brides characterized by an English playwright of the next century [whom Gibson quotes]. If any classically educated viewers of Bruegel's peasant scenes felt the urge to show off their knowledge of ancient literature, they may have quoted from Ovid's description of the feast of Anna Perenna [which Gibson quotes]." Why quote an English and a Roman writer to comment on a Flemish painting? Was Gibson even aware that he might have "felt the urge to show off [his] knowledge"? Still, Gibson is a Bruegel scholar (he is the author of the 1977 book on Bruegel in "The World of Art" series) and he writes clearly, so, if you like Bruegel, you'll probably find this book worth reading.