MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Dedicated to the Wimmelbild

Wimmelbild (Interviews with Bruegel VI)

(21.9.2023)

– Mr. Bruegel, do you know what a wimmelbild is?
– A wimmelbild? (German: Wimmelbild). A stew of a picture?
– Yes, exactly. A stew. At least at first sight. But what about the first sight? Is the impression that a picture creates in a viewer at first sight important for you?
– Complicated question. A good picture should raise interest at first sight. It should show – at first sight – that it has qualities. But a good picture should be more, should do more than just instigating a first sight impression. The story must go on.
– Like a love story?
– Perhaps. But not necessarily as a happy one. Rather a story that has many dimensions, and perhaps also includes many tensions. There are not happy couples, just couples that have happy moments. And this is perhaps a good definition of the relation of a good picture with a sensitive and thoughful viewer.
– Is it only a relation of looking? Perhaps it is also a dance?
– Yes, it includes dancing, acting, looking, flirting perhaps. And perhaps the first impression, it might be deep, that of a flirt. A flirt with deep consequences.
– Consequences of what kind? Of changing one’s life?
– Yes, and also the life of a picture is changed. Because also a picture has a history, a biography. And if someone falls in love with a picture, this has consequences for both of the parties, the person and the picture.
– But this is something art historians do not know?
– No, they don’t. And they can’t. Since working with a picture scientifically means to avoid the consequences of a flirt on a professional level (or it means at least: to control those consequences, to work with them consciously).
– What about doing a wimmelbild about flirting?
– Flirting is a modern expression. We did not use that word then. We said: come live with me, and be my love. And you will find that in my pictures, although, usually, they are not that romantic. They include the romantic, but: come live with me… is the playful beginning of something that, usually, turns out to be not only playful, but complicated: a wimmelbild.

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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