Inside Bruegel: The Play of Images in Children's Games [Hardcover]

Edward Snow (Author)

Book Description

In this brilliant, original and lavishly illustrated book, Edward Snow undertakes an inquiry into a single painting by the Flemish master Peter Bruegel the Elder—the kaleidoscopic Children’s Games—in order to unlock the secrets of the great painter’s art.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Translator and art historian Snow (English/Rice Univ.; A Study of Vermeer, not reviewed) turns a close reading of the multifarious Bruegel into a colorless exercise in pedantry. The Elder Bruegel's range of subjects and richness of detail make it easy to structure a whole book around the imagery of his paintings, a task to which Snow, alas, brings jargon-mongering and donnish analysis. Any art historian would of course be attracted to Bruegel's scope of accomplishment--peasant genres, Bosch-like fantasies, religious histories, parables, landscapes--and his combination of Dutch realism, Renaissance humanism, and medieval motifs. His painting Children's Games, for instance, with its minute social observation, masterful composition, myriad details, and underlying moral subtleties, make it a favorite subject of study. Snow not only examines the significance of almost each frolicking group in the painting, but also contrasts, not always convincingly, the figures with those in other Bruegel canvases. The games Bruegel's children play are not the moralized images of his Netherlandish Proverbs, however, though the two paintings are similarly crammed; nor is the composition of the carefully structured Children's Games as straightforwardly realistic as Peasant Dance. Snow's efforts unfortunately turn into academic interpretations of other academic interpretations or spiral into abstruse theory-speak, featuring ruminations on the ``unstable libidinal field'' of a painting or the ``oasis of pre-volitional well-being'' in a work. Snow may be sensitive to the problem of our aesthetic responses to an artist so subtly nuanced and historically distant, but his impulse is toward amorphous hermeneutics rather than the essence of the images before him. Reading into Bruegel's paintings, Snow renders the Dutch artist, in recondite prose, into an abstract impressionist. ``They were never wrong, the Old Masters,'' as Auden writes, but the same can't be said for this particular commentary on one of those masters. (150 b&w illustrations, one color plate, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

“Edward Snow has an eye—and a mind—for details. He has lovingly ventured inside Bruegel’s Children’s Games, and his intense, intimate prose enables us to linger in the vast, sprawling scene, savoring each of the marvelous figures and pondering their rich and complex interrelations. This extraordinary sustained act of critical attention will transform our understanding of Bruegel’s art and help to illuminate the meanings of that most elusive and precious human activity, play.”—Stephen Greenblatt

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press; 1st edition (November 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086547527X
• ISBN-13: 978-0865475274
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #958,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, April 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside Bruegel: The Play of Images in Children's Games (Hardcover)

Essentially a long gloss on a single painting, this is the best book of art criticism I have ever come across, bar none. Snow literally forces your eye to slow down, and drink in the detail, the nuance, and the shifting structures of Breugel's astoundingly complex painting "Children's Games". I couldn't disagree more strongly with the Kirkus review above - the language is at times non-conversational, but if read slowly, patiently, and in tandem with the plentiful illustrations, this book will unlock more of the complexities of this fascinating (and very modern) painter than an entire stack of critical studies.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside Bruegel: The Play Images in Children's Games, September 21, 2009

By 

K. Slaughter "Picture Lady" (Quantico, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Inside Bruegel: The Play of Images in Children's Games (Hardcover)

I purchased this book as a research tool for an art appreciation enrichment volunteer project I do at local elementary schools. The students just love spotting all the activities in Bruegel's amazing painting in which the children are engaged and this book really helps me highlight and discuss each one. The pictures and illustrations are great and very detailed. There also is extensive analysis of the deeper and allegorical meanings of the painting which was intellectually interesting to me but not the purpose for which I use the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who really wants to "get to know" this painting!