The pendulum has stopped. Death's triumph is in the air.
Here we are, facing one of the darkest, the most pessimistic paintings. No light, no hope. The lines lead us downwards, where bones are crawling, one-eyed brutes are sitting enthroned, and where the Insect with the swastika is fluttering… the only sardonic bracket that punctuates the painting is a soft bath-tub in which Marat-Swan is dying of a fork blow in the heart !
The white birds are not Bruegel's rebellious angels, but the slaughtered Sinless, transfixed by sharp stakes, thrown down in fierce mouths. There are only a few colours, a range of ochre, orange and brown, that harmonize with dark blue, blue-gray, and the whiteness of feathers and bones.
In the melee, a man is arching his back. One can discern parts of his head, turned towards the viewer. The roots of a tree are dipped into his skull. He is part of the pitiless trap, him, the whistleblower-actor-painter. There is neither shelter nor neutrality. “We are all responsible for each other and everything towards anybody and I more than the others” Dostoïevski.
Through a thin strip of nocturnal sky, a scrawny horsewoman, blinded by the lint on her eyes, is storming down a precursor to a stream of abominations. |
Bruegel - la chute des anges rebelles
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