young and produced only a small body of work, but his legacy continued through his sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger, who exemplified the artistic legacy of his father in works such as The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow and Spring: The Flower Garden and Jan the Elder, and his grandson Jan the Younger, who, in different ways, perpetuated his artistic themes and ideas, making Brueghel a household name to this day.
Now Christie’s Mayfair revisits the work of the Brueghels through a contemporary lens, presenting the younger Brueghels and their contemporaries alongside prominent contemporary artists, such as Peter Doig, Jeff Wall, Thomas Schütte, Jeff Koons, Neo Rauch and Sarah Lucas. Exploring Brueghel’s timeless themes of joy, wisdom, the natural and man-made world, good and bad, life and death, this exhibition creates a compelling visual dialogue between many Brueghel works unseen by today’s audiences with works by contemporary artists who have, in various ways, been influenced by the Brueghels’ modern sensibility and subject matter.
The Bad Shepherd is the first exhibition to bring together a cohort of the important contemporary artists with a significant number of works from the Brueghel canon. To highlight this juxtaposition of old and new, we have transformed Christie’s Mayfair into a theatrical black box: the three-floor gallery space will immerse viewers in the pictures, encouraging them to focus on the works of art and respond on a purely visual level, undistracted by a sense of time and space. The σθβξεψτ is the culmination of two years of research and planning involving specialists from the Christie’s Old Masters and Post-War and Contemporary Art departments. It evolves out of Christie’s long and successful involvement with the works of the Brueghel dynasty, including the recovery of the Courtauld’s stolen Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery in 1992, as well as achieving the world record price for Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s The Battle of Carnival and Lent in December 2011 (£6.9 million).
Their insightful observations of the human condition through timeless themes have made the work of the Brueghels a touchstone not only for painters through the ages - including Vasari and Sir Joshua Reynolds - but also for sculptors and scientists, poets - such as Baudelaire, William Carlos Williams, W.H. Auden and Sylvia Plath - as well as filmmakers, from Tarkovsky to Lars von Trier. The Bad Shepherd is accompanied by an extensive academic catalogue coupling the works of these artists with the rich responses that the canon has evinced in works of literature, theatre and journalism up to the present day.
Exhibition: The Bad Shepherd
Christie’s Mayfair, 103 New Bond Street, London W1S 1ST
11th October 2014 – 16th January 2015