Art and Theatre

Above is a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder entitled “Dulle Griet” (or Dull Gret/ Mad Meg in English). It was painted in about 1562. The subject matter is that of Dull Gret or Mad Meg who is a character in Flemish folklore. In the story, and the painting, she leads a group of women to pillage hell.

My interest in this painting stems from the fact that I woking as the set designer on the B.U. Drama department’s production of Caryl Churchill’s “Top Girls”. A play written in the early 1980s by Churchill as a commentary on the state of feminism in Thatcher era England.

In act one of the play, Churchill writes a “dream” sequence in which various women (both real and fictional) from history, one of which is Dull Gret, as painted by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Her character alludes to the fact that the invasion of hell is really about the the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, which ended is the mid 1600s. What is interesting is that the revolt that was started to push the Spanish out started in 1568, not long after the painting was done.

What I find interesting in both counts in one, how symbolism in art can be used to get a message across, without it being one hundred percent obvious. I also love how two art forms I am involved in often have influence on one an other.

The symbolism of the Spanish occupation is perhaps not obvious at first, but it is there. The Spanish (though this may no be politically correct), were though of being hungry for gold, most countries were at the time. The Spanish however got a reputation for being ruthless and relentless in their hunting for the metal. The “devils” in Brueghel’s painting are surrounded with gold. They have an excess of it, and Mad Meg and the women are doing their best to get as much as they can.

What Churchill got from the painting though is not the weirdness of it, or the hunt for gold, but that it’s women who are acting as soldiers. Women who have had enough of the devils and invade hell. Dull Gret in Churchill’s play talks about losing children to the Spanish, and how she had had enough and decides to “pay the bastards”. 

As the set designer, some of the colours, especially the red in the painting, became integral to the colour scheme of the Dinner scene in which Dull Gret appears. Both I and the costume designer took cues from the painting and included them in the costumes and props of the dinner. Further bringing aspects of the painting to life.