All The Rage: Breugel’s games
This month, in honour of the London Games Festival Fringe (25 October to 2 November) the theme of All The Rage is ‘games’. In accordance with this splendid theme, I have written an article on that celebrated painting by Pieter Breugel the Elder, ‘Children’s Games’:
At first sight Bruegel’s Children’s Games might appear to represent a lost world of innocence, where children live out their days in endless play – a representation of the happy state that all must leave behind as they grow to adulthood and maturity. Yet its message is in reality quite the opposite. The games of children show us that the adult world is no more than a game itself, and that all the roles and activities which adults value are mere instances of play. Bruegel’s playful children teach their adult viewers a lesson, with their mimicry of the grown-up world: that all is folly, futility, and the chance of the game.
It’s a bumper issue, as they say, so hurry along and read the gamey October 2008 issue (PDF) of All The Rage.
