Rescue by creativity
James Fleck: Anticancerweb 22 (04), 2020
In 1568, Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel painted The Blind Leading the Blind. Bruegel had a humanistic vision and used to be inspired by everyday scenes, based on the social habits of his place and time. Behind the scenes, there was a strong symbolic appeal to human's immaterial values.
The picture The Blind Leading the Blind refers to a biblical parable (Matthew 15:14) where two blind men and an instruction are mentioned: "If the blind lead the blind both shall fall into a ditch". Bruegel expands the learning lesson to six blind people who walk in a parabolic movement (subliminal reference to the parable), leading to an inexorable fall. Three psychological moments are identified in the facial and body expression of the blind. In the blind who are behind, the dominant feeling is expectation, in the middle is the awareness of risk and, in the end, despair, falling or, eventually, death. Although some may understand the image only in its most explicit form, even identifying the pictorial representation of at least six different types of eye diseases, its subjectivity goes much further. The demonstrated blindness is not physical. Blind people are not necessarily limited. They usually compensate for the disability by making better use of other senses, ensuring their active participation in society. The blindness represented by Bruegel is spiritual. Note that the blind in their trajectory move away from a temple, represented by a church. The temple is also symbolic, as it houses immaterial human values, such as conscience, ethics and solidarity. There is an apparent contradiction, as the blind seem to show solidarity. However, what the painting seeks to reveal is, ironically, the opposite, representing the human denial of solidary behavior. Bruegel’s painting is an appeal to the rescue of immaterial and timeless human values.
In the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a similar perception. Suddenly, a new disease arose for which there was no specific treatment, leading to physical and emotional blindness. Then, the expectation of developing new drugs was generated, represented by the blind at the end of the pilgrim chain. However, science is used to deal with a severe methodological limitation, characterized by the slow achievement of reliable results. This is the risk seen by the blind in the middle of the flow. Without creative intervention, the end would be inexorably tragic, leading to the despair observed in blind people at the end of the chain. The transposition to the current situation would be social disorder, based on the human inability to seek an alternative path. Fortunately, Bruegel's picture symbolically points to a sustained solution in the rescue of immaterial values. More than ever, it is necessary to integrate reason and sensibility. Symbolically, the rescue is spiritual. Overcoming adversity will only be achieved with a new approach to scientific methodology based on essential human values. Interestingly, all of this is immaterial…
References:
1. Pieter Bruegel: Blind Leading the Blind, 1568 Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Napoli, Italia
2. Mateus: Bible (15:14)
Great analogy. Congratulations!
It is an interesting and impressive analogy to how much an observation of symbolism makes us reflect on these current issues. Bruegel in his painting leads us to reflect on solidary behavior, where it is possible to make a comparison with a Covid-19 pandemic. The population was blinded to events and individualism prevails, but the coronavirus forced us to think about rescuing immaterial and timeless human values and that in favor of society and the advancement of science we must put aside our individualities and think about the collective.
What this Renaissance painter eternalized, we see happen 5 centuries later. The basis of this painting is a parable from the Gospel of Matthew. So old, but so current. In Bruegel's work we note that there are 6 blind individuals with a kind of wood that keeps them attached to each other. It's interesting that they're moving away from the community and are going to local darker. Stubborn hearts that are chained to outsof ideas that, to them, seem wisdom. In our space-time, this painting would be people using unproven drugs and being guided by medical gurus who are as blind as patients. These episodes of the covid-19 world show us doctors guiding people out of the community entering into an unknown darkness. Let us hope that these shackles will be broken and we can return to a correct path. Although we know that many have already fallen irreversibly, let us return to the painter's work: one has fallen and the others are standing. That indicates we still have time.
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