© 1994 Ginger Henry Geyer
glazed porcelain
14 parts, 1 7/8” x 4 ½” x 7 ½”

Adaptation of Pieter Bruegel's Children's Games, 1560

     This small piece was made for a dear friend whose last name is Jacks. Thus we get the pun over with...This friend is an art historian; her favorite artist is Pieter Bruegel. In the Low Countries in the 16th century, the trials of everyday life were inextricably mixed with history and with the Bible. In Children's Games, Bruegel plays heavily with allegories of adults acting like children--i.e. not acting our age. So here it is adults, not kids, who with pinched expressions, are rolling hoops, walking on stilts, leap-frogging, making mud pies, fighting and playing here comes the bride. Bruegel's painting covers the jacks bag with a minute panorama of folly. How small we are, playing games to avoid presence. Jesus quotes a childhood taunt to those who refuse to join in on games in Matthew
11: 16-17:

"But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, We played the flute for you, and you didn't dance; we wailed and you did not mourn."

Without wisdom we don't know whether to dance or to weep.

     At least 80 games can be identified in the Bruegel painting, all occurring in what appears to be a public plaza, in front of a civic building. After I was well into painting the piece I found an article on Children's Games that identified the game being played in the prominent lower left corner as jacks or knucklebones (dice). Einstein once said, "God doesn't play dice with the universe." Here it looks like a spillage of black jacks, like the scattering of stars and moon. Bruegel, perhaps, was a prophetic artist, akin to this passage in Zechariah 8:5: "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets", referring to God's intention to restore Jerusalem after its exile. A happy vision it is, when the children can be children.