Kunst in de Keuken 2013

On a cold Tuesday afternoon I took a class of primary school children from De Wimpel to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. Walking through the entrance of the museum the kids went silent. They were overawed by the vastness of the building and the size of the paintings – but not for long. They quickly started chattering away amongst themselves and pulling each other here and there to see the “weird and funny-looking” paintings.

We started our tour in front of “View of Brussels” by Jan Baptist Bonnecroy. We talked about the buildings and towers we could recognise in the painting, as well as the fact that the small streets of old Brussels still retain the names of where the main food imports were brought into the heart of the city – Kiekenmarkt, Vismarkt, Grasmarkt…

After a few moments of admiration we moved on to the more obviously food-related paintings: Pieter Brueghel, Jacob Jordaens, Jan Davidsz de Heem and many others portrayed food-laden table settings, people enjoying feasts, and so much more.

We discussed the the items portrayed in the paintings – the size of the lobsters, the eyes of the fish, Brussels waffles, the plumpness of the human figures and their facial expressions. The children noticed that many objects painted hundreds of years ago still look the same today.

We ended our adventure by summarising the things we saw and trying to set our experiences to a short rhyming song. Next time we will paint our own table setting and mount it in a golden frame…

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