This Was Tomorrow: Pieter Aertsen's Meat Stall as Contemporary Art

Abstract

This essay considers Pieter Aertsen's Meat Stall of 1551 not as a canonical progenitor of genres but as a work of contemporary art. It explores how Aertsen's image, through a combination of revolutionary form and topical subject matters (the plight of butchers, the greed of developers, the excesses of artists), made visible to its audience the mixed blessings of the progress that surrounded them in Antwerp. Its blend of the ironic and the unexpected challenged and unnerved its viewers and resisted unitary or straightforward interpretation. Ultimately, Aertsen's subject was modernity itself and the human predicament in the face of change.