Human brutality and chaos

Do we remain beneath the skin the violent brutish animal that is insensitive to the suffering of others? Pieter the Elder Bruegel (1525 – 1569) Renaissance painter in his painting The Procession to Calvary captures this insensitivity.

“Public executions were quite normal in 16th century life and especially in the troubled land of Flanders where Bruegel lived.  These macabre events were always well attended and had a carnival-type air to them.  I suppose that as such executions were carried out on a regular basis the onlookers became hardened and completely indifferent to the fear and misery of those being led to their death.” 

The Arthur Boyd painted the execution of Christ 400 years later and expressing his feelings about the behaviour of the Germans during the Second World War.  

'The mockers' is one of a series of about 15 paintings executed between 1945 and 1948 after Boyd’s discharge from the army. Responding to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, witnessed through newsreel footage..... this was an attempt to find a personal answer to the moral chaos and social disorder he observed.

The system brakes down and chaos rears its ugly head