Het sprookje van Luilekkerland 1828 - 1937

Here is your audio guide description: Oehmigke & Riemschnieder's print, titled "The Fairytale of the Land of Cockaigne," visualizes a 16th-century European fantasy of a land of plenty. The image, divided into sixteen vignettes, illustrates a world where food and drink are abundant and freely available, suggesting a critique of the social inequalities of the time. Each scene reflects aspects of wish fulfillment, from houses made of cake to roasted fowl flying directly into one's mouth, all reflecting a world free from labor and scarcity. This ties into historical anxieties about class and access to resources, envisioning a space where traditional social hierarchies are upended through the power of imagination. Visually, the print balances the allure of indulgence with an underlying sense of absurdity. The Land of Cockaigne is a place where the conventional rules of society and economics do not apply, yet it prompts us to consider the real-world implications of such an existence. What does it mean to have everything we desire without effort or consequence? This print invites us to reflect on our own desires, and the systems of labor and value that shape our understanding of them.