A p(l)easant story behind the Men’s Res mural

21 May 2021 -

An engineer shares his role in the reproduction of a Dutch Renaissance painter’s work in a common room.

The “dev” room at the bottom of the north-east stairwell in College House on East Campus is home to a little gem (below). A reproduction of Pieter Bruegel’s The Peasant’s Wedding captures a riotous abundance of life, teeming with festive interaction and vitality. It depicts a peasant celebration around a long table, with guests jostling to get into the room.

Today, as a result of the pandemic, the setting is the mural’s antithesis – it can’t be described as bustling. Marked by a “Raiders Club” sign on the door, there are only piles of boxes and an abandoned pool table – not a beer or student in sight.

In 1982, as a young engineering student, Michael Dams (BSc Eng 1982) was tasked “to liven the space up a bit” after the kitchen and dining room moved out of the halls. Over a period of four months – during lunch breaks and in the evenings – he created the mural. Dams, who grew up in Zimbabwe during the liberation war and international sanctions, remembers posters were scarce. As a resourceful teenager he and his brothers took to painting various record album covers on their bedroom walls. This later turned into an interest in the old masters. His artistic skills were usefully transferred to the task at university.

“The subject of a wedding feast and general atmosphere of drinking and partying seemed to lend itself to the position,” says Dams, a retired software developer who spent the past 18 years working for a hedge fund in London, but who is now based in the market town of Farnham, and has maintained an interest in art. “My wife, Kobie, is an artist so art has played quite a big part in our life together and still does.”

Bruegel’s original painting is set in a barn, the bride is in front of a green wall-hanging, with a paper crown above her head made in her honour. She’s not participating in any of the festivities. Is she asleep? The bridegroom is missing and the food being served looks like gruel, carried on a door off its hinges. There’s a child licking a plate in the left corner. 

“If you look carefully, there are two small deviations from the original,” says Dams. “Instead of the bridal crown hanging on the wall above the bride’s head I put a copy of the logo used for the Wits 60-year anniversary being celebrated at the time. I also added a can of Castle lager beer on the floor.” Over the years, inhabitants have added a few random moustaches and cracks have emerged from the wall.

Dams looks back at his university years with fond memories: “I enjoyed the general sense of brotherhood and camaraderie that exists in a place like Men’s Res: tea times in the common rooms, TV and newspapers in the common rooms, sharing a game in the snooker room, meals in the communal dining hall – and, of course, a drink in the dev room.”

He has just returned from an 18-month trip of Europe, despite the pandemic: “We spent six months in Bruges, Belgium, six months in Aix-en-provence, France, three months in Bellagio, Italy and finally three months in Innsbruck, Austria. We had only just arrived in Aix when the pandemic’s first wave hit. During the first lockdown Aix became very quiet. It felt like we were living through the Albert Camus novel La Peste.”

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