Between Utopia and Dystopia

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By Jan Baetens

La Maison d’ailleurs (“The House of Elsewhere”) is a Swiss museum exclusively devoted to the world of science-fiction (http://www.ailleurs.ch/en/). It currently hosts a major exhibition, Mondes Imparfaits/Imperfect Worlds, on the famous Belgian comics series, The Obscure cities, by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters.[1]

Mondes ImparfaitsThis major event (17 November 2019 – 25 October 2020), which offers a wonderful survey of the artwork of the series (gradually morphed into a transmedial universe that also blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality), is built around a reflection on the tension between utopia and dystopia.

In the lavishly illustrated catalog that serves as the companion volume to the show,[2] the Obscure cities world is framed from three different perspectives, which allow for a broad contextualization of the series’ themes and visual world. Part One is an essay by François Rosset (University of Lausanne) on the notion of utopia, which is approached from a historical as well as thematic point of view. It presents the major landmarks of the genre in various media, while addressing topics such as travelogues, paradise, or frontiers. Part Two, logically devoted to dystopia, contains a study by Marc Atallah (director of the Museum and equally Professor at Lausanne). It also presents its subject with the help of key examples borrowed from several media, mainly literature and cinema, and discusses issues such as alienation and surveillance. The Third Part of the Book is an in-depth conversation with the makers of the series, François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, who bring together the reflection on their own work and their ideas on utopia and dystopia, more particularly on the way in which the Obscure Cities help question social, artistic, philosophical, and human aspects of an imagined but highly recognizable world.

Imperfect Worlds is not only a great book for the quality of these texts, it is also a richly illustrated and beautifully printed volume that will prove the starting point of many new explorations into the world of science fiction, which as we know is totally part of our own world.

[1] The complete series is now available, for close-reading as well as for binge-reading, in four superb boxes, published with Casterman, see: https://www.casterman.com/Bande-dessinee/Collections-series/albums/les-cites-obscures

[2] Mondes imparfaits. Autour des Cités obscures de Schuiten et Peeters, Yverdon/Brussels : Maison d’ailleurs/Les Impressions nouvelles, ISBN : 9782874497308, 128 pages, hardback, 28,50 euros. ISBN : 9782874497308.

A New Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

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By Jan Baetens

On:

Jeffrey Lieber

Flintstone Modernism Or The Crisis in Postwar American Culture

Flintstone Modernism

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018

 

I was very jealous of this book’s title, which immediately caught my eye (the dust cover, available in three colors, is no less intriguing) and now, after reading it, I am even more than jealous of the author since Flintstone Modernism is a great read and a brilliant example of the holistic approach of art and history that represents, for me, the best of cultural studies.

Lieber’s book opens with Hannah Arendt’s The Crisis in Culture (1960), the crisis being that of the gap between a lost tradition and an uncertain present as well as our difficulties of building a new future inspired by this past. It ends with deeply moving reflections on Louis Kahn, the visionary architect whose work of the 1950s and 60s is now seen, but only now and certainly not during his lifetime, as the most stimulating illustration of such a bridge between a faraway past and a present aimed at lasting forever.

Yet Flintstone Modernism is not about Arendt and Kahn, but more generally about the paradoxical cultural crisis in postwar America during the two decades after WW2 (there will be other crises to come after these years, but that is not the scope of the book), when the US, as the new world power, tries to give new meaning to a no longer viable European modernism, associated with a functionalist and ideological agenda that was considered outdated as well as incompatible with US values. Lieber’s book analyzes different answers to this fundamental cultural problem, which he frames in terms of the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns (in the 17th Century, this quarrel was between those who considered the models of Ancient Greece and Rome, rediscovered in the Renaissance, as eternal and impossible to surpass and those who stressed instead the inventions and achievements of modern culture). During the postwar period, the US attempts to go in directions other than the European models of the 1920s and 30s. However, common to all these attempts is that the Ancient, which has to be reinvented in Modern times, is no longer that of a totally destroyed and morally bankrupt Europe (and even less of the new evil that was the Soviet Union), but that of the ancient roots of European civilization, namely Egypt, Greece and Rome. More specifically, it appears that the newness to which the US feels attracted cannot be separated from the dream of greatness and monumentality exemplified by the three Ancient cultures, with their Pyramids, their Parthenon and their Forum.

The most original part of Lieber’s book is, however, not his critical stance towards what he calls “Flintstone Modernism” (the popular Flintstones TV series of the early series being such a –funny but also sharp– corporate and petty-bourgeois mix of the Ancients and the Moderns), but his decision to match the analysis of architecture, a typical representative of high art, with an analysis of popular culture, mainly the magazine press (Time, Fortune, shelter and lifestyle magazines) and the immensely popular “sand and sandal” peplums of the period (it will be the same type of movies, think of the infamous 1963 Elizabeth Taylor vehicle Cleopatra, that will play a decisive role in the bankruptcy of the Hollywood studio system in the early sixties). This comparison is dramatically instructive, for Hollywood and Fortune show us much more directly what is at stake in the great social debates of the era than the successive styles and fashions of skyscrapers and corporate or private buildings, which Lieber also reads in light of shelter magazines and big screen escapism. Besides, the comparison also demonstrates the honesty and seriousness of pop (pulp?) culture as well as its major impact on society at large.

Flintstone Modernism is definitely a book on architecture, but it is also a wonderful contribution to the cultural studies take on art and history (and, in that sense, very different from both art history and cultural history). A must-read, I say, and I do hope a future classic.

ART@VSAC

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By Ana Schultze

ART@VSAC is an exhibition of artworks selected as a part of the seventh edition of the Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC), which takes place in Leuven from 21 to 24 August 2019. It is divided over three locations – BAC Atelier, KADOC and the University Library – all venues whose history is closely linked to the university thus forming a peculiar blend of art with science. The artworks on display were invited or submitted to fit in with the conference which is targeted at scientists from several disciplines, interested in visual science and visual art, and also dedicated to encourage interchange between them.

Although the selected artworks all share similar traits, they are also diverse in many respects. The used media vary from paintings and photography, to video and film, installations, performance, as well as hybrid or mixed forms. The contributing artists are also in different stages in their career: they range from emerging to well-established. The common interest of the different artists in the fascination of how the eyes and brains of the beholders create the art experience, unites them and makes the collective ART@VSAC exhibition more than the sum of its parts.

The exhibition is open to the public as well, since the artists and scientists involved are eager to share their findings and also want to open up the scientific dialogue on visual art. One third of the human brain is dedicated to the processing of visual information and many of us get pleasure out of visual stimulation. The visual brain is full of opioids for a reason. So come and enjoy what you see at ART@VSAC! Open your eyes, look and walk around, and get your senses triggered, brains stimulated and hearts touched.

More information & opening hours: http://www.vsac2019.org/artatvsac.

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What a difference the book makes!

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By Jan Baetens

le fait diversFrédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre

Le Fait divers et ses fictions

Paris : éd. de Minuit, 2019, 192 p.

ISBN : 9782707345448
18.00 €

There is no real English translation for the French word « fait divers », which refers to the smaller news items, often purely anecdotal and without any special interest –except for the  public that has always devoured them (another French term is “les chiens écrasés”, the crushed dogs being also the traffic victims, of course). These news briefs often have a strongly melodramatic or sensational content (celebs’ divorces, kidnappings, bank robberies, murders) and their ubiquity is generally condemned as a symptom of depoliticizing and streamlining of a mind-numbed audience.

The book by Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre questions these prejudices, not by rereading the news brief from a new perspective, but by examining what happens –not in the text but in the mind of the readers– when serious literature takes such news items as its starting point. This general interrogation emerges in a special context, that of the alleged fading-out of literature as a socially relevant cultural practice (why go on reading literature?) and that of the book as a living host medium (why read texts in print if there are screens?). That contemporary literature frequently turns toward the “fait divers” could be seen as a an attempt to reestablish a dialogue with the audience, no longer interested in literature but still fascinated by the news brief. But this is not at all the author’s purpose, who claims instead that the merger of serious literature (be it fictional, autofictional or nonfictional) and the “fait divers” tells us something vital on the present status of literary writing, while also highlighting a key function that no other type of cultural practice can accomplish better than literary texts. On the one hand, the spread of “news literature” demonstrates a shift in the relationship between literature and social commitment: writers are no longer “engagés” (engaged, devoted to a specific cause and putting their texts at the service of this cause; today, this would be considered mere propaganda), but “impliqués” (which does not mean “implicated”, but “involved”, being part of what one is describing or commenting and doing it in a sense that goes with certain obligations). On the other hand, if literature does not change the content matter of the news item, it invites –and in many cases encourages, if not forces– the reader to change his or her mind, since its special take on the news brief confronts the audience with a case of “cognitive dissonance” (Leon Festinger), in other words a way of thinking that diverges from the public opinion. Contrary to other forms of social communication, literature has the right, and perhaps also the duty, to go against the grain and to challenge the doxa or general beliefs, often in shocking and scandalizing ways.

Using a variegated corpus of crime-based news items as rewritten in modern and contemporary literary texts (from Proust to Duras, from Genet to Giono, from Foucault to Bon, among many others), Le Fait divers et ses fictions offers a convincing demonstration of its double basic claim: first, the reinvention of literature as a socially relevant practice in an era of information overload and screen culture; second, the special link between literature and the more general issue of social belief and common opinions as well as the critical role of literature in the mechanisms that make us question the apparently unquestionable.

A Life of Joy and Care: An Exhibition Review of “Intimate Audrey”

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By Laura Katherine Smith

The iconic image from Funny Face (dir. Stanley Donen, 1957), one of the films for which Audrey Hepburn is best known, is the extreme close-up of her facial features—her brows, eyes, nostrils and lips. It is an image that Fred Astaire’s character creates in a dark room in an attempt to convince Hepburn’s character to become a model. He serenades her: “I love your funny face…!”

IntimateAudrey_imageLarge black and white images of the actor’s face greet the visitor of Intimate Audrey as they turn a corner and enter the first exhibition space: a low-lit black-box theatre type setting with a life-sized cut out of Audrey at the far end of the room. As the exhibition’s website explains, Intimate Audrey is a “‘bespoke’ exhibition of the life of Audrey Hepburn created by her son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, to celebrate her 90th birthday anniversary in her birth town of Brussels, Belgium.”[1]

The feeling of intimacy, established in the first room (in which one also hears Audrey’s voice), does not diminish, but changes, upon entering a larger, more classical exhibition space with numerous photographs arranged in groups across the walls. In what appears to be Audrey’s scrolled handwriting, one can make out “my father Anthony” and “my mother Ella” below mounted clustered framed photographs.[2] If at first odd—to peer closely at photograph after photograph of strangers, sometimes with very little context or description—one quickly settles into what becomes the joy of following the ordinary moments of a life, which is also the extraordinary life of Audrey. Intimacy is tinged with strangeness as this life is both familiar and yet not, in any way, ours. The reminiscing one feels—“Ah, there’s Audrey in the movies!”—blurs with an impossible, though somehow imagined, recognition. We follow Audrey as a young person, in her early career, on her wedding day, as her son is christened; we time travel to where we have never been and see her in these different roles (daughter, actor, wife, mother, friend, muse, and, both throughout the various photographs and in some particularly striking ones, as a radiantly expressive individual). Somewhere between her ballet photos and sudden hair-change in the 60’s, we realize we are temporarily living in a large-scale family album/memory box of Audrey’s life.

While the downstairs section of the exhibition acts as an introduction to Audrey’s early life: her family, her drawings and books, her love of ballet, and her first acting experiences, the second floor displays memorabilia from her films and personal life: her marriage to actor/director/producer, Mel Ferrer, the birth of her first son, Sean, testimonials of her close friends including Hubert de Givenchy, and her work with UNICEF.

The most striking aspect of the exhibition, other than the beauty and the fashion, which we know and love, does not come as a surprise but is beautifully affirmed through still and moving images; that is, Audrey’s radiant joy and care. Across the many images, Audrey beams: she dances, jumps and poses—with flowers, hats, dogs and deer. She holds her sons close, gazes tenderly into the eyes of loved ones, holds hands with her best friend, and kisses the hands of those she traveled far to meet and for whom she advocated.

It seems a difficult task to create an exhibition around the style icon and one of Hollywood’s greatest stars when one is hard-pressed to find an interior of any space devoid of an Audrey reference. The visitor of Intimate Audrey may not learn something new (her love of flowers and her doubts about her appearance and acting skills have been covered in interviews and in her son’s book, Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit: A Son Remembers (Atria Books, 2003)), but Intimate Audrey is not about new discoveries. It is rather, as its descriptions states, a celebration of one particular life: both ordinary and extraordinary. Intimate Audrey is not a retrospective of a well-known career but an invitation to get a glimpse of a full life (in the always fragmentary way that this is possible): one of personality, youth, love, family and friendship, career and public work.

In line with the idea of this exhibition, there were two important curatorial choices that made Intimate Audrey work. The first is the exhibition’s prohibition of picture-taking: one has to look in order to see (the only photo-op permitted is in front of an exhibition poster and a statue of Audrey). This means that the images cannot be collected as mementos after a visit to the exhibition. The second decision involves an original take on the exhibition catalogue. This delightful surprise offers an elegant and interesting solution to an exhibition that seeks to offer a temporary peek into a life; a well-balanced testimony to Audrey, the woman.

Exhibition Information:

http://intimateaudrey.org/index.php/en/

On until August 25th, 2019.

Venue: Espace Vanderborght,

Rue de l’Ecuyer 50, 1000 Bruxelles

[1] http://intimateaudrey.org/index.php/en/

[2] Thanks to Stephanie Florizoone for pointing out that the scrolled writing framing clustered photographs seems to match Audrey’s handwriting in her displayed UNICEF speeches. This is not confirmed.

Reading Movies in Print

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By Jan Baetens

On: Films à lire. Des scénarios et des livres, ed. by Mireille Brangé and Jean-Louis Jeannelle. Brussels : Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2019, 364 p., ISBN : 9782874496691

Movie scripts are weird. They are neither the works themselves (after all, movies are supposed to replace them), nor the simple blueprint of these works (for the production of the film does not necessarily program their obsolescence). Their status and nature become even weirder when one takes the decision to publish them and the studies collected in this fascinating volume, which complements another volume on scenario and adaptation by Alain Boillat and Gilles Philippe that I presented here a couple of months ago (see: https://culturalstudiesleuven.net/2018/05/07/adaptation-studies-after-the-fidelity-issue/). These publications make very clear that this editorial practice is extremely widespread. Ever since the beginning of cinema as a cultural industry, scenarios have been issued in various forms and formats, ranging from movie magazines to specialized book series, and for widely varying reasons, hovering between art and commerce (published scenarios are a typical movie tie-in product, but they also cater to the needs of die-hard cinephiles).

Reading movies

In Films à lire (with a subtitle that nods to Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men), Brangé and Jeannelle offer the first general overview of the emerging field of “scenarios in print studies”, which will set the standard for all research in the coming years. This book is ground-breaking for different reasons. First of all, it dramatically questions the very definition of the “scenario”, since a scenario in print, that is edited and made available to a non-professional audience, is very different from the technical meaning and practice of scenario, which still dominates most thinking in the field, be it theoretical (what is a scenario?) or practical (how to write a scenario?). A published scenario becomes a work on its own, exploring aspects of literary communication and artistic experiment that classic approaches of the scenario do not touch upon. In addition, the book also challenges all forms of homogeneity in its reading of the scenario. As clearly shown by the many examples of the collection, which contains almost twenty detailed case studies covering various periods and styles of film making in different countries, one should consider the scenario a network of many different types and genres that cannot be reduced to a single mold.

Yet this more open and context sensitive approach of the scenario, as made possible by the shift from the scenario to the scenario in print, is not restricted to the published texts. The most fascinating aspect of Films à lire is the invitation to simultaneously question the twin notions of scenario and movie themselves. In light of what happens when scripts make it into print –and this move is never an automatic or mechanical one–, all contributions help us rethink not only the work of the script writer, but also that of the film maker –both of them being a collective agent rather than an individual and moreover an agent working in conditions that cannot be separated from a large site of technological, legal, aesthetic, financial and highly subjective constraints.

Paper Countries/Countries on Paper

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By Jan Baetens

Everyone should head south (in Belgium) this summer for the splendid exhibit at the Museum of Photography in Charleroi on a special genre of photobooks, the so-called “country portraits.” These portraits are a type of verbo-visual travel literature which flourished between 1920 and 1970, that is, between the appearance of modern tourism and the explosion of mass tourism.

“Pays de papier” (literally: “Paper countries”) covers a field that is, at the same time, very well-known and which has fallen somewhat into oblivion for historical as well as aesthetic reasons. Today, this kind of photo-literature is no longer en vogue, which certainly plays a role in the difficulties one finds to recompose the larger archive of the genre. But even during the heyday of the country portrait, this type of book and magazine (generally in the form of special issues of general magazines) was not always taken seriously: too commercial, too often hastily written and edited, too different from what “good” writing and “good” photographs were supposed to be in these years.
The many prejudices against the genre prove, however, wrong as brilliantly shown by the many works displayed as well as the attractive catalog (in French) of the exhibit.

Paper countries
The two curators, David Martens and Anne Reverseau, have managed to bring together an exceptionally rich selection of country portraits and to present them in a smart thematic way. Their selection highlights the nearly industrial structure of the genre as part of the publishing business, with a strong emphasis on issues of seriality and intertextuality. Yet it also helps rediscover many masterpieces, such as the French edition of William Klein’s mythical 1956 book Life is Good For You and Good in New York, a work that also illuminates the international circulation of this kind of book, which were not always initially published in their “home country” or “home market” (the case of Robert Frank’s The Americans is still famous in this regard).

The research behind the exhibit is impressive, and the same goes for the work on the catalog, astute and diverse (a good mix of book history, photography theory, social analysis and philosophical considerations) but always perfectly accessible to a lay audience. The exhibit itself is an eye-opener in many senses of the word: it opens a forgotten world, yet not in a nostalgic way; it is a feast for the eye; and it exemplifies what sound curatorship ought to be.

Practical information:
Musée de la photographie
11, avenue Paul Pastur, 6032 Charleroi (Mont-sur-Marchienne)
Duration of the exhibit: 25.05.2019 > 22.09.2019
The Museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, between 10.00 and 18.00.

The Belgian Photobook

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By Jan Baetens

Curated by Tamara Berghmans and still on display till Oct. 6th, the FOMU (Antwerp Photography Museum) exhibit on the Belgian photobook is an absolute must see. As a specific photographic host medium, the photobook is definitely not new. Actually, the first pictures by Fox Talbot were published in this format and the rapid shift from unique and non-reproducible daguerreographs to positive-negative types of photography capable of being reproduced and hence (more) easily reprinted in book format, represented a kind of silent revolution, the consequences of which have not always been taken seriously. In recent years, the famous trilogy by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger on the photobook as an independent branch of photography culture has dramatically changed this perception and helped challenge the false idea that photographs are only real or serious cultural artefacts when they are seen on the walls of a museum or gallery.

The Anglo-Saxon approach of Parr and Badger does, however, come with a price in terms of corpus (including genres) as well as temporal, geographic and cultural limitations. Volumes 2 and 3 of their trilogy already addressed these issues, but many questions are still open. What about “minor” cultures in a photography field that is so heavily dominated by the Paris-New York axis? What about genres that are underrepresented or ignored in “major” contexts? What about the very idea of word and image relationships when photography becomes a practice that is aimed to circulate in book format?

Photobook

The FOMU exhibit offers many new answers to questions like these, and it does so in a way that is both highly attractive for a large audience and very rewarding for the more scholarly interested public. The museum showcases a large variety of often fascinating and always very surprising objects, which can not only be seen or admired, but also actually read, either in analog form (many books are on display and can be freely accessed) or in digital form (with the help of tablets and touch screens, all of them using high quality scans). Text panels and captions are exemplary, that is sober and well written, and guide the visitor to the exceptionally well-made (and relatively inexpensive) scientific catalog, which combines detailed descriptions of all items on display and in-depth analyses of thematically structured transversal issues.

In addition, this exhibit is a great opportunity to further reflect on the meaning of the word “Belgium”. The Belgian photobook is radically multilingual, while the differences between Flemish and Francophone cultures are much smaller than one might expect, and it is open to artists, curators, critics, and writers coming from all over the world. In that sense as well, this exhibit is a necessary complement to larger debates on culture and identity in Europe.

Info: https://www.fotomuseum.be/en/exhibitions/Photobook_Belge.html

Symposium “Transforming Relations: Dance and Difference”

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SYMPOSIUM : TRANSFORMING RELATIONS: DANCE AND DIFFERENCE
Friday 26 April. 14:00 – 18:00. Free (without reservation).


Speakers: Antonia Baehr, Clare Croft and Amelia Jones

In the first decades of the 21st century, many traditional stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality have continued to be scrutinized. The LGBTQA movement, queer theory and #metoo, for instance, have encouraged a growing awareness of those identities and experiences that are marginalized by dominant ways of categorization. Likewise, various genders and sexualities have been gaining visibility in popular culture, as well as in the political arena. The challenge persists, however, to negotiate between the development of categories and structures, and the relational conditions through which notions of difference are continuously reconfigured.

Dance has been particularly responsive to such issues of difference. Fostering an art that thinks through bodies, movement and relation, dance and choreography support an exploration and rethinking of questions of corporeality, sexuality and gender. They carry the potential to frame difference not as a divergence from what is already established in advance, but rather to queer difference as a creative openness that continuously produces new ways of relating.

On April 26th, 2019, the Centre for Cultural Studies (KU Leuven) and STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound are hosting their fourth annual symposium on choreographic issues, Transforming Relations: Dance and Difference. The event brings together speakers from dance studies and related theoretical fields, as well as practitioners, to reflect on how relations are transformed and how relations transform within the field of dance.   – more info

SCHEDULE
14.00 – 14.15 Welcome and introduction 
14.15 – 15.00 Amelia Jones 
15.00 – 15.45 Antonia Baehr
15.45 – 16.30 Clare Croft
16.30 – 17.00 Coffee break
17.00 – 18.00 Round table

COM-DANS-foto-Symposium-©Joeri-Thiry-STUK-Huis-voor-Dans-Beeld-Geluid-20

A Visit to the van Buuren Museum & Gardens

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By Laura Smith

Very near to Brugmann Park, in the south of Brussels, you will find the van Buuren Museum. This Amsterdam School-style country house has opened its interior and gardens to the public since the 1970’s. Constructed in 1928, what is today the van Buuren Museum was home to David and Alice van Buuren. Born in the Netherlands, David worked in banking in Brussels;  Alice was born in Antwerp, and the couple were collectors and patrons of the arts.

image_vanBuuren_museum_LS

Inside the red brick façade, visitors discover the couple’s extensive art collection, which spans the centuries. In the rooms and hallways of the house are paintings by the circle of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Henri Fatin-Latour, Paul Signac, Max Ernst, Rik Wouters, Constant Permeke, James Ensor, and a large number of works by Gustave van de Woestyne, to name just a few. Beyond the paintings—which are what sparked my curiosity in visiting the museum initially—, what is most striking is the home’s carefully planned out interior and architectural design. In the living room, for example, you will learn that the fireplace was built taking into account the measurements of the Permeke painting (Night Seascape, 1913) that hangs above it; and gazing through the central living room window, one cannot help but be struck by the garden’s design, the framing of which provides a sense of visual balance. The van Buuren’s Art-Deco furniture, many pieces of which were commissioned from the French design company Dominique, displays a variety of exotic woods, typical of the style and period. In the main living room is a grand piano, built by Julius Blütner, and cased in rosewood by Dominique: many young pianists involved in the newly-founded Queen Elisabeth competition played on the piano. The many lighting fixtures throughout the house showcase intricate color and design motifs: I will remember the brilliantly arresting hanging lamp in the main entrance, designed by Jan Eisenloeffel, and my personal favorite, the understated but playful mushroom-style lamp sitting atop the piano.

In addition to the paintings and sculptures (many of these latter by George Minne), the furniture, the lighting, and the Delft blue porcelain, I was particular drawn to the boldly colorful rugs; these are spread across the floors through the dining and three connected living rooms. The text provided to visitors of the museum explains that the strong, bright, curved lines of Jaap Gidding’s rugs were influenced by the Kees van Dongen painting hanging in the same room (unfortunately, the original van Dongen was stolen from the collection in 2013: a photographic reproduction hangs in its place).

As one explores the van Buuren museum, room by room, the eye is constantly navigating and exploring the colors, textures and materials of the objects on display. The individual works, each with their own history, theme, style, and producer, are organized in such a way that the relation they create with the space and with one another is a palpable work of art itself: each room is a scene that contributes to the cohesion of the home. The two built-in table ash-trays, which stand next to seating, in the living room and study, ignite in the imagination scenes of animated conversation by the fireplace—the van Buuren’s entertained many well-known guests—or, quiet moments of solitude.

One of my favorite rooms in the house was the bright studio upstairs. Here we learn that the patron of the arts was also an artist himself. Among many paintings, drawings, and objects, there are two painted portraits of van Buuren in the studio; one by Gustave van de Woestyne, the other: a self-portrait. The significant differences between the portraits serve to highlight the subjective nature of perception.

In what was the van Buuren’s bedroom, a short video provides some background on the couple. This spans from their early years, to the construction of the house, to the couple’s move to the United States during the Second World War, to their life upon returning to Belgium. Emphasis is placed on their significant role in the design of their home, its interior and, after David’s death, the gardens. The story of the van Buuren’s is explained in storybook-style animation. While visually entertaining, the film’s style seemed to take precedence over the story of their lives and their passion for the arts.

image_vanbuuren_prize_LSOutside, the garden, like the house, has been carefully planned both in the details—in the variety and colors of the flowers, plants and trees,—and as a whole: the garden is divided in different sections—different gardens, including rose gardens and a hedge-maze. To the left of the main museum door is a discrete plaque that reads: “European Union Prize For Cultural Heritage (Europa Nostra Award) 2015.” This prize was awarded to the van Buuren museum for the conservation of its gardens.

Whether you are interested in architecture, painting, sculpture, tapestry, furniture, glass work, landscaping, or all of these together and more, the van Buuren museum & gardens offers the experience of an eclectic time capsule; one that is still living as its careful design speaks to the inter-relation between various forms of art.

Furthermore, if you are interested in Art-Deco and Art Nouveau, this coming weekend (30-31 March 2019) is the last weekend of The Brussels Art Nouveau & Art Deco (BANAD) Festival, a yearly festival that offers routes and tours of this heritage in Brussels (www.banad.brussels)

The van Buuren Museum is open daily, except Tuesdays, from 14:00 – 17:30.

Student entrance is €5.

For more information: https://www.museumvanbuuren.be/home.php

Special thanks to the museum for kindly providing me with documentation.