Death and Art

Not news from, but news in, Brugge and the rest of Europe comes the death of Simone Veil who died yesterday, June 30, aged 89.. This Auschwitz survivor lived, when many of her family died, and went on to carve out a magnificent career for herself. She was Minister of Health under Giscard d’Estaing, President of the European Parliament, Honorary President of the Fondation pour la Memoire de la Shoah, Member of the Academie Francaise. Need I go on? Perhaps her most courageous act was to push through legislation for the legalisation of abortion in January 1975. Quite an achievement forty years ago in a country like France with its deeply traditional and Roman Catholic roots.

In the meantime I despair when I hear and read of the state of British politics with the inflexible Theresa and the D.U.P. support package involving real money with apparently no insistence that D.U.P. policy moves to support gay marriage and abortion though the latter, strangely, managed to garner sufficient support for meaningful legislation in Parliament. Brexit continues its downhill path of UK destruction while Corbynmania allows the mirage of a Labour electoral victory in sight when a majority of voters will not support Really Left policies. What’s not to like in the Labour manifesto? Nothing save the impossibility of affording it all.

 The Haymaker by Emile Claus. 1896

But to return to Beloved Brugge or rather, yesterday, to Ghorgeous Ghent. A friend and I returned to the Caermersklooster, in Patershol, to see another marvellous exhibition in this former Carmelite monastery. Entitled, Rooted, it displays Flemish art from 1880-1930. Much of the exhibition is of paintings from private collections and demonstrates a major turning point in Flemish art history against the backdrop of the development of Belgium as a leading industrial nation. The early works were painted by a group of Belgian Impressionists who had left the grime and overcrowding of industrial Ghent for the pastoral paradise of villages along the River Leie. These light and picturesque works by Gustave Van de Woestyne, Emile Claus, George Minne and Valerius De Saedeleer, are the most romantic and beautiful of the entire exhibition and show the nostalgia the artists felt towards the rapidly-departing pastoral idyll of earlier nineteenth century life. All these paintings are done before the First World War and, with the onset of war, the tone and style changes abruptly as artists flee Belgium and
become immersed in the international art scene.

Woman on a Bicycle. Hubert Malfait 1924

The pastoral gives way to the metropolitan; scenes, again based on ordinary lives, now picture images of cafe interiors, fairs, circuses, the music hall and modern pursuits like cycling. The pictures of Gustave de Smet, Frits Van den Berghe, Constant Permeke and Edmund Tytgat are individually striking and contrast dramatically and urgently with the earlier Romanticism on view. Two of my favourite Flemish artists feature; James Ensor in his Oostende studio and Rik Wouters in his domestic Paradise; both are idiosynchratically expressive but somehow a little apart from the general tide of art history.

One visitor enjoying a ride on the carousel

I did enjoy the manner of display in this Rooted exhibition; several small rooms are furnished with items of furniture contemporary to the paintings and one space has an imaginative version of a carousel to echo the circus theme. Delightful and light-hearted as a backdrop to an exhibition of outstanding works from radical and influential Flemish painters of the day. Worth seeing twice!

Zomer by Gustave de Smets 1913



  Open air school in Astridpark

And just as a passing observation; I noticed last week how many school parties there seemed to be roaming the streets and squares of Brugge then the penny dropped! School finished yesterday and pupils and teachers alike were unwinding in thankful preparation. Still three weeks to go in the UK before the longed-for Summer break!