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A BRIEF HISTORY OF VISUAL ARTS IN BRUSSELSGawan Fagard

Brussels’ turbulent evolution from a provincial town that transformed into a political centre under French rule by the second half of the $#th century, later in the hands of the Dutch until its status as a capital of the newborn state of Belgium in $#!%, is still ref lected in today’s complex cultural structure. However, Brussels never played the role of a capital of the fine arts in the Western hemisphere, de&ning canon and creating momentum, as for example $'th century Bruges, $(th century Antwerp, Fin-de-siècle Paris and New York in the $)'%s and $)*%s did. Therefore, the history of Brussels is marked by fragmentation, political instability and institutional amalgamation due to the many entities that claimed (and still do claim today) Brussels as ‘their’ city. Being a central meeting place between the Latin South and the Germanic North, Brussels has always maximised its advantages as a transit zone for artists, writers and intellectuals rather than being a place to stay and settle. Today, due to increasing mobility and the easy connections with main cultural centres such as Paris, London and Amsterdam, this feature has been stressed even more, attracting a vibrant community of artistic and cultural agents as well as institutions. Moreover, the political complexity of the city seems to have a rather positive in+uence in terms of both under- and aboveground artistic production and consumption. Its multi-layered nature and its open-minded mentality do indeed attract many international cultural workers to pass through and leave their traces. In this chapter we will investigate some aspects of the history of the visual arts in Brussels in order to better understand its contemporary situation.

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FRENCH AND DUTCH HEGEMONIES (1744-1830)

!e emergence of Brussels as a cultural capital under Charles de Lorraine

Even though Brussels had a notable artist community during the late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque period, its cultural function as a capital only emerged around the second half of the $#th century, under the reign of the governor of the French Low Countries, Charles de Lorraine ($(,,-$(#%). -e city, being hardly of any importance in terms of production and trade, appeared to be well-suited for developing a new centre for cultural exchanges between the Catholic Netherlands and France. -e Académie impérial et royal des sciences et belles-lettres de Bruxelles (founded in $((%) fuelled the emergence of a number of institutions in the spirit of enlightenment and freemasonry, beginning with the Royal Library in $(#'. -e neoclassical Palais de Lorraine and the Place royale are exquisite edi&ces from this period. Even though one cannot speak of a Belgian identity yet, the relatively independent status of the Low Countries from royalist France can be seen as the &rst emergence of modern-style awareness of Brussels as a cultural centre. -e artist community also clearly de&ned itself to be di.erent from the French school of Rococo, by strongly adhering to Baroque aesthetics and genre painting as outlined by Flemish and Dutch schools from the $(th century.

!e French Revolution

-e French revolution caused a thorough upheaval of society, even though in Brussels the position of the aristocracy was not wiped out as radically as was the case in France. Nonetheless, the French Neo-Classical school, headed by Jacques Louis David, in&ltrated in the French-speaking art scene in Brussels and the late $#th century artists such as Joseph-David Odevaere and Joseph Paelinck and even François-Joseph Navez adopted a ‘Davidist’ style.

Administrative institutionalisation a"er the French Revolution

-e revolutionary administration immediately ‘departmentalised’ the French Low Countries in the $()%s, all the while respecting the cultural importance of its capital, Brussels. Following the creation of the Louvre in Paris in $()!, one of the &rst national museums of &ne art in the world, the Republic issued a decree for the implantation of $, peripheral museums throughout France, of

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which the Brussels location was one of the main +agship institutions. In $#%!, under the in+uence of the new dictatorial rule of Bonaparte, the Musée dépar-temental des Beaux-Arts opened its doors. Its functioning was supervised by the municipal government of Brussels. -e museum was mainly carrying out educational interests of the Empire: the decentralisation and distribution of cultural goods, to enable the young generations of artists and students to study the great masters. Besides allowing artists to work in the galleries all week long, the museum was also open to the public on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Around the museum, wide cultural activity started to take shape, focusing on education as well as on the development of an extensive collection under the auspices of its director Guillaume-Jacques-Joseph Bosschaert.

In $#$$, the Société pour l’encouragement des Beaux-Arts was created, which was an association of intellectuals and artists organising a triennial exhibition of contemporary art, alternating between Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp and located in ‘l’Ancienne cour’, a place soon to become the very beating heart of both intellectual and artistic life in Brussels and the Belgian region.

!e Dutch period

Following Napoleon’s defeat in $#$' in Waterloo, Dutch rule took over the Catholic Low Countries, drawing renewed attention to Dutch genre and romantic landscape painting. -e supervision of the Musée des Beaux-Arts was transferred entirely to the municipal government of Brussels and bene&ted from new in+uxes of Flemish artwork from Dutch collections (mostly Rubens and Jordaens). However, Brussels had to wait until the Belgian revolution in $#!% for the consolidation and diversification of institutions for artistic production and display.

THE SEARCH FOR A NATIONAL IDENTITY (1830-1880)

Historicist Romanticism and the move to Realism

-e Belgian revolution of $#!% did not only cause major movements in political and social life, it also a.ected deeply the &eld of the arts. Most importantly, the creation of a sovereign Belgian state meant a new wave of aesthetic endeavours, not in the least in terms of public commissions. One of the key artists who emerged out of the revolution was the young Antwerp-born Gustave Wappers, who was celebrated for his ‘patriotic’ positions as well as his ‘Rubensian’

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style in the Salon of $#!%, thus pushing the French-inspired neo-classicist school of François-Joseph Navez slowly out of the centre of aesthetic debates (even though Navez became the director of the newly-created Académie des Beaux-Arts). Wappers’ pompous visual translation of the happenings of the Revolution, Episode of the September Days !"#$ – today on view in the central hall of the Musée royal des Beaux-Arts – became the iconic representation of Belgian sovereignty. -e painting was displayed in all main cities in the country and travelled to many great galleries throughout Europe. Due more to historical momentum than to its innovative style, historicism and romanticism became the nationalist style par excellence, presided by Wappers and developed further by painters such as Louis Gaillat and Henry Leys. It was their over-arching interest to piece together the fragments of Belgium’s history into a nationalist narrative of unity and stability and thus create a visual identity for the glori&cation of the new emerging Kingdom of Belgium as a European power.

However, it must be borne in mind that mid-$)th century art in Belgium was still very much dominated by genre painting on the one hand, generally oriented towards Flemish $(th century pastoral scenery, and portrait painting on the other – both practices serving the dominantly bourgeois society of Brussels in their aesthetic and decorative needs.

It is generally acknowledged that the $#'$ exhibition of ‘-e Stone Breakers’ by Courbet in Brussels shocked a whole generation of artists and marked the move to a freer and closer-to-nature conception of painting. However, already in the $#,%s people such as -éodore Fourmois started to practise painting in plein air, depicting everyday, anecdotic subjects in an astonishingly direct style. Starting in $#*#, a group of painters gathered under the name Société libre des Beaux-Arts (consisting of, among others, Guillaume Vogels, Louis Artan and Hippolyte Boulenger) and advocated a free and light-hearted depiction of nature, thus opposing themselves to both heavy-handed historicism and mannerist genre painting. -is &rst emergence of realism indeed prepared the way for both the social realism of Constantin Meunier and the French-inspired impressionism marking an avant-garde seizure in European art by the last two decades of the $)th century.

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!e Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

In $)!', the Belgian state conceived the &rst plan for a Musée d’art moderne in Brussels, intended exclusively for the ‘most remarkable Belgian painters, sculptors, draughtsmen and architects’ – thus re+ecting a nationalist interest in the institutional context of the visual arts. In $#,$, the collections of the existing Musée des Beaux-Arts were transferred from the city of Brussels to the national government, and in $#,' the museum was divided into both a historical and a modern gallery, under the new heading Musée royal de peinture et de sculpture de Belgique. But its main educational purpose was preserved, offering a possibility to students and artists to study the great masterpieces from the past. In addition, new acquisitions were made, mostly Flemish Primitives (Van Eyck, Dirk Bouts, Rogier Van Der Weyden, etc.) and Dutch $(th century painting (Salomon Van Ruysdael, Frans Hals, etc.). -e sculpture galleries were also filled with new statues, mostly from the $(th and $#th centuries. It seems that in order for the young state of Belgium to a/rm itself as a nation à part entière, it needed both to build an impressive collection of historical art (praised by distinguished guests such as Delacroix and Baudelaire) and to develop an artist community with an international style and appeal.

In $#*', Leopold II inherited the crown and decreed with paternal-istic rigour the modernisation of Brussels on the model of the Parisian ‘Haussmannisation’. He was certainly the &rst and perhaps the only head of state of the Belgian nation who ever truly believed in Belgium as a major world power, playing an important role both in industrial and colonial activities (with the acquisition of Congo Freestate as a personal property of the royal family in $##,). Belgium’s importance as the world’s fourth largest economy thanks to the industrial revolution fuelled by coal mining and steel production in Wallonia, and its gigantic revenues from the exploitation of the ore-rich Congo colony, indeed released a maximum amount of economic surplus which was reinvested in megalomaniac urban projects and the creation of cultural institutions with a clearly nationalist purpose. -e ever-enlarging and distressing Musée des Beaux-Arts also needed a new building according to the modern aesthetics and technical standards of the day. Under the initiative of the Académie royale des sciences et des lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique the architect Alphonse Balat was appointed to design what was to become the Palais des Beaux Arts – a place where all cultural functions of what already seemed to be the ‘Mont des Arts’ were to be brought together: museums, libraries, concert halls, salons, temporary triennial exhibitions, award ceremonies and even a hall for industrial design. In $##%, the building was completed and was inaugurated with a massive retrospective show of

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the history of Belgian art between $#!% and $##%. ‘L’Ancienne cour’ was to be dedicated entirely to modern art (Musée moderne, demolished in $)*% to make room for the Royal Library and relocated to a new underground wing in $)#,), while the new building welcomed the ever-growing collection of ancient art from the Middle Ages until the $#th century, still in use today.

!e Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Belgique

-e spirit of both artistic and scienti&c universalism and hunger for encyclo-paedic knowledge of the world also triggered the newly emerged nation to expand its collections in realms other than the visual arts from the West. In $)!', the &rst collection of heraldry, artefacts and numismatics was housed in the Musée de la Porte de Hal. But the collection was growing throughout the years and the need for a central, prestigious display venue became necessary. In anticipation of the '%th anniversary of Belgium in $##%, Leopold II ordered another major urban project: the development of a monumental edi&ce, Arc de Triomphe included, now still known as the Cinquantenaire. Initially built to host a prestigious exhibition of Belgian trading products and local artefacts, the southern wing was refurnished as the new Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, inaugurated in $##) and enlarged with an extensive collection of antiquities in $)%' and with a collection of ethnographic art in $)%*. In $)"', under the initiative of the new director and Egyptologist Eugène Capart, the collections were expanded and the museum became one of the most advanced research institutions for archaeology and ethnography throughout the country.

With the development of the Heizel area in the North of Brussels in $)!%, the entire Parc du Cinquantenaire and its many halls was repurposed for cultural use only, comporting the Musée de l’armée ($)""), Autoworld ($)#*) and a research and preservation institute for artistic objects and artefacts Institut royal du patrimoine artistique (founded in $),# and relocated to a new modern building in the park in $)*").

!e curious case of Antoine Wiertz and his museum

One of the most remarkable and unclassi&able Belgian artists from the $)th century was without a doubt Antoine Wiertz. His heroic and metaphysical romanticism overturned the nationalist stances of this style as it was practised by the Wappers school. Instead, in his massive paintings, Wiertz strove for grandiose evocations of mythological and religious &gures, giants and spirits of a cosmic nature, seeking to equal his one and only example, Peter Paul Rubens.

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Originating from Liège, he settled in Brussels in $#'% a0er having convinced the Belgian government to build an immense studio space on the top of a hill close to the Luxembourg train station (nowadays in the shadow of the European Parliament) in return for a signi&cant number of paintings. His highly personal style would indeed cause him to work outside of the commercial circuit dominated by bourgeois taste, which made him seek contact with important figures in the national government and even the king himself in order to obtain a certain material basis for living. A0er his death in $#*', his studio was preserved in its original state (some of the paintings in it are even too large to be moved out of the building) and was set under the administration of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in $#*#. Today, the Musée Wiertz is still preserved as a precious ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ (total art work), providing insight into the deepness of the artist’s imaginative mind and his singular cosmology.

A similar fate was preserved for the studio spaces of the sculptor and painter Constantin Meunier, one of Belgian’s most notable contributors to the development of social realism in the whole of the industrialised areas of Western Europe. A0er his death in $)%', the studio, including an extensive collection of at least (%% pieces, was acquired and preserved by the Belgian state in $)!*. Until today, the Musée Constantin Meunier is open to the public under the technical and scientific curatorship of the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts.

BREAKTHROUGH OF THE EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDES (1880-1918)

Les XX and La libre esthétique

Taking advantage of both its closeness to Paris as a centre of artistic develop-ments since the $##%s and the growing welfare of Belgium at the very height of its industrial power, Brussels quickly became a key crossroads for artists, intel-lectuals and critics bringing international debates and aesthetic currents to the city. It was in this spirit of cosmopolitan breakthrough and cultural independ-ence that one of the most progressive artistic groups of its time was founded in Brussels: Les XX. In $##! the lawyer and art critic Octave Maus, who had established the in+uential periodical L’Art moderne declared the birth of the group in the Taverne Guillaume, rue du Musée, close to the Musée moderne. An extraordinarily diverse group of painters were invited to join, ranging from the young James Ensor to divisionists such as -eo Van Rysselberghe and Emile Claus, the symbolist Ferdinand Khnopff and the provocative

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Félicien Rops. More than a stylistic movement, Les XX was meant to be an open-minded initiative introducing the notion of avant-garde art in Belgian society, and giving it an international appeal by inviting an impressive amount of foreign guests to their events and exhibitions: people such as Monet, Renoir, Whistler, Cézanne, Gauguin, Rodin, Toorop and Van Gogh were brought to Brussels – long before they were recognised as established artists.

According to the initiator and benefactor Octave Maus, the artists of Les XX found each other in an ‘all-encompassing revolt against academism and the clichés from the wig-era’. Indeed, Les XX quickly managed to establish themselves as an avant-garde group of individuals, breaking with the dominance of bourgeois aesthetics and advocating unconditional artistic freedom. This freedom was granted through close collaboration with the ‘Musée moderne’, whose central galleries were regularly used for temporary exhibitions and multi-disciplinary artistic events (as well as concerts, lectures, poetry readings, etc.).

In $#), the group of Les XX was dissolved and replaced by La Libre Esthétique, introducing new generations of artists, such as Léon Spillaert, and organising regular salons until the First World War. -e group also presented new international avant-gardes to the Belgian public; in $)$$ for example, the &rst cubist exhibition outside of France was organised in Brussels.

As a founder and president of both societies, Octave Maus was without a doubt the most in+uential &gure of the Belgian avant-garde around the turn of the century, de&nitively placing Brussels on the map as a major international artistic pole. -e critic Gustave Ge.roy wrote: ‘-is is not about Belgian art, this is about the emergence of a European art, about the various key debates that roam around in the civilised world and meet in one of its largest cities.’ By the end of the $)th century, and certainly by the end of the First World War, Belgium’s nationalist rhetoric was already weakened and replaced by a European one – at least in the arts.

Art Nouveau, Victor Horta and Henri Van De Velde

Architecture and decorative arts at the turn of the century experienced a con-siderable breakthrough, in+uenced by the growing artistic avant-garde and by a rising trend-sensitive middle class.

Victor Horta – who was from Ghent but trained as an architect in Paris – understood that architecture is not only about designing spaces, but that it is also about the creation of a ‘scene for living’ in which every single detail has to be designed by one hand. As such, he developed his very singular style, based on the playful observation of natural motifs, colour shades and light

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arrangements. -e Hôtel Tassel, built in $#)! in Ixelles, marked the beginning of Art Nouveau, proposing a whole new arrangement of space, allowing natural light to penetrate throughout nearly all rooms by the inventive use of central staircases and half-transparent panels. Horta was set to become without a doubt the most in+uential architect of his time, designing dozens of private houses, commercial buildings, warehouses and public edi&ces (among the most prestigious was the Maison du Peuple, unfortunately destroyed in $)*', and later, in a more modernist style leaning towards art deco, the Palais des Beaux Arts and the Central Station). Today, the Musée Horta, located in the house he designed for himself and his studio, still bears witness to the all-encompassing and visionary style of the master.

Another key player in the emergence of Art Nouveau was the painter, architect and designer Henry Van De Velde. Rather in+uenced by the British and American Arts-and-Cra0s movement, he fervently revolted against the standardisation of design as an e.ect of industrialisation. However, his style was more modest than Horta’s and, with its horizontally oriented tranquil-lity, foreshadowed some features of Bauhaus modernity as it would emerge in Germany a0er the First World War. Indeed, Van De Velde worked most of his life at the Baushaus in Weimar, however his in+uence in Brussels, both as an architect and an artist, was consolidated by two private residences in Uccle and Tervueren, but he is also remembered as the founder of one of Brussels’ most renowned art schools, La Cambre (founded in $)"*).

!e rise of private collections

The rise of industrial society had brought about a relatively new form of cultural investment throughout the second half of the $)th century: the private art collection. Together with the increasing importance of the notion of avant-garde, rich art lovers distinguished themselves with extensive collections of visual art. Most of them became relevant to the general public since they were bequeathed to one of the abovementioned national museums, but others have been kept intact in their original state until today.

-is is essentially the case with the collection of the art benefactor Henri Van Cutsem, who invited the prestigious architect Victor Horta to design the interior of a ‘maison de maître’ at the Avenue des Arts in $#)%. In $)%,, the house was inherited by his friend, the sculptor Guillaume Charlier, who added to its collection and donated it to the municipality of St. Josse ten Noode in $)"', where its small but outstanding collection of essentially Belgian $)th century paintings is presented in a strange mix with $(th and $#th century cra0 and design, now called the Charlier Museum.

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-e Dutch banker David Van Buuren, who settled in Brussels in $)%) with his Belgian wife Alice Piette, built a rich private collection. Van Buuren not only commissioned the construction of a unique ‘De Stijl’ Art Deco house in Uccle, but he also &lled it with the &nest paintings and sculptures of their time, such as Ensor, Van Gogh, Permeke, Rik Wouters, Van Dongen, etc. along with Art Deco design and art objects. In $)(%, Alice Van Buuren created a foundation that still runs the house as a museum today.

But perhaps one of the most remarkable private art collections in Brussels from that period is the ‘Palais Stoclet’. This private edifice on Avenue de Tervuren was designed in $)%, by the Austrian architect Josef Ho.mann as the private mansion of another rich Belgian banker: Adolphe Stoclet. Its interior spaces are a unique example of Austrian Art-Deco cra0ed by the prestigious Vienna-based group of artists and designers known as the ‘Wiener Werkstätte’, whose members were all relocated to Brussels for several months in order to complete the house. -e frescoes by Gustav Klimt are without a doubt one of its most prominent elements. Today, negotiations with the heirs are still ongoing to disclose the Palais Stoclet to the public.

Expanding museum culture: Musée d’Ixelles

All over Belgium, smaller regional museums were popping up in the a0ermath of the consolidation of museum culture by the Musées royaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. In the Brussels region, a number of new collections emerged, of which the Musée d’Ixelles is without a doubt the most remarkable. -e collection was a bequest of a hundred or so paintings from the artist and collector Edmond de Pratere in $#)". An abandoned abattoir in the Flagey area of Ixelles was found and repurposed as a small but modern museum, run by the municipality of Ixelles. From then on this relatively small museum had an extraordinary history of new acquisitions (focusing on Belgian avant-garde artists such as Félicien Rops, Rik Wouters, George Minne, Leon Spilliaert, etc., mostly from extensive donations by Octave Maus and the painter Fritz Toussaint) and temporary exhibitions featuring both art from the past and contemporary art, thus playing an important role in both the Belgian and international art world throughout the "%th century. In $)'(, under the initiative of the new director Jean Coquelet, this activity was enhanced by the addition of a new wing, especially designed for temporary exhibitions. Until today, the museum is widely known both for its collection and its ambitious programme, thanks to a unique collaboration between both public and private funding arrangements.

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THE INTERBELLUM: THE REIGN OF BOURGEOIS SOCIETY (1918-1945)

New dynamics in Avant-Garde styles: Expressionism, Abstract Art and Surrealism

New issues of form and pictorial representation were addressed in the artistic movements of the twenties as a dense +ood of –isms rolled over the European continent. Les Fauves (represented by the Auderghem-based group comporting Rik Wouters, Jos Albert and Edgard Tytgat, among others) made impressionism move into a more direct and emotional style, introducing vivid colours in the pallet. -e expressionists (with Constant Permeke, Gustave De Smet and Frits Van den Berghe as the main representatives) also revolted against the light and optimistic nature of pre-war avant-garde styles, and rooted the new interna-tional aesthetic of the movement in the dark earth of the Belgian countryside, thus developing a very singular aesthetic of post-war rural misery.

Futuristic, cubist and constructivist aesthetics developed right before the outburst of the First World War and became very popular in countries such as France, Italy and Russia, and spread rapidly throughout the European continent, but were received only sporadically in the Belgian art world. However, those movements prepared the way for the Eerste Belgische abstracten, a small but noteworthy group of early abstract painters mainly centred around studios in Antwerp and Brussels: artists such as Georges Vantongerloo, Jozef Peeters and Victor Servranckx shared an obsession for this new ‘universal’ language of geometric forms and cosmic harmonies, heavily in+uenced by the Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan and De Stijl.

But probably one of the most compelling and singular styles that found fertile ground in Brussels in $)", was surrealism. Belgian surrealism distanced itself almost immediately from the Freudian and le0ist ideologies of French surrealism claimed by André Breton (building up to the o/cial rejection of Belgian surrealism by its French counterpart in $),*), in order to go its own way in both aesthetic and philosophical terms. Mainly fuelled by a disil-lusioned class of French-speaking intellectuals, Belgian surrealism was more indebted to a certain poetic and humoristic creativity, instead of a belief in psychic automatism. A small group of writers, musicians and artists formed a group around Paul Nougé, among whom the painters René Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens and Marcel Mariën. André Delvaux’s work can be associated with the oneiric and poetic atmospheres that characterised Belgian surrealism, even though he never wished to be considered a surrealist artist. Belgian surrealism continued to +ourish a0er the Second World War and published its manifesto

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in $),(, with important consequences until the late $)*%s, leading directly to Belgian conceptual art as we know it today.

It is important to note that in terms of institutions, the Musée moderne had lost its central function as a venue for avant-garde exhibitions a0er the First World War. Due to an increasing privatisation of public life, the $)"%s saw a large amount of private galleries emerging in Brussels, re+ecting the fragmentation of artistic styles and movements, as well as their increasing commercialisation. However, the crisis in $)!% forced many galleries to close their doors again, leaving the artist community of Brussels with a precarious lack of exhibition spaces. Fortunately, by then a new public venue for the arts had seen the light: the new Palais des Beaux Arts.

Henri Le Boeuf and the Palais des Beaux Arts

Due to the use of the initial Palais des Beaux Arts built by Balat in $##% for the collection of ancient art from the Musée ancien in $##), the need for a new venue for temporary events, exhibitions, concerts, theatre and ceremonies became ever more important after the First World War. During the ‘gay twenties’ – when a short and intense feeling of welfare and prosperity was regained – Brussels developed a strong middle class of industrialists, lawyers and bankers who increasingly wished to participate in cultural life. -us the idea for a new Palais des Beaux Arts was taken up again and, by lack of interest on behalf of the government, was carried out as an entirely private enterprise, under the initiative of the mayor Adolphe Max and the banker and music lover Henri Le Boeuf. -erefore, the new Palais des Beaux Arts was a typical example of the dominance of a privately owned bourgeois culture in Brussels, that, indebted to a humanist and visionary idea of cultural democratisation, was responsible for a large part of artistic life between both world wars. In $)"#, the Palais des Beaux Arts, designed by Victor Horta in a modest art deco style, was inaugurated and in a very short period of time it became the venue par excellence for internationally renowned events of high culture – visual arts, music, literature, theatre and cinema alike – and this in the spirit of non-hierarchical and democratic social participation.

-e Palais des Beaux Arts from then on played a central role in all aspects of cultural life, especially during the artistic revival a0er the Second World War with the emergence of the Jeune Peinture Belge. Its recent reorganisation under the general director Paul Dujardin, who restructured the fragmented organisation in the $))%s and carried out important renovation and preserva-tion works on the building, has made BOZAR an essential element of today’s cultural life in Brussels.

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!e emergence of cinema as an art and the Royal Film Archives

Not only the traditional media of painting and sculpture were brought into the aesthetic debates of the turn of the century, but also photography and later &lm became part of the public’s visual experiences. Besides its immense e.ects on painting, photography had hardly proven its artistic quality as such; it was supposed to have a merely reproductive and encyclopaedic function and therefore had to wait until the late $)*%s to be recognised as an art form on its own. Cinema entered via another means into the public sphere, namely that of theatre and performances, or that of entertainment. Already in $#)' the Lumière brothers presented their invention of the ‘moving picture’ to the public in Brussels, introducing at very short notice a new visual culture that was consumed at the back of cafés, in theatres and in music halls. In $)%' the &rst ‘cinematographic temple’ opened its doors on Boulevard Anspach: Pathé Palace – as a franchise of the French production company Pathé. However, it was only a0er the First World War that cinema became a popular art form, causing cinemas to pop up all over the city, and that it was understood to be important enough to be collected and preserved: in $)!# the &lmmaker Henri Storck started to gather the &rst collections of what would become, under the in+uence of the passionate &lm preservationist Claude Ledoux, the Royal Film Archives in $),#, opening its doors as a small &lm museum in $)*". Today, the archive is popularly known as Cinematek and still holds one of the largest collections of &lm material in the world, in particular silent &lms.

Brussels never did get a museum for photography (unlike Antwerp and Charleroi), and today still lacks an institution for research, preservation and display of one of the main artistic media of our age.

SHIFTING PARADIGMS IN THE POST-WAR PERIOD (1945 TO TODAY)

!e jeune peinture Belge

Already in $)!), shortly before the outburst of the Second World War, Galerie Apollo opened its doors in Brussels. -e purpose of its spiritual parents, the painters Louis Van Lint, Gaston Bertrand and Anne Bonnet, was to overcome the new academicism of modernity, especially the expressionist tradition that had become a Belgian mannerism. Forming a collective under the name La Route Libre (later known as Apport) they exhibited a new generation of artists under the provocative title La Jeune Peinture Belge in $),'. Two years later

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they were invited to organise an exhibition in the prestigious Palais des Beaux Arts, in which, among others, the young Pierre Alechinsky and Pol Bury were introduced to the public. Although the stylistic diversity of the group recalled the spirit of Les XX and La Libre Esthetique, this generation of artists seemed to be heavily traumatised by the horrors of the Second World War and therefore marked by a strong uncertainty and loss of meaningfulness that expressed itself in a hesitant pictorial style, pushing the limits of pictorial representation versus materiality. A0er the tragic death of René Lust in $),#, the group was dissolved and the remaining artists went their own way. Commemorating this very short but intense resurgence of artistic talent, the Prix du Jeune Peinture Belge was called into existence in $)'%, and remains until today the main annual award for visual arts in Belgium.

COBRA

In $),(, another group of artists emerged under the name Surréalisme Revolutionnaire, founded by the Brussels-based painters Christian Dotremont and Joseph Noiret. In the desire to create an international network, they associated themselves with two other collectives. Together they formed the group COBRA – a combination of the first letters of their home cities Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br) and Amsterdam (A) as well as being the name of a serpent. A number of acclaimed artists associate themselves with the group (among whom Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, Guillaume Corneille and later also Pierre Alechinsky and Serge Vandercam). As a generation that found itself disillusioned with respect to mankind and progress a0er the disaster of two world wars, the COBRA artists shared a desire to escape modern industrial life, and to &nd solace in the study of what was then known as ‘primitive’ art, folk art and children’s drawings, as well as Jean Dubu.et’s ‘art brut’. As such, they attempted to reclaim a sphere of spontaneous, anti-rational and anti-aesthetic creation against all form-obsessed tendencies of the pre-war avant-gardes, such as cubism, surrealism and geometric abstract art. Both the pictorial gesture and the primal colours and materials used in their paintings and sculptures replaced representational obsessions of previous artistic movements, bringing artistic creation back to its ‘savage’ origin. Even though the COBRA group was already dissolved in $)'$, its impact on the European art scene was immense and was echoed in aesthetic practices until the sixties, giving rise to a new informal abstraction in Belgian art practised by artists such as Bram Bogart and Henri Michaux.

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!e dominance of the United States in the #$%&s and #$'&s

As opposed to informal abstraction as it was developed by the COBRA-oriented artists, the arts from the $)'%s were dominated by an obsession with geometrical abstraction. While Western Europe was declining in its status as the place to be for the artistic avant-garde, the United States organised a massive o.ensive on the art market, claiming the new, absolute aesthetic of what they called ‘abstract expressionism’ – a style that soon started to in+uence the Belgian art scene. Even though pre-war &guration still +ourished largely in Belgian art, different variants of abstraction saw the light: geometrical abstraction as practised by Luc Peire, Gaston Bertrand and Jo Delahaut, as well as the more playful lyrical abstraction by Louis Van Lint and Maurice Wyckaert, were the most dominant currents. Geometrical abstraction soon evolved into an American-style minimalism, especially when the Brussels-based artists Jo Delahaut, Jan Rets and Guy Vandenbranden founded a new movement with an exhibition called L’Art Construit International in the Musée d’Ixelles in $)*%.

It was only around the mid $)*%s that &guration regained ground. Roger Raveel and Raoul De Keyser, whose style was propagated under the program-matic name La Nouvelle Vision acted as important Belgian players in post-war figurative art, continuously balancing on the critical verge of abstraction. But &guration also came into play from a completely di.erent perspective: pop art. Just as pop art did in the United States, it commented on the sub-jectivity and aesthetic independence claimed by abstract expressionism, and introduced objects and aesthetics of daily life into artistic debates. Pol Mara and Etienne Elias can be seen as Belgian representatives of the movement and were presented at the iconic Pop art, nouveau réalisme, etc exhibition in the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels in $)*'. However, the debate continues as to whether one can really speak of Belgian pop art or not, but in any case a notable reception of this American movement can be identi&ed.

Broodthaers and conceptual art in Belgium

One of the most in+uential post-war Belgian artists is without a doubt the young Brussels-born artist Marcel Broodthaers. Flirting with communism and surrealism in the early $),%s, he became the founding father of Belgian conceptual art. Starting out as a (rather unsuccessful) writer, Broodthaers’ objects, films, documents and texts had an ambiguously poetic character, and mainly re+ected an anti-institutional spirit as it emerged all over Europe throughout the *%s, leading to the occupation of the Palais des Beaux Arts in

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$)*#. Later that year, Broodthaers opened his own imaginary museum Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section XIXe siècle in his home, which was the beginning of a longstanding tour de force as a commentary on the museum institution.

Under the impulse of the international success of Marcel Broodthaers, a new generation of artists emerged throughout the $)(%s, mainly in Antwerp, Liège and Brussels, concentrating on the development of what was still known today as conceptual art. -e main issues at stake were a playful re+ection about the role of the museum, the function of art objects and their commodity value, as well as an overall prevalence of ideas and text instead of the form-oriented research of the traditional avant-gardes. An entirely new understanding of art was introduced in the Belgian art world, generally referred to as conceptual art. It advocated a radical break with the ‘frameability’ of an artwork – focusing on ephemeral, o0en site-speci&c and non-valuable objects: ready-mades, installa-tions, décors, performances, &lms and the like.

In Brussels, artists as diverse as Jacques Lennep, Didier Vermeiren, Lili Dujouri, Marianne Berenhaut, Marthe Wéry, Michel François, Chantal Akerman, Jaqueline Mesmaeker and Walter Swennen investigated the unlimited amount of concepts, materials and media that became available to artists, and thereby the notion of the unicity and originality of a work became a key to artistic quality. -is obsession with originality still dominates today’s discourse on the visual arts, even though it moved into a self-re+ective mode under in+uence of the $)#%s postmodernist movement.

Cultural diversi(cation from the #$)&s to the *&&&s

-e gradual transformations in the political landscape of Belgium in the $)#%s and $))%s had an enormous impact on the cultural structure of Brussels. In the a0ermath of the Flemish movement that founded a Dutch-speaking University in Brussels in $)*) (the Vrije Universiteit Brussel), the Flemish in+uence in Brussels was empowered throughout the several stages of federalisation. -e creation of language-based communities in the $)#% reformations diversi&ed the cultural claims that were invested in the city, and cultural boards from both French-speaking and Flemish governments invested heavily in the construc-tion of so-called ‘cultural centres’ in all of the $) municipalities of the Brussels region. Some of them carried out a lively artistic agenda, sometimes fuelled by local creation but o0en also displaying art in a wider perspective. Centres like De Beursschouwburg, De Pianofabriek and De Markten became reference venues for the local art scene, as well as the Botanique and Jacques Franck.

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In "%%* the city council of Brussels liberated a budget for the contemporary arts and the Centrale Electrique was founded in the city centre as a display venue for young emerging artists, and more recently also curated group shows of national acclaim.

A year later, in "%%(, Brussels &nally received its Centre for Contemporary Arts, the WIELS, located in an old brewery in Forest, which presents cutting-edge exhibitions of international allure. Today, WIELS plays a central role in the emergence of Brussels as a capital of the visual arts, operating in a globally networked sphere and bringing internationally acclaimed artists to the Brussels public.

Due to a growing involvement of political agendas in cultural policy, the art scene in Brussels from the $)#%s onwards has been increasingly characterised by a paradigm of democratisation, with the aim of its institutions being to bring the arts as much as possible to the public and to involve a maximum amount of people in artistic debates. A system of artistic management was established, involving an important bureaucratic organisation of cultural institutions and policy makers, seeking the legitimisation of their activities in democratic terms. Quanti&able public interest replaced bourgeois taste as a bias for the promotion of the visual arts.

BRUSSELS AND ITS POSITION IN THE GLOBAL ART WORLD TODAY

In the context of an increasingly nomadic and horizontally networked global art world, the notion of a cultural centre has obviously been questioned in recent decades. Moreover, since the anti-institutional debates which dominated the arts in the sixties, art practices are no longer confined to the safe enclosures of artistic institutions such as museums, art centres and galleries. Instead, artists create their own environments and look for temporary ‘in-situ’ locations and alternative ‘o. space’ display platforms in order to bring their work into existence. In this respect, the geographically prosperous location of Brussels makes the city an important hub for the con-temporary visual arts, where a series of conditions have been met in order for the visual arts to +ourish.

But let us investigate some of the aspects in more detail, drawing attention to the more speci&c debates that are at stake in the realm of the visual arts in Brussels today.

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!e artist community

Describing an artist community in a concise manner is probably one of the most di/cult things one could ask of an art critic. Artist communities are generally extremely fragmented realities, whose elements are nonetheless well connected through ideas, social interactions and shared venues. -e relatively sparse number of artistic institutions in Belgium and Brussels is counterbal-anced by a signi&cant number of international artists who choose Brussels as their home. Subject to a general development of the concept of ‘creative industry’ in cultural policy, artists function increasingly on a self-employed basis, running their studios as small enterprises. Whoever is not able to earn a living inside this economic reality – and a large number of artists do not, especially in Brussels – is exiled to an ‘o. ’ circuit, where a lot of artist-run communities join forces to organise shows and exhibitions in small, o0en temporary venues. However, communication between the ‘in’ and the ‘o. ’ circuits is astonishingly +uid in Brussels, as the city hosts many people who – apart from being internationally acclaimed artists – also wish to keep in touch with the ‘underground’ scene, where a lot of artistic freedom is preserved.

A strong generation of established artists, mostly of a conceptual nature, has emerged in the last decade in Brussels, with some of the most in+uential being Angel Vergara, Aglaia Konrad, Frank -eys, Ann Veronica Janssens, Michel François, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Pierre Bismuth, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Richard Venlet and Sven Augustijnen. Traditionally, this ‘core’ of artists is o0en loosely connected with the Etablissement d’en face, a small artist-run venue in Rue Dansaert.

Artistic education

-e French-speaking art school La Cambre has played an essential role in the development of the visual arts in Brussels since the $)(%s and has trained many conceptual artists who have dominated the Brussels art scene. Moreover, in the spirit of the anti-academic debates of its time, an alternative art school Ecole des recherches graphiques (L’ERG) was founded in $)(" by the eminent art historians Thierry De Duve and Jean Giraud. L’ERG has provided a high-quality educational environment for both art theory and practice, with international artists such as Joëlle Tuerlinckx and Marcel Berlanger as part of the sta.. On the Flemish side, Sint Lukas Brussel has also become a fairly successful school for contemporary art, o.ering excellent studio and research facilities to its students.

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However, Europe-wide reformations that are meant to universalise higher education and associate artistic education institutions with university faculties in order to re-orient them towards a more scholarly and ‘accountable’ approach, seems to collide heavily with the independent spirit in which art academies have operated in the past. Moreover, the relatively free art schools risk being caught in a bureaucratic system of increased status and evaluation, in which the notion of artistic expertise is quantifiable through the introduction of a much debated ‘Ph.D. in the Arts’. The fear of an ‘intellectualisation’ and ‘rationalisation’ of art practice has caused a heated and fundamental debate in all educational institutions in the &eld of the arts throughout Europe. As such, the gap between the art schools and the art world is becoming ever-larger.

Studio spaces

Artists find refuge mostly in non-educational environments in order to work within a maximum of creative freedom. -e international emergence of residency programmes throughout the last decade has also affected Brussels – a city that went through considerable de-industrialisation, with a lot of relatively cheap, open spaces available, which can serve ideally as artist studios. Small independent artist associations, often in semi-temporary locations, emerged all over the city: Nadine, Bains::Connective, iMal, Komplot, Recyclart, w-o-l-k-e and Atelier Graphoui, complemented by more institutional residency programmes such as De Pianofabriek, Beursschouwburg and WIELS. Contemporary artists, often working in transitory modes and building their studios wherever they work, &nd Brussels to be a welcoming place for short-term projects. For those who wish to base themselves in Brussels on a long-term basis, peripheral municipalities such as Schaerbeek, Molenbeek, Saint-Gilles, Forest and Laeken o.er a reasonable amount of cheap studio space, although often organised in an improvised manner. However, the image of Brussels as a humane and socially agreeable environment attracts artists who want to escape the dense and competitive atmosphere that reigns in traditional art cities such as Paris, London and New York.

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Public collections, museums and venues

In the historical overview of visual arts in Brussels, as discussed above, we have seen the emergence of a large amount of main institutions and venues that have made Brussels what it is today: the capital of a relatively young but powerful Western European country provided with a number of represen-tational collections and venues. Where the museum culture of the city still breathed the dusty air of $)th century universalism and grandeur, a whole set of public collections and venues were either restructured out of older ones or freshly created out of nowhere. -is dichotomy between dusty collections on the one hand and sparkling up-to-date venues on the other, characterises artistic life in Brussels today.

First of all, the ‘Palais des Beaux Arts’, which was fragmented into many small associations throughout the seventies and the eighties, was restored as a dynamic meeting place between the arts, focusing again on cutting edge exhibitions of contemporary as well as historical art.

But the struggle for a high-quality venue for the contemporary arts came &nally to an end when the curator Dirk Snauwaert assured a complex set of conditions for the reconversion of the Wielemans Ceuppens brewery in Forest. Since "%%(, the WIELS has been one of Brussels’ most important venues for contemporary arts, however its purpose is not for collection.

A considerate collection of time-based work emerged out of the Argos Festival that has taken place every year since $)#). In $))* Argos Art Centre was founded with the function of collecting, researching and disclosing audiovisual artworks, and today it plays an ever more important role as a collection but also as a venue for experimental installations and presentations, as well as debates and publications.

In this respect, one also has to mention Beursschouwburg, which mainly focuses on theatre and music, but still presents a considerable number of photography, video and other visual installations of a rather experimental nature. -e visual arts programme of Botanique is in the same league.

-e demand for a structural museum of modern and contemporary art in Brussels is today an acute but highly utopian desire that goes together with a &ery critique addressed at the Musée des Beaux Arts, which decided in "%$$ to close its modern galleries in order to make space for a newly acquired collection of fin-de-siècle art and design. A number of projects have been proposed by di.erent voices, such as a privately-funded Guggenheim Brussels in the Heizel area or a MoMA Brussels on Sainctelette Square, as well as the reconversion of the Dexia Art Centre close to the opera house La Monnaie, but it seems that no concrete budgets have been liberated and a consistent curatorial concept is still lacking.

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On the other hand, an event-based cultural consumption caused a number of very active festivals, temporary projects and art happenings to appear in Brussels. One of the most renowned is the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, founded in $)),, focussing mainly on performance art but also drawing attention to inter-national visual arts and video. One of the largest nation-wide festivals for the arts is Europalia, which highlights the history and arts of a country every year. -e European presidencies, which change every six months, bring in a wave of national culture from all over Europe, showing their contemporary art in the Palais des Beaux Arts. Tour & Taxis, a private venue in an old railway depot in Laeken, regularly organises exhibitions and fairs of a more commercial nature.

!e art market

-e art market in Brussels is dominated by internationally renowned galleries such as Jan Mot, Xavier Hu1ens, Greta Meert, Baronian Francey, Meessen De Clercq, Rodolphe Janssens, etc. -ese galleries not only stand in for the trade of artworks, but also play an important role in the production and even conceptualisation of artworks. Every year the international art market meets at Art Brussels, one of Europe’s most important contemporary art fairs.

Essential to a vibrant art market are the private collectors, mostly industrial or &nancial companies or upper class individuals who invest in contempo-rary art for the sake of its status or just by mere passion. In Brussels, the most extensive private collections are in the hands of large companies such as Belgacom, ING and Bel&us, which increasingly invest in a public disclosure of their collections. Individual collections, such as Bibliotheca Wittockiana, Fondation Boghossian, Verhaerents Art Collection and C.A.B. Contemporary Art have been opening their doors to the public in a rapid tempo, thus creating a true challenge to public display institutions. The collaboration between private collectors and public collection managers is unfortunately very weak in the fragmented network of the Brussels art world, causing Belgium’s national institutions to miss out on a number of occasions to enhance their own collections and exhibitions with privately owned work. Moreover, the lack of acquisition funds regularly causes top artworks to be sold to foreign collections, such as the Congo Series by Luc Tuymans that was o.ered to the Musées royaux but was sold to the MoMA in New York.

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Cultural policy in Brussels

As regards cultural policy, a counter current movement against the globalising tendencies in the art world can be observed. Focussing on the very locality of the arts and its rootedness in local traditions, cultural policy seems to transform itself quickly due to an increasingly conservative political elite. Especially in the context of Brussels, which has a long-standing tradition of cosmopolitanism and cultural mixture – also in terms of important immigration waves throughout the "%th century – this o0en appears at odds with the nature of the city. -e increasing artistic ignorance of politicians and policy-makers demolishes the concept of ‘high art’ and +attens aesthetic debates in terms of ‘creative industry’ and ‘city marketing’. -e development of the Musée Magritte, which was conceived as a tourist attraction rather than as a well-researched thematic museum about one of Belgium’s most proli&c artists, is a good example of this. -e highly contested closure of the Musée d’art moderne to make room for a Musée du %n de siècle, also features as one of the excesses of this policy. Moreover, the rapid institutional demolition of Belgium as a unitary state has its repercussions for an ever-increasing bureau-cratic complexi&cation of policies, subsidy regulations and decrees coming from the many policy levels (i.e. municipal, regional, communitarian, federal and European), discouraging many individuals and institutions to investigate and negotiate their interests.

However, this complexity has its advantages, as any typically Ka1aesque situation has: creative cultural managers and artists alike can bene&t from many di.erent funds that are theoretically available for the arts in Brussels, and those who know the jungle of cultural fundraising may have an adventurous challenge in dealing with it.

To individual artists, however, who o0en have no direct cultural identity and no administrative structure, these processes are o0en very esoteric and handicapping. Apart from the WIELS residency programme, Brussels thus seems to be lacking a post-graduate environment in which international artists can be made familiar with the speci&cities of local policies.

References

Canonne, X. ("%%(). — Le surréalisme en Belgique, !&'(-'$$$. Arles: Actes sud.Geirlandt, K.J., & Mertens, P. ($)#!). — Kunst in België na (). Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds.Geirlandt, K.J., Jeune peinture belge & Palais des beaux-arts. ($))%). — ($ ans de Jeune peinture belge: !&)$-&$ : regard contemporain sur un choix historique : hommage

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Karel Geirlandt : !* mars-' avril !&&$, Palais des beaux-arts, Bruxelles = ($ jaar Jonge Belgische Schilderkunst : !&)$-&$ : een actuele visie op een historische keuze : hommage Karel Geirlandt : !* maart-' april !&&$, Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Brussel. Bruxelles: Ludion.Jacobs, S., Bussers, H., & Palais des beaux-arts. ("%%)). — Bozar LXXX: [the book was published on the occasion of the "$th anniversary of the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels]. Tielt: Lannoo.Ollinger-Zinque, G., & Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique. ($))!). — Les XX [et] la Libre esthétique: Honderd jaar later = cent ans après. Bruxelles: Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique.Palmer, M. ("%%,). — Un art Belge, d’Ensor à Panamarenko. Brussels: Racine.Roberts-Jones-Popelier, F. ($)#(). — Kroniek van een museum: Koninklijke Museum voor Schone Kunsten van Belgie Brussel. Liège: Pierre Mardaga.Robert-Jones, P. ($))'). — Histoire de la peinture en Belgique : du XIVe siècle à nos jours, depuis les premiers maîtres des Anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège jusqu’aux artistes contemporains, Brussels: Renaissance du livre.