Closed
for lunch
The attendants at the ticket counter looked
positively shocked when we walked into the museum. Their embarassment deepened when we asked for
two entry-tickets: “we are very sorry, but the museum is closed!"
I felt dejected, our day's outing sabotaged
by the implacable quirks of opening hours : "Oh, so you're closed for the
day?" They smiled at such ignorance: "Well no, just from noon till 2PM"
Of course, the sacred French 'pause du midi'
– it's not because you're only 15 kilometers across the Belgian border, at
Dunkerque, that French customs would no longer hold sway (2).
Thus evicted from the Musée des Beaux Arts, we wandered about in
the cold, drifting towards the harbour. Everything about Dunkerque feels naval
and seabound. From the salty taste of the air, over the echoing screeches of
seagulls to the rhythmic clicking of
masts & poles & wires rocking
in the wind.
Naval & industrial history
Cosy or fashionable Dunkerque is not – what
with its
abandoned naval shipyards and the ominous shapes of the remaining, fuming industries on the
horizon. Even with a strong sea-breeze your throat & nose smart from the
potent mixture of sea-salt & chemical smells. There’s nothing frivolous
either about its history – over the ages it has been besieged and occupied by
various military forces (much like Belgium in fact) with the WWII bombings as a
devastating finale.
Dunkerque could once boast one of the
biggest naval construction works of France – but they all have been dismantled
in the 80s of the past century. Even now, the city’s outskirts are marked by
industrial buildings, utilitary infrastructure typical of a bygone
industrial age, a channel and a
railroad prominently crossing the landscape. Grey concrete walls covered with graffiti add to the industrial
suburbian atmosphere. Only along the coast
Dunkerque offers some old fashioned resort charms with Malo-les-bains still
sporting many a frivolous seaside villa.
Contemporary art, too, has been deployed to redeem this battered region:
a huge old shipyard building got a contemporary make over and has become a
popular art hot-spot.
Reconstruction & corrosion
Much of Dunkerque-city has been rebuilt after WWII. In the city-centre only the church tower and
the city-hall have been restored to their former shapes – the other parts of
the city have been rebuilt with lots of concrete & iron, bravely reflecting
the modern city-conceptions of the time. With some effort you can still
imagine the optimistic 50’s-60’s urbanistic models with colourfully decorated
cubist buildings, modern cars and
optimistically smiling young families.
By now, inevitably, the modernist
vigour has faded, the iron is getting rusty, some of the concrete is rotting, and the
fancy colours are dulled. Everything
looks quite grey and used – concrete
does not age well...
There’s nothing picturesque either about the
open air market on the main square: the stalls look shabby, they mostly ply
utilitarian wares: some with professional and household tools, others with
various cheap clothes – somewhere a dieselmotor
adds its fumes to the cold air resulting in a heady mixture of sea salt
and burnt fuel, creating a smog which no
7 beaufort wind can dispel.
La Brasserie
But, also in Dunkerque, one French
institution bravely battles on, watching over French civilisation : The Local
Brasserie. During the lunch hour it is
packed with animated people, all
babbling, all savouring three course meals. No fast food in sight, no gaudy
furniture or neon – but nicely covered tables, a well equipped kitchen, a true
zinc and the distinctive clatter of dishes & cutlery. And of course: the disciplined ballet of attendants, chefs
and headwaiter who, every day again, with unperturbed
authority and flair, accomplish a perfect lunch hour performance.
The
Fine Arts and The Sea
At 2PM sharp we mount the stairs to the
Musée des Beaux Arts again – no pompous 19th century affair this, but a 70s
building, true to Dunkerque's reconstructed soul. The interior is spacious
and functional , so endearingly 70s in
its furnishings, from the PVC faux plafonds with neon lighting to the
metallically gleaming balustrades of
the stairs. There's a moving
authenticity to this building and a palpable sensitivity in the arrangement of
its collections.
How well Dunkerque's sea-borne identity is
captured – the past naval exploits, the multifarious riches it attracted as an
international hub of ocean trade, its
present status as a small port in a small, lost corner of Europe, and
beyond all that : the eternal screeching of seagulls, the rolling& crashing of waves, the whistling of the
wind – this is the sound track to this
building.
Post-colonial love of the world
The museum exhibits duly incorporate a
contemporary post-colonial, critical awareness – but all the while giving loving due to the objects, to the enduring allure of all these works of art that have been accumulated over
the ages – and that make up 'the relative permanence of our world' .
In the museum lobby one can browse through
cases with nautical books (both technical and romantic) and gape at displays with old shipping
journals. Dear C's sailing experience comes in handy to decipher some of the daily
sea & weather chronicles, which yield unexpectedly poetic impressions
alongside meticulous meteorological & sailing details.
“temps couvert, le vent est irrégulier. À
11h la brise fraîchit un peu. Croché les écoutes doubles. Rien à signaler.
Temps à grains, mais sans vent, la brise
fraîchit et radonne dans les grains. La mer est phosphorescente et belle. Rien
de particulier”
In the rooms with the aptly named 'Retours de mer' ('returns of the sea'), European painted seascapes of all
periods hang alongside Oceanic decorative
art and functional objects (functional but mysterious, god knows how this exotic
paddle arrived here) - here &there teh noise of contemporary videos erupts, showing various modes of struggling with the sea.
Works
of art as shifting frontiers of the human domain
Wonder &
enchantment await the visitor of the permanent collections, a whole floor packed with objects and paintings from the museum reserves. The collections have been built from donations by local connoisseur-collectors, spanning art of all genres, ages and continents. Who were these men,
whose portraits hang side by side: they were rich, for sure, esteemed
solid citizens, but also men with a personal
taste and particular inclinations guiding their acquisitions.
It's to the huge credit of the curator to
have created a wonderful atmosphere of
correspondences between disparate works – one feels privileged to wander amongst the many works, to explore, to discover. Here one can become besotted with
a little gem by an unknown painter,
there one stumbles on a work by a famous master.
This is more than a cabinet de curiosités, it
is a dépot full of enchanted objects that “help the soul to exist”, that
help the spectator to be attentive, to reflect, to ponder, to savour, to
recognize, to look and look again - to
compare, to contrast, to choose, to
love.
“Dans ou à travers les oeuvres, ce sont
bien les frontières mouvantes du domaine humain que [l'on] va reconnaître”.
[...] Aussitôt mis en circulation, l'objet utile est comme dévoré par la jungle
des choses. L'oeuvre d'art résiste : elle continue […] d'irradier [..] la
présence humaine. Dans l'universelle indifférence, les oeuvres d'art posent la
différence de l'homme. Elles l'aident à exister.” *
(* Introduction par Jean-Clarence Lambert aux
“Ecrits sur l'art” de Paul Valéry)
Disclaimer and a nod to all things French
(1) Disclaimer - the above post was
written before terror broke loose on January 7th/8th/9th. More has happened
since last Sunday to make sense of, but I have little coherent thoughts to add. 4 million people
marching without incidents – that’s good
I suppose. Thursday’s foiling (in Belgium) of another terrorist plot is good (the
foiling) – it is also bad since the plot confirms the deadly
mix we all have been dreading since May: readily available Kalashnikovs on the black
market (the Paris jihadis, too, got
their weapons in Brussels) + returned
Syria-combatants (in proportion to its population Belgium is thought to have the
most Syria-Jihadists in europe) + radicalisation (radicalize and de-radicalize: new omni-present
verbs) in disadvantaged neigbourhoods (Belgium scores worst in Europe as
to the education- and employment-gap between immigrants and natives).
What else did we
get: the resurrected CH cover (funny, both forgiving and self-derisory for one part of the world ; insulting & provocative for another part of the world --- confirming how deep the gulf between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’
values is?)
As to myself - I'm sinking into irrelevant melancholy musings about the original human sin. Our selfish genes – which we try to overcome by creating group bonds based on ideologies
or religions. The empowerment and the solidarity of groups, the rousing calls
of ideologies and religions to transcend mere selfish and material interests. And then the sad fact that all of these absolute
beliefs have all, at some point in time, in some place in the word, led to
destruction and disaster.
(2)
Ah the battle of ideas & customs
between the Anglosaxons and the French! Quite amusing to watch for Belgians (suffering occasional disrespect from both). Dutch-speaking Belgians may of course seek refuge in
English from arrogant ruling class French - there may even be some
schadenfreude at the loss of french grandeur. But then, there’s also a
simmering resentment of the all pervasive global anglosaxon culture to which
the French at least offer some, however fallible, alternative. People seem to grow increasingly weary of a certain type of Anglosaxon victorious capitalism. As to me, for instance, it’s not the uncompetitive French egalitarian spirit I would mock, like all those London
bankers do when hearing about French financial
sector topguns fleeing France’s high taxes and emigrating ‘en masse’ to London.
It’s rather the apparent sense of personal entitlement (the greed?) of those footlose
top-earners which offends me.
As a melancholy teenager, holed up in a room with "pale blinds drawn", I hummed along with Bowie's "Sound & Vision" : "blue blue electric blue that's the colour of my room where I will live, blue blue".
