Meditations on a 90 year old Belgian paperback

It must have been lying around on my windowsill for over 10 years – a frail old paperback migrating from pile to pile over the years, unread.

But its moment had come  - “Méditations devant des images” - yes, meditativeness was welcome now. 

I tested its weight in my hand (heavier than expected), appreciating the soft texture of the paper cover, then passing my fingers over the roughness of some of the cut pages. A previous reader obviously had never gotten further than the chapter on Van Eyck, beyond which the pages were still uncut.


Enthralled by the opening sentence, I carefully, though inexpertly, started cutting open the rest of the book with a kitchen knife, page by page - an oddly tactile ritual for accessing a book.

Les plus grandes œuvres des Primitifs flamands sont silencieuses. Tout y est immobile : la nature et les hommes. Cela est surprenant quand on évoque les temps pleins de tumulte dans lesquels ces œuvres furent conçues, temps de guerres incessantes, de meurtres politiques, de soulèvements, et temps de mœurs bruyantes, de fêtes pompeuses […]

The greatest works of the Flemish Primitives are silent. Everything is still: nature and men. This is surprising when one remembers the tumultuous times in which these works were conceived, times of incessant wars, political murders, uprisings, and times of raucous habits, pompous feasts [...]


So here we have a Gustave Vanzype, back in 1929 caring about how artists of previous eras could produce works of intense stillness and noble elation amidst the clamor & materialism of their times. It’s what a brooding blogger, writing in 2019, can only wistfully recognize as an almost shameful longing (a longing for an art stepping out of its rowdy age, expressing deeper seated human longings, edifying works of beauty and truth beyond pressing everyday realities).

 

This elated trust in what high art can achieve is clearly the common theme of the different essays in Vanzype’s book, covering both Italian and Netherlandish artists. Gustave Vanzype (1) also turns out to be an elated Belgian. He is unashamedly proud of “our school” (examples in the book span Bruegel, Rubens, van Dyck and Belgian ‘modern’ painters such as Henry Leys, Jan Stobbaert and Franz Courtens) but explains how the works of "our masters" have gotten dispersed all over Europe, following the historical upheavals that so often have upset our provinces.

Il n’est pas pays plus européen que le nôtre. A son action comme à sa pensée, toujours l’étranger participe. Et c’est miracle que subsistent des caractères particuliers à nos provinces. Ils subsistent, intenses et permanents dans le langage que, toujours, nous avons parlé avec le plus d’éloquence : le langage de la peinture. Mais pour nous en rendre compte, nous devons sortir de chez nous, parcourir l’Europe, aller au Louvre, au Prado, à l’Ermitage, à Vienne, à Munich, à Berlin, à Dresde, à Florence. Nous ne pouvons nous bien connaître en demeurant sous notre ciel. […] Pour ma part j’avais quarante ans quand j’ai entendu le vrai langage de celle de Bruegel. Il a fallu que l’occasion s’offrît de voir Vienne. (2)


It’s a startling passage to read in 2019, by a mind brooding about the state of the world, and of Europe and Belgium in particular. Who would, today, in our fragmenting countries, still dare to evoke a shared historical language of painting (and of music)?

A Belgian Biographical Note


(1) The Belgians amongst us – for as long as there still are any – may smile affectionately when pronouncing his name – it sounds so endearingly familiar & prosaic: “Gustave Vanzype”. The solid sound of his name makes for a lovely contrast with the sensitive & erudite character of his writings. One imagines a typical Belgian francophone Flemish bourgeois of the end of the 19th Century. Which is indeed borne out by the first paragraph of his on-line biography biography.

Gustave Vanzype naît à Bruxelles le 10 juin 1869, d'un père d'origine brugeoise et d'une mère née en Hollande, à Maestricht. Mais c'est le français que l'on pratique dans son milieu.

Gustave Vanzype was born in Brussels on June 10th, 1869, of a father of Bruges origin and a mother born in Holland, in Maastricht. But it's French that is spoken in his circles.


What follows next, surprises and humbles. Here is a boy, abandoned by his father, utterly poor but so devoted to literature and art that he runs away from a sensible training in business. So poor, even, that after a failed stint in Paris, he has to walk back home, on foot, all the way from Paris to Brussels. Désargenté, c'est à pied qu'il effectue le trajet Paris-Bruxelles.

In today’s world, a “Gustave Vanzype” might write freely in Dutch – so that’s good. But then, maybe in today’s world our Gustave would never have dared to give up a training in business to go and write about art. At the most, idling away a Sunday – today’s Gustave might write some arty stuff on the social media, maybe in some sort of English.


(2) a startling passage - in translation
There’s no country that’s more European than ours. In its actions as in its thoughts, the foreign always participates. And it is a miracle that our provinces still retain a particular character. It subsists, intense and permanent in the language that we have always spoken with the most eloquence: the language of painting. But to be aware of it, we must leave our homes, travel across Europe, go to the Louvre, the Prado, the Hermitage, Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Florence. We cannot know ourselves well by staying under our skies. [...] For my part I was forty when I heard the true language of Bruegel's. It took the opportunity to go and see Vienna