The Brussels Museum of Fine Arts Revisited

“It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to ‘sea’ as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ‘ship’” (1)

< now please replace ‘sea’ and ‘ship’ by ‘ art museums’(2)>

Yeah, “whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth”, I take to an art museum. So on that particularly damned “damp, drizzly” Saturday morning in August, without much ado I quietly cycled to the Brussels Royal Museum of Fine Arts, mounted its wide stairs flanked by pompous pillars, drew my wrinkled museum pass and discreetly mixed in with scattered groups of visitors.

The Brussels Royal Museum of Fine Arts is obviously not the Louvre and I still remember overhearing, oh over 10 years ago, the disparaging remarks made by some Dutch tourists, who chiefly found fault with the museum’s outdated set-up, reminiscent of “former eastern bloc poverty ”, its last refurbishing dating from the 70s or so. Since then, however, the Brussels museum people (despite meagre funding) did catch up on trendy museum marketing principles: renovating parts of the building, adding a stylish ‘brasserie’ and an up-to-date bookshop , reshuffling the collections and dedicating a whole museum-within-a-museum to the crowd-attracting Magritte.
But I myself, of course, go on cherishing the museum’s vestiges of obsoleteness wherever I can still spot them (those 70s false ceilings, those worn carpets, the fake wood panelling, ...). It’s especially the inadvertent overlap of ill-matched successive styles that does me in: 20th century shabbiness combined with the lingering bourgeois grandeur of a 19th century museum.

And on a sombre rainy day, when the lights in the museum are up, and when through the windows you can catch glimpses of shadowy people struggling with umbrellas, on such a day it is not hard to imagine the bustling bourgeois city Brussels still was in the 1930s.
Neither is it hard to imagine W.H. Auden wandering about in these museum rooms on a December day in 1938, brooding about the human position of suffering while standing in front of Breughel’s Icarus (3) , “how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster”. Today, handy signs direct you to the popular room with the Bruegel paintings. And though the Icarus painting is in fact no longer considered an authentic Bruegel, many visitors still pause in front of it, some of them perhaps reading an Auden sentence quoted in their guide, others searching for Icarus’ tiny “white legs disappearing into the green water” (they are so tiny & tucked away in a corner of the painting, these floundering legs, that you could easily miss them).

There were a lot of Italian visitors last Saturday, flocking together in the rooms with the Flemish Primitives (where they can see, amongst others, two heart rending, pathetic pietas by Van Der Weyden ; an Annunciation by the elusive Master of Flémalle, set in a claustrophobic but enchantingly domestic room ; Dierik Bout’s harsh rendering of a cruel scene of justice ; an oddly still pieta by Petrus Christus, with those figures in frozen postures of grief, standing somewhat forlornly in a vast landscape ; and of course the smooth devotion of Memling’s portraits.

Do Italian art lovers nowadays still admire these Flemish paintings as they reportedly did in the 15th century? According to my friend J. (writer & art historian, carrying a Belgian passport ill matched with his rather Southern ‘elective affinities’ honed during long stays in Italy) Italians are mostly bemused now by the Flemish primitives, struggling with what they see as stiffness and lack of fluidity & volume, failing to fully grasp the sensuality of the typical early Netherlandish sense of atmosphere and of titillating texture.
Be that as it may, my fellow Italian visitors that Saturday were looking intently and slowly, earnestly consulting their guidebooks, whispering appreciatively to each other.

As to me, I got fascinated that day by the quite distinct sensibilities of two Madonna paintings done by Quinten Metsys (1466-1529). Quinten Metsys... ! (4) At times perhaps the most Italian of early Netherlandish painters...
In any case a painter who, without renouncing the Flemish heritage, in some of his paintings fully seems to master the Italian renaissance lessons of well modelled volumes and pleasing compositions. He’s also a painter with a finely honed sensitivity, able to render compassuinately a wide range of emotions, without veering into the somewhat pedant and contorted mannerism of slightly later Netherlandish generations of painters.

Take these two Madonna’s for instance, each appealing to our sensibilities in such a different way. There is that majestic Madonna, seated on an elaborate gothic throne, with the regally draped folds of her robe filling almost the entire picture plane (though in the back, at both sides, you do get a peak at the world outside) . Her expression is serious & sad, (though there’ s a tad of sulkiness too, perhaps in keeping with the slightly aloof appearance of a rich, beautiful girl?). She ‘s absorbed in her reading, no doubt taking in ominous tidings – the little Jesus sitting on her lap is reading too, it seems (or is he just watching the pictures? ) – with a concentrated & knowing look far beyond his age. And yet, it’s such a touchingly small child too, with those little hands, so cute in his white shirt, ah and with a little foot peeping out of the folds of his mother’s stately dress.

And then there’s that other Madonna-painting, so soft and immediately pleasing in both colours and subject , with that warm & intimate rapport between mother & son, with so joyous and domestic a scene (including the humble bread & apple, the homely knife on a plain table cloth).
Two Madonna’s by the same painter, what could be potentially more boring ... and yet (for those who want to see) each painting presents us with a wholly distinct palette of human feeling & sensibility.

How many people have already stood in front of these Madonna’s, rapt with delighted attention ... ? How many meditating faithful Christians? How many agnostic art lovers? (um, & how many bored tourists or students?) How many generations of frivolous dilettantes, earnest connoisseurs and erudite art historians?
In any case, Max J. Friedländer (5) - one of the most insightful and intuitive art historians/connoisseurs I have come across in my, admittedly limited, readings – must have looked quite intently at many of Metsys’ Madonna’s. Leaving us with precise, evocative descriptions, precious crystals of human perceptiveness that manage to capture in a few laconic phrases the full, complex richness of the many sensitivities at play in these paintings.

And isn’t that why we look at paintings : because they are testimonials of human experience which spectators throughout the ages can share and relive, because they offer a “concentrated timelessness”(6) in an otherwise constantly changing and even threatening world.
And isn’t that what is so appealing about these ancient art museums – that the sheer richness of their art collections is proof of a "lasting collective human obsession” (paraphrasing again Leen Huet)(6) .
Thus art museums offer at least some sort of reassurance for the transient & isolated individuals we otherwise are - and some sort of escape too, from our own duller selves, whenever “we grow grim about the mouth” .

 
neatly numbered (though quite lopsided) notes & quotes
(1) Herman Melville Moby Dick
(2) (taking personal note of the fact that dear C. would of course much rather keep the quote as such, duly salvaging all ships and seas)
(3)
W.H. Auden “Musée des Beaux Arts”
(4) Quinten Metsys (a.ka. Quentin Matsys or Quentin Massys) In fact I don’t quite understand why Metsys (who showed such individuality and mastery in a wide range of genres, from realistic caricatures over moving Madonna’s to religious altarpieces and humanist portraits)is not more widely acclaimed. Why for instance was Mabuse (Jan Gossaert/Gennnin Gossart) recently entitled to a major London ‘solo’-exhibition, and not Metsys? + taking note (4) as an opportunity to apologize for the drab quality of the pics (of the 2 clandestinely taken pictures on the spot and of the rather disappointing reproductions found on the web)
(5) Max J. Friedländer Early Netherlandish Painting Volume VII Quentin Massys - some of my favourite Friedländer quotes about various Metsys madonnas:
“the emotional pitch lacks the depth and gravity that give weight to the Brussels panels. The Virgin’s head is rather doll-like – smug and aloof. The child is amiable and insignificant. The whole painting is innocuous and festive, but without the imprint of sorrow that none of Quentin’s other Madonna’s altogether lack”
“[...] the Virgin’s expression is grave, noble and sorrowful, but here it is a bit more sullen and homespun, not quite so proud and a trifle weary. The child, covered to the toes in a long white shift, perches in somewhat uncertain posture on the mother’s arm, an expression of almost animal-like gravity on his face.”
“The intimacy of the kiss is at odds with any air of solemnity, as are the still life details, the delicacies shown on the table in the foreground in orderly array and painstaking, almost over realistic technique.”
And yet another one: “Mother and child move in triumphant freedom, in the spirit of the renaissance.”
And, finally, a quote to confound those who might think Matsys or Friedländer are only about cloyingly sentimental Madonna’s (the following quote refers to Metsys’ Antwerp Altarpiece of the Lamentation) :
“The master eagerly seizes upon opportunities to bemuse the viewer with a show of splendour and a depiction of orgiastic cruelty. The lofty sorrow and many-voiced harmony of lamentation in the centre panel are framed on either side by evil instinct.”
(6)
a passage from Leen Huet’s novel “Eenoog”, describing a visit to the Uffizi - “op een plek als deze zou het verleidelijk zijn om schilderijen beter gezelschap te vinden dan mensen. […] Het gaat om hun tijdloosheid, hun concentratie. Achter een paar kleurvakken zit de ervaring van een heel leven. Ervaring die ik lees. En ik ben niet de enige die er zo over denkt, alleen een langdurige collectieve obsessie kan tot dit soort overvloedig gevulde ruimtes leiden” -
a hesitant, unauthorized translation : “in a place such as this it would be tempting to prefer the company of paintings to that of human beings […]. It’s about their timelessness, their concentration. Behind a few coloured planes there is the experience of a whole life. An experience I am reading. And I am not the only one who thinks about it like that, only a lasting collective obsession can produce lavishly filled rooms such as these”

The sumptuous villa of an industrial tycoon, politics of oppression, veiled women, International Gothic and the spiritual quiet of a Sacra Conversazione.

(or: from hybrid reality to universal intuitions )

A disabused post modern discourse?

Is not reality a dirty tale of dominance, full of selfish sound & fury? And is not so-called high or universal art merely an expression of the dominant (obviously) base desires of the dominant class of the dominant continent?

Take that beautiful art deco villa: just the spoiled son of a Belgian 19th C industrial tycoon throwing his inherited money at a lavish art deco villa, sumptuously decorated with the most expensive materials. And that oriental flavour? Well, Mr Tycoon Senior did not only exploit European natural and human resources but also tramped about in Cairo, and indulged in an exotic fascination for the Orient.

Well, at least that sumptuous villa is now being recycled as a “Center of art and dialogue between the cultures of the East and the West”. And all that splendor now houses a politically aware exhibit about “Rituals, wigs, scarves, make-up and so many other constraints determining the life of women for Centuries, between concealment, unveiling and revealing”.

The imposed (!) modesty of the Virgin? The imposed (!) modesty of the veiled Arabic woman? Or the imposed (?) immodesty of Eve, of sensually made up pin ups. Sigh - the inescapable politics of sexual dominance and male projections about how women should dress : never clothed enough (when modesty is required) – never naked enough (when sexual desires have to be aroused). Those naked women on Renaissance paintings: mere porn for rich patrons .
Yah, obviously, whether you’re Darwinian, or Freudian, or Marxist – you have learned that all art can be deconstructed to become a dirty tale of selfish genes, repressed (or expressed? umm...) sexuality, capitalist dominance. We’re all just selfish individuals confined to our contingent provincial conditions. Da. There.

Redeemed by ‘ordinary poetics’


But however true the above disabused discourse may be - yes, Tiziano’s Venus of Orbino is a pin-up , for those who want to see her like that – those who have an “'oculus impudicus' qui ravale l’émotion artistique à la concupiscence” (Jean Claude Bologne ). So, however distressingly true the above may be, ‘disinterested’ poetry and a universal lyrical sensitivity do exist (yes, non-sexually inspired enchantment with the poetic and aesthetic sensitivity of Tizian’s Venus is possible ) – or, at least, there are still enough of us believing in it.

And therefore, wandering about that art deco villa, I can be enchanted by the space and the rhythms of the rooms, by the pure sensuousness of the materials. And I’m moved, deeply moved by the
magic worked by Maimouna Guerresi : the poignancy and stillness of those white, spectral , hieratic figures ... Levitating? Striding?

What do they remind me of? Definitely not of submissiveness. Of the oriental mystery of veiled women, then? Yes perhaps, but not as a matter of exotics, but rather like the mystery and stillness of a meditating Madonna - the “quiet spirituality of a "sacra conversatione”, done by Bellini for instance, whose Madonnas have that same aura of non-sentimental but deeply moving, contemplative concentration. “ quies - a spiritual reconciliation, idyllic or ascetic retreat into solitude”. Yes, I’m reminded of Bellini, whose pictures achieve that rare intuitive unity of poetry & metaphorical & religious meaning, not requiring analytical erudition to understand their significance.


And that levitating figure? The mystical ecstasy of a Saint? Bernini’s baroque imagination? Saint Theresa?


And those striding figures, with the elegantly dignified folds of those draperies, is there not a visual resonance with the
elongated sinuosity of the gothic international style ...

And so I wonder & ponder ... exulting in intuitive associations. Irrelevant projections? Merely revealing my own hybrid set of accidental cultural references, my own pathetic longing for some universal beauty and meaning? Well, not entirely irrelevant ..., not merely strictly personal intuitions it seems. Later on, when doing some web research on Maïmouna Guerresi, I’m delighted to find these echoes in her own artistic statement :


“As with many ancient icons, my figures in hieratic poses recall images of the Virgin, but also celebrate contemporary cultures and religions that have kept their traditions alive. This gives rise to a new and hybrid iconography [...] My work is part of a [...] transcultural expression’, where the elements of formal beauty combine with ancient African symbolic forms. I present a hybrid reality, consisting of eastern and western cultural references, in which ordinary poetics reach beyond what is represented to unite with a universal condition of beauty, mysticism and sensitivity. This kind of intuition is common to all peoples of the world” .

Post Scriptum, 6 months later
(But I am having doubts now about these "spectral, hieratical figures" - it's their "faceless-ness" which makes me feel uneasy. Because, what's an individual without the expressiveness of her/his face? What's an individual without eyes?)

Art Historical Notes Washed Ashore : Guest Contributions to a Brief Art History of Rain

It seems that representations of rain are definitely on the mind of artistically aware bloggers, as witnessed by the generous reactions to my appeal for contributions towards an art history of rain.

Pensum confirmed the status of Turner (1775-1851) as notorious painter of rain & fog, and furnished a precious link to Georges Michel, a pre-impressionist French landscape painter who ostensibly did not shy away from some dramatic open air drizzle .
And as to non-western art, Pensum also drew attention to Indian artists’ delectation in rendering rainy subjects . Note the explicitly pelting rain in the image (coming from a 17th Century manuscript) of Krishna and Radha dancing in the rain!
Further thinking about “Rain in Art”, Pensum also became all the more certain “that earlier tribes and peoples must have depicted rain in petroglyphs and ritual art “ – suspicions backed up by some interesting articles he found, i.a. by Renaud Ego . And indeed, in view of the importance of “rain” for human life, it only seems natural that it should have turned up in ritual images. Which leaves one speculating whether “Rain” was perhaps too much linked with pagan rain rituals to be admissible for depiction in Christian art?

However that may be, Pensum found further delightful examples of rain in eastern art (quoting his comment): “ it would seem that the Eastern traditions have been more enamoured with precipitation from early on. of course the rain has been used to good effect by oriental artists, as in this Korean painting from the late 12th or early 13th century. And though a later work, this ink painting by Maruyama Oshin from the late 18th century is a fine example of exploiting the obscuration provided by the falling rain. While in India it seems they relate rain with joy (perhaps the fall of blessings?) as they tend to like dancing in it as in this example from about 1670”

Furthermore, both Pensum and Roxana came to the rescue of my failing memory and supplied the name of the Japanese rain artist par excellence, Hiroshige ( 1797-1858), who did the famous Japanese print of a bridge in the rain.

As a superb connoisseur of floating bridges, Roxana also promptly came up with the tribute Van Gogh paid to this Hiroshige rainy bridge.
And with her exquisite Japanese art sensibility, she furthermore kindly shared yet another lovely Japanese print picturing a rainy evening.

Leen Huet from her side consulted the undisputed art expert from the Low Countries, Karel Van Mander (the 16th C Flemish-Dutch gossipy equivalent of Vasari) and came up with a charming anecdote: a painter from Mechelen/Malines, the illustrious completely forgotten Gregorius Beerings (1525-1573), seems to have specialised in Flood pictures showing nothing but a rainy sky and water with the Ark. Questioned about the absence of people in his pictures, the painter shrewdly explained that all people had either drowned (& their bodies would only resurface after the receding of the waters) or were hidden from view in Noah’s ark. According to Van Mander our good Gregorius had quite some success with his chain produced uniformly grey flood pictures. But, Alas!!!, dear curious blog reader: no pictures of this Flemish rain genius seem to have survived. ...
Leen Huet further shows a Michelangelo (1475 – 1564) Sistine fresco with desperate, drenched people seeking refuge from the flood. Michelangelo's Flood looks suitably grey & grim & miserable, but does lack, to my romantic rain taste at least, the splendid splatter of gleaming rain drops .

From an aesthetic point of view, Leen Huet also raises the question why in particular the Flemish Primitives, disposing of the technical means (oil paint!) to depict the sensual and optical qualities of rain, never did render it. Too dull and gray, in comparison with scintillating mirrors , tears, vases and gleaming copper? Iconographically speaking, Leen Huet further notes how Rain is, apart from the Flood, not very present in the bible and therefore not the kind of subject Christian patrons would ask for.

In the meanwhile, rain has briefly stopped over here, so time to rush out for some dry open air experiences.

Wanted: A Brief Art History of Rain

Granted, there are many pressing questions worth being answered first, but right now I’m just sitting here wondering about Rain in Art. When & where & why has it first been represented? Isn’t there some famous Japanese print with a bridge in the rain (but when was that made?). And how often has it been raining in Western art? Not that much before the 19th century it would seem. There are violently romantic ‘storm at sea’ pictures. And Turner did do foggy & rainy things, and obviously there are impressionist paintings of Paris in the rain and of London in the fog. Simmering expressionist views of drizzly Berlin must have been painted too.
And then of course, the full potential of the urban romance of rain has been unlocked by urban photography – going from classical B&W photos ( Leonard Misonne!) to glossy pictures of all the grubby grimy glamour of shimmering neon lights reflected in wet streets.

But so, the real art-historical question: how about rain in pre-romantic, pre-modern art? Is there for instance any explicit rain to be seen in 17th century Dutch landscape and seascape paintings? Well, skies & seas & rivers can definitely look pretty rough in the most anxious pictures done by Van Ruysdael , but where’s the visibly raging rain? The splashing drops? The rainy misty shrouds? I’m not sure ...
And the Venetians then, with their Laguna-dampness .... Does rain ever finally pour down in Giorgione’s ominous Tempest?
Oh, and in medieval books of hours, with their miniatures showing the labours of the months, surely there must be a picture of poor drenched peasants toiling away in a downpour? But no, even October, November and December seem to keep it quite dry in Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

Um, but come to think of it, surely there will be plenty of rain in religious art! Mystical floods! The Deluge! Noah’s Ark! Hmmm ... not really, wet precipitations clearly were not a favourite pictorial theme before the Romantic age.
Though there are of course a few Nativities taking place in snow covered stables including icicles hanging down from the shabby roof. And Bruegel’s hunters were courageously (& quite prettily) trotting through deep and very white snow. But still: no rain.
There are quite some missed iconographic opportunities there methinks. How infinitely pouring rain could have added to the pathos of poor Joseph and Maria trudging on that tired donkey during their Flight to Egypt! And imagine a chilling hostile drizzle in the Garden of Olives... (now don’t tell me it hardly ever rains in Egypt or Jerusalem - painters adapted the scenes to northern tastes anyway).

And the Caravaggists, with their contrasted chiaroscuros – why did they not exploit the many pictorial delights of gleaming , splattering, refracting Rain?
Perhaps because rain back then in the old days really was nothing but a nuisance, a harbinger of miserable wetness and of fatal colds & coughs?
Perhaps one does need a sufficient measure of rainproof materials and vehicles, as well as warm housing, to appreciate the romantic and visual potential of rain?
Not to mention the lavish availability of waterproof sources of artificial light – yeah, car lamps, traffic lights and neon lights ... they do get the very best out of rain.

Notes being washed away

Prisoner's Dilemma in Brussels? (July 21st , 2011)

Being an inveterate doubting humanist, I‘ve never shied away from Great Nagging Questions such as “the inescapable duel between biological necessity and the transcendence of the human spirit”. (1) Thus there is the puzzle of altruism (or just plain kindness): is it a uniquely human moral quality which transcends (2) the ‘inevitably’ selfish biological instincts (3)? But then how could it survive nature’s merciless selection of the fittest? Or is altruism merely yet another evolutionary strategy serving an ulterior selfish motive, a strategy that has evolved because in some cases apparent selfless behaviour does enhance evolutionary success? (be it on the level of selfish genes, selfish individuals or selfish groups) (4)

In any case, digesting the findings of evolutionary biologists, keen economists reasoned without much delay that 1> self-seeking is inherent to our evolved human nature and that 2> humans are rational in the pursuit of their self-interest. Thus they posited this elemental truth: “Human beings are self-seeking, rational agents out to maximize their gains in a fierce, competitive world”(5).
And wanting to draw conclusions as to how societies should organize themselves, they added 3>, “nature [being] mankind’s moral compass” this ‘natural’ individual gain maximization will get the most out of each and every resource (human or otherwise), thus benefiting to the community as a whole.

Mathematically based ‘game-theory’ could even help those rational self-seeking ‘players’ to find the optimal strategy to maximize their individual gains. (5)
But alas, one of those maximising games irrefutably showed that individual rational and self-seeking reasoning did not always produce the best possible collective good. In the so-called “Prisoner's Dilemma” “each player pursuing his own self-interest leads both players to be worse off than had they not pursued purely their own self-interests”(6)

So shouldn’t we then all, as reasonable beings aware of the limits of pure selfishness, rather seek enlightened cooperation instead of going for the selfish option in our ‘games’?
Umm, well, It’s true that if we are both being reasonable that we will both be better off, but ... ay, here’s the rub, what if I am being reasonable & I give in, and the other does not, then I’m the dunce of the affair! Ah and just suppose that I won’t budge, while the other might give in, then I have a chance to win it all! And so neither of us gives in, neither of us cooperates and we‘re both worse off than if we had cooperated.

Dear readers, obviously only few of you are concerned with the fate of the Belgian people, but really, the recent Belgian political manoeuvres are a perfect (though sickening) example of game-theory. The Belgian politicians (sorry, the Dutch and the French speaking politicians of Belgium) have been trapped in this Prisoner’s Dilemma for over a year now, hostages of narrow “Them and Us” group thinking, too paralyzed to be able to form even a government.

Yesterday, at the eve of the Belgian National Holiday, the poor tired King of Belgium addressed its troubled nation, speaking about responsibility and tolerance, about how disastrous the current stalemate was for each Belgian citizen (sorry, for each Dutch speaking and each French speaking citizen of Belgium). An almost desperate, but above all genuine and dignified plea for cooperation ... (7)

Upon which, quite reluctantly, one of the stalling Flemish political parties (say party A) did announce to be willing to rejoin the negotiations with the French speaking parties. And, WHAMM – BHAMM , this mere sign of “willingness to cooperate” was immediately punished by another Flemish party (say party B), eager to steal voters from party A . Indeed, Party B could now claim to be the only Truly Unflinching Defender of The Flemish Interests. And so Party B did not measure its words – accusing Party A to betray the Flemish Interests, “to show its bare naked butt” (“volledig met de billen bloot” ), “to go flat on its belly” (“plat op de buik”).

Again, I am an eternally doubting person who knows she does not know and who, having not analyzed in full detail all proposals from all Dutch speaking and all French speaking parties, is not eager to take big political stands.
But I do have taste ....and I do have a sense of beauty and of dignity. And the sheer crudeness with which this Flemish party B crushed a tentative opening towards negotiation ... Nope, that’s not where I want to be. And yep, now I know for sure – this party B is indeed nothing but a bullying populist party opportunistically catering to the basest selfish instincts.

And in the meanwhile, also on this 21st of July, and also in Brussels, European leaders are convening, with nothing less than the fate of the Eurozone being at stake. One can only hope they will be able to “transcend”(9) the Prisoner’s dilemma, that they will be able to at least try and pursue the collective good ...

Nine National Belgian Notes
(1) Oren Harman – “The Price of Altruism” - “George Price and the search for the origins of kindness”. Click here for a review. It's a truly fascinating book “[covering] the entire 150-year history of scientists’ researching, debating and bickering about a theoretical problem that lies at the core of behavioral biology, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology: Why is it that organisms sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others?”
(2) Ah, transcendence! Have never been quite able to grasp what it is, except that it denotes a realm of all that‘s beyond our greedy materialist grasp? As a (inveterate, doubting, etc) humanist I of course take “transcendence” in its humanist-philosophical sense, not in any God-given sense. And what would I personally put then in that transcendental realm - everything that is not merely utilitarian, everything that gets us beyond our role in the food chain, ie : meaning, beauty, goodness, justice, ...
(3) “inevitably selfish” – yeah, well, it’s simple really: in a struggle for life under conditions of scarce resources, selfishness does enhance individual fitness to survive, and thus evolution will mercilessly get rid of any selfless tendencies that reduce individual fitness.
(4) This kind of apparent altruism then depends on relatedness of genes (helping one’s kin), or on expected reciprocity of support and mercy amongst individuals, or on the success of cohesive groups against other groups. But so it is still always one entity surviving at the expense of another. There are even very elegant mathematical formulas that describe how and when “selfless” behaviour is an efficient strategy for genes and individuals to enhance their eventual selection success.
(5) “The price of Altruism” pp 135-137
(6) See Wikipedia for full exposition on Prisoner's Dilemma
(7) Look, I have neither outspoken royalist nor anti-royalist convictions. But I can see how a purely ceremonial, symbolic monarch can help to foster some common sense of belonging – without therefore veering into royal adoration or blind patriotism. And again, as to the Belgian nation – yes, I do cherish it, because it so utterly lacks the more nefarious tones of nationalism, and yes, I do value this cultural diversity inherent in the Belgian nation. And as to the threat for the Dutch language of having to share a nation with an “imperialist” language such as French – well, frankly, I think that Global English poses more of a threat – (witness this very blog written in second hand Global English by a Dutch speaker)
(8) as Hannah Arendt rhetorically asked: “ Could it be that taste belongs among the political faculties?”
(9) Ah, there’s “transcend” again! Time for a confession – while I am fascinated by the biological origins of human morality – at heart I still am this old-fashioned Kantian humanist who would rather believe that humans do not merely entertain notions of altruism and goodness because of their use for individual or collective survival. I would much rather continue to believe human morality stems from some sort of empathy or non-utilitarian “affection for our fellow creatures in chance’s kingdom” (Richard Powers), from some non-utilitarian sense of beauty and human dignity.

Ten Minutes

At an exhibition, one often casts but a glance at each painting. Our enjoyment is based on the retina transmitting an instant impression before being attracted by the next delight.
Looking for a full ten minutes at a single painting is already considered a lot of time (with usually over 100 paintings per exhibition, and 10 minutes for each other painting, one ought to spend 16.5 hours at the average exhibition).

And yet, 10 minutes spent in front of a superb painting .... is nothing. And everything!! 10 minutes standing there, enchanted, entranced by the leaves of a tree, by dancing light patches, by the tangible atmosphere of a breathing nature.

The painter himself, we can read, used to set off for entire days in the countryside to observe patiently the myriad of light effects, “laying in the fields from dawn till night , in order to learn to represent with precision the breaking of day, the sunrise and sunset, the evening hours”.

Today's cameras are probably better equipped to exploit all optical laws to faithfully render a landscape – but could they also convey the enchantment of laying in the fields for entire days from dawn till night?

From the catalogue
“Le peintre Joachim von Sandrart rapporte qu’ils partaient ensemble des jours entiers pour observer les effets du soleil sur le paysage, se préparant ainsi à rendre avec acuité la nature particulière de la lumière matinale ou les effets du coucher du soleil.”
““Il cherchait avec tous les moyens à pénétrer les secrets de la nature, étendu dans les champs, de l’aube à la nuit, afin d’apprendre à représenter avec exactitude la naissance du jour, le lever et le coucher du soleil, les heures du soir” “

Of Soldiers & Mystics, or: from Guns to Tears

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

(Walt Whitman - Song of Myself)

Well, dear blog-reader, I bet you would never have pictured me going to the "Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History".  Granted, C. did drag me along, but I didn’t put up much of a resistance either. Furthermore, we didn’t just visit the innocent exhibition documenting the Belgian presence in Germany after WW II.  Nope, I must confess that we devoted most of our time to the permanent collections of guns and cannons throughout the ages.

While C. was eager to explain how everything (from cannons to revolvers) worked, I was no less eager to grasp guns’ basic operating principles and pushed for ever more details and examples.
And truly, when it comes to arms human ingenuity is boundless! How ingenious indeed, automatic machine guns that recycle the gun’s own recoil force to increase its fire ability! Yah, and how devilishly smart those shrapnel shells were: self-exploding canisters widely dispersing bullets above enemy grounds!

At this point C. and I did look rather shamefacedly at each other – how smart, and how mean and diabolically destructive this all indeed is ...
And I promptly remembered a similar shameful realisation in childhood. As a true tomboy I had always favoured toy weapons and little soldiers over dolls. But round about age 11 or 12 I did experience a sudden burst of empathy (thanks to voracious reading? or female hormones at last getting through? ) and started worrying about my militarist games. After a transition period ( in which I would only wound but no longer ruthlessly kill my imaginary enemies), I then radically decided to throw out all the toy guns and to pursue more peaceful occupations (ie even more reading).

And as it happened , on the very same day the visit to the Military Museum would find a startling counterpoint. Outside the Cinquantenaire park, just across the road, in a church which I hadn’t even noticed before, ran an exhibition whose title had piqued my curiosity when earlier browsing a cultural agenda:
Mystical Gardens of the Heart of Europe / Les Jardins Intéreurs du Coeur de l’Europe.

After all the , um, virile sound and fury, the contrast couldn’t be greater when entering that church – a half dark space filled with ethereal (albeit recorded) vocal music (1).  Only a few people were wandering about , looking at a dozen of exhibition panes with reproductions of drawings & gravures, accompanied by sober texts.
The works and thoughts of the great European mystics (2) were evoked : Hildegard von Bingen, Meester Eckhart, Jan van Ruusbroeck, Hadewijch van Antwerpen, Marguerite Porète, Angelus Silesius, ... and, more recently, Etty van Hillesum, Edith Stein, etc.

And I don’t know at what point exactly it happened – perhaps while stirred by a particular ephemeral & pure passage in that music? Or perhaps while reading some of those accompanying texts, speaking of “inner gardens” and of the ideals of solitude and contemplation in a “collapsing world”?
Anyway, I felt tears welling up, first because it all had felt for the briefest of joyous moments like some sort of homecoming. And then, immediately, because of an all engulfing sadness, a keen sense of fragility and loss. It was about personal loss: hadn’t I renounced my own contemplative inclinations - though rather philosophical & aesthetic than religious- to become a useful member of a utilitarian world?(3). And, worse still, it also was about a general loss: a whole world, a whole human culture of reflective thinking bound to disappear.

But later on, by the most ambiguous of reasoning, I did manage to feel a certain paradoxical and defiant pride about the sheer stubborn persistence of this most useless, this most irrelevant, this most fragile of human inclinations: contemplative thinking. (4)
An inclination, apparently bestowing no evolutionary advantage whatsoever in the struggle of life, producing neither guns nor bread, but still sticking around.... Yah, was not thinking a freedom from necessity, and thus a source of human pride in the face of the overwhelming practical imperatives of our genes?

Always in for some crisp critical notes
(1) Oh beware, do beware of recorded religious music in churches! Insidious tearjerkers, that’s what they are. And not the real thing!
(2) At this point I still owe some sort of apology to A. regarding a discussion about religion we had a couple of years ago. In my over-zealousness to denounce the hypocrisy of established religions, and wishing to save “moral awareness” from the clutches of the church, I did not fully appreciate the nuances A. introduced. She (rightly, I now concede) drew attention to the depths of thinking and the moral integrity attained in the Christian mystical tradition.
(3) And I cannot honestly blame “the” world or my parents for this early exile from the gardens of contemplation. (Well, not completely at any rate). It has been an ongoing (and, frankly, quite exhausting) warfare going on in my own head: on the one side an admiration for the “true” & “useful” knowledge brought by the natural sciences as well as for the impressive technological advances (and this admiration is then accompanied by frustration about the eternally recursive and “useless” nature of reflective thinking). On the other side, a simply irrepressible need for beauty and meaning (“ a life without reflection is not worth living”)
(4) But about “thinking”, Arendt of course was never wrong, and perhaps she has said all there remained to say in her “The Life of the Mind” ( which may well be the ultimate Elegy for Philosophy).

Appalling

There are things one would rather not know , things one would rather not read about. Atrocious deeds done to people, done to women in particular.

Over the past weeks one could thus read interviews with that doctor of a hospital in east Congo , telling about the ordeals of women who have been raped, mutilated and are then ostracised by their own communities. Telling about how in the vast majority of cases their abusers go unpunished.
And while further perusing the papers, one could read about the belated capture of a Croatian war criminal. And one was reminded of those cruel war years in Yougoslavia, when Bosnian women were abused by the thousands.

No, one would rather not know all that . One really would rather read something else. And yet, these crimes have to be made known, as widely as possible. Silence would be the worst.

And what to do? Besides shuddering and lamenting? Run to the bank and donate to Amnesty? Write a letter to one’s representative in the European parliament? And link to a UN- campaign page.

Links:
http://www.stoprapenow.org/
www.feministpeacenetwork.org

'a certain slant of light', on a late May afternoon

Place – a terrace in the centre of Brussels
Time – Saturday May 14th , 6PM

“There’s a certain slant of light”, on late May afternoons ... And there ‘s also a certain texture of (grey) stone ....

Not to mention there are certain windows, with red flowers on the window sill, through which one can catch a glimpse of a man reading, with his head slightly bent.

And to perfect this luminous bliss - his silhouette contrasts nicely with the gay colours of a certain rainbow flag, fluttering behind yet an another window in the back.

From Eternal Stone to Mirrors & Polka Dots

It’s perhaps not needed (but well, not forbidden either) that I generously share the reflections which popped up during a trip to yet another provincial European town, quite removed from the epicentre of world affairs.

Though actually, even a drowsily dull train ride from Brussels to Metz can spawn images quite representative of our age. On this particular train service one first has ample opportunity to observe (live!) the modern breed of valiant business travellers - all impeccably suited, reading financial newspapers, touting Blackberries and laptops – a sure sign that the Belgo-Luxembourg financial industry isn’t dead yet.
After the orderly disembarkation of this financial cohort, one then can direct one’s gaze outside, marvelling at the mightily imposing steel plants of ArcelorMittal – thus being presented with conclusive visual evidence of the fact that, despite the many industrial residues in these regions, the lead in heavy industry has passed on to other continents (to India in this case).
But the gawking train traveller is not granted much time to muse about the financial and industrial decline of Europe because a giant hallucination next fills the entire train window : a gleaming, white roller coaster structure, quickly followed by a vision of yet another, even larger, steel&wood roller coaster skeleton.
Since it is well known that Europe will not perish for lack of amusement, these structures obviously do not startle because of their frivolous function, but rather because of their sheer physical bulkiness: dinosaurs tramping about in an otherwise virtual entertainment age.

Having in the preceding paragraphs duly paid my tribute to the real world, I now dare to divulge the obscure nature of my readings on the train (that is, whenever I was not keenly observing my surroundings). First I expectantly opened a book titled “the necessity of art”, but I soon got bored by its threadbare Marxist references and then even felt quite depressed because of the nature itself of the venture: the necessity to demonstrate the necessity of art ...

So I eagerly switched to (hopefully) more solid reading : an early 20th C book (1) by Wilhelm Worringer (2) about the Gothic "artistic will" as opposed to classical art intentions.
It is strange to read in 2011 a book with a thesis that now is common place but in 1927 was still provocative , challenging as it did the monopoly of classical aesthetic ideals and arguing that “abstract” art was not a matter of lack of representative skills but rather a conscious intention (3).
And though I did savour some of the book’s thoughtful insights about the deep human needs and insufficiencies art caters to (4) , it could not lift my rather sombre, self doubting mood (as an irrelevant unpractical art lover in a materialist world). Ah blessed the times when one would still quarrel about the qualities of representative art versus abstract art - blessed the times when one would still seriously discuss matters of beauty, of meaning, of transcendental longings! Etc Etc Etc

But lo! there was Metz station, time to get out, to check in a hotel and to engage asap in art-touristic appeasing rituals (5).
Wishing to further burnish my modern day credentials, I first of all visited the brand new Pompidou centre for modern & contemporary art. And I must admit, the exhibits there do sometimes manage to revive the feverish ‘Zeitgeist’ and some of the excitement of the once deemed revolutionary 20th C art .
But the Metz-Pompidou curators do not seem dogmatic, and so the exhibits are endearingly ambivalent about some of the 20th C art that does not fit into the now dominant modern discourse, the kind of art now spurned for not being “avant garde” enough (6).
Thus they do display works that “offer an alternative to a reading of the 20th Century reduced to a succession of rowdy ruptures” (7), but on the other hand comments on the wall earnestly and retrospectively chide the Parisian Museum of Modern art for “having neglected in the mid 20the C avant garde works to the benefit of certain cubist works that by their decorative qualities had become acceptable”.

But of course, no eagerness to honour ephemeral modernity, would ever have me skip my dose of illusions of permanence, and so, “for love of the eternal character of stone”(8), the next day I wandered for hours in the gallo-roman-medieval museum of Metz - quietly contemplating the remaining emanations in stone of the many varieties of human energies and beliefs throughout the ages.

And yet , and yet – for all my deplorable art-conservative instincts and classical longings, when later visiting also nearby Nancy – it was not the elegant 18th century classicist splendour of the famous Place Stanislas which stirred me most... No, it was the unexpected encounter in a museum with an old “acquaintance” – the endearingly outrageous, crazy Japanese artist Yayoï Kusama , who magically & stubbornly fills the world with mirrors & polka dots.

notes
(1) "L’Art gothique, [Formprobleme der Gotik, 1927]. Traduction de l'allemand par D. Decourdemanche, Paris, Gallimard, 1941."
(2) his sheer name, so ‘stark und stabil’ , so alliterative, & then also that worrying echo. The publication date of this particular French translation is also startling: April 1941 - one cannot but imagine defeated Parisian flâneurs ruefully scanning the many German names on display in the windows of bookshops ....
(3) “in historical periods of anxiety and uncertainty, man seeks to abstract objects from their unpredictable state and transform them into absolute, transcendental forms”
(4) WW(French translation) : “toutes les creations métaphysiques et poétiques de l’humanité ne sont que des reactions puissantes et admirables de l’instinct de conservation contre la sensation déprimante de l’insuffisance humaine [...]"
(5) In fact, what WW writes about the “primitive art drive” may very well apply to my own refuge-seeking in art galleries, cathedrals and other contemplative sanctuaries: “Troubled and tormented by life, [primitive man] seeks the inanimate because there the disquiet of all becoming makes way for enduring stability. [...] Creating an artistic work, means expressively fixing a stable beyond of the phenomena(un au-delà des phénomènes)"
(6) I may have had an overdose of modern art in my twenties, which would explain why I now often get so very tired when visiting yet another museum of modern art , telling yet again with gusto the story of all those brave ruptures with stifling tradition – but well, “Duchamp’s urinal is in the museum for almost 100 years now” (as Thierry de Duve wrote), so perhaps it's no wonder I find it difficult to experience still its revolutionary thrill.
(7) “offre une alternative à une lecture de l’art du XX siècle réduit à une succession de bruyantes ruptures. [...] [où] le scandale confère [...] une célebrité immédiate”
(8) WW (French translation): “Par amour pour le caractère éternel de la pierre”