Last weekend, second visit to the MAS. To my dismay, I cannot quite claim that my first impressions were confirmed: my conscience is not clear. I must admit to having been uncharacteristically mild. I hereby solemnly promise never again to tone down my critical appraisal in the interest of an inappropriate sense of objectivity.
Là où tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté. (Charles Baudelaire)
Upon entering the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts (MSKG), this is what happens: your breathing settles down, and your mind and heart are gently invited to partake of "cette musique occulte plus forte que les malheurs du jour [...,] ce chant voilé qui volontiers s'accorde avec le rythme de la respiration, avec les battements du coeur (Michel Seuphor). You are not told what to see, or how to see it. The ample space and light, and the sobriety of the interior design induce calm, activate the senses.
I witnessed a rare thing. Although the weather was overcast, every now and then the sun peeped through. Inside the museum, I actually saw this modulation of light happening! I don't know if many are aware of it, but this is the very life-blood of painting. The changing light makes the paintings breathe, makes them sing (and, by the way, this defines the difference between a painting and its reproduction). Put this in your pipe, museum curators and architects.
[In the same light, haha, the reproductions of my drawings in this blog give, at a guess, about less than 1% of the original drawings].
Granted, there is probably too much emphasis on 18th and 19th century bourgeois genre painting. But this can be explained by the gravitational pull exerted by the SMAK (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst), across the road, on anything that might be considered 'modern'. I don't see why the Museum of Fine Arts could not accomodate the few 'modern' paintings that are now in the SMAK. Last time I had the stomach to look, their Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky were displayed (or strung up) 4 meters up a wall, in a corner against the ceiling. The utter disgust, hardly disguised, with which the high priests of the Church of Contemporary Arts mess about with painting, in total ignorance of its nature, reminds me of the attitude of the Catholic church towards sex. Hands off, I say.
For those of you susceptible to the silent "chant d'Orphée," go and enjoy the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent. I for one, cannot wait to see the Constable exhibition planned in September.
Greetings.
And here, my drawings of last Friday, 22 July. A slightly rainy morning, yet not cold, and little wind.
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MAS (o menos ?)
Antwerp has a new museum. Or rather, it has a new prestigious building, a monument indeed, that houses the former Ethnographic Museum, the National Nautical Museum, the Museum of Folk Culture, and then some.
The Exterior
I will not linger too long. The stacking of corrugated glass and concrete sections may stir some exitement, but - and this is the main flaw of the building -, all of the glass sections are merely "boulevard," a large hallway climbing towards the roof: the museum collections as such are hidden away within the central column. At the risk of being hung, drawn and quartered on the Grote Markt before the end of summer, I must say this: I do not like red rough-hewn stone slabs that the building is clad with. The material looks out of place, has no relation whatsoever with the geography, history or culture of this corner of the universe. As Jean Clair writes, in his recent L'hiver de la culture, "Les musées ne ressemblent plus à rien," contrary to airports and sports stadiums. The contemporary museum offers shelter, he writes, but nothing of the "terre natale". Enough.
The Ascent
The 'boulevard' is freely accessible until midnight or thereabouts. The journey upward is one of growing exitement, in proportion with the expanding panorama. I leave aside the unease inspired by the same red stone slabs covering the ceilings, and the ill-conceived, half-hearted mini-exhibitions along the walls of the automatic staircase. I must, however, protest as vociferously as written text allows, against the fallacies that meet your eye as you reach each level. On each landing, a large part of the central wall is covered with something which I genuinely took to be a last-minute attempt to temporarily hide an unfinished wall, with something contrived by a guy on the building site who happened to have brought along his laptop that day. Afterwards, I read that these were "light-walls" by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven. Van Kerckhoven is known for her feminist claims for more attention for female contemporary artists. However, here she proves to be utterly unable to create anything on this scale. Display panels in the supermarket have more plasttic, graphic and aesthetic merit than these.. things. Ten lashes with the cat o' nine tails for those responsible.
The rooftop of the MAS offers a truly spectacular vantage point: the view is breathtaking. It is the place where from now on, the good citizens of Antwerp will go to see confirmed their in-bred belief that this city is the greatest and most beautiful place on God's Earth, and, in fact, the true centre of the Universe. Dissent is highly dangerous in this site of apotheosis, so I won't even mention the fact that the greenish armoured glass panelling cuts the panorama in two, neatly dividing skies from the earth, along the horizon. (For the far-sighted: you can see the spot along the right bank of the Schelde where I draw: facing West, at one o' clock, say no more). For anyone silly enough to openly criticize the view, there is a gigantic Health and Safety Warning sign, clearly visible from upon high, down there in the square. Luc Tuymans' "Dead Skull"-mosaic, a blow-up of a 2002 oil painting. (He must be either too busy-busy, or too expensive?)
The Descent
"Lasciate ogni esperanza, voi ch'entrate."
I left the roof wondering where on earth they had hidden the museum collections. It turns out that the entrance to these, on each floor, is a small, dark and otherwise unassuming door above which could be written Dante's warning words - not so much for what is to follow - merely for the museal concept itself. No diamond gates. You timidly push open the door, and see nothing beyond but inky darkness. It is a purposefully conceived sluice that quasi hermetically seals off the museum from the Rest of the World. The only place where one can enjoy (?) this experience is in the House of Horrors at the Fair. The suspicion has seriously taken hold of me, that this predilection for obscurity in museums is the manifestation of a global vampire conspiracy. Do not mock the idea! I remember, some years ago, stumbling in the blackest darkness, through the Fine Arts Museum of Antwerp, where a fashion designer had 'redesigned' the interior. You could technically distinguish paintings, when your eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, after a week or so. By then, your shins would have healed as well.
There are no roses without thorns (talking of non-gm roses), and every silver lining has its black cloud. In the same way, it is quite impossible to visit a museum these days, without having a theme slapped in your face, repeatedly. There may be several reasons for this. For one, it is an established fact that vampires do not rate human intelligence and sensibility very highly: they look down on us mortals, and feel we have to be herded. Secondly, museum staff have to be kept at work and in work. Thirdly, and most worryingly, it seems that museum curators don't truly believe in the power of the exhibited pieces. "What is an object,' they ask themselves daily (and rhetorically), "without a roomful of documentation and multimedia tools?" Or, as Peter Ustinov phrased it: "What is an earthquake without a Richterscale?"
Perversely, in these days of integral democratization these vampires have taught many of us to say: "Oh I don't know about art," not because we lack access to it, but because we are intimidated into believing that a work of art, an artefact, can only be 'understood' through the theme, which an external authority - a vampire - imposes upon the objects.
That is, no doubt, why I completely missed the theme of the first exhibition. In my flawed memory, this was the superb Paul & Dora Janssen-Aerts-collection. Oh no it was not! It was the 'Life & Death'-exhibition. Considering the quality, the novelty of this most striking collection of pre-Columbian art, and the fact that it is bloody here, in this city, it is probably the most underpublicized prize of the MAS, of Antwerp, of this country. It is the most resplendent treasure to have arrived in this city for a long, long time.
In this exhibition neither the darkness, nor the ambiant music, nor the straight-jacket of the imposed theme, nor the faintly irritating video's, succeed in drowning the power of the collection. Even the wardens on this floor are polite and courteous. May the Paul & Dora Janssen-Aerts long remain in this city.
From here on, it all goes downwards. In both ways. The collection of African and Oceanic sculpture does not benefit from being shown against white walls. And the person who decided to exhibit part of the African collections against a visciously red background should have his or her eyes examined, and I mean that. It is like trying to see the sculptures through clouds of pepperspray. Ripping apart the Ethnographic collections does of course seem an excellent idea to a vampire curator, but to me, with my weak intellect, it is merely confusing. I now don't remember what I saw or where I saw it (let alone why I saw it there).
Further along, the ambiant music leaves its 'background', becomes louder and seriously irritating. At one point I tried to admire some Egyptian objects, but I was chased away by a wall shouting something at me. The Nautical collection is not for the faint-hearted. The light-levels are so low (in normal light you wouldn't be able to enjoy the video's), that you have to negotiate your hazardous way through the rigging and achor chains of model sailing ships on the one hand, and wardens who tell you curtly to step away from the exhibit, just as you're trying to read what the object of your curiosity might actually be.
Going down. Masterpieces in the MAS. I was convinced that this floor must be subterraneous, as the gloomy cellarlight indicated. I found the layout rather too depressing to remain there. then, as my eyes were acclimatizing, I recognized some well-known paintings from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. "What have they done to you, my poor captive friends," I cried out. "What have you done to deserve to be walled in like this?!" It is difficult to believe that this is actually billed as the "opening exhibition". But then, when you consider the poster announcing "Masterpieces in the MAS," you should be warned. Some nincompoop with a pc has thought it fitting to cut up Jean Fouquet's Madonna, deleting the striking red and blue cherubs, and replacing them with something that vaguely looks like wall-paper. A good measure of the respect that painting receives these days. An Antwerp masterpiece turned into "la peinture drôle," as Jean Clair would probably say.
Antwerp has a new museum. But for the glass 'boulevard' winding up along its central column, the MAS should soon be dubbed "the Bunker," for that is what it is.
However, we have not run out of options. The most reasonable and plausible proposition is that the MAS should swap places with the Metropolis multiplex cinema complex in Merksem (good public transport access!). Converting the horizontal Metropolis building complex, it would be far easier to attract natural light into the interior, as any self-respecting museum does (but alas few do). On the other hand, the MAS-building is far more appropriate for dividing up into cinema theatres. Or for cultivating button mushrooms.
Thank God in Heaven that we still have the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, that old-fashioned big old bombastic slab of a museum, with its high-ceilinged walls with the vast sky-lights!
P.S.: I've been told by a passing madman that there are plans to superimpose a whole new building on top of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. The lunatic imagination of some people... Next someone will claim that the St.-Annawood will be cut down, opposite from my secret drawing-spot!
Must-read: Jean Clair, "L'hiver de la culture," Flammarion.
If you thought my criticism was harsh, then prepare yourself for this. Jean Clair makes even me feel a bit queasy...
See you soon.
