Dear friend,
you might remember I visited the IMAGINE! exhibition in Brussels some time ago, celebrating 100 years of international Surrealism. In the same week, a second exhibition opened, focused on the contribution of Belgian artists to the Surrealist movement. This one is called Histoire de ne pas rire. Surrealism in Belgium , and it’s hosted at Bozar (which is pronounced the same way as ‘beaux-arts’, but it’s not the same as the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts). Of course, I had to visit this one too, and these are my impressions…
…first impression: the first rooms are so weirdly organised that one can’t look at a painting without blocking someone from looking at it (or another painting). Luckily this improved after a few rooms. Second impression: this is mostly a Musée Magritte Remix, including so many works of the most famous Belgian painter that the actual Musée Magritte is currently hosting the paintings of a different artist, Jean-Michel Folon . Also this impression improved later in the exhibition, but still it feels a bit like a cheat.
The painting in the photo at the beginning of the post is by Paul Delvaux. I love his style, even if a bit too often he seemed to just paint naked women for no apparent reason. This one (better photographed here ) is almost an exception… but then I found out it was originally only half of a painting .
This work by René Magritte (also see it here ) has always looked a bit silly to me (mostly because of the malicious expression of the pear… compare it with a different version ), but let’s look at it as the encouragement for a tree that is a bit too stuck in its root to go and explore the possibilities the world offers.
Like it happened for the IMAGINE! exhibition, the nicest side of Histoire de ne pas rire is the fact it devotes a decent space to women artists I hadn’t clocked before. For instance, Jane Graverol (wikipedia ), whose most fascinating work for me was this Les harmonies naturelles (also here ).
Rachel Baes’ De filosofieles/La leçon de philosophie is one of the most haunting paintings in the exhibition (more or her on wikipedia , and a better picture here ). Is the girl walking backwards or forward?
By the way, as I was looking for better photos than mine, I found a more detailed post about the exhibition at Brussels Pictures .
All in all, despite the nuisance of the first couple of rooms, I would recommend this exhibition too, which gets more interesting in its second half.