The eyes have it

Entry to the National Gallery here is free the first Wednesday each month and we had wanted to visit the special exhibition they have of the 1930s school of Belgian (Wallonny actually) painters who used the name NERVIA and were in the business of celebrating the traditions of the area and also to encourage younger painters in that part of the world. They were unknowns for me - but I am a fan of belgian painting. And it proved to be a wonderful exhibition – with the styles variously reminding me of Renaissance; the great Belgian master Constantin Meunier; and more modern Clydeside painters. The new Glasgow boys are only part of the story - my friend Duncan Goldthorp has a relative who painted stunning realist industrial landscapes before the heavy industry disappeared from the West of Scotland.
In the course of searching the internet for some pictures of the members of the school (it’s Louis Besseret’s painting which heads the post) I found a great art blog - It’s about time.
After the exhibition, we dropped (hardly surprisingly) into the Anthony Frost English bookshop and were warmly received by the staff – a cup of coffee no less! I picked up a copy of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States and a Thomas Hardy novel. Zinn’s is one of the extremely few bits of radical writing one can get in the States and sparked the thought about the methodology of the global freedom indices. Patently the USA authorities place major restrictions on the availability of alternative world views which are allowed not only in schools, universities and libraries but even in bookshops and publishers – let alone the printed and visual media. On that basis it should be scored badly – but such things are difficult to measure and therefore are not part of the methodology used for these league tables. A diagram could usefully developed to identify the different areas of freedom – unfortunately this blog doesn’t allow me to insert diagrams.

And while we’re on the subject of the media Farewell Fourth Estate is a good overview.

Brussels culture

Have now identified some possible apartments here in Brussels and will make a first visit Thursday – in a nice area. Had the idea today of revisiting the Musee des Beaux arts whose presentation of Belgian painters and sculptors so impressed me first more than 20 years ago. And this was no disappointment – although only one of the striking Constantin Meunier sculptures of coal miners and their grieving wives now on display (see above). I had forgotten just how powerful Belgian realistic painters of the late 19th century were - such as Charles Degroux and Eugene Laermans with their studies of poverty (Le banc des pauvres showing the haggard faces at the side of the church service) and the effect of alcohol , Braekeleer (with his interiors) and Leon Frederic (with his studies of various age groups). The museum library was groaning with books on Magritte, James Ensor and Felix Ropf – and also on Breughel and Bosch (one of whose massive triptychs was folded to draw the visitor in for closer study) but not a single book apparently on the realist painters. However I did find one of these large black and white catalogues of the entire museum stock of “modern” painting which gave me what I wanted – 700 pages each with about 10 small versions of the paintings - for 5 euros! I came out of the gallery to typical Brussels gloom and rain. The gallery has an excellent website where you can access most of the paintings. The pictures which now head up the last few blogs are taken from that website.
Before that I had encountered one of these amazing shops devoted to classical music –at least to the (German) Nexos brand which allowed me to get 2 free CDs for 1 bought at 7 euros. This encourages experimentation – and so I was very pleasantly surprised by such revelations as Alfred Hill’s String Quartets vol 1 (a New Zealander who lived from 1869 to 1960); Giovanni Platti’s 6 Flute Sonatas op 3 (1697-1763) and various French Flute composers (Donjon; Genin; Godrad; Gaubert; Gounod) of the late 19th century. The opportunity for such musical and cultural serendipity is perhaps the main criterion in the selection of the base I seek – and does strongly point to this area. I remember with fondness a similar shop in Sofia.