Painter captures historical complexities of Scottish battlefields
Flemish artist Koen Broucke’s exhibition in Ronse is a result of a fellowship at the Glasgow School of Art that allowed him to explore the sites of ancient Highland battlefields
Walking in war’s path
Contemporary art’s preoccupation with the present day is, of course, axiomatic. It’s built into the very name of the form. Broucke bucks the trend by injecting a healthy dose of history into his canvases.
The artist started exhibiting at art galleries and historical museums in the early 1990s and continued to combine his passions as he racked up successive graduate and postgraduate degrees in history. He’s currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Leuven.
Broucke’s technical approach, with its expressive brushstrokes and bursts of colour, harkens back to the heyday of Modernism. His conceptual approach, however, is as postmodern as it gets.
It’s in the details
With each project, Broucke, 51, mashes together rigorous academic research and an almost metaphysical concentration on historical places and artefacts. But, unlike most other contemporary artists, he doesn’t seek the shock of the new but the reverberations of the past.
“I start from the concept of ‘historical sensation’ as introduced by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga,” Broucke explains. “Huizinga described it as ‘that feeling, brought on by a small surviving object, of a sudden, almost sensory contact with the past.’ So I like to go into details, painting a dead rabbit I saw on my way to the battlefield, light bulbs salvaged from warships, damaged uniforms or flowers on a window sill.”
I like to go into details, painting a dead rabbit on my way to the battlefield, light bulbs saved form big warships or flowers on a window sill
Battlefields are particularly poignant sites of reflection. Broucke’s 2015 exhibition The Beauty of War at the Royal Library of Belgium observed the Waterloo bicentenary with a and a battery of new paintings alongside a selection of archival works plucked from the library’s collection.
His method requires extended, seemingly aimless walks through the landscape, where he collects observations that he will process and synthesize with historical research later.
“I take photographs and draw sketches on location,” Broucke says. “The paintings are all made in the studio afterwards. Then I return to the site and do it again. The goal is the accumulation of knowledge – not just pure historical knowledge, but also intuitive knowledge of the place, of the atmosphere, of my own position in this landscape.”
Highlander
His current exhibition, How Long Have You Been in Scotland?, at Ronse’s Light Cube Gallery is the fruit of an ongoing research fellowship at the Glasgow School of Art. Scotland’s largest city served as a base of operations for Broucke’s academic obligations in both Glasgow and London as well as excursions into the Highlands.
How Long Have You Been in Scotland? presents 70 works, many of them new pieces inspired by the sojourn. One place in particular enthralled the painter.
“I visited a few battlefields like Bannockburn and Culloden,” he says, “but Scapa Flow was my focus. I went to the former Royal Navy headquarters several times. Indeed, my work requires that I return to the same place and go into depth.”
Scapa Flow is rich in history. Sheltered by the rugged Orkney Islands, it served as the UK’s chief naval base in both world wars and was the site where the German fleet was scuttled in 1919.
The title of Broucke’s research project “Many Ways to Scapa Flow” is a nod to another famous episode in which German U-boat commander Günther Prien infiltrated the base and sank a British battleship during the Second World War. Prien’s autobiographical narrative Mein Weg nach Scapa Flow was a wartime bestseller in his home country.
My work requires that I return to the same place and go into depth
Broucke sought to capture the complexity of the place and its history in his paintings. Some foreground the vast expanse of the bay; others feature spectral ships on the horizon, ghosts of the Kaiser’s scuttled fleet. One depicts a U-boat crew dancing around a cannon.
As if this exhibition wasn’t enough, the prolific artist is also showing simultaneously at one of Belgium’s premiere antiquarian bookshops. Situated in the middle of Antwerp’s historic centre, Demian Books hosts Hypocrief, a showcase of Broucke’s interventions in the art-book domain.
Over the past 25 years, the artist has experimented with margin drawings and paintings on historical texts, collages of antique sheet music and illuminated manuscripts. Broucke will discuss all this and more at an artist talk at Light Cube on 2 October, just a week before the exhibition wraps.
Visitors will learn about his practice-based research, see preliminary drawings and hear anecdotes from his battlefield walks. He will also preview future adventures.
Next year Broucke is set to create a brand new installation at Ghent’s contemporary arts museum Smak. The piece will be a faithful duplicate of his library and studio, which will allow him to work under the public’s watchful eye.
How Long Have You Been in Scotland?, until 9 October, Light Cube Gallery, Sint-Martensstraat 12, Ronse
Hypocrief, until 23 October, Demian Books, Hendrik Conscienceplein 16, Antwerp