Home

Arts

Anthropologist of his own life

The wondrous world of Patrick Van Caeckenbergh at Museum M

Twenty years ago, Patrick Van Caeckenbergh was the rising star of the Flemish art scene, crowned with a highly praised presence at the 1993 Venice Biennale. But after his last retrospective exhibition in this country, in 1996, the Aalst-born artist faded from public view.

After he moved to Sint-Kornelis-Horebeke, a tiny hamlet in the Flemish Ardennes, in 1997, critics have often described him as a hermit. “Me being a recluse has become the big cliché,” he says. “But I have never been more sociable than since I moved there.”

Christophe Verbiest
(February 22, 2012)

Bullseye

How to get nominated for an Oscar in five easy steps
© Photo News

As you read this, Flemish director Michaël R Roskam is in Hollywood, flashing a smile and pumping the hands of Oscar voters. Interviews, appearances, events, Q&As. He’s doing what he’s been doing for more than a year now – talking about his movie Rundskop, known across the world by its English title Bullhead. This Sunday, Belgium will find out if it has won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Read a lot of comics

Since his childhood, Michaël R Roskam has been a fan of comics and graphic novels. He thought he would grow up to draw comics himself, but instead he became a painter. Take a good look at his Oscar-nominated film Bullhead, and you will see both skills. Roskam doesn’t, like so many other filmmakers, tell a story only through the narrative and dialogue. He uses the image to convey emotions, to set a mood, to relate an entire lifetime of rage in one long shot.

Lisa Bradshaw
(February 22, 2012)

Lost in translation

Flemish literary translators are honoured in Brussels, as a survey starkly reveals trouble in the industry
Translators achieve more of a profile if their names are included on book covers

Earlier this month, Flemish literary organisation Het beschrijf hosted a public tribute to literary translators at Flagey as part of the PETRA literary translation conference. And such a tribute, which included a literary talk show, performances, panel discussions and special guest appearances by world-renowned authors such as Michael Cunningham and Dubravka Ugrešić, was desperately needed.

The Flemish literary translation industry is in crisis. Already in 2007 Karel Verhoeven, now co-editor of De Standaard, described the situation as “stifling” and “humiliating”. That’s despite half of all books in any bookshop in Flanders being translations. Take away the cookbooks, and the proportion is higher still.

Nobody could have guessed just how bad it was until the Flemish Authors Association (VAV), inspired by a survey on earnings carried out by the European Council of Literary Translators Associations (CEATL), decided to poll its own members.

Alan Hope
(December 21, 2011)

The Golden Age

A history of Hollywood through the eyes of Jan Van Loy
© Bart Van Der Moeren

The premise of Jan Van Loy’s fourth novel Ik, Hollywood (I, Hollywood) is simple yet uncharted territory for a Fleming: In 1909, 17-year-old Louie Peters moves to Hollywood with his brother Charlie. Enticed by the popular short films known as nickelodeons and unsure about his future, he decides to build a studio and try his hand at movie-making. Fast-forward to the year 2000, where journalist Dirk Jansen is asked to write the life story of one of the pioneers of the film industry, who is now living in Brussels: the 108-year-old Louie.

“I grew up watching Hollywood movies, so it was a big part of my childhood,” says Van Loy (pictured). “I’ve always wanted to create a story about Hollywood – its history and the period.” The result is a 640-page epic spanning six decades of film history and covering a wide array of topics such as the studio system, civil rights, McCarthyism, the Wall Street Crash and even polio, which are intertwined with the lives of dozens of larger-than-life characters.

Rebecca Benoot
(December 21, 2011)

Milow and Selah Sue big MIA winners

© Belga

Milow and Selah Sue each walked away with three awards from last weekend’s Flemish Music Industry Awards MIAs). Milow won for best pop artist, best male solo artist and best live act. Instead of making an acceptance speech in the latter case, he and his band played a number by Bruce Springsteen.

Selah Sue (pictured), who Milow had a hand in discovering, took best album, best-selling artist and best female solo artist, which she dedicated to her grandmother.

Rock band dEUS was nominated six times and picked up two awards, for best rock/alternative act and best musician for the band’s guitarist Mauro Pawlowski. Hit of the year (voted by the public) and video of the year went to the Bruges-born Australian Gotye for “Somebody That I Used to Know”.

(December 14, 2011)

Out of the cage

Geike Arnaert’s first solo outing proves there’s life after Hooverphonic

“The time to kill is now / Before the page is full”, Geike Arnaert sings in “This Page”, the final song on her first solo album For the Beauty of Confusion. It’s difficult not to think that she’s singing about leaving Hooverphonic. Having joined the seminal Flemish band at 17, she was the frontwoman for more than 11 years.

In the autumn of 2008, she called it a day. A year ago, Hooverphonic, the brainchild of lyricist Alex Callier, released its first post-Geike album The Night Before with their new singer Noémie Wolfs.

Since Geike’s decision to leave, she has kept a low profile, only recording a few benefit singles and collaborating with Dutch- Flemish band Dorléac.

Christophe Verbiest
(November 23, 2011)

The many sides of Maeterlinck

Ghent celebrates the centenary of Flanders’ sole winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
© Courtesy Ghent City Archives

The trouble is that there’s more than one Maurice Maeterlinck. There’s the writer of lush fairy tales like Pelléas and Mélisande or The Blue Bird; there’s the amateur naturalist who studied The Life of the Bees; there’s the popular philosopher who wrote such uplifting treatises as The Treasure of the Humble, and finally there’s the underappreciated genius of those eerie one-act plays, The Intruder and The Blind. Not to mention the poet and his simple, almost monosyllabic, volume Hothouse.

But now the city of Ghent, where Maeterlinck was born in 1862, is making an impressive effort to create a more coherent picture of their famous son as they celebrate the 100th anniversary of the year he won the Nobel Prize for Literature – the only Belgian to ever do so to this day.

Cleveland Moffet
(November 2, 2011)

Retelling the story

Tervuren’s Africa Museum throws open the cellar doors before closing for a revamp and a reconsider of its colonial past
© KMMA

It’s at least as famous for what it doesn’t tell about the Congo as for what it does. To remedy that, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, just outside of Brussels, will close its doors next July for a three-year renovation. The end goal: to tell the full story of this large, central African nation rather than an ennobled take on Belgium’s days as a colonial power.

The museum, housed in a palatial building overlooking Tervuren park, was built by King Leopold II to host a 1897 exposition of African curia, showcasing the worthiness of his forays into the “dark continent” to his people. That’s if they weren’t already convinced by the wealth amassed through the country’s exploitation of Congo’s Katanga mines, not to mention its rich rubber resources.

Emma Portier Davis
(October 25, 2011)

The Flemish Italian

A new exhibition at Rubens House reveals the famous painter as an architect
© Museo del Prado, Madrid

Peter Paul Rubens is one of the 17th century’s best-known painters. Less known, however, is that he was also a connoisseur of architecture. In the first-ever exhibition to be dedicated to the artist’s architectural endeavours, the Rubens House in Antwerp has brought together drawings, books and paintings from collections worldwide to tell the story of Rubens, the architect.

Palazzo Rubens: The Master as Architect could not take place in a more apt setting. Not only did the museum used to be Rubens’ family home, it was actually designed by the artist himself. “A more eloquent testimony of his ideas on architecture is scarcely imaginable,” says Ben van Beneden, the curator at Rubens House.

Some of the pieces – valuable architecture books from Rubens’ library and works by Michelangelo, Van Dyck and Rubens himself – are from the museum’s own collection, others are on loan from the Hermitage, the Louvre or the British Museum.

Anna Jenkinson
(October 4, 2011)

Oh yeah

Locals relive the 1950s as a legendary jazz club reopens in Antwerp

Don’t be discouraged if at first you can’t find Café Kiebooms amongst the bright neon lights of De Coninckplein in Antwerp. Some people will have heard of the legendary ’50s jazz club, but few will know it has reopened and under what wider flag it sails. So, enjoy this moment of the jazz club’s mystique, then remember that you’re in-the-know, Daddy-O, and head to the inconspicuous Café Olympia at nr 18.

When accordionist Leo Kiebooms bought the Olympia in 1949, he kept its name and some of its features – hence the lit-up discus-thrower at the entrance, a reminder of the Antwerp 1920s Olympic Games. But he spared no costs to decorate the rest of the joint with fancy blue lights and had a little stage built, one that snugly fit his jazz combo. Soon the Olympia came to be known as Café Kiebooms, and the legend lives on today.

Monique Philips
(August 2, 2011)