Museum time: Blicke auf Europa, Brussels Fine Art Museum

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I’ve been having some seriously cool weekends recently, and for once I feel like I’m really getting the value out of the city where I live. Fun adventure time in Brussels has definitely been the order of the day - and night - so I’ll start off with a very good exhibition of German paintings I went to 3 weeks ago. I know this is a long time ago but I don’t think it does any harm to go away and thing about paintings for quite some time after you’ve seen them, because then you only remember the most striking ones.

‘Blicke auf Europa’ - (Views on Europe) is about ‘Europe and German Painting in the 19th Century’ and one of the most impressive curatorial efforts I’ve ever seen insofar as loads of absolutely huge German museums have worked together to loan Brussels really fabulous selections of paintings. Jo and I were lucky enough to have two exceptionally knowledgeable guides in the form of Frank from Frankfurt and Markus from Munich (no, honestly) who gave the whole exhibition a special je ne sais quoi (or more precisely an Ich weiss nicht genau was). Frankly, I was educated – did you know the King of Greece was Bavarian? Well you do now…

The exhibition is divided up into German paintings of different European countries from the 19th Century, along with a brief description of how they were viewed and the virtues (and vices) embodied. I found the descriptions a little coy about certain aspects (i.e. the Franco-Prussian war, Bismarck, going on a reactionary realpolitik spree after the fall on Napoleon) and a little over-enthusiastic about some (young German painters going to Italy, rivalry with Sweden during the thirty years’ War, being excellent Europeans) but overall it was excellently put together and you can’t really blame them for having a strong political message when the exhibition is also called the “central cultural contribution in Brussels of the Federal Republic of Germany to its Presidency of the Council of the European Union during the first half of 2007”.

Because I’m no art historian I’m just going to talk about my favourite painting from the show; I’d like to apologise for my general lack of proper fine arts knowledge right now.

Monk by the Sea, Caspar David Friedrich.

I got all excited when I saw this painting. “Ooh, I’ve seen this one!” I exclaimed with all the joy of your great-aunt realizing her favourite episode of ‘Midsomer Murders’ is being repeated. Frank and Markus gave me a look that can only be described as ‘Teutonic’ before pointing out that Herr Friedrich actually painted this picture five times, and I had no way of knowing if this was the same one I was so quick to claim acquaintance with.

This said, it’s a painting worth painting five times because it says more about the human condition, about the nature of loneliness, and about romanticism as a movement than the traditional thousand words. There’s this idea – certainly one I used to have – that romanticism is all about forests and love poetry and waterfalls. But the fact is that Werther shoots himself and you only have to spend a certain amount of time alone with nature before it reminds you how tiny and insignificant you are; the the sea in particular is this massive force which could crush us all like puny ants tomorrow, if you think about it.

When I saw it - or one if its four siblings - before, it was in an exhibition called ‘Melancolie’ in Grand Palais in Paris which had set itself the not insignificant task of tracing ‘Melancholy’ as a cultural concept through Western history form Ancient Greece to the present day. It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen but even in a captivating collection which included loads of Picasso, Bosch and Odilon Redon (a real weakness of mine) galore – not to mention the actual gates of Beldam – this painting stood out.

Gratuitous Redon because it’s the internet and I can:

There’s something about the huge expanse of blue sky, which takes up almost the entire tableau, that’s at once so oppressive (we’re all subordinate to natural forces) and so liberating – it’s a space filled with potential where you’re free to dream. I mean what’s the monk even doing there? OK he could be contemplating chucking himself in but how do we know he’s not feeling wildly exhilarated after an energetic stroll up from the Abbey to the headland? What if he’s waiting for a boat full of dancing girls to collect him and take him off to a life of earthly pleasures? What if he is and the boat doesn’t come?

When I was at university I wrote my dissertation Baudelaire and Huysmans and the development of the flaneur and dandy – two figures who couldn’t exist without romanticism. Mainly it was an excuse to read lots of books in the secret inner sanctum of the University Library but by the end I came to the conclusion that without the movement’s definition of itself in opposition to society, you wouldn’t have the existentialists and their doctrine of free will either. This Monk is a quintessentially existentialist figure in my view – away from the paraphernalia of society, he’s there by sea. Looking at this painting makes you think about who you are, what you want and what you believe – which is why it’s such a great inclusion in this exhibition about the creation of a national identity over the space of 100 years.

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