Sanguine / Bloedrood

A conversation between Luc Tuymans, Bart De Baere and Manfred Sellink on the occasion of Sanguine/Bloedrood. Luc Tuymans on Baroque

 

January 2018

 

Edward Kienholz [Five Car Stud]:

The installation of Edward Kienholz kick-starts the exhibition. The iconic work had gone 'missing' for 40 years, it had been hidden in a Japanese collection all that time. It resurfaced in 2011 and was immediately shown to the public again. First in the basement of the LACMA, then in the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, and then in the Prada Foundation, which bought the work and linked it to a larger retrospective around Kienholz’s oeuvre. Although 45 years old, the installation is extremely contemporary. It is a very political, social and critical piece of work. It has a certain urgency about it.

We show the installation in a tent on the Waalse Kaai, located between the M HKA and the KMSKA. So outside the premises, in the intimate darkness of a dome. Exactly as Five Car Stud was initially shown, on the Documenta of 1972, by Harald Szeemann. Although our tent is not made of exactly the same material, it does have approximately the same dimensions.

When I first saw the work from a distance, it reminded me of Goya's El tres de mayo. Maybe not a Baroque painting, but a work by an old master anyway. It is overwhelming and - as it shows an execution - has an obvious element of violence. That overwhelming and violent aspect is also present in Kienholz's installation. For me, that makes Five Car Stud the connecting piece between Baroque paintings and contemporary art. The work is not only the starting point of the exhibition, it also owes its title – Sanguine/Bloedrood – to it.

The work of Kienholz (Five Car Stud), together with the work of Caravaggio, form the two benchmarks between which the contemporary field will develop. The fact that the Baroque style has been engrained in Western image thinking and has, as such, inspired various power groups, is often overlooked. This is clearly reflected in a colonial context, however. It is one of the reasons why Pascale Tayou, and also Johann Georg Pinsel from Ukraine, are in the exhibition.

The image is overwhelming within the iconic installation. There are three elements that play and that are continuously present throughout the exhibition: the index, the symbol and the icon. The theatricality of Kienholz's work also raises the question of whether or not the image moves. It contains a cinematic element.

The documentation on Five Car Stud – a work by Edward Kienholz and his wife Nancy – can be visited outside the exhibition on the first floor of the M HKA.

 

Henri Storck [Rubens]

The large works by Rubens - which we do not show in the KMSKA, but in churches - show that they are not actually made for the intimate atmosphere, but for the public domain in particular. That is why we show the film by Henri Storck [Rubens] in the exhibition. Outside, on the facade of the M HKA, we project images of David and Goliath by Caravaggio, which we filmed at Villa Borgehse. In this way, we reinforce the cinematic character and the narrative of the exhibition. It is not an exhibition that will be jam-packed with works, but one that is perceptually grafted on identities and entities.

 

Carla Arocha en Stéphane Schraenen [Circa Tabac]

In the centre is a work by Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen [Circa Tabac], which has already been shown in The Wallace Collection in London. Circa Tabac creates a total fragmentation of the form. Everything is segmented, falls apart again, and this effect is emphasised even further because the work itself is a mirror. The cinematic aspect is present here in an extreme, repetitive form. It is also present in the physical relationship between the viewer and what is, or is not, visible when you look at the sculpture from a distance. That's why it was particularly important to show this 13-metre-long sculpture in the round space.

 

Dominik Leijman [Harnessed Swimmer]

A clear reference to Caravaggio. It is an older work, which also makes use of projection. The grandfather of Leijman’s girlfriend is projected onto a painted surface. He has installed a swimming pool in the basement of his house, without power streaming, but with a harness that physically prevents you from swimming forward. You see that older man vaguely making a fierce forward crawl movement in the water, which suggests an eminent feeling of ‘presence'.

 

Joris Ghekiere [Untitled]

Joris Ghekiere has a very eclectic oeuvre. His works navigate between figurative images with a certain form of lyricism and abstracted forms. But there is always an investigation into the meaning of the surface of a painting. It works as a screen and at the same time it functions as a kind of benchmark. Of the contemporary artists, apart from a few rare exceptions, we usually display one work within the exhibition. I thought that would be better for the artist, and more clear-cut for the overall project that has become Sainguine/Bloedrood.

 

Zurbarán [The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian]

In this work by Francisco de Zurbarán, as in the installation of Kienholz, there is that element of mutilation. At the same time, it also refers back to the dome, which is outside and forms the stage for Five Car Stud.

 

Javier Téllez [El León de Caracas]

The video of Javier Téllez strikes me as Baroque, in the sense that it is about something iconic: the image of the lion, the image of power. For me as well as for my wife, it is a work with a strong emotional connotation. She is from Venezuela, just like Javier Téllez. When we first saw the video, the destruction of the land was already visible. In a very iconic way, you see a stuffed lion that is carried and touched by extras, dressed as police officers, through the shanti towns. The element of decay has an almost epic quality. The entire exhibition takes place within the concept of monumentality. This is, in fact, a common thread that connects old masters with contemporary works.

 

Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami is also in the exhibition, with a display case full of mock-ups / preliminary studies and with a photo of an existing work [The Birth of a Universe]. Unfortunately, bringing the real sculpture to Antwerp proved too expensive. Besides, it would interfere with the works of Pinsel [Mater Dolorosa en Saint John the Baptist]. With Murakami's works, we indirectly focus on the way the Baroque keeps on enjoying an upward movement. When I first made a painting of a Baroque church, I was amazed by the pure technique with which the builders combined images and in an elevated form, almost like a rocket, spatially enlarged the image plane. Murakami does the same, but in a different way. His background is more cynical, his work is a reflection of his Superflat aesthetics, and a reference to the fact that people have forgotten that two atomic bombs fell on Japan.

At the same time, however, there are overlaps with the Baroque. He works from an Asian tradition, from the arts and crafts idea, which is extremely professionalized and refined. Teamwork at Murakami means that conceptually, the work is his, but he doesn't do everything himself. That was the same with Rubens, who, from his studio, would come up with an image, which was then executed elsewhere. The exhibition also contains two sketches by Rubens, which make the hand of the master very clear within that process.

Murakami’s work also contains a PR element, which relates in an inert way to what he actually means: a nihilistic view of life. In the case of the Baroque, this view is different, but there is just as much a contradiction between two worldviews and at the same time a visual uniformity.

 

On Kawara

We will introduce On Kawara to the exhibition with his Date Paintings. That is the Kawara who everyone knows. Later, he reappears with earlier, lesser-known work. The Date Paintings can be understood from a minimalist and conceptual point of view, but at the same time, they contain what happens on a certain day. So Kawara adds a unity of time and an element of remembrance. I found it fascinating to place him in the vicinity of Murakami, and to get both artists talking, as it were. The Date Paintings are an announcement of what you will see further down the road from On Kawara in the exhibition: an unexpected and more direct work [Thanatophanies].

 

David Gheron Tretiakoff [Immolation I, II, III, IV],

David Gheron Tretiakoff has made a very specific work [Immolation I, II, III, IV], which consists of four sheets of rice paper. It is extremely fragile, and the sheets of rice paper are reminiscent of human skin, not least because they contain images of people setting fire to themselves in an act of protest. Those images are made with the glowing end of a burning cigarette. In combination with the very fragile structure of the paper, it acquires an almost poetic value and becomes a work that, despite its cruelty, still has a certain beauty. The images also have the quality of 'remnant', after the devastating fire. Moreover, branding with cigarettes is a method of torture. David Gheron Tretiakoff takes topicality to a new level in his images, while making them lyrical and bearable.

 

Lili Dujourie [The Kiss]

Lili Dujourie was an obvious choice for me. She is an iconic, female Belgian artist, and greatly undervalued. Dujourie plays with the sensuality of the image. She has a very clear, sharp look at how the formal aspect can change to a different kind of narrative. There is also an element of reflection, of resistance in her work. This is also evident in [The Kiss], where the undulating tenderness of soft matter contrasts with the hardness of a triangle, which spatially makes an architectural point. There is also a field of tension in it that is always present in the Baroque.

 

Jan Vercruysse [M (M1)]

A grand piano on the floor with blue glass on top, this work by Jan Vercruysse immediately catches the eye. Through the choice of material, the surface reflects a sense of inertia, which is present in the concept of fame, of notoriety. All this in a clearly detached manner. In complete silence.

Further on in the exhibition, there is auditory work, a soundpiece by Piotr Tolmachov [MM].

 

Dennis Tyfus

Dennis Tyfus is an artist who can draw effortlessly. The verticality and simplicity of the yellow, overexposed surface, combined with the present graphic elements, is reminiscent of the work of David Gheron Tretiakoff. There is again a multitude of things to see. As a spectator, you really have to look at it for a while to see all the different elements. It is a narrative in a narrative, in different forms and at different times at the same time. Incidentally, that is what we are showing throughout the exhibition.

 

Marlène Dumas [Magdalena (A Painting Needs a Wall to Object to)]

The dark painting by Marlène Dumas - for me one of the strongest contemporary female painters - shows a woman turning around. I chose this work mainly because of its gestuality, which reflects both remarkable directness and extreme restraint. Black also plays an important role. The contrast between black and white in the image evokes another colonial memory.

 

Mike Bouchet [Brim]

This work is a huge enlargement of a hamburger. So there is the notion of eating, but as it is extrapolated by its size, it is impossible to eat it now. So the extremely elaborate and extremely vulgar seek confrontation with the work of, for example, On Kawara, or Marlène Dumas, Nadia Naveau, Rubens or Jan Van Imschoot. But it also contrasts with Bouchet's second work [Isabel Dos Santos Jacuzzi], a cardboard jacuzzi that has been rendered unusable. It is shown here as a ruin.

 

Jan Van Imschoot (L’adoration de François pour Judith]

I know Jan Van Imschoot personally, and it is simply impossible for me to curate an exhibition on Baroque work without him. He is an artist who could easily paint a Tintoretto. He goes straight to the heart of the Baroque. Since Van Imschoot is also a real Rubens fan, I delibereately did not to hang him next to the two sketches of Rubens.

 

Nadia Naveau [Deaf Ted, Figaro’s Triumph en Roi je t’attends à Babylone]

We could also have settled for Jeff Koons here with his Blue Balls, but I found Nadia Naveau even more essential in the context of this exhibition, the clash between Baroque and Contemporary Art. Unlike the work of Jan Fabre, for example, that of Naveau is more sculptural. It is more specific in the language of form, with a special tension between objects from the workout culture, which at the same time develop into Louis XV-like busts. All the works we have chosen play with this twilight zone. There are centuries between the different works, but I always wanted to be able to make the connection. In every exhibition I create, there is a cognitive link in the entire visual story, but in this case the big challenge was to develop that story in extremis.

 

Pascale Marthine Tayou

We show Pascale MarthineTayou's work in the inbetween spaces, close to Jan Fabre's drawings, which he made with his blood. I found it interesting that there is an imaginary city on the ceiling, which was made in a different place, by different hands and shipped with a container to the port of Antwerp. The texture of the city clearly shows how the different parts were made, how they were calibrated. This is about the recovery of materials that create this urban sculpture that turns back onto itself, yet formulates a strangeness.

 

Jan Fabre [Een mug/vampier op mijn bloed en Maandstonden van Gerda]

Jan Fabre could not have been absent from the exhibition. Not only because he is a local, but especially because his work has a high Baroque content. In this exhibition, he has opted for a minimal intervention. The blood, which forms a kind of trace, is thus a characteristic Fabre work: in its smallness, as a writing material or as a relic, there is also a megalomaniac element to it.

 

Tobias Rehberger [Kopfverluste, Joan Crawford Slapping Library en Monster Triumphing Library]

The three works by the German artist Tobias Rehberger combine sculpture and projection. At first sight they are almost furniture-like, but behind the sculptures, a kind of haze of visual material can be seen. These are projections of films, of images that you can't actually make out. The real contemporary aspect is blocked off by the formal aspect of the sculptures, by Rehberger's own formal idiom.

 

Bruce Nauman [Good Boy, Bad Boy]

Bruce Nauman is the total counterpart of what Rehberger does. This old work by Nauman is one of his first video works. He was a frontrunner in video art, and made all these kinds of works long before other artists did. He shows his works in a compressed form, very brutal and confronting in space.

 

Michaël Borremans

There are three drawings by Michaël Borremans in the exhibition, from the SMAK collection. Mainly because I think Borremans is very strong, especially as a draughtsman. That's why I wanted to show three older drawings. The house and the accumulation of characters is, in a perverse way, highlighted by the reductions and enlargements.

 

On Kawara [Thanatophanies]

On Kawara’s other work is a set of 30 lithographs, originally from 1955. The portraits are all based on victims of the H bomb. The work is gruesome in its realism. It is often forgotten that Kawara's earlier work was also figurative, and these lithographs are a prime example of this. It is a totally unexpected work, monumental in its modesty. The work will be shown in a kind of square, in a certain order, and will cover one wall. Much like in a middle-class front room. In my opinion, this work is equivalent to the work of Kienholz, albeit obviously in a completely different way.

 

Marcel Gautherot [Aleijadinho]

Marcel Gautherot was a late-comer to the exhibition, and is more suited to the list of documentaries. The exhibition contains two areas for documentaries. The first, in a long corridor at the end of the exhibition, connects with the Five Car Stud of Kienholz, and is purely set out for documentaries: this is where the preliminary studies and the source material are shown. The purpose of this corridor is to contextualise Kienholz's work in time, outside of the tent. Spectators can choose the viewing order themselves: first Five Car Stud followed by the background information, or the other way round. First the immediate experience and then the reflection.

At the other documentary spot, we see the reverse of preliminary studies: Gautherot took photographs of the statues of a Baroque sculptor, Aleijadinho, from the 17^th century. These images are integrated in Baroque churches, and can, of course, not be moved. That is why Gautherot, who was also Oscar Niemeyer's photographer, took photographs of these sculptures in Brazil. The colonial aspect is once again present, which demonstrates the extreme spread of the Baroque period over time.

 

Pierre Huyghe [Human Mask]

In France, no more painting is being done, even though there are a few astonishingly good artists. Pierre Huyghe is one of them. With his work, he too takes a swipe at contemporary events, but at the same time draws on a certain theatricality. The theatricality here is of an animal nature. Huyghe uses a monkey, trained to serve in an eatery, and brings it back to Fukushima after the nuclear disaster. On the monkey's face, he places a no-mask, so that the being becomes a kind of hybrid creature - between man and monkey - that tries to find its way among the rubble. Like in a labyrinth. Since we have to show the film horizontally and in a large format, the image is positively impressive.

 

Fred Bervoets [De gezegende nederlaag]

[De gezegende nederlaag] of Fred Bervoets is a work that is very often misunderstood. I consciously chose one of those spaghetti paintings from the 1970s. These were very contemporary at the time.  They contain an extreme sense of violence, A Clockwork Orange-like quality, a kind of vibrating aesthetics. The paintings work well within a Baroque exhibition, both here and in the Prada Foundation.

We show the work on a black wall, extrapolating the use of colour and the tangle. This formal idiom was very much demarcated for Bervoets. It is also more mechanical than lyrical, although Bervoets is better known for the latter. So it is a pittura metaphisica of Bervoets.

 

Yutaka Sone [Every Snowflake has a Different Shape No. 30],

Yutaka Sone is the Japanese artist with the ice crystals. The work in the exhibition is a very small work, but again a small work that grows bigger because of its specificity. I've always found this a fascinating work, because it's such a crystallized concept. So simple, but oh so perfectly made.

 

Piotr Tolmachov

The work of Piotr Tolmachov, a Belarusian, is a soundpiece. It uses the sound available in the room and sucks it back through suction cups connected to the speakers, which rhythmically move through the room. This soundpiece also provides an exciting interaction with the work next to it, by Sone, giving the latter an extra dimension.

 

Sigmar Polke [Lanterna Mágica]

The choice of Sigmar Polke and his Lanterna Mágica seems to me to be self-evident. He is an artist who has always made a connection between image and alchemy. He draws on the old Western way of thinking, but does so with a choice of materials on which paint will change over time. Transparent screens create double images that rotate.

 

Zhang Enli

With [Bucket 1 and Bucket 2], the Chinese artist Zhang Enli shows two empty buckets. Two hollow objects, the traditional connotation of something that takes place inside, the less visible inside vs. the visible outside. They are juxtaposed with a more recent work [Inane], which shows an elastic shape that grows larger and smaller within a space.

 

Sleeper of Borremans is, in my opinion, an epic work. It is accessible, reasonably white and bright. I thought it appropriate to place it next to a Van Dyck and one of Adriaen Brouwer’s successors.

 

Jacob Jordaens [Studies van de kop van Abraham Grapheus] - Cornelis de Vos [Portrait of Abraham Grapheus]

I've never initiated an exhibition myself, it has always been at someone else’s request. Of course, when you do it, it has to be meaningful.

Like the Jordaens, which, as an iconic piece, relates to the Five Car Stud. The same person, Abraham Grapheus, can is depicted in Jordaens' work and another work from the KMSKA, a substantial work by Cornelis De Vos that was recently restored. In the case of Jordaens, it is a study and I found it fascinating that this character, the same head, is included in a fully-fledged painting. This Abraham Grapheus was painted at the time by the three eminent painters, namely Van Dyck, Jordaens and Rubens. It’s fascinating that it receives this feedback on a human level, and I’m pleased that we have been able to achieve that.

Anthony Van Dyck

Van Dyck will be given a role in the exhibition because, as a painter, he is a completely different from Rubens. There is a psychological dimension to his work. In the portraits he made in England, he was the first to perceive traces of the middle classes. This work shows a man from the neck, a different approach and a fascinating alternation after the works of Borremans and Jordaens, which were more studies than anything else. Van Dyck's work is a counterpoint, in which the character is shown in a proper painting.

 

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Manfred Sellink: “I find it very fascinating to see how Luc looks at the past. He is clearly well versed in art history, but at the same time creates accents and connections that are less obvious to art historians. Contemporary artists give you a fresh look. They make you look at material in a way that is different from the strictly art-historical approach, which is valuable.”

 

“Luc and I went to a number of print rooms for the exhibition [The State of Things] in Beijing, to select graphic drawings from the 16^th and 17^th centuries for an exhibition that would be a confrontation between Chinese artists and graphic works by artists from the Low Countries. I always asked for the iconic works to be laid out ahead of our visit, and Luc invariably picked out the odd one out. Works that we looked at with less interest, that did not strike us as iconic. He looks with different eyes, which is hugely enriching.”

 

“This is also the case in Sanguine/Bloedrood. The discourse Luc quotes is on the one hand a very established art-historical discourse. The Baroque, a very complex concept, can be interpreted in many ways. But there are also very clear elements in it, such as the Poussinists versus the Rubenists, for example. This was, incidentally, an important theoretical discussion in the 17^th century. It all sounds terribly learned, but it is basically about line versus colour, a discussion that was already held in the 16^th century between the Venetians and the Florentines. Rubens represents colour, while Poussin represents the clear line. And when Luc makes such a counterpoint between de La Tour on the one hand - which ultimately did not make it to the exhibition - and Rubens on the other hand, it is, in fact, a contemporary continuation of that centuries-old discourse between line and colour. De La Tour is not really a Poussinist, but he does have that clear line that he borrows from Caravaggio. This is juxtaposed by the whirlwind of movement, in which Rubens mixes the Venetian palette with Caravaggio's chiaroscuro. I look at that contradiction from an academic point of view, Luc from an artistic point of view. The two approaches are complementary and actually meet in the same place.”

 

"What makes it even richer, even more interesting, is that it gives a different perspective on the Baroque. No ahistorical view, but a look at what the impact of the Baroque, of colour, line, claire-obscure and violence meant in the Baroque tradition up to the 18^th, 19^th, 20^th century. And what they still mean today. Luc makes those connections, Luc draws those lines. That's what I find so valuable about an exhibition like this.”

 

Bart De Baere: “What I like is that the artistic ability is being used again in the interest of art. What Luc does is very articulated. The artist’s visual thinking has a different speed than academic thinking. It breaks with the system of how we normally verbalise things, visual thinking creates very sharp combinations. The entire exhibition can be seen as a long series of moves and choices. As a kind of meaning that comes from Luc. He uses the artist’s artistic capacity to give art a shot in the arm.”

 

Manfred Sellink: “The beauty of this kind of exhibition is that it offers a platform. Not only for the horrible, but important, word 'contextualising', but also to show that art - whether it be Baroque, 15^th or 16^th century - was in the past much more international and fluid. There is no such thing as Flemish Baroque. Antwerp had a number of important Baroque painters who have a number of things in common, but there are also overlaps with painters from the South or the North. For example, it is very interesting to compare Rubens' portraits with those of Rembrandt. The division into national schools is something that dates back to the 1830s or 1840s, when all the major national museums were established. The Europe of nations as we know it was born. It is understandable that at a certain point we started to look at these visual languages and traditions for guidance, at the expense of certain ways of looking at things. Ways of looking at a lot of connections that are extremely interesting.”

 

"This kind of exhibition does make those kinds of connections, geographically as well as in time. We are living in a period where we are faced with more images than ever before. If you look at the speed at which those images attack us, I cannot imagine people saying that Poussin is too complicated. It is precisely this era, with all its images, that I find suitable to explain the complex and interesting images from the past.

 

Luc Tuymans: “It is also impossible to go beyond globalisation. We live in a time when no more questions are asked about globalisation. With the rise of populism and the comeback of nationalism, the story of the Baroque as a turning point is both interesting and topical. That’s why Kienholz is so captivating, because he tells the story of segregation. We live in a time of the internet, of Wikipedia, but they have had the opposite result to what you’d expect. You would expect them to make information accessible to everyone, but the Internet is, of course, run by a small number of people. Hopefully, art will always escape this cataloguing. An exhibition about the Baroque lends itself to this, because breaking through the cataloguing is perhaps what the Baroque initially did, before art was classified as being Baroque. It is rather unclear where the Baroque originated. It is not the Renaissance that has been reformulated from ancient times. And it is a completely different viewpoint from everything that came afterwards. It was a rupture, a turning point.”

 

Bart De Baere: “The Baroque era is in many ways the beginning of our time, not only in terms of globalisation. It is a time when images start having an edge: an edge of commercialisation, cynicism, conceivability,... I've always seen that as a kind of orgasm of transgression, of total excess, while it is actually about accepting a form of complexity, a kind of insolubility in the image. While the brightness that is present in worldviews, presented in art, is partly connected with a borderline experience. That is the borderline experience that we now exerpience together.”

 

Manfred Sellink: “We have to be careful not to reduce the Baroque to just the grand, overwhelming gesture. That is, of course, present, but if you study the 17^th century, you notice not only the epic and the great but also the intimate and the small. The caricature of the Baroque as we know it is only a fraction of a much more complex and interesting reality. If you look at Van Dyck's small study head, the beautiful intimate painted portrait of two young girls by Woutiers, or Brouwer's genre scene, you will immediately notice a large variety. So there is a very strong filmic element in the Baroque from our perspective, but that can be both the real epic - think of Rubens, or a Spielberg-like spectacle - and the stilled shot.”

 

Bart De Baere: “At the time, violence was much more direct than it had been for a long time, but the remarkable thing is that it has now regained its interest value. It’s making a come-back, there is a kind of cruelty in the public image today, in the way things are discussed and in their inevitability. Violence and cruelty are not as close to us as they were then, fortunately. When you read detailed reports of the 80-year war, you’d think it was common practice.

 

Luc Tuymans: “At the time, people lived and breathed violence.”

 

Bart De Baere: “Yes, but we are now again forced to live with it, and you are looking for ways to deal with it. You continually make that point in contemporary art, in the choices you make. There is now, I think, a greater relevance than 30 years ago when we were in a kind of cocoon and imagined that violence had disappeared from our existence.”

 

Luc Tuymans: “The fascinating thing about Rubens, of course, is that violence is a luxury problem. It is luxuriously exhibited in his paintings, and there is a certain cynicism in it. Rubens marketed the violence through his appearance. You get a form of pornography, but different from Caravaggio, where it really becomes physical.”

 

Bart De Baere: “I find it strange that you call it pornographic, because with pornography, you cross a line for me that is relevant. Artists then made a mockery of things: 'this is a reality, and I'm going to include it in my work’. So I would not call that pornographic, but rather a way of looking the often harsh reality in the eye. Pornography is not about looking things in the eye, it is about total objectification.”
 

Manfred Sellink: “You also have to look at the context of certain works. Large altarpieces, whether by Caravaggio or Rubens, play a totally different role than cabinets designed for the intimacy of houses. They require a different way of looking at things. The large altarpieces used a visual language at the service of these institutions. We are also used to seeing paintings in a fairly neutral and well-lit spaces, but you have to imagine that many of those paintings at the time could only be admired in the dark with some candles. If you could see them at all, because triptychs were usually closed. It also stank in the church. These are all completely different circumstances. A Caravaggio must have made a crushing impression in twilight. That violence in the counter-reformation was also deliberate, people had to empathize with the pain of the torture of the saints and with the suffering of Christ. So you had to include that theatrical aspect in those large altars.”

 

“This is completely different with pieces designed for the intimacy of a house, where violence would, instead, nauseate. There is a very good example of a painter who is not a Baroque artist: Pieter Bruegel. He made a painting that depicted the murder of innocent children. It was in royal possession in the 17^th century, presumably in Sweden, and all those children were painted away. They were replaced with merchandise. Children who were slaughtered, that was a no-no in the 17^th century, and certainly not in a royal setting. Too horrifying, it was then found. The painting - which is now part of the royal collection in England - now looks very strange: Spanish soldiers burning fire treasures in a Flemish village, while planting their swords in merchandise and wicker baskets. But based on copies, we know what's actually underneath, namely children. What was possible in churches was much more difficult to accept in domestic circles. There they did not want to live with the horror, and they preferred not to be looking at a painting that depicted the slaughter of two hundred children.”

 

Luc Tuymans: “That's also the fascinating thing: we can never recreate the actual setting in which a work appeared for the first time.”

 

Manfred Sellink: “Now we look at images so differently, it can come across as very old-fashioned to try to reconstruct the original context.”

 

Bart De Baere: “In the case of Pontormo, you don't even come close to seeing the image that the painter intended. His biographer, Vasari, describes how he changes a light opening somewhere at a certain moment.”

 

Manfred Sellink: “Yes, but it's also up to us as spectators and admirers of art. Since the 19^th century, we have started to look at religious art in a completely different way. And whether we like it or not, by taking art out of the churches and by looking at it differently now, we can reconstruct how someone looked at a Pontormo in 1550. We can apply a few simple tricks, for example by hanging some works higher when the point of view is important. In the new set-up of the KMSKA, we are going to hang the singing angels, which are three panels by Hans Memling, a lot higher than before. But still not seven meters high, as it probably once hung in the church. Nobody finds it acceptable these days to have to look at one of the absolute masterpieces of the KMSKA with a pair of binoculars. But Memling's work was originally the top section of a large polyptych, and unfortunately nothing remains of what was underneath. So it would be very strange and artificial to hang it at that height anyway, while you don't know or can't see what's beneath it. What you can do, however, is to hang the work a bit higher and thus indicate that the perspective is now different. I am very wary of moving towards such constructions. But we digress, this is about Sanguine/Bloedrood and the Baroque.”

 

Luc Tuymans: “Well, this will keep us going for a while.”

 

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Text: Hans Willemse

Editor: Jeroen Verelst