Page 56 - Studio International - May 1973

Belgian realists and the name of Gerhard Richter should also be Keyser, and there is a more recent development
mentioned.
in the sense of a radical realism in the works of
If in the loth century pictorial art is a critical Guy Degobert, Marcel Maeyer and Roger
self-scrutiny of its nature and function in Wittevrongel. This is not counting the Social
K. J. Geirlandt
contemporary society, this happens inter alia in Realist movement of which, since 1945, the
confrontation with all the domains which principal propagators have been Roger Somville
surround and delimit it. Thus assemblage art and Edmond Dubrunfaut, and the most
is a confrontation with materials not used in important manifestoes and group formations :
classical painting or sculpture, and which, `Forces Murales' (1947), 'Art et Réalité' (r954)
according to Kemeny, have become the artist's and 'Mouvement Réaliste' (1969).
new palette, 'too large to be held in the hand'. It was Roger Raveel (born in 1921) who gave
Cubism and collage art had already shown the the impulse to the figurative innovation. He is a
way. Object art and its appropriation of reality contemporary of the Dutch Cobra artists, but he
During the abstract art deluge, the confronts classical painting with its ability to did not follow them in their passionate art.
disappearance of the familiar and recognizable create illusions and represent objects. The During the period of pictorial 'outbursts' from
image of reality meant for the traditionalists not works of Kienholz, Kudo and others scan the 1951-1954, he practised an archaic figuration,
only the denial of art, but also the decline of essence of plastic art in its relation to the recalling the works of Leger and of the Brabant
bourgeois humanistic ethics. happening. artist J. Brusselmans. The forms were clear and
It was remarkable that the traditional It so happens that, each time there is an easily recognizable, but highly simplified; there
recognizable image was regarded by the social innovation, the majority of its adherents was no anecdote and the theme came from the
realists as an essential condition both for misunderstand it. In most cases the new is immediate surroundings of the artist, but
resuming the dialogue with the man-in-the- approached from that particular aspect which without any intimist climate. The colours were
street and for rediscovering the social function of links it with the past, and its essence is not lively and pure, the structure was elaborate. The
art. When, in the sixties, the recognizable image immediately grasped. This is what is happening translation of reality into the artistic image was
made its come-back, it came up to the today : one does not at once distinguish the made by means of a series of pictorial
expectations of neither the defenders of essence of the innovation in hyperrealism, so equivalents and by effects full of contrast
traditional art nor the social realists. In their that its propagation rests on a number of between, for example, the concrete and spiritual,
opinion pop-art, new realism and new misunderstandings which trace part of this new the linear and pictorial, or local and abstract
figuration were as aberrant as abstraction, and realism back to roth century illusionism, colours. Unlike today, it was a very monotheistic
the outcome of an art in a state of crisis. historical realism and a disguised animism. period from an artistic point of view: they
The new artistic movements which Fortunately, the propagation of the innovation believed in abstraction, acting in such a
originated in London, New York and Paris, and eventually becomes easier due to the followers polarizing way that many semi-figurative
which were the products of a city culture in a basing themselves on misunderstandings. movements also rallied round it.
post-industrial age, used extra-pictorial means, Belgium has made a certain contribution to The abstract movement's domination in
mass-media and, to a large extent, photography. this new realism or new figuration. Two groups Belgium was so strong, that in 1955 Raveel did
Chuck Close is one artist who uses great care of artists have been interested in this field since some abstract experiments in which he was
in representing photographic information, the sixties. There is 'The New Vision', i.e. the particularly preoccupied with the light-giving
concentrating particularly on the focus problem, art of Roger Raveel, Etienne Elias and Raoul De function of colour. In the summer of 1962 he
visited an exhibition of Rauschenberg in
Switzerland, which made a deep impression on
him because 'he made pictures with objects
attached to them by means of which he tries to
make the picture participate in the surrounding
space'. This had already been present in
Raveel's work for some time. In an interview
towards the end of 1962 Raveel stressed the
importance of this merging of the picture with
its immediate surroundings, and his endeavours
to introduce a 'magical power' into art. Raveel
instinctively felt what the final goal had to be.
The painters whom he admired, namely
De Kooning and Stamos, he called 'artists of
yesterday'. Yet he only found a new way when
he discovered Pop Art, and saw a relationship
between his oeuvre of 1951-54 and Pop Art
works. At the same time he had found an
opening towards reality and returned to his
former way of representation. In 1962-63 he
painted a large triptych Yard with Living
Pigeon, and in the central panel he placed
a cage with a living pigeon. By means of this
picture Raveel situated himself very clearly. He
proclaimed that his reality had nothing in
common with the large town or with Pop Art.
His reality was confined to his rural
surroundings. His means were neither those of
Rauschenberg and lyrical abstraction, nor those
238