Page 27 - Studio Internatinal - October 1974

Belgian art reflects the best of all Europe and
this is especially true of Belgian modernism.
After the serious social unrest of the 1850s
Belgium achieved in many fields an importance
far greater than might have been expected from
a population of that size. Belgian business
boomed, fed with raw materials from the
mushrooming colonies and with patents from
inventors of genius like Zenobe Gramm
(dynamo, 1871) and Leo H. Baekland, who not
only produced a new kind of photographic
printing paper but also the secret of Bakelite.
Belgium shone during the glittering period of
European expansion. By the turn of the century
Belgium had produced no fewer than five Nobel
prizewinners and was one of the most powerful
industrial nations in the world. The health of
art is partly determined by economic factors; so
it is not surprising that Belgian cultural life
blossomed from the 1880s on and that Brussels
became one of the most attractive artistic centres
in Europe.
Any history of modernism in Belgium must
begin with 'Les XX', the circle of the twenty,
which, together with its successor, 'La Libre
Esthetique', was the driving radical force in
Brussels for thirty years. It was also, for a time,
the most important avant-garde organization of
its kind anywhere in Europe, attracting the most
considerable foreign artists to it, offering little-
known painters their only chance of exhibiting
and commissioning some of the greatest but
least understood composers of the day to write
music for its regular concerts. The progress of
'Les Vingt' and 'La Libre Esthetique' also
illustrates how Belgian art has profited from an

openness to ideas emanating from abroad: wherever they were taking place. Early group In 1887 Seurat had shown La Grande Jane
French Post-Impressionism, Symbolism and the Salons showed Rodin, Whistler, Sargent, some with 'Les XX' and in 1888 he joined the Belgian
British Arts and Crafts Movement provided at of the impressionists, Redon and Monticelli. again, as did Signac, who exhibited thirteen of
various times the framework within which most Redon was still little-known even in Paris at that his divisionist canvases.
of the group's members worked. time, and when later `XX' exhibitions concentrated This partly explains how so many young
'Les Vingt', founded in Brussels in 1884 and on the post-impressionists it became clear to a Belgian painters became interested in
run by a secretary, the lawyer Octave Maus, number of French artists that the most Neo-Impressionism, but they were also influence
were twenty young artists (among them James favourable platform for their work and ideas was by what they read in the pages of a weekly,
Ensor, Theo van Rysselberghe, Willy Finch, to be found in Brussels. L'Art Moderne. L'Art Moderne had begun
Ferdinand Khnopff, Felicien Rops and, later, In 1888 even Cezanne (who had refused to publication in 1881 but, edited by Maus, Edmo
Henry van de Velde) who came together to take part in any exhibition since 1877) agreed Picard and the writer and art historian Emile
organize annual exhibitions of their work and to be shown with 'Les XX'. Told that Sisley and Verhaeren, it became almost the house journal
that of twenty invited and mostly foreign Van Gogh were to be represented in Brussels, of 'Les XX' after 1884. Maus asked Felix Feneo
artists. The group was therefore very exclusive. he wrote to Maus: 'In view of the pleasure of to become the Paris correspondent of the paper
But it had no programme and was extremely finding myself in such good company I do not and it was in L'Art Moderne that the brilliant
sensitive to important new developments, hesitate to modify my resolve (not to exhibit).' critic developed many of his ideas.
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