Category: Artists

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Democracy ART

The European Parliament co-sponsored a remarkable art exhibition in 2023 entitled „Art in Democracy“ The catalogue of the exhibition offers insights into the many preconditions of art. A democratic environment constitutes a non-negligible precondition for most of the works of art. Artists thrive within democracies. Many artists flee authoritarian regimes as their work environments rely on a real freedom of expression irrespective of the will and belief of ruling politicians.
Artists who do not flee in time for whatever reasons have suffered tremendously under Nazi terror in Germany. Authoritarian leaders don’t respect the various forms of expression by artists. Europe and the European Union provide safe havens for many artists to continue their careers in art. This has become a real value of our way of life. Many countries envy us in this respect. We take this for granted in the EU, but 70% of the world population endures authoritarian control. A reminder of this, from time to time, justifies a lot of expenses to support art and artists even beyond our borders.

The romantic setting of the image below is set against the surrealist open window (of opportunities) in an almost Magritte-style dreamland.
(Image: Rafal Olbinski, La Pologne dans l’UE, created for the occasion of adhesion to the EU)

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Digital Visions

Urban planning has been digitalized for a long time. 3D modeling of places and buildings including their interiors are state of the art. As urbanization is also about investment, speculation and anticipation, digital imaging has entered the public spheres in form of cover up of building sites behind fences and in form of large digital prints for information, curiosity and advertising purposes. The inner cities are frequently an avantgarde and microcosm of societal developments. Some dream of full or total flexibility for office spaces (see image below), others experience the inner cities as the spotlight of inequality in society. The best paid executives are catered for by the worst paid delivery personnel. The photographers of the Landesarchiv Berlin, Grönboldt and Wunstorf, brought together a documentary exhibition entitled „Pixel aus Beton“, pixel made of concrete.

With a bird‘s eye view they reveal past, present and future details of how Berlin is experienced and envisioned by investors, architects and people living through the seemingly endless construction going on in the city. The keywords list as part of the exhibition creates a link to scientific literature and to the TU Center for Metropolitan Studies. Photography and even more so digital photography offers a social science perspective to the digital images exhibited. Cities are data spinning areas and a formidable place for digital visuals and visions.

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Revealing masks

Masks can have multiple functions. During the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 onwards we developed a hate-love relationship to wearing masks. Carnival traditions give wearing masks yet another touch. The painter James Ensor added other meanings to a mask. They do not disguise the person wearing them, but might make otherwise difficult to see features of a personality more visible. In a donation initiative and auction to raise funds to fight cancer Yves Delplace made the biggest contribution through his donation of the painting „Intrigue année 2024. Le preneur de selfie”  of which we represent only a partial extract below. In 2025 this depiction of 3 leaders of big countries has gained unexpected relevance. The US and Russia partying jointly while people still die on the  battlefield die to Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine has been turned into a cynic depiction. James Ensor and the surrealists in general would have appreciated this application of their way to deal with or foreshadow coming events. For some people you think it is about time to take off their masks or somebody to take it off. For others like Putin, the friendly looking mask has become apparently a frozen expression despite of the underlying ruthlessness.

Image taken at KBR Brussels 2024 exhibition of donations for auction and jury awards, by YvesDelplace.

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Time Concepts

Tell me about your concept of time. How do you define time? Answers to this question are likely to depend on your upbringing, affinity to a specific scientific discipline or epistemological belief(s). Aristotle defines time to be subordinate to the more basic principle of change. To understand change we need the concept of time. Two points in time define time, intermediate points are possible, which might be interpreted as a precursor of infinitesimally short spells of time. To explain change, Aristotle refers to his concept of time. Other concepts of time build on the notion of succession of events or sequences of events.
Clocks going round in circles have been used to show the progression of time independent of events. Beams of atoms later allowed for more precision of time keeping. The prevalent concept of time still is dominated by the idea of time as an arrow, usually depicted in some diagram resemblance based on the Cartesian coordinate system, but usually starting at 0 or a particular point in time as diagrams in economics.
Following on from the old concept of change and time, we still claim for causality in most day-to-day experiences or for social processes the link to a chronological progression of time. In statistical analyses building on time-stamped occurrences we may use event history analyses or stochastic differential equations to analyze (social) change depending on one or several (earlier) factors. Even the theory of deterministic chaos, which is applied in weather forecasts for example, arises from the sequence of point of measurements.
Mainly since Isaac Newton we cherish the notion of a universal time, which helps us to coordinate different locations on our planet with reference to the Greenwich mean time. Other concepts of time make use of infinity of time and how to deal with this. Life before, or life after death, are human constructs trying to make time understandable or at least manageable for us beyond our own living time. Depictions of time in the arts, paintings or music opens up yet another vast space of thinking about, as well as, experiencing time. We did have and still do have a great time thinking about time.

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Antique Drama

Modern drama and performances have their roots in antique drama. This is evident in literature from the time and some rare artefacts that have survived until today. Masks and statues give an amazing impression of the high standards already attained more than 2.000 years ago.
Many performances have been linked to mystical rituals and religious ceremonies, but beyond those instances there has also been a depiction and interpretation of for example the Greek mythology. Dionysos inspired many artists and people of that time and philosophers equally found inspiration in performances and the representations in temples, arenas and market places. The treasures of the BNF in Paris, galerie Mazarin and rooms next to it like “la salle des colonnes” (Image below), allow to travel back in time into an antique setting in the room of columns.
Taking the world as horizon is the title of the rotating exhibition from the treasures of the BNF. The beginnings of philosophy and major milestones in arts and mysticism across the world figure in this exhibition. In the spacious setting it feels like travelling back in time for a while, just to build on these foundations.

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Endless Questions

The winner of the Niépce prize 2024 has been awarded to Anne-Lise Broyer and features prominently at the BNF in Paris. The exhibition of the professional photographer reflects by way of photographic “still images” on the historic fate of the mediterranean basin. Each and every image has no answers, but keeps posing questions. In the long alley of the BNF in honor of Julien Cain, we walk through history of more than 2 thousand years in photographs up until today and even beyond. Let’s keep asking the most fundamental questions again and again. The exhibition entitled “Est-ce-là que l’on habitait ?” invites us to ask ourselves about the historic origins of so-called Western culture in the mediterranean basin. Ancient philosophy and arts are the foundations even of our current ideas of democracy and freedom.
However, what has become of this in the 21st century? The original statue of freedom has suffered badly. What has become of the freedom of mobility at a time of barbed wire fences rising between countries that influences each other over thousands of years? How about nature? How about religion and freedom of expression? Where is progress? Where is regression?
For centuries we have sought answers in libraries starting from the Library of Alexandria to the treasures of art and knowledge of today across the world. Let’s make more intensive use of these treasures where we shall find answers to most of our questions of the past, to the past and of future interest.

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Hugo intergenerational

Well, this entry is not about Hugo Boss, whose name is probably known to more people worldwide nowadays than the French poet and writer Victor Hugo. The latter Hugo, however, is likely to be known to more generations to come than the former one. In his 19 years of exile with his family he had the unique chance to get to know his grand children a bit closer, which was rather unusual for the late 19th century. The romantic poet was charmed to an extent that he could help it, but to express himself in a longer poem. „L‘art d’être grand-père“ (The art of being grandfather)“. Victor Hugo experienced the death of own children and his wife before and his grandchildren surely gave him reason to believe in a more joyful tomorrow. Comments on this poem mention the idealised vision of the romantic regard on children and even more so on his own grandchildren. « Leur front tourné vers nous nous éclaire… … Ils trébuchent, encore ivre du paradis. » 

We forget all earthly quarrels just listening to the soothing sound like children’s rhymes. Hugo is a master of all literary classes and he ensured that his intergenerational legacy would be part of this.  (Image: Maison Victor Hugo, Paris, writing desk ro stand in front of)

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Text to Image

Long before everybody started to discuss Artificial Intelligence, which in many applications takes the form of transformation of a textual prompt into an Image, Photographers have had literature or quotations in their mind that shaped their images. This was a kind of poetic imagery not always easy to recognize. The exhibition in the „Institut de France“, Bibliothèques Mazarine (LINK), with photographs by Nicolas Fève (LINK) offfers a great insight into this way to conceive of an image and its realization through photography. Exposing the sources of inspiration as well as the photo is like adding textual citations to an image in a much more inspirational and transforming manner than AI is doing these days in 2025. 

Text to image is only one out of the many ways texts might guide imagination, but it is a powerful and gripping one. The history of literature is full of other forms like videos based on novels, comic strips to make classic texts in Latin more accessible. As we shall ask AI products like texts and images to cite their sources and honor authorship, photography as art and science might enhance the literary experience by adding citations to an image. This has the additional advantage that more people will follow up on the sources of inspiration.

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Apocalyptic Collection

As long as humanity exists we had to deal with the experience of apocalyptic horrors. First, mankind could not make sense of natural disasters. Second, after we understood many of the disastrous events on earth and even most cosmological events, we proceeded to create our own apocalyptic disasters. 

One thousand years of unimaginable suffering and destruction are the subject of a unique exhibition at the BNF entitled Apocalypse. The documents start with biblical representations of it and continues throughout the centuries. The artists‘ attempts to depict and characterize the Shoa is part of the exhibition. The atomic bomb is another issue of the 20th century. In the 21st century artists try to move beyond the different forms of the apocalypse. The collection of various kinds of dealing with apocalypses constitutes itself an apocalyptic experience. We still have to go a long way to come close to understanding what drives disasters and what the role of mankind is on this way to seemingly endless destruction. The apocalyptic experiences remind us to keep asking some fundamental questions.  (Image: Exhibition Apocalypse at BNF Paris, Center Piece by Otobong Nkanga, Unearthed)

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Artists Intergenerational

Generations influence each other. That’s a very simple general statement. Biographies, auto-biographies and life course research have all established sometimes more, sometimes less direct influences between the generations. The exhibition “A partir d’elle. Artists and their Mother“, curated by Julie Héraut, combines literature, photo and video that speak to the rather complex psychological or sociological issue. Visits in 2025 available at Stichting A, Brussels.
The starting point of the inquiry into the nature of photography by Roland Barth is chosen like an investigation into a crime. Sophie Létourneau had written an essay which proposes to read the original text by Barthes from this perspective. The artists in the exhibition seem to follow this process of asking themselves what their relationship to their mother is like and how to represent this in an artistic form.
A life course perspective, which takes images or videos with 10 or about 20 years difference, offers a kind of analytical as well as artificialized vision of the evolution of the artists’ relationships with their mother. Realistic images with a morphing backwards from old to young is presented next to images confronting young and old next to each other. “Words don’t come easy to me” could be the title of one of the videos where a young artist has a particularly hard time to talk to his/her mother.
Just after the celebrating Franz Kafka last year and his famous “Letter to my father”, the inquiry into artists and their mothers complements the analytical and artistic vision and interpretations of the child and parent intergenerational relationship.