James Pembroke Travel: William Cook delves into Surreal Belgium
Belgium is so familiar, yet so weird. No wonder it produced the world’s greatest Surrealists. William Cook headed off on the trail of René Magritte, and found himself in a strange parallel universe
Standing on Ostend’s windswept promenade, gazing out across the cold grey water, British travellers could be forgiven for wondering why they ever bothered to leave Blighty. The weather is identical (damp and blustery); the architecture is pretty similar (drab brick and concrete); even the locals look much the same, wrapped up against the wind and rain.
The thing that brought me here, and keeps bringing me back, is something you’ll never find in Britain. Ostend may look like Ramsgate on a rainy day but, unlike Ramsgate, it’s the gateway to the homeland of Surrealist art.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated by Surrealism. My parents (both artists) were always trying to introduce me to Abstraction, but I was far more interested in the dreamlike art of René Magritte.
‘Where does Magritte live?’ I asked my mum. ‘Belgium,’ she replied. ‘Where’s Belgium?’ I asked her. ‘Between France and Germany.’ She didn’t sound too sure. Eventually, I found it in my atlas. It was too small to feature on my globe. Later, I became enthralled by the ghostly netherworlds of Paul Delvaux – haunted cities full of spooky skeletons and bare naked ladies
‘Where does Delvaux live?’ I asked my mum, a bit embarrassed to enquire, on account of all his naughty nudes.
‘Belgium,’ she said, bluntly. I could tell she wasn’t a fan.
From then on, Belgium and Surrealism became indelibly linked in my imagination and, half a century later, I’m pleased to find I wasn’t too far wrong. As well as all the usual suspects (Mesens, Marien, Lecomte…), there are loads of other Belgian artists with no direct links to the Surrealist movement who share the same perspective. Maybe it’s because Belgium is such a strange linguistic mishmash, of Flemish, French and German. Maybe it’s because it’s been fought over for centuries, by Austrians, Spaniards and Prussians, and heaven knows who else. Whatever the reason, having travelled all over this compact country, and finding it more peculiar with every visit, it strikes me that this mongrel nation is a singularly surreal place.
The best place to start your surreal tour of Belgium is the Ensor
House in Ostend. James Ensor is a household name in Belgium, but he’s still little known in Britain. Born in 1860, he spent his entire life in Ostend, living above this souvenir shop run by his domineering mother. I always thought the skulls and masks in his paintings were products of his lurid imagination but, in fact, these were the kind of curios you could buy in his mother’s curiosity shop downstairs.
In this provincial hideaway, where he lived until his death in 1949, indifferent to the world around him, Ensor developed a unique aesthetic, straddling Impressionism and Expressionism, and laying the foundations for Belgian Surrealists such as Delvaux.
As befits an artist with such a weird vision of the world, Ensor was completely batty. An admirer bought him a harmonium, which he installed in his apartment and played obsessively, composing rudimentary marching tunes for the local brass band. Even though his musicianship remained elementary, he insisted on playing these basic compositions to all his visitors, who only wanted to see his brilliant paintings. Ensor’s passion for music eclipsed his art, even though he had no musical talent whatsoever. Ostend’s superb art gallery has a fine collection of his otherworldly artworks, alongside some sinister works by Léon Spilliaert, another protosurrealist, who was also born in Ostend.
An hour away by coastal tram (a very surreal way to travel) is the little seaside town of Saint-idesbald, where Delvaux
had a holiday house. Today, SaintIdesbald is home to the delightful Paul Delvaux Museum, hidden in a whitewashed villa on a quiet sidestreet a few blocks back from the beach. I’d assumed this was Delvaux’s holiday home, but the curator told me it was nothing of the sort – Delvaux lived a few miles away. The foundation needed a building in which to display its sublime collection and, as no other building was available, they bought this residential house.
When they ran out of room, there was no way they could extend upwards or outwards, so they dug down and down, creating an enormous basement which stretches far beyond the garden, and under the car park across the road. It’s eccentric and enchanting, the most fitting forum you can imagine for Delvaux’s bizarre suburban fantasies.
Next morning, I caught a cranky old train to Brussels, rattling through flat, fallow fields and thinking of all the trains in Delvaux’s hypnotic pictures. I’d come to Brussels to see an exhibition at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts about the relationship between Magritte and Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers. Broodthaers was a generation younger, but the two men liked each other, and you can see they had a lot in common.
Brussels is the best place in the world to see Magritte. The Magritte Museum houses the world’s biggest collection and, out in the suburbs, is the humdrum house where he created most of these mesmeric works. There used to be a Magritte on show here, but it was stolen in an armed robbery. Although the museum got it back, it’s no longer here. Yet there’s still lots to look at – including ‘lost’ Magrittes, re-created from photos of destroyed or mislaid paintings.
What’s so moving about this place is what a plain and simple house it is. Magritte and his wife lived in the ground floor flat (they had no children). They had a small bedroom, a little living room and a basic kitchen out the back. At the end of their compact garden, Magritte built a studio where he did commercial work to pay the rent. He did his surrealist paintings in the tiny dining room, beside his beloved wife, Georgette.
Over at the Atomium – that mad, futuristic eyesore built for the 1958 World Fair – there’s yet another Magritte exhibition: an array of life-sized models that replicate his greatest artworks.
It’s a daft idea, totally pointless, but surprisingly enjoyable. For this part of the trip I’d tagged along with a bunch of other journalists, all here to see the Broodthaers, and as we got off the tour bus, back in the city centre, disaster struck. Ever since I arrived in Ostend I’d been writing down everything in a notebook, and now I realised, to my horror, that I’d mislaid it somewhere en route. Everything was in that notebook, and I mean absolutely everything. It felt like a punch in the stomach.
I decided I must have left it at the Atomium. I hailed a cab and we crawled through rush-hour traffic for half an hour, euros racking up on the meter.
When we arrived at The Atomium, I remembered. I’d left it on the tour bus. I phoned my guide. He phoned the bus driver. The driver had my notebook.
If I hadn’t jumped into that cab, I could have walked across the street and fetched it. Now he was out of town. He wouldn’t be back until seven tonight, when my Eurostar left for London.
Was my notebook lost or found? Was the stuff I’d written down essential or useless? It was an absurdist situation the Belgian Surrealists would have relished.
When it happened, I’d been close to tears – but now I had to laugh. At seven that evening, as my train slid out of Brussels and left this ugly, beguiling city behind, I took out my new notebook and began to write.
Magritte, Broodthaers & Contemporary Art, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, to 18th February 2018. Magritte: Atomium Meets Surrealism, The Atomium, Brussels, to 10th September 2018