My mind has not been with dolls or in Berlin this week. I have just returned from a trip to Antwerp. I fell in love with this city some years ago when I had an exhibition there and am always glad to return. M HKA the contemporary art museum is always worth a visit, amazingly so on this occasion. On the ground floor we were treated to a spectacular overview of art from the 1960s and 70s showing the influence on European Art of the new movements coming out of the states. The exhibition Spirits of Internationalism, ends this weekend. All hung beautifully in the amazing spaces of this disused grain silo.
Then, on the second floor we were inspired by the retrospective of Belgian artist Chantel Ackerman “Too Far, Too Close”. It really made me think about how narratives can be created in film by using the medium spatially, spreading image across different types and sizes of screens, not relying on a prosaic, cinematic, single screen, device. A lot of artists and gallery curators are so unimaginative in their approach to showing video works.
Seeing the four spectacular Rubens paintings in the cathedral prompted a visit to his extraordinary house, extended from its Flemish heart into an extravagant Baroque Italian villa. Art super stars working for the “Yankee Dollar” are nothing new really. Neither of course is the practice of artists not making their own work, recently criticised so heavily by Mr Hockney. But I learnt several things during my visit to Rubens house that question our ideas about authorship.
1. Rubens was a court painter to Archduke Albrecht, as such it was his duty to make court portraits. Several copies would be made by the studio that could be ordered to be given as gifts to other monarchs or friends of the Archduke.
2. Rubens over painted older masters paintings with his own alterations to “improve” them.
3. Finally there was a painting made by two painters, one good at figures and landscape the other at still life, apparently a common practice at that time and a quick way to turn out paintings for the open market. It also enabled the buyer to get , well 2 for the price of 1.
Final inspiration came from the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels, an extraordinary collection, still on the subject of 2 for 1, there was a spinet with a virginals fitted into the side.
Back home and back on track now, I got several books of German Romantic Painting out of the University Library yesterday and did a lot of thinking on the bus coming home. However I am not going to Berlin yet so I had better get on with some video editing now, inspired by Chantel Ackerman perhaps?
