BOZAR
You have to love a place that makes it easy for people to pronounce its name right. The BOZAR in Brussels is the “Palais des Beaux Arts” (= Centre for Fine Arts).
The Belgians tend to do that with the French language - make it ‘user-friendly’. None of this “four twenties ten” to say ninety like in France. They are happy to just call it “nonante"!
This might lead you to believe that Belgians like to simplify things. Actually, that is not quite the case. Especially Brussels can be quite a chaotic city. Lovable yes, but often all over the place. In the case of the BOZAR ‘being all over the place’ is taken quite literally. The ticket office of the BOZAR is across the (very busy) street running in front of the actual building. New patrons (like me a few years ago) only realise this when they have entered BOZAR’s spacious vestibule and are looking in vain for ticket counters. Once you find them though, the staff is usually very friendly, efficient and able to help customers in many languages - providing information on all events, including concerts (it is the home of the National Orchestra of Belgium), movies and lectures that take place at the centre.
The building is the work of Victor Horta, Belgian’s most famous Art Nouveau architect. For this palace he left behind the organic curved lines of Art Nouveau and concentrated on the geometric lines of Art Deco instead. The centre is built over several levels climbing up the ‘Mont des Arts” (this Hill of the Arts) in Brussels’ museum district, which spreads out around a monumental staircase that connects the upper and lower parts of the city. Horta had to fit his 'Palais' on an irregular plot and adhere to strict height specifications. After all, on top of the hill sits the Belgian Royal Palace and this arts centre was not to spoil the king's view of the lower town.
Several major exhibitions are scheduled at the BOZAR throughout the year, often with interesting satellite events to accompany them. It first caught my attention in 2016 with the “Picasso. Sculptures” exhibition. Sculpture is not the genre we primarily associate Picasso with, yet it showcased perfectly the genius of this man as he experimented with an array of materials and techniques. This exhibition had been put on in collaboration with the Musée Picasso in Paris and, as the catalogue proclaimed "..the sculptures conducted a dialogue with paintings, ceramics, photographs and objets d'art from Picasso's private collection".
Since then I have had the chance to visit the amazing exhibition “Spanish Still Life” - that included 80 works covering a period of 400 years and showed the evolution of 'bodegones', starting with iconic works by Cotán and Meléndez, moving on to Velazquez and Goya, and finishing off with modern pieces by Picasso, Dali and Miró - as well as last year's crowd-puller “Beyond Klimt” - a celebration of Klimt and Viennese Modernism where the focus lay on the ‘beyond’ rather than Klimt’s work.
My personal favourite was the “Fernand Léger” retrospective in 2018. Having fallen in love with Léger's work during my history of art studies I was very happy to see that the BOZAR was bringing together one hundred of his major works. His oeuvre was celebrated both inside the spacious exhibition halls as well as outside the building. Likenesses of his colourful works were adorning the walls bordering the stairs down the side of the building. A contemporary of Picasso, Léger developed his own kind of cubism; branded “tubism” - since his bold works, resplendent with colourful geometric forms, often included cylindrical shapes and machines as well as robotic humans. They are instantly recognisable and in my opinion they brought the white walls of the BOZAR to life like no other works I have seen there before or since.
The last exhibition I saw only at the beginning of this year was the one dedicated to Theodoor van Loon. Van Loon was a Caravaggist painter born in the Spanish Netherlands whose trips to Italy introduced him to the world of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro and the theatricality of the Italian Baroque. Yet, his works still carry the hallmarks of Flemish painting of the era- especially when it comes to attention to detail and texture. He was a master of plasticity, bringing his figures to life with a tangible humanity. His distinctive style embodied the spiritual renewal that the Catholic Church was seeking after the upheaval of the Reformation. Van Loon's sacred works, like those of his contemporary Rubens, were used to fill the empty churches with newly pious images in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation.
Noteworthy satellite events of this retrospective included guided tours and concerts in churches where van Loon's paintings are still displayed today in the locations they were created for.
Now that I have told you about all the exhibitions you have missed let me tempt you with what is yet to come: Discover the Brussels Renaissance master Bernard von Orley or the craftsmanship in printmaking of Bruegel and his contemporaries in two exhibitions that are about to open. October brings the opening of the Brancusi exhibition, certainly an event I will strive to see. And the end of the year will be celebrated with a Keith Haring retrospective that will run until 2020.
I know that the Old Masters and the Magritte museums at the top of the Mount of Arts are always alluring, but next time you are in Brussels remember the BOZAR. There might be something on that you really love, and it is literally just down the stairs!
In addition to the hyperlinks in the text here are some links if you feel inspired to explore further
Picasso.Sculptures - a short video
Spanish Still Life video
Victor Horta
Fernand Leger (Taking photos was not allowed at this exhibition therefore I don't have much to show you - so please look online for his work instead)
