Etchings and the avant-garde: Dutch art at Bozar

To celebrate the Dutch presidency of the Council of the European Union, which runs until July, the Netherlands has set up a range of cultural activities across Brussels. Three exhibitions at Bozar catch the eye: modernist Theo Van Doesburg, good old Rembrandt and the ambitious but still incomplete Imagine Europe.
 
Theo Van Doesburg: A New Expression of Life, Art and Technology not only fits in the programme for the Dutch presidency, it’s also part of a larger cycle of exhibitions that Bozar is organising this year about the importance and meaning of the avant-garde.

Utrecht-born Van Doesburg, who lived from 1883 until 1931, was part of the avant-garde of the interwar years. With painter Piet Mondriaan and architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld, he spearheaded neoplasticism, or De Stijl (the Style), the artistic movement founded in 1917.

He was a versatile artist: painter, poet, interior designer, graphic artist and arts theorist. All these aspects of his practice are present in Theo Van Doesburg, as are the links between his art and that of his contemporaries. In fact, of the more than 140 works here, only a third are by Van Doesburg.

A new expression

“It was time to appreciate his place in art history. Everyone knows Mondriaan, but no one knows Van Doesburg,” says Gladys Fabre, the exhibition’s French curator. “My starting point was a manifesto he wrote in 1922 in which he was looking for a new expression of life, art and science. This refers to his belief in an interaction between all art disciplines.”

That much is clear from the first room of the exhibition, where geometric abstract paintings by Mondriaan or Georges Vantongerloo hang next to decorative windows by Van Doesburg that follow the same colour scheme.

Despite being unmistakably a member of De Stijl, Van Doesburg also had a Dadaist period, mainly as a poet and graphic designer – works that are close to those of Kurt Schwitters, whose collages are among the highlights of the Bozar show.

This Dadaist phase is just one example of how Van Doesburg kept evolving in the 14 years between the inception of De Stijl and his untimely death. It’s an evolution both in style and medium. You can see drawings, for instance, that Van Doesburg made for the interior of a university hall in Amsterdam, the colour scheme for a cinema and dance hall or the design for a tiled floor.

The exhibition is also strong in showing the influence of De Stijl on other European artists, some of them now almost forgotten, like the German Walter Dexel or the Hungarian Vilmos Huszár. That’s where, ultimately, the power of this exhibition lies: not only in showing an overview of Van Doesburg’s work, but also in giving the visitor a feeling of the vibrant time the interbellum was for the artists of De Stijl.

Learn from the master

A smaller exhibition, in scale though not in scope, is Rembrandt in Black & White, presenting more than 80 etchings by the 17th-century Dutch master. Famous, first and foremost, for his paintings like “The Night Watch” or “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp”, he was also an inspired etcher. All the works in the exhibition come from the private collection of Dutch collector Jaap Mulders.

Etching is a technique of print-making that was highly important in spreading a painter’s name in the era before photography, since the works could be reproduced endlessly. Paintings, almost always hanging in private collections, could very seldom be seen.

“It’s difficult to imagine now, but, until a century ago, Rembrandt was more famous for his graphic work than for his paintings,” says Mulders. “The first catalogue of his etchings appeared in 1751, the first one with his paintings two centuries later.”

An etching is rarely a unique piece, but all the works in the exhibitions are original 17th-century prints, made by Rembrandt or under his supervision in his studio. And, of course, Rembrandt made the amazingly detailed drawings on which the etchings are based. They are grouped in six categories: biblical scenes, genre scenes and beggars, landscapes, nudes, portraits and self-portraits.

If you consider his paintings, you’ll have to admit that, despite the qualities of the better-known masterpieces mentioned above, Rembrandt’s art reached its peak in his self-portraits: from paintings as a bewildered young man until the famous final self-reflection with his puffed-up face, finished a few months before his death in 1669.

Rembrandt in Black & White shows that as an etcher, too, he reaches the pinnacle of his art when he portrays himself: unabashed, but never totally free of a touch of vanity.

A vision of Europe

The ambitious Imagine Europe: In Search of New Narratives was due to have opened at the same time as the other two exhibitions. After being postponed for reasons unknown, initially for a month, it has now been rescheduled again and should open on 13 April.

It’s billed as “not a classical exhibition, but a cross between an agora, a laboratory and an atelier”. A discussion room will host debates and lectures on themes such as migration and democracy. A varied series of videos – fiction, animation, documentary – will examine possible models for change in Europe.

In 12 rooms, visual artists and architects develop their views of new narratives for Europe. Among them is Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who made a lifelike copy of the office of Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission.

The timeless installation “D’est” by Belgian Chantal Akerman, who died last year, will be on show. And Flemish artist Ives Maes presents his “Recyclable Refugee Camp”, a project he started in 2003: a refugee camp built from fully compostable polyester, an ironic shot at making “100% ethical art”.

Until 29 May, Bozar, Rue Ravenstein 23, Brussels.
Photo: Theo van Doesburg, Composition III, 1917. Loan Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE), on loan to Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden.