Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Belgium is western art too

DEATH OF MARAT BY DAVID

TIN TIN

MANNEQUIN PISS

ART DECO


SURREAL MAGRITTE




DEATH OF ICARUS


Belgium is the history of European art in many ways.  At the Royal Museum of Fine Art in Brussels, it is all laid out for you.  It is almost too much to fathom.

Vasari, the historian of painting, credits Van Eyck with the invention of oil painting.  He certainly made it legitimate and popular.  He was Flemish.  Bosch and Bruegel are there.  Rubens and his star pupil Van Dyck.

Jacques Louis David, (top picture) painted his famous Death of Marat in Belgium, and there it hangs still.  Old Jacques was a true revolutionary and like Robespierre and the other naughty boys, he got too cosy with the workings of the guillotine.  He would have been for the chop too but the French hated to waste a good painter, so they sent him to Brussels.  Karl Marx ended up there too.

Tin Tin was invented in Belgium along with surrealism and Art Deco.  The photos above chronicle a little of it.

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