Wendy French is pleased to find that a themed anthology from Emma Press successfully does what it sets out to do
art
Born to a well-to-do Antwerp businessman and his aristocratic wife, Fritz Mayer was groomed to become a diplomat, but instead threw himself into collecting with a particular passion for Dutch art of the 14th-16th centuries.
Displayed are elaborate composites, built up from paintings and photographs that eventually result in portraits at once convincingly human, alien and heartless.
Bicycles are as close as it gets to the perfect blend of form and function — but that doesn’t stop designers seeking to make them sleeker, faster and funkier. As such, they are ideal subject-matter for the Design Museum in the Belgian city of Ghent, whose Bike to the Future, despite the corny title, is a wide and even subtle exploration of cycling design and its enormous impact.
Between 1560 and 1630, Europe experienced the worst of a Little Ice Age characterised by long, cold winters. The cruel weather coincided with the most intensive period of witch hunts in history. Bruegel the elder, is credited with leading the way as Flemish and Dutch artists developed what is now the popular image of a witch, flying on a broomstick with her ragged hair streaming in the wind.
From stylised art nouveau temptresses to giant Tintin cartoons, Brussels has an established tradition of putting art on the outside of its buildings as well as inside. The capital’s newest gallery in a former brewery in Molenbeek – the neighbourhood notorious as a breeding ground of the Paris and Brussels terror attacks – captures that spirit.
For British rock fans, 2016 is marked by the death of David Bowie. In the French-speaking world, it has further significance as the 25th anniversary of the fatal heart attack that ended Serge Gainsbourg’s career as a hell-raising provocateur whose lyrics prompted President Mitterrand to compare him to Baudelaire. To commemorate the poet of the French rock world, Brussels and Paris have both organised exhibitions of French photographer Pierre Terrasson’s portraits of Gainsbourg and of other major 1980s performers, including Bowie.
A denizen is a person, animal or plant that lives in a particular place or region. Photographer Andres Serrano, best known for causing outrage with taboo-breaking images, decided it was le mot juste to describe the homeless people of Brussels he was asked to photograph by the city’s fine arts museum.
As if an extraordinary imagination for fantastic, unsettling monsters and a genius ahead of his time for sensitive, naturalistic depictions of ordinary people weren’t enough, Hieronymous Bosch also had a modern knack for successful branding.
An introduction to poetry comics edited by Chrissy Williams & Tom Humberstone turns out to be something of a revelation for Richie McCaffery
Fiona Sinclair explores a picture & poem collaboration by Gordon Meade & Douglas Robertson
D A Prince is intrigued by the methods and the outcome of a poet-artist collaboration between Judith Wilkinson and Ditty Doornbos
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, drawing, poetry reviews, year 2016 • Tags: books, D A Prince, drawing, poetry