Walk down the hill through Brussels’ Jardin Botanique and into the sketchy and quite ugly Place Charles Rogier, and you’ll be greeted by an extraordinary sight: a massive depiction of Le Fils de l’Homme, or The Son of Man. A 1964 painting by Belgian surrealist artist, Magritte, the whole thing must be 100 metres high, covering the entire facade of one of the hotels on the square.
The giant canvas is claimed as the world’s largest Magritte artwork, an accolade I suspect no one else is trying to win. The bowler-hatted man in a grey suit and red tie has his face obscured by a large apple, is an arresting sight and a fittingly bizzare homage to what is probably Magritte’s best known artwork. Anyone who watched the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crowne Affair, with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, will recognise it.
Magritte is Belgium’s most famous artist and the facade of the hotel was commissioned to coincide with the 125th anniversary of his birth last year. It was part of a temporary street art trail of large collages, called In the footsteps of Magritte by French artist Julien de Casabianca, scattered across the city centre. Everytime I come across one of them the same question comes to mind, “What would Magritte make of modern Belgium?”
Magritte’s art is said to be representative of Belgitude, the Belgian expression of its sense of national identity. An identity that recognises the absurdities of a nation riddled by contradictions, and explicitly tells the world it doesn’t take itself too seriously. How else could you explain the Permanent Committee on Language Monitoring, an institution so Orwellian that not even the surrealists would have imagined it.
Recently, this committee found a train conductor guilty of breaking the language laws by welcoming people onto a train in both Dutch and French when the train was still in Dutch-speaking Flanders. The rules are that staff on Belgian trains only speak French when in Wallonia, Dutch when in Flanders, but both languages are allowed in Brussels. The offending greeting was spoken in Vilvoorde, less than 2km from Brussels.
I can’t decide if this is peak surrealism, or the antithesis of Belgitude. It is certainly the pinnacle of Flemish anal retentiveness. The outside world might assume this was a joke, the self mockery that makes up part of the nation’s psyche. To the zealots on both sides of the Belgian language border, it is deadly serious. In the bubble of irrelevance within which they exist, it matters not how ludicrous it makes Belgium appear.
It’s quite something to realise a person on a train to Brussels heard the conductor greet passengers in Dutch and French, and was so outraged that they made a complaint. That led to an investigation, then to the national rail operator being reprimanded and forced to issue guidance that it’s illegal to do something that, in most countries, would be considered good customer service. The levels of petty mindedness are mind blowing.
Elsewhere in Brussels, I’ve been spotting new street art that’s comprised of many tiny photos. This turns out to be the project called Universal Humanity by a Luxembourg artist, Thomas Iser. There’s a depiction of Mona Lisa created using tiny photos of people. On a narrow side street in the Marolles district was another work of photos of people in different settings from around the world.
The Marolles district is a good area for spotting street art. There are a number of works by the PARCOURS Street Art project – including some that pay homage to another great Brussels painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who is buried in the the nearby Église Notre-Dame de la Chapelle. It’s also one of the few remaining parts of the city where you might hear Brusseleir spoken.
The distinctive dialect of Brussels is derived from Dutch, and strongly associated with the Marolles. It harks back to the days when Brussels was a predominately Dutch speaking city. As the 19th and 20th centuries wore on though, Dutch was supplanted by French and Brusseleir almost became extinct. It hints at the complex history that gave birth to the existence of the Permanent Committee on Language Monitoring.
It also begs the question, is a language better off extinct than being used to divide people by politicians, who cultivate followers willing to report those who speak it on trains in the wrong part of the country?
Utterly disgraceful! If I’d seen this elsewhere I’d have thought it a joke in bad taste but coming from you I have to believe it. The world is definitely degenerate when good deeds are punished.
Fabulous artwork.