Our apartment is without doubt very basic, but it is in an interesting district. I would say it is poor in many ways, but also bustling, international, with fine buildings and a bit of a sizzle to it. One side we are in the rag district - colourful retail/wholesale boutiques, little fashion houses. The other way there’s the occasional cafe or antique shop, or more likely a family-run ethnic grocery, with marvellous breads, fruits, meats. There are masses of men standing about - Arabic, Egyptian, Turkish - not many women. This is an immigrant community with all the challenges and marvels of such places. … If I was going to buy a property in Brussels, this is where I would start to look. FYI the street we’re in is called Rue Lambert Crickx
We had a wandering round day. Taking in the amazing architecture, the absolutely different way things are in Belgium (compared to Austria), the street scenes, the food shops, all that….
I have often thought the Brits are more like the Belgians than any other European country. There’s something a bit disorganised about it all here, scruffy, overweight, practical, realistic. Like us, Belgium had a big fat rich period based on colonial plunder and spent the loot on massive buildings and statuary. They are more religious than we are, and old-fashioned in still being enthusiastic smokers. They have much more street/public art than we do, and it’s great. They drop litter like we do, and live on street food like we do… waffles, chips, masses of sweet stuff. They wear bundly-looking clothes like we do. They have police horses about the place (like we used to do). Their pubs and cafes are very civilised, not too obsessed with behaviour like French and Italian ones can be. They let their roads go to pot like we do. They’re better at foreign languages than the Brits, but they have no choice: I bet they’d each subside into their French or Dutch or whatever if they were allowed to. Their parks are scruffy and almost natural, like ours are… quite unlike the formalities of the French. They are more obedient as pedestrians than we are, but there are plenty of places where you can just stroll across the streets, which feels really risky after the strict regulation of Austria. Anyway, to me, it all offers a delightful mix of recognisable culture and foreign-ness. I like it very much.
We went to the Grand Place, 17th century swank building by the guilds of the day which is still absolutely knockout.
We talked with a crazy Burmese man, schizophrenic I think, who has machines in his head running his life. He wants to go to hospital. It's Tintin town, too.... The rockets are gorgeous but about £30 for the small ones, and over £100 for the big ones. Too too expensive.
We wandered off through the St Hubert Arcade (with a charming elderly beggar lady outside beseeching the swanky shoppers)….
The arcade is amazing, with such glories all along, worth going to see if you’re passing. We called into the cathedral, with its Romanesque origins and subsequent decorations … a lovely light interior, and fantastic carving… but I was just anti-church today, and looked with a resentful eye at the parade of no less than twelve MEN on the pillars. One actually is supported by two naked legless armless women. It is impossible to say if this was a St Bartholomew or a St Nathaneal. Ugh.
We found lunch among the office buildings - delicious trendy rice bowls and steamed buns, in a place called Mile End.
Then we searched out some ‘modern art’ - not so easy when they are flogging Art Nouveau and Magritte as being modern… Well, you know, things have moved on since then. Eventually we went to the Musée des Beaux Arts where we had a special deal being old + also passengers on EuroStar…. to go and see the works of Wim Delvoye, bad boy of Belgian art. This is partly distributed among the Old Masters, and a weird thing that is. He is the man who invented Cloaca (a machine which replicates human digestion and produces turds at the end of the process, on a sort of conveyor belt). You can see one on the green strip here....
He also started tattooing pigs to give Chinese farmers a more interesting life (and the pigs too). He then had the pigs killed and their skins sold as art works. The pigs were mildly anaesthetised for the procedures… Later he clothed pigs in velour...
He makes Moebius strips out of wheels, and carves into the rubber to make ornate surfaces… rather beautiful and sinister. He takes classical statues and recasts them in bronze as swirling twisted shapes.
Seeing all these travesties among the well-known religious and landscape studies of the Flemish schools is really odd. I had no interest WHATSOEVER in looking at the old paintings, and it make me wonder how they can ever survive as revered works… Their time has passed.
My sexist instincts seem to have been quite high today.... These two classical pieces are upstairs in the museum a few feet apart. Both have their left foot forward. I can see he was free to play, while she......
My main rage was with the gallery itself. Despite the fact they had searched my bag when I went in, and it had nothing but my sketching materials in it, I had to leave it (twice, as it happened) in a locker and not take it round with me. The bag was a risk, too big. This is a monstrous, sexist injustice. No man had his pockets or jacket searched. I was really angry.
Outside again we wandered back towards our flat… I wondered what on earth this statue woman was actually doing apart from being naked and available. I wondered if there were any similar men lounging about and then immediately saw this bloke trying to fix a fountain ... it seemed a good-enough pairing.
But really there is a lot of very good public art. We bought an ice-cream for Andrew, some beautiful Arabic pastries in a tiny box to bring back for supper. We found the infamous Mannequin Pis by accident, stopped for a beer in a cafe, chatted to the police-horsemen, bought some fish for supper, and fruit… and then came back to this weird underlit apartment. We are both tired. It’s our last day tomorrow.
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