25 avril 2007
Outstretched arms...
03 avril 2007
St. Catherine by night
09 mars 2007
A foray into Schaerbeek
Schaerbeek, Brussels
01 mars 2007
The strangest buildings in Brussels
One of the
defining features of the urban landscape of Brussels is its apparent lack of
uniformity, harmony, or indeed any discernable sense of a whole. As if the
notion of urban planning was considered largely superfluous. One can
thus find incredibly contrasting sights at every corner - the old almost swallowed up by the new, the large right besides the small, the beautiful alongside the dull and ugly... often
all at the same spot. It isn't rare to see ancient houses of inestimable historical
value in Schaerbeek left to rot for decades, uninhabited, until all
that’s left of them are gutted skeletons, with wild plants sprouting from the
walls. Other houses have been painstakingly restored and repainted, but with strangely bright
colours, guided by esthetic values that one would be inclined to call 'kitch', if not outright tasteless. And again, with
little effort to make them fit into the larger urban environment...
A notable
exception are the houses with painted BD motives, that tend to be
inventive and somehow making use of spaces that would otherwise
remain grey and dull. However, this cannot be said of various brave new world
experiments, such as a house covered by a chequer-board design, or one with a
huge fresco of a sailing boat, or further still 1930s period houses with facades partially
half-pink, poison green or synthetic yellow.
Despite the
critical remarks though, I find myself weirdly attracted by
the incongruous character of Brussels. After all, at a time when art is defined less in terms of esthetical value, and more by how surprising, or better still,
shocking it is, a walk through
Brussels can be very rewarding. It might be worth studying this
phenomenon more deeply, find further examples (see the PHOTO album), and maybe even attempt to trace this phenomenon to its historical and psychological roots...
25 février 2007
Rue de la Cigogne...
One of the smallest and most charming streets in Brussels, hidden away not too far away from the canal...
Along the Bruxelles-Charleroi Canal
Sadly, Brussels lost its river in the 19th century, when someone apparently decided it occupies too much space. The only body of water remotely similar to a river is the Bruxelles-Charleroi Canal. Except that its still waters are not exactly full of charm, and on both sides it is flanked by poor and dreary urban areas inhabited mainly by maghrebian immigrants. Of course that doesn't imply lack of things beautiful to behold, or at least interesting enough to be seen - quite the contrary (see PHOTOS)
05 février 2007
Le bonheur de découvrir la derniére pièce du puzzle
Only a few old houses in the southern part of the Brussels EU Quarter between the European Parliament and the Council survived the euro-construction binge of the 1960s: entire swathes of the city were razed to the ground to make way for the tedious if not monstrous buildings of the then EEC institutions... The last remaining row of old houses on rue Belliard was demolished at the end of last year.
Among the solitary survivors of the onslaught is house No.143 with a jig-saw puzzle shop on the ground floor - one of only few specialised shops of its kind in Europe. Just as all the buildings around are being torn down, No. 143 stands firm. I stopped by on my way to work, and I asked the owner if he intends to stay. He replied merely: 'Je vends des puzzles, pas des maisons...'
The choice of puzzles on offer is mind-boggling: from sets consisting of a few dozens pieces up to giant ones of 13 or 15 thousand pieces for those endowed with lots more time and patience than myself. The motifs range from classical paintings by Carravagio and Tiziano through the typical kitch posters, down to humourous images and downright bizarre spherical or cube-like puzzles... The shop assistant tried to lure me into buying a memory card game consisting of matching pairs of cards, in my country known under the generic name 'pexesso'. But while pexesso usually carries pictures of castles, animals, cars, or other pedagogically worthy objects, this particular one consisted of matching images of bare women's breats of all shapes and sizes. I resisted the temptation and bought a slightly less shocking set of matching 'Ladies and Gents' WC signes from all over the world... 