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Lovely Bones: The transfixing skeletons and dreamlike nudes of Belgian painter Paul Delvaux
11.11.2019
02:19 pm
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‘The Entombment’ (1957).
 
After being discouraged from pursuing a career in art by his lawyer father, Paul Delvaux would enroll at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. René Magritte, was studying there as well. Delvaux’s father unhappily agreed to his son’s study of architecture, though the younger Delvaux was deeply challenged by the evil that was mathematics, and failed his exam. Delvaux would then switch gears delving into the art of decorative painting. After an extended stay at the Académie Royale, he would graduate in 1924 after approximately eight-years of artistic immersion—though some sources indicate Delvaux would depart the school much later, in 1927. A quote attributed to Delvaux below nicely provides insight into his evolution as an artist and precisely what inspired him:

“Youthful impressions, fixed once and for all in the mind, influence you all your life.”

One of Delvaux’s artistic calling cards was his affinity for human skeletons. This interest could be traced back to his early schooling and his fascination with the skeletons that were on display in his biology classroom. Another account details Delvaux developed a fear of skeletons after being subjected to looking at one hanging in the music room at school. The artist had also been photographed numerous times at various ages with various skeletal muses. Also distinctly present in Delvaux’s dreamworld were entirely or partially nude women. Along with his skeletons, his paintings of women were often unsettling and confusing, as were some of the sexual situations Delvaux envisioned, then painted them into. Another young love of Delvaux was the illustrations of French illustrator Édouard Riou. Delvaux would become aware of Riou after receiving Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, which he got as a communion gift in 1907. Delvaux would be inspireded by artists affiliated with the Barbizon School, an art movement originating in the forest-town of Barbizon focused on the expert painting of landscapes, just south of Paris. 

Furthermore, even though he had not completed his studies in architecture, the time he spent with the discipline would prove to be a strong influence in his work, especially those including another childhood love, trains, and train stations. In addition, during his time at Académie Royale, Delvaux was also under the direct tutelage of two Belgian painters; Constant Montald and the esoteric symbolist, Jean Delville. Traits of both Montald and Delville can be clearly seen in Delvaux’s work.
 

‘The Tunnel’ (1978).
 
A pivotal event in Delvaux’s career occurred in 1926 when he attended a gallery show for Giorgio de Chirico—the founder of the short-lived Scuola Metafisica (Metaphysical School) in Italy. De Chirico is credited for providing much of the fuel used to ignite the Surrealist movement. Surrealist works by René Magritte were of keen interest to Delvaux, as were Salvador Dali and Dada pioneer Max Ernst. Surrealism is quite evident in Delvaux’s paintings and concepts, but the artist did not consider himself a part of the movement. In fact, Delvaux’s work would be categorized in 1925 by German photographer, art historian and critic Franz Roh as “Magic Realism.” Another formative experience for the artist were his visits to the Musee Spitzner, which after burning down, turned into a traveling anatomical museum featuring approximately 250 different wax recreations of human anatomy, including hideous deformities and wax depictions of social diseases. In 1943, Delvaux would pay tribute to Pierre Spitzner in paint. Here’s Delvaux detailing his first visit to the Spitzner:

“In the middle of the entrance to the Museum was a woman who was the cashier, then on one side there was a man’s skeleton and the skeleton of a monkey, and on the other side, there was a representation of Siamese twins. And in the interior, one saw a rather dramatic and terrifying series of anatomical casts in wax, which represented the dramas and horrors of syphilis, the dramas, deformations. And all this in the midst of the artificial gaiety of the fair. The contrast was so striking that it made a powerful impression on me. All the ‘Sleeping Venuses’ that I have made, come from there. Even the one in London, at the Tate Gallery. It is an exact copy of the sleeping Venus in the Spitzner Museum, but with Greek temples or dressmaker’s dummies, and the like. It is different, certainly, but the underlying feeling is the same.”

In 1933 Delvaux lost his mother. Following her death, he would destroy more than 100 of his early paintings after being criticized for the explicit nudity in his work. His father would pass away four years later. That year would bring about Delvaux’s first marriage to Suzanne Purnal, and the beginning of a new, horribly destructive chapter in Delvaux’s life. Unsurprisingly, in the decade he spent with a woman he never really loved who made his life miserable,  Delvaux created some of his most masterful work. The Nazi occupation of Belgium would be yet another conduit for Delvaux’s creativity, bringing the artist to darker, more controversial places. He would paint as bombs descended across Brussels—most famously “Sleeping Venus” (1944). In 1948, priests were prohibited from attending one of his solo gallery shows, the reason more than likely his depictions of nude women. Men of the cloth would be banned from another show of Delvaux’s in Venice in 1954, this time at the behest of the future “people’s pope” Pope John XXIII, then-Cardinal Roncalli.  Roncalli was incensed by Delvaux’s work and labeled it “heretical.” Here’s the painting by Delvaux that drove the future Pontiff over the edge:
 

‘Crucifixion,’ 1952. Delvaux would paint different versions of ‘Crucifixion’ and ‘Sleeping Venus’ over the course of his career.
 
Quite by chance during a visit to the Belgian seaside town of Saint Idesbald in 1947, Delvaux would meet up with his first love, Anne-Marie de Martelaere—a woman his family, especially his overprotective mother, had forced him to stop seeing. They rekindled their romance, and Delvaux would divorce Purnal and move to Saint Idesbald, marrying de Martelaere in 1952. The town is also home to the Paul Delvaux Foundation and Museum (founded in 1982).  He would continue painting until he lost his sight in 1986 at the age of 89, the same year he lost the love of his life, Anne-Marie. Delvaux would move to Veurne, Belgium, where he would live the rest of his days before passing away at the age of 96.

Authentic paintings by Delvaux routinely sell at auction for well over a million dollars. In 2012 an oil on canvas by Delvaux “Le Canapé Bleu” (painted in 1967) sold for an astonishing $3,200,000.

Five decades of Delvaux’s divine NSFW work follows.
 

‘Woman in Cave’ (1936).
 

‘Women-Trees’ (1937).
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.11.2019
02:19 pm
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Never mind the Sex Pistols, Here’s ‘The Kids’: Pissed-off pioneering punks from Belgium
12.19.2016
03:34 pm
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In 1976 Ludo Mariman took on the vocalist spot for The Crash, a group that would quickly change its name to The Kids. According to Mariman nobody in the band could really actually play an instrument so they ended up sounding like a “really bad version of Velvet Underground.” When punk rock began its search and destroy tour in the UK, it still hadn’t become a scene in Belgium yet with a couple of notable exceptions. Such as the band Chainsaw who if you blinked in Belgium back in 1977 you missed, and the wild success of Plastic Bertrand’s world-wide smash “Ça Plane Pour Moi.” Mariman headed off to London to see what all the fuss was about where he witnessed a live gig by the Ramones. It was then that Mariman had an epiphany of sorts and realized even though the Crash lacked actual “musical” talent they had the same kind of drive and energy that the quad from Queens possessed.

In 1978, when they were still quite literally kids (bass player Danny Haes was only fourteen at the time) The Kids put out two pretty blistering albums. The first was a self-titled record full of anarchic jams that all punched the time clock in under three-minutes like “Fascist Cops,” “Do You Love the Nazis,” and “I Don’t Want To Get a Job in the City.” The band’s second album, Naughty Kids was also full of catchy, pissed-off tracks including a fun sing-along I currently can’t get out of my head called “Jesus Christ (Didn’t Exist).”

As of last year The Kids were still touring rather extensively around Europe. I’ve included a few singles by The Kids below as well as footage from their first appearance on television in Belgium in 1978—which includes the band performing a cover of “Anarchy in the U.K.” If you dig The Kids, I’d highly suggest adding the 2006 compilation marking the band’s 30th anniversary that includes all the tracks from The Kids’ first two albums and a few live tracks put out by French label Wild Wild Records. Posers get LOST!
 
Listen the the Kids, after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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12.19.2016
03:34 pm
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‘This Is Belgium’: the Radio Soulwax guide to late 80s Belgian New Beat


  
The perfect follow-up to The Beat Club’s “Acid Train” video I posted a few days ago, “This Is Belgium” sees that country’s top dance music export, Radio Soulwax, compiling an audio/visual history of its New Beat scene from the late 80s.

Not only are these videos great to listen to, they’re also very informative, charting the cultural and social history of a localized scene whose influence has since spread far and wide (and which is not to be confused with the original American use of the phrase “New Beat”, which meant an off-shoot of New Wave, it seems).

A regional dance music curio similar in a way to Italy’s Cosmic disco scene, New Beat djs took popular tracks of the time and slowed them down, usually playing 45rpm records at 33rpm, pitched up to +8 on the turntable. Like Cosmic, the wrong speed aspect gave New Beat an otherworldly edge: something is up with these records but it can be difficult to pinpoint what that is, if you don’t know they’re actually being played wrong.

Kicks become thuds, claps become clanks, and every vocal seems wretched from the bowels of hell. Visually New Beat may be plastered in smiley faces, but musically it’s threatening, it’s a lil’ bit scary. Slowing down acid and techno records made the sounds heavier and the atmosphere darker, and it also chimed with the emerging industrial/EBM scene of the time. This dark, powerful aesthetic would be seminal in defining the techno that came from Northern Europe in the 1990s.

From Wikipedia:

The New Beat sound originated in Belgium in the late 1980s, especially in 1987 and 1988.

The Belgian New Beat was an underground danceable music style, well known at clubs and discos in Europe. It is a local crossover of EBM, Acid and mid 80s underground House music. The 80s Dark Wave also became an aesthetic influence (especially Depeche Mode’s videos from 1985–1989). At the time, EBM was popular in German speaking countries and The Netherlands, Acid / Acid Trance was popular in the UK, and House Music (in a 80s Eurodisco French twist) was popular in France. Belgium created this unique music sound, with huge underground success all over Europe.

Legend has it that the Belgian New Beat genre was invented in the nightclub Boccaccio in Destelbergen near Ghent when DJ Marc Grouls played a 45rpm EBM record at 33rpm, with the pitch control set to +8. The track in question was Flesh by A Split-Second.

In addition to A Split-Second, the genre was also heavily influenced by other Industrial and EBM acts such as Front 242 and The Neon Judgement, as well as New Wave, and Dark Wave acts such as the likes of Fad Gadget, Gary Numan and Anne Clark.

Part one of this two hour Soulwax trip comes complete with commentary/text that tells the story of this short lived but influential dance fad (very informative and worthy of your eyes) while part two features what is presumably some Belgians reliving the New Beat dance crazes of their youth (which involve a lot of hoping around from foot to foot) while rocking some awesome retro shell suits. Enjoy: 

Radio Soulwax ‘This Is Belgium Pt 1’
 

 
Radio Soulwax ‘This Is Belgium Pt 2’
 

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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05.02.2013
07:27 am
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The ‘Acid Train’ will blow your brain!
04.30.2013
12:26 pm
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Today’s dose of dance music silliness comes via Belgium, and New Beat act The Beat Club, with the video for their 1989 track “Acid Train”. It’s catchy, it’s fun and the video looks like it was made on a hijacked porno set. Come to think of it, the lingerie models were probably thrown in as part of the deal.

The tinny lead synth riff isn’t even the real ear worm here, that award goes to the uptight train conductor shouting before his head dissolves into a 3D smiley face button.

“CAN I SEE YOUR TICKETS PLEEZ?!” 

I’m sure it seemed like a great idea at the time.

The Beat Club “Acid Train”
 

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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04.30.2013
12:26 pm
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Rhythm Device: perhaps not the ‘Acid Rock’ you were expecting
11.21.2012
03:58 pm
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Some ravers, yesterday
 
“Acid Rock’ by Rhythm Device is actually from Belgium in 1989, and not California in the late 60s, as the name might conjure up.

Hence the uber-silly video of leather-clad danse-boyz rocking out in a cheap looking discotheque.

The bass riff in this New Beat classic is naggingly familiar, it reminds me of the KLF a bit, but I am guessing it’s all nicked off some Chicago acid original anyway. That hasn’t stopped “Acid Rock” from being sampled by Nine Inch Nails, no less, on their late 80s hit “Down In It”.

Rhythm Device was the nom-de-techno of producer Frank De Wulfe, who followed up “Acid Rock” with the “Dream Trance” / “Higher Destiny” 12”. Although Discogs helpfully informs us that, even though they had different names:

These tracks are actually four different mixes of “Acid Rock”.

What a surprise.

Anyway, it’s all about the video. A perfect guide in how to look devastatingly butch and astoundingly gay at the same time, it’s all sold by the singers unwavering seriousness:
 

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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11.21.2012
03:58 pm
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Bilzen Festival 1969: 2 Hour Concert with The Bonzos, Deep Purple, Shocking Blue and more

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Not going out tonight? Then stay in and enjoy over 2 hours worth of compilation footage of the Blizen Jazz Festival, from 1969. The concert includes performances by Deep Purple, The Move, Humble Pie, Shocking Blue, The Moody Blues, Soft Machine, Marsha Hunt, leading up to a joyous set by The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

Here’s the listing as posted on YouTube in no particular order:

Shocking Blue - August 22, 1969
“Venus” + interview

Deep Purple - August 22 1969
“Wring That Neck” 
“Mandrake Root”

Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - August 22, 1969
“Big Shot”
“You Done My Brain In”
“Hello Mabel”
“Urban Spaceman”
“Quiet Talks And Summer Walks”
“I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”
“Canyons Of Your Mind”
“Trouser Press”

Taste - August 22, 1969
“Blister On The Moon”
“Sugar Mama”

Moody Blues - August 22, 1969
“Tuesday Afternoon”
“Have You Heard” (Part 1)
“The Voyage”
“Have You Heard” (Part 2)

Soft Machine - August 22, 1969
“Moon In June” + interview

Marsha Hunt & White Trash - August 22, 1969
Interview
“My World Is Empty Without You Babe”

Brian Auger & The Trinity - August 22, 1969
Interview
“Pavane”
“I Just Got Some”

Steve Shorter & Tilly Set - August 22 1969
“Move On Up”

Humble Pie - August 24 1969
“The Sad Bag Of Shaky Jake” /” I Walk On Gilded Splinters”

Life - August 24 1969
“Baby Please Don’t Go”

Blossom Toes - August 24 1969
“Stargazer”

The Move - August 24 1968
“Sunshine Help Me”

Roland and The Bluesworkshop - August 23 1968
Belgian TV - BRT

Various clips from this concert have appeared on the web over the years, but when placed altogether like this, it is a fab 2 hours. Enjoy!
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.30.2012
06:32 pm
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A Ghost Town In Belgium Becomes A Canvas For Graffiti Artists
07.30.2010
05:07 am
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Doel, Belgium, a town known mostly for it’s proximity to nuclear reactors, has become a virtual ghost town. Fortunately, radiation didn’t figure into Doel’s fate.  The townspeople of Doel were forced to move in order to accommodate the expansion of Antwerp harbor. Other than a handful of diehard citizens, a few businesses, and squatters, the town is uninhabited and will soon be demolished. In the meantime, Doel has become a huge canvas for artists. Cesare Santorini made this short film documenting the incredible and ephemeral street art of Doel.

I wish Santorini’s choice of music in this video had been better. You may want to turn down the volume.

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.30.2010
05:07 am
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