Conceptual, Surrealist, Pictorial: Photo-based Art in Belgium (1960s - early 1990s)

Today, photography as art is ubiquitous. The process through which photography since the 1960s gradually entered the oeuvres of artists of the canon and grew into one of the primary artistic media was the theme of numerous exhibitions and publications. However, how this photographic breakthrough happened in Belgium, remained a terra incognita. Therefore, this dissertation addresses the evolution and the potential particularity of the use of photography by Belgian artists from the 1960s until the early 1990s. The period demarcation is based on studies of the artistic canon, which refer to Conceptual art as the beginning of the process in which photography gained acceptance as an autonomous artistic medium. There is also consensus on the fact that this process was completed in the early 1990s. This first introduction to the research material resulted in a long list of over a hundred names of artists. The subsequent selection from this inventory was based on two criteria. First, photography had to have been one of the principal media in the artist s practice. Second, the artist s photographic work had to have been displayed during the period studied and at the most significant forums of contemporary art in Belgium. The latter criterion was added to discover not only what kind of photo-based work was created, but also how it was included in the art world, the institute. After filtering out those artists who used photography only sporadically or those who rarely if ever represented their work at exhibitions or in publications on contemporary art, seventeen artists remained. Their oeuvres became the subject of the case studies of this dissertation. Subsequently, the aim of the current study was twofold. The first goal was to explore the Belgian history of the use of photography within the domain of the visual arts through representative case studies. From there, the second aim was to identify the major similarities and differences between the Belgian case studies and the international artistic canon. The dissertation is composed of two parts; each of them comprises an introduction and two chapters. The introductions consist of a discussion of the theoretical framework of the research and an overview of the institutional context in which contemporary art and photography gained a platform in Belgium. The first two chapters, united in Part 1, discuss the use of photography within Conceptual art. Chapter 1 addresses the work of the Belgian pioneers within this field, Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976), Jacques Charlier (b. 1939), and Jef Geys (b. 1936). Chapter 2 discusses the breakthrough of photoconceptualism in Belgium through the case studies of Yves De Smet (b. 1946), Philippe Van Snick (b. 1946), Jacques Lennep (b. 1941), Jacques Louis Nyst (b. 1942), and Jacques Lizène (b. 1946). Part 2 includes two chapters that address the various ways in which photographs presented themselves as tableaux since the late 1970s. Chapter 3 demonstrates the transition from Conceptual photography to a more pictorial photography by means of an analysis of the oeuvres of Danny Matthys (b. 1947), Stefan De Jaeger (b. 1957), Jan Vercruysse (b. 1948), Ria Pacquée (b. 1954), and Liliane Vertessen (b. 1952). Chapter 4 discusses two phenomena emerging in the late 1980s, both of which are connected to the increasing medium hybridization within contemporary art. First, there is the ubiquitous use of photographic images within large multimedia installations, represented by Marie-Jo Lafontaine (b. 1950) and Michel François (b. 1956). Second, and finally, the case studies of Carl De Keyzer (b. 1958) and Dirk Braeckman (b. 1958) show the inclusion of documentary photography, or autonomous photography that is nourished by a documentary approach, in the domain of contemporary art. When compared with the work by contemporary artists from the artistic canon and analyses of their work by authoritative writers (Jeff Wall, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Douglas Crimp, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Carla Gottlieb, Jean-François Chevrier), the studied work of the Belgian artists generally proved to correspond with photoconceptualism, the staged picture (observed in the work by Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall) and the documentary tableau (exemplified by the Bechers students). But of course, Belgian artists expression of the topical tendencies seen among international artists happened from their position in the periphery. As a consequence, in Belgium, the new tendencies often surfaced somewhat later than those in the international artistic centers. This delay was less true for the Belgian Conceptual artists than for the Belgian photographers creating and exhibiting documentary tableaux. Another characteristic of peripheral production that surfaced in the dissertation is that local artistic traditions influence the contemporary art practices and merge with them. Particularly striking in the case studies was the legacy of the Brussels Surrealist group. The Brussels Surrealists deliberately adopted certain strategies such as the staging of absurd situations, the use of the disturbing object, the subversive combination of image and text, or the procedure of rewriting (the reuse and slight adaptation of existing material) in order to create images that affected the viewer and encouraged him or her to contemplate the work of art. These same strategies were found in the studied oeuvres from the 1960s until the 1990s. This can be explained by the fact that Surrealism in Belgium continued to exist even after the historical avant-garde period. While many key figures of Parisian Surrealism, such as André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, migrated to the United States during the Second World War, most Belgian Surrealists continued working in Europe. Consequently, their work served as a direct source for the following generations of artists. Along with the Surrealist legacy, the strong pictorial tradition from the Low Countries and, by extension, Europe, also inspired the Belgian artists working in the period that this dissertation surveys. This influence is evident in the so-called Postmodernist era, when the use of pictorial strategies by Belgian artists including Matthys, De Jaeger, Vercruysse, Pacquée, Vertessen, Lafontaine, De Keyzer and Braeckman parallels the international tendencies of the staged and/or documentary Picture or Tableau. In accordance with the artistic canon, the Belgian artists deliberately revived classical pictorial genres, including: portraiture and self-portraiture; the pictorial strategy of constructing a scene; the inclusion of narrativity; and material features like the use of color and large formats. It should be noted, however, that the artists of the preceding Conceptual period, like De Smet, Lennep, Nyst, Lizène and Matthys, had also made use of classical pictorial genres, such as portraiture, landscape or still life, and narrative structures. Other shared characteristics found in the case studies are the recurrent use of the documentary photographic tradition (as found in the work of Charlier, Geys, De Smet, Van Snick, Lennep, Lizène, Matthys, Pacquée, De Keyzer, and Braeckman) and, although less generally, a poetic dimension (observed in the work by Broodthaers, Nyst, Vercruysse, and François). Ultimately, as the key words of the dissertation s title indicate, the most distinctive features of photo-based art in Belgium since the 1960s are the qualities of the local Surrealist and pictorial tradition, along with the persistence of Conceptual tendencies. At least until 1980, and even later, the Conceptual mode, launched in the 1960s by the widely successful Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, continued to exist. This is not only seen in the artistic production, but also in the Belgian history of exhibitions of contemporary art. The subsidiary investigation of this dissertation showed that among the forums for contemporary art and photography, there actually was a very vivid (photo)conceptual scene in Belgium, more precisely in Antwerp, Brussels and especially in Ghent. As a result, Conceptual art had a strong and long lasting influence. As a final conclusion, I would like to state that instead of being intangible or troubled by a lack of identity like the cliché s about Belgian art sound art, and in particular photo-based art, made by Belgian artists in the 1960s until the 1990s is fundamentally hybrid. This hybridization is clearly definable and comes to the fore on two levels. First is the use of media. Many of the discussed art works integrate photography as an element within a multimedia installation or show a photographic image that includes characteristics of other media, especially painting. In relation to the theory of hybridization by Jan Baetens and Heidi Peeters, and the concept of the multi-mediating picture, coined by Hilde Van Gelder and Helen Westgeest, I believe that in both types of works, photography is used because of its specific characteristics such as its ability to easily be reproduced or its mediated and subjective relation to the world and everyday reality. Second, the hybridity of Belgian art manifests itself with determining influences from the history of art and photography. As the case studies have shown, photo-based art in Belgium originated from Conceptual art, Surrealism, the pictorial tradition, documentary photography and visual poetry.status: publishe