Blind Date: Portretten met blikken en blozen
Katharina Van Cauteren, Nils Büttner, Matthias Ubl, Hildegard Van de Velde. Scenography by Walter Van Beirendonck
Phoebus Foundation & Hannibal, 2020
€60,00
The story of Flemish portraiture told through dozens of masterpieces
Men in stately black, women with millstone collars, children with golden rattles, old berries and complacent artists… They are the protagonists of almost every portrait ever painted in the Southern Netherlands. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, the small piece of land that is today called “Flanders” is the economic and cultural, intellectual and financial heart of Europe. And money has to roll: everyone who can afford it invests in a portrait.
Today, the cherished status symbols of yesteryear have largely lost their original meaning. From functional and emotional, the portraits transformed into gateways to the past. On the basis of masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation, Blind Date sketches the broad context in which they were created. It peels the layers of meaning of the images, as if they were an onion. Because whether it is an impressive Rubens or Van Dyck, or an intimate portrait by a forgotten artist: the people in these paintings were once flesh and blood. They had quirks and hidden agendas, ambitions and higher goals. Sometimes they are highly personal and hyper-individual. Sometimes there is a layer of dust on it, and the ladies and gentlemen are children of their time. Usually, however, their dreams and pretensions are surprisingly timeless and soberingly recognizable.
Blind Date is an appointment with history: an encounter with portrayed men and women from bygone centuries. But for those who are willing to look closely, the boundary between past and present appears to be paper thin. IN DUTCH!
ISBN: 9789463887397
