Le Déménagement

Here's an idea for a French movie rooted in reality: 

The Title: 'Le Déménagement' and will be in theatres across Europe in 2013.

The Plot: A wealthy French couple, the Dépardots, played by Gérard Dépardieu  and Brigitte Bardot, are hounded by the French State's tax department and collectors (Pierre Richard). Their close friend and President of the French Republic (played by Daniel Autieul)  is -because of political pressure- not able to help them and advises them to move to Belgium to avoid paying huge amounts of money. 

They end up buying a house in a sleepy Belgian village called Estaimpuis. What seems like a simple moving of house quickly turns into chaos as they encounter the mayor of Estaimpuis (Benoit Poelvoorde) and a former Russian hitman (Jean Reno) trying to persuade them to assume the Russian nationality.

120 mins. Mrs B Productions.

Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Gérard Dépardieu, Jean Reno, Benoit Poelvoorde, Daniel Auteuil, Pierre Richard.
Rating: PG

From the Archives: An evening with Luc Tuymans

Last year, around this time I wrote a post on a talk Luc Tuymans gave at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels.
Somehow the post never made it to the publishing stage. I found a draft of it, it's short and sweet and clearly indicates what kind of vitriolic mood I was in when I got home.
Here goes:

Title: Luc Tuymans in Bozar

Yesterday evening Luc Tuymans spoke at the Bozar in Brussels. Luc Tuymans speaks all the time. He loves the sound of his own voice.
But I had to fork out 6 euros just for the privilege of the Tuymans gospel.
He was late turning up of course. He probably couldn't get his massive swollen ego out the green room doors.
Anyway. Half of the audience lapped it all up. The maestro speaks. I think the other half was just as annoyed as I was.

In his own words: 'I do not like populists. I'm not a political artist. I'm not a historical painter.'
Me-me-me.

The only great thing about this evening that I was strolling around in my beloved Brussels once again.
I managed to marvel at Poelaert's Palais de Justice and be amazed at how the Royal School of Music still looks like it was bombed just the other day.

Nun-approved wax

Way back in the 1930's cooperations were testing the water and seeking out new fishing grounds to flog their products.
Johnson's Wax Company advertised in Roman Catholic Magazines.
A Dutch 1933 ad shows a nun slaving over a wooden floor, scrubbing and polishing away.
On the opposite side we see a nun standing next to a Johnson fluid wax can looking quite pleased.

'Hundreds of children! and yet.... all floors stay brilliantly clean!'
Looks like Johnson Wax is just in the nick of time to save the dear sister from some nervous break-down or a few kids from some corporal punishment involving a ruler of some kind.

At the time of the ad SC Johnson & Son had 4 factories employing some 50.000 workers. The main Dutch office was located in THe Hague.

The new cow in town

I was a bit startled to find a cow on the Ladeuze square on Wednesday.
A socialist trade union had organized a spot of Crap yourself rich, proceeds would go to the Cancer Fund.
At 1.30 pm the beautiful beast was let out of its box.
When I came back from class around 4 it still hadn't crapped.
Never in my life have I ever seen so much people stand in expectation of a cow doing its business. Really.
It must be like watching wallpaper dry.
Honestly. If you were a cow, would you be able to go with all those people looking at you?

Matches

More on the tacky side of life: a hideous electric fireplace, with all the fake trimmings to make it look real, like a rotating transparant filter to simulate smoke, sparkles on the logs to make them shimmer, dimable lights for effect.
It just had to go. We put it up for sale on internet.

So on Saturday these people come over to collect the thing. Dr Livingstone explains how it works, how you can flip a switch to increase the heat and turn on the fan etc.
Suddenly the lady asks: 'So you don't need matches to light it then?'.

ROFLCOPTER

Really. I don't know how Dr Livingstone managed to maintain a straight face.

We should have thrown a packet of matches into the bargain for free. It would have been all kinds of awesome when they took it home and lit it on fire...

Moving (2)

We're selling off furniture via the web. The more we sell, the less we have to move.
We've had lots of interest over the weekend.
Today Dr Livingstone is delivering a bed in Antwerp on the way to a job, yesterday a guy came and took a huge cabinet for A1 paper off our hands, tonight there's someone coming to collect two bed slats and tomorrow there's another drop off of two bookcases.

We're also very keen on getting rid of a high sleeper bed. It's in our way, hardly ever been used and for a very reasonable price we hope to flog it.

So yesterday I packed up a lot of books in some Chiquita banana boxes. Not many left of them now I'm afraid. Used the lid as well, only managed to pack 2 bookcases in 8 boxes.

Tomorrow we're getting a quote from the cabinet maker.

/Drumroll.

Dr Livingstone told me to put the selling of the remaining bookcases on hold for a while until we're absolutely sure we can afford the made to measure one.

So I'll be playing the lottery again this weekend...

Heroine of the week: Kathryn Bennetts

The woman we all love to hate, the chemtrial believing Flemish Minister for Environment and Culture Joke Schauvliege, is really screwing the country around again. Last week she gave an interview stating that a minister shouldn't actually know anything about Culture to run the department. "Je moet als minister van Cultuur geen cultuurkenner zijn. Een minister moet vooral goed beleid voeren"

Quod erat demonstrandum. It is plainly obvious she does not understand anything about Culture: She has announced a series of budget cuts (among many, many others also hitting environmental groups) and will put the Flemish Opera and the Royal Ballet of Flanders under one intendant. Kathryn Bennetts, of the Royal Ballet has resigned forthwith
.
"I do not want to live in a country with that kind of policies. This is an act of arrogance and ignorance. These plans are from a Minister of Culture whom I have never met and has never attended one of our performances. This is utterly shamefull for Flanders" dixit Bennetts in the papers. She had been with the Royal Ballet as artistic director since 2005. This is a very powerful signal. And one not te be ignored, or passed over lightly.

But, knowing Schauwvliege it'll just bounce off her and she'll just go: 'There is a crisis on, everyone needs to get by with less'.
If you hear how she's running (or not running) the Department (less subsidies, more own resources), doesn't that say enough about her non-capacity? The magical words: 'The sector needs to implement their own objectives from the bottom up' are just NewSpeak for 'I don't really know how to do it myself'.

When will the Flemish Minister President Kris Peeters grow some balls and end this catastrophe? Flanders is becoming the laughing stock of the international art world.

Banana Box Update

I'm up to 20 Chiquita Banana Boxes as of today. So half way off the main target already.

We've also managed to negotiate about 0.5% off our mortgage! \o/

Prado discovers new Pieter Brueghel the Elder painting

It is always a thrilling time for scolars when a piece of art turns up that has been hidden (sic) in a private collection.
The owners sent it to the Museo del Prado for a cleaning. Experts have now attributed it to Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
The most fascinating bit of this is that it is a tuchlein. Tuchlein has for a great deal been ignored by scolars because of the rarety and lack of research to build upon.

I am always sceptical when it comes to linking pieces to 'the big names'. Especially when works are autographed.
The provenance of the work is always the trickiest bit. It is all too tempting to identify existing works with works mentioned in sources only on the grounds of an identical or related subject. Referring to old texts to make a pedigree more impressive and link a work to Brueghel are very very tempting.
We also know Breugel (the Elder) had the habit of painting the same subject a number of times in different versions. Different versions even were even part of the same collection. For instance, Jean Noiret owned two versions of the Wedding and Fair. Kaiser Rudolf II owned two versions of Calvary and Babel.

So I hope the Museo del Prado did their homework on this one.

They reference a painting in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels [Inv. 10818, sold in Paris at the Petit Gallery on June 10, 1904 (sale Fontaine-Flament, no. 12, reprod. Bastelaer and Hulin de Loo, 1907, cat. A-32). In 1905 work was owned by Marie Croquison of Courtrai, who in 1933 donated it to his nephew Dr. Frans Heulens, which in turn donated it in 1988 at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.] and another fragment in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (cat. 728 A, which is no longer attributed to Brueghel the Younger, and is mentioned in passing as not being completely watertight but could have been fashioned after a model -perhaps taken from this one, or used the same).

They do not mention a version of the Sint Maartensfeest painted by Pieter Balten (which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp). There is mention of the same subject (drawing) in the Musée Atger, Montpellier. Or another copy in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (nr. 425). Engraved by N. Guerard (1648-1719).


Although I have my doubts about the attribution of the work to Balten (or indeed his workshop), because there is another version of the Feast in the Rijksmuseum also attributed to Balten, which does look entirely different.
The relationship between Balten and Brueghel is, however, more complicated. In 1551 they collaborated on an altarpiece (destr.) for the Mechelen Glovemakers. Balten's other works, for example the Ecce homo (Fine Arts Antwerp), reveal that the two artists were closely associated: a group from the Ecce homo reappears as an independent painting (Brussels, A. de Heuvel priv. col.) by Brueghel’s son and imitator Pieter Brueghel the younger.

It is also worth noting that the horseback figure on the Feast reappears several times in the Cavalry by Balten sold at Christie's in July 2005 (lot nr 7).

Comparing these compositions could yield even more information about a work we have thought to be lost for so long.
On a related note I would like to recommend The Bruegel enterprise (De firma Bruegel) catalog (Maastricht/Brussel 2001) on painstakingly comparing works from the workshop of Pieter Brueghel the Younger (and many others) which generated a lot of interesting information on the copying practice, shop organisation and sixteenth/seventeenth century markets.

x-posted from The Art Detective

Beg, steal or borrow?

'Gimme loads of money!' I said to the bank manager.

He said: 'Yes, I will.'

Alas, we'll have to pay it all back. I wasn't wearing a balaclava and toting a AK47.

Househunting (part 7)

We got a call from the real estate guy. The house is ours, they agreed with our final bid!
ZOMG! We're going to be in debt for the next twenty odd years!

Ah well, all in a good cause. Friends of ours said we'd be doing the right thing.
Dr Livingstone and myself were already discussing how we'd arrange all of the furniture. We both want a new made-to-measure bookcase. I did have to compromise, the Dr's exact words were: 'No, they're not going on every wall in the room, I don't want to live in a bloody library!'.

Right. It's off to the shops to get hold of some Chuiqita banana boxes. I've already hoarded eleven over the past two weeks. I'm aiming for the round number of fourty.
This means we'll be moving house again, around the New Year. We've moved a lot over the last couple of years.
This'll be the third time in seven years. And hopefully the last! So we'll be getting another chance to throw out some of the rubbish we've accumulated over the years. And I'm not someone who keeps everything just in case.

I've already made a start by sifting through old cassettes I used to record. I've even got a recording of a Top 30 from 1985. Radio was soooo slow in those days.
I'm making a list of songs I still like. Then I proceed to go to the library. Which is like one big iTunes, really. On the plus side I don't have to pay for the songs. A lot of them aren't available online anyway due to copyright laws and what not.
Yes I'm a cheapskate. And a pirate.

Househunting (part 6)

On Saturday we had an appointment to see another house. At 9.30am.
At just a stone's throw away from one of the mills where I work as a volunteer. House surrounded by woodland and fields. 70.000 square meters.

Dr Livingstone wanted to buy forthwith, on impulse. I wanted to have a bit of time to reconsider. Granted, it was a neat and tidy house. And no neighbours. Plenty of space. But just a bit too expensive (the owner said there would be no negotiating about the price). And too much garden (though uncultivated, which means loads of trees keeping the sun away from the windows. I like my sun).
It really was a steal at the price it was going and a lot of interest too (two more people showed up as we left). The very nice real estate guy gave us a bundle of paperwork to read through (all possible certificates on isolation, electricity, ground composition etc).

When we got into the car we kinda had something like an argument. I asked Dr Livingstone what he likes about the house, and he asked me what I disliked about it. I didn't want to write it off just yet, but it wasn't the WOW! vibe I got off the other property (the one where we retracted the bid).
So once we got back home, we had some coffee in the sun outside and we took a closer look at everything.

The owner told us he had done all the renovation on the house himself (which I never ever like, no matter how neat everything looks).
The electricity certificate proved this. The installation is allowed to continue to operate for another 18 months, after that there needs to be a follow-up check by some specialist company because a few things were amiss. I didn't like the list of things that were written down and still had to be carried out.
My biggest issue (although a bit counter intuitive) was the surrounding grounds. Having no near neighbours is a big plus, but I really son't see myself taking care of woodland.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Dr Livingstone said he could easily do all of that. But then I reminded him of the state of his back as it was right now. I agree with him on the uniqueness of the house, but I thought it best not to rush into this Great Enthusiasm.
Dr Livingstone went on to do some more work in his shop and I pondered the rest of the morning on the house hunting issue.

Around 3pm I collected him and we went to our nice newly found beer pub to talk things over.
It was a bit crowded, so we decided to take a walk in the nearby forest. Just to get a bit of air, relieve the tension we'd been carrying around since morning. So we put forth all the pro's and cons of the house we'd seen and compared it to the house we'd formerly bid on.
By that time we ended up at the pub again and had a Duchesse de Bourgogne, a Meroode Tripel and a Waterloo (well, two actually).
The Waterloo Tripel is supposed to have been given to the troop fighting there in 1815 and supposedly given them strenght and courage.

Which is exactly what we did and Dr Livingstone picked up his mobile and called the estate agent (not the one we'd seen that morning, but the one we'd been emailing the past weeks).
Dr Livingstone told him we'd put in a new offer. If the guy managed to sell the house for a lesser price to us, we'd split the difference down the middle and he'd pocket a handsome sum of money on top of the commission he's probably squeezing out of the sellers already.
In all of those weeks not a single prospective client had been to view the house. He did say there were two parties coming to visit on Monday and he'd meet up with the owners on Tuesday.
We've not heard anything so far, but we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Househunting (part 5)

An update on the househunting business: The real estate guy got back to us saying the owners didn't find it a very exciting price.
So we upped the bid with 20K, saying we didn't wan't to bid any higher untill some of the questions we'd asked had been answered.
One of these was the isolation on the roof. We're very certain it isn't isolated as the seller claims and we've asked for some proof. His word will not do. We're looking at 20K extra costs if we have to put down isolation.
The estate guy said the owner did not want to respond to any of our questions if we didn't put in a bid higher than 300K.
Which is a pretty strange reaction. Does this guy want to sell the house or not? Does he seriously think we'll just buy a house without knowing what exactly we're buying?
Strange.
Dr Livingstone didn't sleep a wink.
So we retracted the bid the following day. Real estate guy emailed us saying he understood our reaction and he is having a hard time selling the place because the owner is 'a man of principle'.
Whatever that means.

Househunting (part 4)

We didn't hear a word from the estate agent on Friday. Nor on Monday morning, so Dr Livingstone had to ring him up.
He gave us some cock and bull story about him being embarrassed to relay the bid to the sellers because it was an extremely low bid. Then he tried some strange story about they'd already got an offer from someone when the old price was still up. And that offer is supposedly 35K more than what we're bidding.

He's not a very convincing liar. He'd told us there was zero interest in the house when it was up for sale in July (with the old price) It is now being sold for 50K less than what it was costing in July. And now we're offering 45K less then the new asking price.

He's probably in a pickle as he probably promised these people they'd get a lot of dosh and it seems, frankly, no one's interested.
Well, we're the second people to go and view the house, the others never came back to him with an offer.

So there you have it. One house, on the market for nearly two months, one seller mortally ill and wanting to get rid of it before he pops it. And everyone else's purse is empty at the moment, as they've spent all their hard earned cash on holiday.

Dr Livingstone told the agent he should come back to us with a new price.

I wonder. I always lose at Monopoly. I expect this won't be any different.

Dick Cheney Oil Spill

Google key words "Dick Cheney" and 'oil spill" and teh intertubes give you a lot of speculation about Dick Cheney's ties with top oil dogs, Halliburton and the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Funnily enough in the newsfeed of our Flemish paper De Standaard two headlines showed up which struck me as rather funny:





06.25 am BP starts crucial tests oil spill
06.38 am Dick Cheney got heart pump

Chocks away!

I'm holding my breath every time I hear roaring propeller engines overhead.
Test flights with 'new' C-130 of the Belgian Air Force have started!
The transport aircraft (for the 15th-wing in Melsbroek) had been spotted at the Melsbroek airbase shortly after Sabena Technics in Zaventem had finished service on the winged cargo haul.
The 'new' plane was purchased from the American company Evergreen with money from insurance companies. It replaces the C-130 that was destroyed by a fire in one of the hangars of Sabena Technics about two years ago.

The technicians worked on the C-130E for eighteen months to make it meet the same requirements as the ten other C-130H's - a more recent version of the Lockheed aircraft - from the Belgian army.

The plane was built in 1965 and was used for weather observing duties in the United States. According to Evergreen the C-130 has clocked about 20,361 flight hours and the wings have been replaced.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the unit will officially be handed over to the military in early December once tests have been completed.

Funny Money

This totally cracked me up when I saw the front page of the newspaper yesterday.

A safe investment in troubled times

In light of all these credit crises and banks on the brink of bankruptcy, where is your money safe? Stuff it in a sock and hide it under a mattress?
I think I've got the solution in just two words: Buy art.
It’s very simple. Invest some of your savings in art. It is a fairly sound investment without too much risk involved. It doesn't lose its value during a financial crisis, even in times of war or supreme inflation. You do however need to know what exactly you are buying, if it turns out you've bought a fake, that's money down the drain. But a quick internet search and some browsing through Art Indexes can give you a fairly good idea what items you might be interested in are going for and have been going for for several years.
Dr Rachel Campbell has done some interesting research on this topic.
Mind you: I am not talking about the top end of the market here. The art market can collapse (remember the Japanese companies buying up impressionist paintings because stocks were falling). If you've got more than half a million euros to spend (-sorry - invest), that would be something to worry about.

I don't know where my little country stands on this issue but some European countries are looking into the possibility if it is at all possible to incorporate works of art into pension trusts.
And if you don't have room in your house, the insurance unaffordable or the conditions to keep it are not up to scratch: Rent it out to a museum. Rent comprising of restoration, climate controlled storage and/or insurance. But always bear in mind that even storage facilities are prone to fire.
If it is a work of national importance, I'm sure public funding of your Shurgardist practice won't be a point of discussion. If it is, you can always sell it with a profit to the museum or state in question. Some mayor art works have been bought by governments to keep the work of art inside the country, rather than see it disappear into a collection on another continent.

So I'm going on a scouting trip next week, an auction house has some viewing days, auction is in two weeks time.
The work from the artist I've got my eye on has been selling for much less than it has been valued for about a decade now. But alas, I can't attend the auction in person, when I need to do the bidding I have a class. So doing it over the phone is out of the question too. I could send off the standard email to the auction house to do the bidding for me, but I'm not sure how honest they would handle my bid. They are a respectable hotel de vente but I am and always will be a sceptic till my dying day.

But nonetheless: Going, going, gone!