Belgian Avant-Garde Art on Paper in a European Context, 1918-1950

The BePAPER project This PhD, under supervision of promotor Prof. dr. Sascha Bru and co-promotor Prof. dr. Barbara Baert is a component of the BePAPER project, Belgian Art on Paper in a European Perspective, 1918-1950. It is part of the research programme BRAIN-be 2.0, Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks (https://www.belspo.be/belspo/brain2-be/project_p2_nl.stm), funded by BELSPO. The project is conducted in participation with curator dr. Inga Rossi-Schrimpf and director Michel Draguet of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB), the Université Libre Bruxelles (ULB), and Prof. dr. Fred Truyen. BePAPER aims to study, disclose, and promote Belgian avant-garde ‘works on paper’ between 1918-1950. The RMFAB collection ‘work on paper modern art’ consists of more than 1000 individual sheets and sketchbooks by Belgian avant-garde artists from this period. It has a wide variety of autographic artworks with paper as basic material: drawings, sketches, collages, paper assemblages, water colours, gouaches, book and magazine illustrations, etc. Among the artists included in the project are Futurist Jules Schmalzigaug, the Expressionists Frits van den Berghe, Joseph Cantré, Gustave De Smet, Constant Permeke, the Constructivists Jozef Peeters, Karel Maes, Felix De Boeck, Victor Servranckx, Edmond van Dooren and Pierre-Louis Flouquet, the Cubist, and later on Purist, Marthe Donas, the Surrealists Paul Delvaux, René Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens as well as the Dadaist Paul Joostens. Apart from the scientific articles and a PhD, the findings of the BePAPER project will also be disclosed to the public by the organization of a symposium, a lecture series at the ULB, and a (travelling) exhibition with an accompanying catalogue. To promote these hitherto fairly unknown artworks open data solutions are employed in order to build a sustainable internet platform and an online database. With respect to the development of a FAIR digital strategy, Prof. dr. Fred Truyen’s involvement will be indispensable. PhD Thesis As the collection of 1000 avant-garde works on paper the RMFAB illustrates, many Belgian avant-garde artists were drawn to the medium of paper during the interbellum and the 1940s. Through a quantitative analysis of the data provided by the museum, the corpus for the qualitative study that makes up this dissertation will be selected. Apart from the selected works, this PhD will also explore print culture in general, and, in doing so, will contribute to the research of Belgian, and by extension European, cultural production in the first half of the twentieth century. The dissertation will combine the fields of art history and literary history, and therefore will be approached from the interdisciplinary perspective of cultural studies. Magazines, journals, artist’s books, letters and ego documents will be delved into to gain a better understanding of art theories (applicable to the RMFAB works on paper) formulated by Belgian avant-garde artists, and to hopefully attain valuable information on the artists’ thoughts on the materiality of paper. The analysis of early twentieth-century reviews will also provide an insight into the reception of these works by the art establishment. Hence, the thesis will draw on a wider scope of sources found in archives such as those held by the RMFAB, namely the Archive of Contemporary Art in Belgium (ACAB) and the Archive of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (ARMFAB). Ultimately, the Belgian avant-garde works on paper will also be compared to other (popular) art forms such as the then upcoming medium of film. Building on the specificity of this collection, this PhD aims to chart why and how these Belgian avant-garde artists turned to paper. Did the choice of this medium have an influence on their aesthetics? What was the status of paper in their oeuvres? And how do they relate to other art works in different mediums by the Belgian and international avant-garde? As the European avant-garde could be regarded as the biggest international art network, the question arises whether or not these Belgian artworks on paper circulated internationally by being featured in magazines or exhibitions. As deduced from these research questions, the subject will be approached by looking at four aspects: (i) the rich diversity in terms of material and functionality, (ii) reproduction and dissemination of the artworks, (iii) international circulation of the artworks, and (iv) the aesthetics of these works on paper. These four aspects will be elaborated on the basis of five case studies: Jozef Peeters, a central figure and networker of the Antwerp avant-garde, film aficionado Paul Joostens, a singular figure and sole Dadaist among Belgian artists, the duo René Magritte–Victor Servranckx, who teamed up for different projects on/with paper, the Surrealist E.L.T. Mesens, who played a major role in promoting the surrealist movement in London, and Marthe Donas, one of few successful female avant-garde artists whose abstract works were featured in international (solo) exhibitions and magazines. Since there has never been a comprehensive study and overview of this hitherto unexplored subject, this dissertation will fill a substantial gap in the research on the cultural production of the Belgian avant-garde. It will thereby also contribute significantly to a better definition of the collection category of ‘modern works on paper’ or graphic art within European art history between the years 1918 to 1950, that is, up and until the dawn of CoBrA and the rise of the so-called neo-avant-gardes. This will allow us to bring into the limelight possibly late appropriation tendencies within the Belgian avant-gardes and the emergence of trends already pointing ahead to the neo-avant-gardes.