This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Brussels Antiques & Fine Arts Fair – BRAFA. In Britain, such occasions typically feature worthy speeches explaining how ‘it’s all about the people’, but here it did seem to be ‘all about the art’. So let’s pitch into the offerings of 130 galleries covering everything from fossils to tribal masks to jewellery to furniture as well as all eras of painting. That last category included plenty of abstraction – Georges Matthieu, Maurice Estève and Simon Hantaï seemed especially prominent. Still, combining the art with the people, here are ten unconventional depictions of human faces…
Pol Bury: from ‘Six ramollissements de Pol Bury’, 1982 at Harold t’Kint de Roodenbeke, Brussels
One of the most distinctive booths, presented 70 works drawn from the estate of Pol Bury, in a studio-style environment. Bury (1922-2005) is best known for sculptures animated by electric motors, but his wide range includes portrait ‘softenings’, in which he physically distorted a print of the image before rephotographing it. In this particular softening, I’d say, he’s pretty hard on himself.
René Magritte: ‘Les bijoux indiscrets’, 1963, at Gilden’s Art Gallery, London
This wrist with a face takes its title – ‘Indiscreet Jewellery’ – from Diderot’s most-published book, a satire popular with the surrealists in which a sultan’s magic ring is able to make women’s ‘jewels’ – i.e. genitals – speak publicly. In this lithograph, published in Paris and now circling back to Magritte’s home city via London, it seems a bracelet is set to declaim the secrets of the hand – of the artist’s hand, perhaps.
Contemporary brooch at Gioielleria Nardi, Venice
Speaking of jewellery, that doesn’t often feature faces. However, the long-running themes of the multi-generational jewellery business Nardi include the blackamoor or ‘Meretto’, representing the inter-continental aspect of the trading city nation at its peak. This brooch takes the form of a carved black coral bust with diamonds, amethysts, pearls and sapphires in the earrings, turban and regalia. ‘The rich cultural tapestry of Venice is intricately woven into each exquisite piece’, says the company.
Jacques de Braeckeleer: ‘Bust of Jacques Vekemans, c. 1880, at Klaas Muller, Brussels
In this pair of Jacques, De Braekeleer (1823 – 1906) was a respected Flemish sculptor, here working in terra cotta. Vekemans (1815-1888) was the second director of Antwerp’s zoo, known for his expansion of the breeding programme for exotic animals. What struck me was the exotically sculptural hair that reshapes his face, both top and bottom.
Andy Warhol: ‘Untitled (Marilyn)’, c. 1978, at Galerie Von Vertes, Zurich
This screenprint is the only example I’ve seen of Warhol’s most famous face being blanked out in this way. It makes sense as a comment on the cult of celebrity: so iconic is Marilyn, not unassisted by Warhol’s previous versions, that she can be recognised without actually being seen.
Hans Bellmer: ‘Untitled’, 1959 at Rueb, Amsterdam
I’m not sure what this late Bellmer pencil drawing is – face, breast, spider, spoof of how Dali paints soft bodies supported on wooden props? Whatever, it’s a compellingly economical surrealist jotting, and came from the collection of famed Picasso biographer John Richardson.
Karel Appel: ‘Visage’, 1976, at Repetto, Lugano
There was good harvest of Appels at the fair, typically with primary colours and violently impasto brushwork coagulating into wildly abstracted figures. That’s in line with the unbridled spontaneity of the CoBrA group, which the Dutch artist (1921–2006) helped to found in 1948. Most were on canvas, but this example – about life-size – is acrylic on embossed paper, adding an extra dimensionality to its self-framing.
Ishyeen Imaalu Mask, 19th century, at Serge Schoffel, Brussels
This mask from the Congo is unusual for its projecting eyes, designed to reinforce the anonymity of the wearer. That’s essential, so as not to give away his human form at a time when he is a god. Rings of holes round each eye ensure that the man/god can see…
Stick Katsina Doll, c 1910-20s, at Galerie Flak, Paris
I like the geometric face on this cottonwood doll, of a type designed to represent Hopi gods and so teach Native American children about the spirit world. This one is the Ma’alo Dancer, associated with prayers for rain and bountiful harvests. The influence of such figures on modern art may not generate the attention of African equivalents, but Breton, Ernst, Duchamp – and, more recently, Horst Antes – all collected them.
Stefaan De Croock: ‘Portrait’, 2024, at Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg / Brussels
Stefaan De Croock trained academically in Ghent but initially made his name as street artist ‘Strook’. He spends his time hunting for characterful wood in order to collage faces that tap into place – typically using a source building for more than one work – as well as the implied history stemming from the events to which the material was a witness of sorts: he sees them as ‘monuments to memory’ suggesting how ‘reality is coloured by experience’.
BRAFA continues to 2nd Feb at Brussels Expo – Halls 3 & 4, Place de Belgique 1, 1020 Brussels
