Dealers at fairs such as Frieze may think that five days of attendance 11-6 is hard work, but BRAFA’s 147 galleries spend ten days in Brussels’ Expo Centre, and when I visited on 29th January, the fair was open until 10 pm! It remained busy, and the quality – across twenty specialities ranging from ancient to antique to modern, art to artefacts to design – was high. Perhaps the late conclusion influenced me, as I found myself drawn towards rather dark art…
Germaine Richier: ‘L’Oiseau’, 1953, at Galerie de la Béraudière, Brussels
Perhaps the fair’s outstanding table was one populated with a dozen darkly distorted and hybridised figures by the French sculptor Germaine Richier (1902-59). They were made immediately after the Second World War, fitting in with existentialist interpretations. Typically, the skeletal support structure is made visible rather than disguised, and organic elements are added into the plaster to be cast in bronze: here the man-bird’s ribcage is a fish bone.
Pablo Picasso: ‘Black Owl’, 1947, at Galerie Jean-François Cazeau, Paris
Taken literally, a ‘black owl’ is a 1-in-10,000 melanistic mutation of the barn owl. I don’t suppose Picasso represents that, as much as an imagined bird-woman – to partner Richier’s man-bird, perhaps. The year before in Antibes, Picasso had rescued and adopted an injured owl, which he named Ubu. I take this lithograph to blend the pet with Françoise Gilot, his muse at the time – according to whom Ubu ‘smelled awful and ate nothing but mice’.
Peter van Boucle: ‘Still Life with a Boar’s Head’, c. 1650 at Colnaghi, London / New York / Brussels / Madrid
Active between Antwerp and Paris, Peter van Boucle (1610-73) developed a mode of still life that negotiated between the material richness of the Flemish Baroque and the emerging restraint of French classicism. Modern eyes are more likely to be struck, though, by the dark – even disturbing – subject of a work likely to be hung in a country kitchen. Presumably the onions are ready to be cooked with the still-bleeding head…
Thu Van Tran: ‘Colours of Grey’, 2023, at Meessen, Brussels
This is about as dark as an apparent abstraction will get… The French-Vietnamese artist uses plaster, lime and six colours to make her ongoing series ‘Colours of Grey’, the grey being mixed from the other six. All rather contemplative and content-free until you wonder whether that haziness might represent smoke in a valley. Not only might it: the six colours gave their name to the defoliants used by the US military during the Vietnam War (agent orange, purple, blue, green, pink, white).
Georges Lemmen: ‘Sea Evening (Heist)’, 1891, at Galerie Berès, Paris
This oil, painted a-la-Seurat directly onto a wooden panel, was made just after the neo-impressionist painter Georges Lemmen (1865-1916) was elected to ‘Les XX’, then Belgium’s most active artistic circle, at the age of just 24. Pointillism was all the rage, and Lemmen adopted it for several marine views made near Heist, at the eastern end of the Belgian North Sea coast. It’s only 20 cm wide, so a Heist heist would be simpler than most, and it is a temptingly jewel-like picture…
BRAFA ART FAIR, 25th January – 1st February 2026 Brussels Expo @brafaartfair
