THIS is a large, compendious exhibition of over a hundred Belgian and Luxembourg artists, whose works range over three quarters of a century. Some of the names will be familiar here - for instance, the sculptor Pol Bury, who was so strong a presence 20 years or so ago, but is represented only by a single, disappointingly minor work. Or Jean Marie Biwer, a prominent figure in the big international exhibitions of the Eighties. Or Paul Delvaux who for decades ranked just after Magritte among Belgium's leading surrealists. As for Michel Seuphor (born 1901), he is probably better known and respected as a spokesman for abstract art than for his own creative efforts.
Those who claim to detect national, or even regional characteristics and identities at almost a glance may be able to spot a binding link between the hugely disparate works on view; as for me, I cannot. Frans Minnaert does seem to have obvious links with Flemish Expressionism, and particularly with Permeke, in his brooding landscape of Brabant. However Luc Peire (born 1916) paints in a cool, spacious Constructivist manner quite without national or local traits, and much the same is true of Guy Vandenbranden and Jo Delahaut, whose style is austerely colourful with a strictly geometric basis. And Marcel Louis Baugniet - who, according to the catalogue, is 100 years old this year - obviously looks back to Malevich and El Lissitzky.
There is very little present of the Cobra painters who stirred up such a conflagration in the early Abstract Expressionist days. Lismonde, another elder figure, works in a spidery, linear, hypnotic way rather reminiscent of Giacometti, but without moving into figurativism. The bronzes of Nat Neujean (much respected, so I am told, for his portraits) are courageously old fashioned, solidly crafted and with a deep sense of emotional engagement. There could hardly be a sharper contrast than that between these traditional pieces and Jan Carlier's hanging abstract metal piece, as bare and flat as a field gate but with a strong presence.
The Luxembourg painters include several interesting and very contemporary figures, notably Biwer himself and Roger Bertemes. I liked the cool, poised photographs of Guillaume Bijl, the idiosyncratic lyricism of Jacques Charlier's Peinture de Fete, the stark contemporaneity of Raoul de Keyser's bathroom painting, Camille de Taeye's shadowed, introspective self portrait. And Sam Dillemans's big, free, almost messy portrait of the painter Fred Bervoets really does merit the term confrontation." By contrast, Roger Dudant's untitled painting, which suggests modern glass and steel architecture, has a cool, subtilised, slightly disembodied quality. The insouciant humour of Beatrijs Lombaerts's painting of three woman sweepers is built up largely through collage like techniques.
Two of the most individual painters on view are Christian Rolet, who suggests figurativism but remains shadowy and enigmatic, and Jean Pierre Ransonnet, who shows a sequence of four pictures in which a startlingly blue sky is framed by what seem to be stylised pine trees. There are interesting sculptors too, such as Luk van Soom who exhibits a perforated metal screen, Reinhoud who seems to owe a debt to Gabo, and Rik Poot. Lucien Wercollier, apparently a patriarch in Luxembourger art, works in an organic, abstract format descended lineally from Brancusi and Aip. Felix Roulin's eloquent bronze Les Mains verges on Surrealism; the tall woodcarvings of Jacky de Maeyer have a kind of arrogant, neo primitive stance.
It must be admitted, however (and no particular slur is intended), that a large proportion of the works of art on view look very much like what you can see virtually anywhere else in Europe, or indeed in a number of non European countries as well. They are well made, in step with contemporary trends, and stake no claim to originality or even individuality. The internationalisation of art seems to have produced a high level of uniformity virtually everywhere, though arguably a similar situation existed a century ago when the dominance of academic realism produced a similar sameness.
