Paul Delvaux

Belgian art historian and filmmaker Paul Haesaerts (1901–1974) made a significant contribution to the promotion of modern Flemish art. In the late 1940s, he started experimenting with the medium of film to practice a new form of lens-based art criticism. The understudied documentary "Quatre peintres belges au travail" (1952) presents Belgian artists Edgar Tytgat, Albert Dasnoy, Jean Brusselmans and Paul Delvaux at work in their studio. On a large sheet of glass placed in front of the camera, they each paint one of the seasons that also represent a stage in a person’s life. A close reading of this Kodachrome color film sheds light on the context of mid-century art reproductions, mass media and post-war Flemish culture. It also examines in what way this film operates as Haesaerts’s concept of cinéma critique, while raising questions as to the way Haesaerts attempted to reconcile the spatial art of painting with the temporal medium of film.

Until his death in 1994, the twentiethcentury master Paul Delvaux was the last surviving member of the first generation of surrealist painters. In this portrait, he reminisces about his family, himself, his art and the various phases of his career. He explains that all his visual ideas are derived from childhood memories and the film shows the way in which these scenes have been incorporated into his work. The painter is seen as a young man (the earliest footage dates from 1945) and the film includes some unique shots of the extraordinary Musée Spitzner.

The approach of the paintings by Paul Delvaux is offered in the form of a discussion between the artist and a psychiatrist who asked about the content of his work. The document gives plenty of room for his paintings that illustrate the themes: the poetic climate, the loneliness of the characters, the naked woman, skeletons ...

A family film, a short summer film, made to record the joy of being together. But what a family! Léon Spilliaert, Paul Delvaux, Edgar Tytgat and his wife Maria, Luc and Paul Haessaerts. A garden, some seats and a camera that films the group of friends. They talk (given all the jollity, laughter and gestures seen it is a shame that it is a silent film). A period document only a few minutes long, a witness that puts names to faces, a reminder of a sunny afternoon. Emotion that loses itself in the moment.