Reading this week:

• Tales from the Dark Continent edited by Charles Allen
• Journey into Africa by James McCarthy

Having stumbled out of the Royal Museum for Central Africa and into the daylight (well into the overcast skies), I proceeded to make my way into Brussels proper. Since the trolley out to the museum was undergoing maintenance, this involved a bus ride to the metro station and then a lovely metro ride into the city center. Except I didn’t really mean to go into the city center, that was too far, I meant to go to the city edge because there was supposed to be a yarn store which I was going to check out on behalf of my super amazing wife, but then I couldn’t find it which made yarn hunting feel a bit demoralizing so trying to figure out what else to do in Brussels I went to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts! Oh also there was an accordion player on the metro when I was riding it. When we were in Spain (which I will write about later) there was an accordion player on the metro and now here I was in Belgium with a metro-bound accordion player so I assume this is a European thing?

The first thing to know about the Royal Museums of Fine Arts is that “Museums” is plural. I did not realize this for quite a while and it made the whole experience rather bewildering. Not helping was the fact that I entered the place about two hours before closing and I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to see every single piece of fine art within that time and by golly I wanted to get my money’s worth. So I beat through the crowds and rushed over to the ticket machine and got what I thought was a general entry ticket to the singular Museum which noted what I thought was just a special exhibit: IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism. Ticket in hand I wandered off to the first exhibit I thought might be interesting to see, the Magritte Museum.

I found the Magritte Museum (what I at that time thought was the Magritte exhibit) and first had to figure out how to work the lockers so I could store the bag of Belgian chocolates I got for my super amazing wife at the behest of the friend I came to Belgium to see. With that done I got into the rather long line for the Magritte exhibit and waited and waited and finally got to the front where you scan your ticket only for my ticket to not work. Because it was actually a ticket for the surrealism exhibit, and the docent eventually told me that I had to go to that exhibit and couldn’t come into the Magritte exhibit. Stressed and put out, I went down to the surrealism exhibit, only to come across another barrier. Besides my time limit and being bewildered, the other off-putting thing about the museum was that every single other tourist there was as confused and bewildered as I was, so here I was trying to get into an actual exhibit to see some actual art in this museum only to find another tourist arguing with the docent there and it took a while. I mean maybe like 2 minutes but I was stressed! I just wanted some culture! And I was very annoyed at not being able to see any Magrittes in this town where Magritte lived! I didn’t even want to see any Magrittes before I came to Brussels but now that I was here I wanted to see some Magrittes and I had been thwarted! The whole thing was very annoying! But eventually I got into IMAGINE! and it turns out it had a pretty good chunk of Magrittes anyway.

I really liked the one above, “The Dominion of Light.” I have a cousin who told us once proudly that she knew she had good taste because everything she likes turns out to be expensive. In that case I have really great taste because another one in the series sold for £59.4 million. I think I like what everyone else likes about it, the paradox that makes you work hard to try to understand it. Plus he paints really good. Pretty big plus if you’re a surrealist.

A few other works jumped out at me. Having been to the Dalí Museum, I find it fun to see a Dalí anywhere else. Like, you’re a Dalí! You should be in the Dalí Museum! That’s where Dalís go! Of course that is silly but that is the way my brain works so it is extra surreal to see the surrealist elsewhere. My two absolute favorite pieces in the surrealist exhibit however were in a section that gave you a little warning that some topics might be sensitive for particular viewers. They meant sex, sex is the topic that might be sensitive. The first was the sculpture? object? in the gallery on the left by Mimi Parent. A whip made out of two braids of hair, two pigtails, is pretty provocative, but then you title it “Mistress” and man (woman?) that is the height of wit. I loved it. The other probably wouldn’t have been so great on its own, Duchamp putting a boob on a book, but the museum itself managed to put together just an absolutely exquisite meta-artwork by taking a sculpture titled “Please Touch” and putting it under glass.

Full of surrealism I now had an hour left before the museums closed. What to do? I had already paid I think €18.50 to see the surrealists, and I was in a bit of a huff that didn’t cover the entire museum, did I really want to pay another €10 to see more stuff when I only had an hour? I waffled but eventually decided that art is priceless and got a ticket (correctly, this time) to see what I thought was the actual Fine Arts museum itself but now reading the website I realize is the Old Masters Museum. It was still not smooth sailing from here, because first I had to confirm what ticket I needed, and then wait in line for that, and then try to enter only to be told I needed to recheck my chocolate bag because I had retrieved it, and that being accomplished I was then once again in a line behind other bewildered tourists, and the poor docent who must be at least trilingual and is therefore very impressive was trying to explain to the bewildered tourist what to do while other tourists were skipping the line which annoyed me and the lady in front of me but we eventually got there, we figured it out, I entered the museum, and admired some old masters.

Old masters are not normally really my style. I probably waffle on that but like religious iconography just doesn’t really vibe with me. Maybe if I knew more Christian lore it would but I don’t. Plus I was annoyed by the whole process of getting in the door so it took me a bit to settle down and what really did it for me was going into the Bruegel room. It wasn’t a huge collection but the neatest part (for me) was the two different versions of “The Numbering at Bethlehem” but Bruegel I and Bruegel II. Kinda fun to paint the same painting as your old man just to prove you got the chops. I assume that is what he was doing, I don’t know. They weren’t directly next to each other so you had to shuffle between the two to take in the pair, but overall I thought it was pretty neat and it chilled me out enough to really examine the rest of the artwork in a levelheaded manner.

Of the rest of the paintings the one that really caught my attention was “The Art Lover’s Gallery,” which was displayed just sorta tucked away in a hallway. It wasn’t a major focal point of the collection but it had exactly the thing to appeal to me: an astrolabe. I noticed that the dudes in the frilly collars had a whole set of navigational instruments and man do I love navigational instruments. Plus the room is decorated in a way I would like to decorate, choc-a-bloc with paintings and other curiosities. I had almost walked away when I realized too that my astrolabe tunnel vision kept me from noticing the black boy that looks to be maybe a servant wandering in with tea? I’m not sure. But since this painting is from 1621 there is a whole world to be unearthed just from his presence in the painting. Unfortunately I did not have the time and do not have the knowhow to unearth that world, but it was a pretty neat way to end my time in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts.