Quatre Peintres Belges au Travail: Paul Haesaerts’s Film on Edgar Tytgat, Albert Dasnoy, Jean Brusselmans and Paul Delvaux (1952)

Joséphine Vandekerckhove

doi:10.3390/arts11010036

Abstract

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.

Highlights

Brusselmans and Paul DelvauxBelgian art historian and filmmaker Paul Haesaerts (1901–1974) made several important contributions to the promotion of Flemish art
From the 1930s onwards, he was a principal member of the Flemish art scene and part of Belgian artistic organizations such as Les Compagnons de l’Art and La Jeune Peinture Belge (Thirifays 1951; Maes 2015)
The thirty-minute film Quatre peintres belges au travail opens with images of hands with particular red nail varnish holding color reproductions of the richly decorated miniatures of Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry (c. 1415) by the Limbourg brothers

Summary

Introduction

Belgian art historian and filmmaker Paul Haesaerts (1901–1974) made several important contributions to the promotion of Flemish art. From the 1930s onwards, he was a principal member of the Flemish art scene and part of Belgian artistic organizations such as Les Compagnons de l’Art and La Jeune Peinture Belge (Thirifays 1951; Maes 2015). Together with his brother Luc. Together with his brother Luc Haesaerts, he founded the journal Les Beaux-Arts in 1930, publishing widely on Flemish modern art.

Edgard

Four Belgian Painters at Work

Haesaerts’s Art Criticism in Color

Screening the Artist Studio

Conclusions