I am a coward. I love still life. It takes one instant, an infinitely short length of time, and presents it, static and therefore perfect – only things that cannot change cannot perish, and still life admits no progression. This is my cowardice; in sinking past the frame all stops, life drops away as you expand to [...]

For most people who consider Belgium to be somewhat of a picturesque but tedious interlude between Calais and their final destination, making a stop on the E40 at Ghent to see the ancient altarpiece in the Saint Bavo Cathedral is less likely than the Venus de Milo learning to play guitar. If they were to [...]

If we pick up a book of poetry we may be allowed the hope of being emotionally stimulated or imaginatively provoked by what we find. We may well believe that a rose is in fact incredibly ‘lusty’, that the crocus lies ‘naked and shivering’, and that laurels do indeed find themselves ‘dry-tongued’. This bed of [...]

I suppose you could call it Psycho-criticism. Pyscho-criticism w as a flash-in-the-pan. The most radical of the postmodern schools, it burnt the candle at every end and died, gasping for breath, in a small pool of its own hilarity. I invented Pyscho-criticism. At least, I was there at its inception. In sixth form history of art [...]

Build a museum. Aside from the technical tinkering that keeps a building standing and allows it to function as a museum (consider the contingencies of crowd circulation, security, climate control etc.), you’d be much preoccupied with its public face. This ‘face’ is, of course, constructed by the way in which the museum arranges its exhibition [...]

I believe architecture should be a retrospect of the human past, where distinct spatial and temporal contributions can be observed. The architecture should embody a tactile, concrete aesthetic biography. Aesthetic then, if applying strict etymology, is a derivation of the Greek aisthesis = sense perception; things that are perceptible by the senses, not things that [...]

From its inception as the eponymous fictional island in Thomas More’s novel of 1516 to modern-day Disney films, utopia has led a primarily literary existence. A hybrid of two Greek derivates (‘no place’ and ‘good place’), More’s Utopia is a place of perfect social, legal and political systems. Our contemporary equivalent of such an idealised [...]

What links a number one women’s tennis champion, the world’s toughest formula one circuit, some small blue cartoon characters and ice-skating priests? Bienvenue en Belgique, onthaal aan België. If the recent Stella Artois advertising campaign is to be believed, then you probably cannot name more than three famous people from this country. Its capital, Brussels, [...]

Exhibited in Paris in 1922, Le Corbusier’s plans for “La Ville Contemporaine” depict a city founded on geometry and abstract form. The architect employed the latest technology to produce a design that he believed would not only solve the physical problems of the early twentieth-century city, but would also result in a return to more [...]

Ingmar  Bergman passed away this year. It was not unexpected of course – he was after all 89 years of age – but time still stopped for an instant. An era died there. Will he ever have an heir? I was curious about the world’s reaction. Not surprisingly, America, alongside Sweden, reacted the most. In [...]