THE ART (?) OF COPY-PAINTING
I would never have entered the building if my wife had not taken me. To an exhibition of a painting-copying atelier, open to all-comers, an essentially private (i.e. not municipality-funded) venture in a non-chic part of the city centre.
I immediately knew both from the dress of those exhibiting and visiting and their painting that this would be difficult. They represent a slice of Belgian society I feel uneasy with. Lower-to-middle class, not necessarily uneducated, but pretty anti-establishment, or rather keeping away from establishment in its own world, with its own references and codes. Very far from far from religion, except for dabbling vaguely in eastern ones (and with pot). Many living off government jobs (primary school teachers) or social security. Politically often far-left. One senses a mute anger and fronde.
The copies were what they were. Some honest attempts, marred by the fact that no one, it seems, learns to draw nowadays. Other works would be best burned or overpainted. And since it was free, my wife, ever curious, joined in. And of course, her works, that of a trained artist, immediately stood out from the rest. Admiration quickly turned to embarrassment and jealousy, in particular as she refused to say ‘good, good’ to what was clearly ‘bad, bad’ in the work of fellow-copiers, thereby breaking, for the organizers, the unwritten rule that everyone’s work was of equal value and everyone should be treated as equal.
Perhaps not surprising therefore that yesterday, two days on, my wife received an e-mail from the organizers of the atelier and exhibition, accusing her of racism, for not having accepted the greeting of a participant of Muslim origin. Not mentioned of course was the fact that the gentleman in question had barged in on her conversation with someone else, or the fact that good manners would demand that it was my wife as the senior person in age who should offer the greeting. I will pass on the use in the e-mail of the familiar ‘tu’, which I consider inappropriate, but which carries its own message.
To quote “We would like you to consider carefully your behaviour and that you can find a way to make reparation for this act towards Mahoed” (Nous aimerions que tu remettes en question ce comportement et que tu puisses trouver un moyen pour réparer cet acte envers Mahmoed.)
No, we are not going to reconsider nor make reparation for someone’s essentially self-inflicted wound.
For me, lurking in the background is a doctrine of egalitarianism which excuses every kind of boorishness, ugliness and bad manners. Sorry, I think I have a sense of beauty and balance, God-given and inborn, a sense of what carries me and humanity forward, and what imprisons me and my fellow-men in a slough of despond, or in cheap, nasty and immediate pleasure. I do my best as a Christian not to dismiss my fellow-men, but where there is no room for my own canons of beauty and decency, I stay away. I fear, though, that thiis all-excusing egalitarianism is here to stay in Belgian society.
It has taken me three days to clear my spirit of the visit, of a sense of being trapped in a dirty, directionless, spirit-dulling fog.
For pictures from the exhibition, see: https://mmekourdukova.livejournal.com/1036878.html