Foto happening tijdens de Britse theater week, Nieuwstraat Brussel, 1967. Fotograaf onbekend.

Britse Theater Week/ Inno

“In preparation for British Week, four Belgian pop artists (Jaques Charlier, Emile Christiaens, Roland Van den Berghe, Frans Van Roosmaelen) will be working on billboards in Brussels on September 1. Their paintings illustrate “Modern British Theatre” Week and the “Poetic Show,” which will be held in Brussels from September 30 to October 6 at the Centre for Fine Arts. The paintings will be exhibited during the “Poetic Show” on October 6 in the Henry Le Boeuf Hall, where English poets and folk singers will perform.”

From: Newspaper clipping from the Gazet van Antwerpen, Roland Van den Berghe archive.

“In Nieuwstraat, Roland Van den Berghe composed a ‘tribute’ to Magritte. He did so against the apocalyptic backdrop of an Innovation building being demolished. Water dripped behind the canvas of the smoke-stained facades as if in an ever-surreal cave. The jackhammers made a hellish racket. Amidst it all, we still managed to catch up with the Ghent painter. He traveled all over Europe with his works. Now he was painting for the Innovation. As he himself said: ‘a haystack with intestines leading to a farm.’ That is Belgium to me, he said. He also thought that the collapsing lunar landscape—as someone called the spectacle behind it—was “demolition.” Which we didn’t think at all. If you also factor in the history of the noise that was there yesterday… Talk about surrealism! [...]

According to Roland Van den Berghe, these five young men are the five best painters in Belgium. Soon, they will tour Belgian universities, accompanied by Marcel Broodthaers and a collection of their works.”

From: Five Belgian “open-air” painters: street pop art at British Week, by P.H. in a newspaper clipping, Roland Van den Berghe Archive.

Photo of an event during British Theater Week, Nieuwstraat, Brussels, 1967. Photographer unknown.

Photographic tribute to René Magritte by Roland Van den Berghe, Rue des Nouvelles, Brussels, 1967. Photographer unknown.

“Roland decides to pay homage to René Magritte. His work consists of a sketch—in the style of Raveel—of the square farmhouse in Godveerdegem. Just as around Medusa’s head, he adds a tangle of fire hoses, a reference to the catastrophe that has just occurred. Roland is still hard at work painting portraits from the top of tall ladders when a red Alfa Romeo convertible drives up on the now-car-free Nieuwstraat, with Marcel Broodthaers inside and his wife Maria sitting on the trunk.

A large bucket is brought out, and they begin to cover Roland’s painting with rolls of brick-patterned wallpaper. Roland initially enjoys it; he is aware that a happening is taking place here. On the back of a piece of wallpaper, Marcel writes a poem in his beautiful handwriting: Le corbeau et le renard. Here, Broodthaers clearly plays the fox who, with Brussels compliments, makes the cheese fall from the Ghent raven’s beak. He has appropriated Roland’s work, even though he supposedly wasn’t going to participate. But the performance isn’t over yet. Meanwhile, it turns out there’s another participant nearby, the Liège artist Jacques Charlier, who has developed his own brand of surrealism. Together with Broodthaers, he begins to wrap Roland’s head in duct tape. Roland is literally silenced. He is bound on the spot like a mummy, also a nod to a scene from a text by the French absurdist author Boris Vian (1920–1959).”

From: An Art Happening at the Fenced-Off Ruins of Innovation, by Willem Elias in De geus, vol. 50, no. 3, May 2018.

Timeline

August 22, 1966
Letter from Marcel Van Maele to Roland Van den Berghe; invitation for all participating painters to gather at Café “Welkom”.

September 1, 1966
In preparation for British Week, Belgian pop artists will work on billboards in Brussels on September 1.

September 30 – October 6, 1966
British Theater Week and Poetry Week.

December 11 – December 23, 1967 (–1968)
Interuniversity exhibition: Reportage.

Photo tribute to René Magritte by Roland Van den Berghe, Rue des Nouvelles, Brussels, 1967. Photographer unknown.