Brussels' greatest artist... whom everybody hates

WARNING: This post contains lesbianism, frontal nudity, graphic suicide, roasted babies and rapists getting shot in the face from point blank range. I think that's all sensitivities covered.

The wierd and macabre world of Antoine Wiertz

Much maligned
Let me introduce you to Romantic painter Antoine Joesph Wiertz. Don't worry if you've never heard of him, it doesn't make you a Philistine. Wiertz has been unkindly described as perhaps "the worst painter to have a government funded museum all to himself". His paintings are bold, ghoulish, macabre and perhaps even slightly naive. During his own lifetime he was laughed out of the Louvre and exiled to Brussels. But don't listen to the art critics... listen to me and my polemic. 

Antoine Joesph Wiertz was pretty easy on the eye, eh ladies?

So why does Wiertz have a museum all of his very own?
What Wiertz lacked in talent he made up for in luck. He was very much in the right place at the right time. Belgium had just been created as an independent nation and the new Government was looking for national heroes to unite the people and inject some patriotism. Wiertz was hobnobbing with the equivalent of the Minister for Culture and happened to mention he was looking for a new studio to house his enormous paintings. The pair struck a deal. Wiertz would donate all of his works to the state, in return they would be permanently displayed in a Government-funded museum. 

Wiertz's works are enormous, this photo gives some idea of their true scale

The lonely Wiertz museum
Thanks to the deal struck in 1850 I was able to visit the Wiertz museum free-of-charge in 2013. Back in the 1920s the Belgian government must have thought it had struck gold and the museum was attracting nearly 50,000 visitors every year. His visceral works of death, dismemberment and naked birds had captured the public imagination. Unfortunately, nearly a century later Wiertz is largely forgotten. According to the Economist, the museum now draws fewer than 10 visitors a day. I had the entire gallery to myself. I spent an hour there and didn't see another soul. It was a ghost town. The Magritte museum with its predictable apples and bowler hats is currently thronging with idiots clamouring and jostling to point their smartphones at something they recognise for two-seconds of diversion. 

The best museum in Brussels
The Wiertz Museum's unpopularity is a real shame. For a start it's free. Secondly, his images are bold, brutal, proto-surreal and painted on a Cyclopean scale. Finally, there's a beautiful irony in the museum. It sits slap bang in the middle of the European parliament complex. Wiertz had always argued that Brussels (and not Paris) should be the new capital of Europe... and now it is (bureaucratically at least).

Why Wiertz is so brilliant
The longer I spent looking at his paintings the more I started to appreciate the artist. His images are as relevant today as ever. In fact, I'd argue Wiertz was something of a trailblazer. * all of these photos are on my Flickr stream if you'd like to see them in high-res*

It must have been shocking to think of a woman bearing arms in the early 19th Century, let alone blowing a Frenchman's skull open for getting a bit too familiar. There were no rape alarms or pepper spray for Wiertz's heroine - just a carbine and a lead ball. The assailant's face explodes like a Tarrantino film.

He won't be raping again in a hurry

Suicide was a shocking idea to pious society but not for Wiertz, he packs a punch with this work. The man's face might be shrouded in pistol smoke but fragments of his head fly across the canvas. 

Suicide by Wiertz

Here Cyclops chomps down on a man's leg. The giant's eyes are closed in pleasure at the bite and the man dangles in agony. Wiertz does not spare the red paint.

An amuse bouche for a Cyclopean hunger

I love the La Jeune Sorciere (Young Sorceress). It's a painting packed with sexual metaphor. A nubile, naked witch straddles the most phallic looking broomstick I've ever seen while a hoary, old hag stoops over her. They both look very guilty and there's more than a hint of lesbianism in the image. The old woman leans over the young girl in a dominant way and raises the finger of secrecy and silence over her wrinkled lips. The girl is even blindfolded.

Erotic, esoteric and evocative are three words beginning with 'E' to describe La Jeune Sorciere

This painting shows a Christ-like figure transcending the Earth seconds after his death. The planets and the rocket trail he blazes as he bursts through the atmosphere look more science-fiction than Baroque.

A painting moments after death

Sex is never far from Wiertz's mind and you can't help but wonder what's going on behind the red, velvet curtain.

Sex and Wiertz go together like tea and jam

This painting of the Greeks and Trojans fighting over the body of Patrocles got Wiertz sneering, contemptuous reviews at the Paris Salon. He didn't take criticism well and turned his back on Paris and critics for good. Apparently it was unsympathetically hung and badly lit... but I'm not a Wiertz apologist.

Rather harshly judged I think

Have you ever seen Quasimodo look so beastly but dignified all at the same time? Wiertz's portrait of Notre Dame's most famous hunchback is much more thoughtfully and sympathetically considered than any other depiction I've ever seen.

Quasimodo looks deep in thought, almost serene

What artist would be inspired to paint a picture of a baby with third-degree burns after its mother left it too close to the fire? I think you can guess.

A mother screams in horror as roasted skin peels from her baby's legs

If you're not traumatised enough already here's a painting of wailing children clawing at the coffin of their last surviving parent while a burly labourer drags it away uncaringly.

No innocence in childhood in the world of Wiertz

Finally, here's the Lion of Waterloo. It's fair to say Wiertz wasn't a Francophile. In this painting he celebrates Wellington's victory over Napoleon just a few miles down the road.

Celebrating the British (and Prussian) victory at Waterloo

And this is how I was first introduced to Wiertz. I saw this statue and wondered who it was in honour of... one Google search later and here we are.

A fitting statue for an overlooked and much maligned artist

TLDR - If you're ever in Brussels go to the Wiertz Museum near the European Parliament because it's brilliant