Luc Fierens, Belgium, On the road collage book

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Comment by De Villo Sloan on December 1, 2012 at 8:57pm

This is a treasure, Guido. 

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on November 30, 2012 at 4:19pm

I want to make a book on the art of RV in my personal collection, so trip thru memory lane and sometimes this is oops, quite scary. Forgot that around 1998 we started a series of exhibitions in Robert’s house on the staircase of the house and called this L’ART NU DESCENDANT MON ESCALIER (nude art descending our staircases, reference to a major work by Marcel Duchamp), When I see new what we exhibited WITHOUT any insurance at all  !!! makes my head spin in fact:

Pierre Alechinsky, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Corneille, Camile De Taeye, Mansouri, Marcel Marien, Leon Spilliaert, Zadkine, Hans Bellmer (Unica Zurn’s tormentor) and so on. At that moment I had not purchased some Unica’s!

I have erased the address below because hey, this is collection that could attract some crooks and the house is not protected at all !!!

Some of the people we Xhibited in 1998

Exhibition poster for the nudes descending from the staircases

3 brothers in arms on the staircases: Robert Varlez, Pedro Garcia and GV in 1998, oops I had more hair then but was fatter than 2day, LoL

Comment by vizma bruns on November 30, 2012 at 7:10am

Goodness me Guido! This is thoroughly interesting!

That wave collage is magic!

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on November 30, 2012 at 12:18am

Part 2 of the former story

Pub owners who financed our 3 days of total independence were guys like

FERRE GRIGNARD , skiffle and protest singer, hippie, alcoholic, went later to jail for other stuff he did and died 2 young, weep weep weep

PANAMARENKO, now a major artist accepted by the system. dreamer and creator of crazy flying machines.

A couple of years ago he had an exhibition of his flying sculptures in the Flemish Parliament and I said to him how I missed the days of the free square state. He almost cried in my arms. COPAIN COPAIN momet again.

Stories stories, just stories, part of my life and some others.

 

Collage 1 by Marcel Marien, THE SECRET OF THE BEDROOM Works by Marcel

 

 Another work from Andre

 

Because my health is so bad and I have no wife or kids, I toured my own brother thru my art collection and told him to take notes on what was valuable in the sense of do not throw this away but try to sell this after I am gone, because I am not going to leave any money behind.

After he while he bacame pale and asked me to stop and put the info in a document.

He got quite scared by my Unica Zurns. No problem bro, me too I am scared by Unica! He did not find this funny at all ... After effect of this tour  ° he is now buying art of Hassan Massoudy he discovered in my collection and we went to Paris 2gether the meet the great man from Iraq (in exile BEFORE the Sadam regime)

Collage 2 by Marcel Marien, THE TAO

Collage 3 by Andre Stas, THE TROUGH OF THE WAVE , he knows his Vispo quite well, hey ...

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on November 29, 2012 at 11:58pm

Marien was the main influence on all of us, dead and still alive. His collages are very Belgian, in the sense he mocks the whole political shabang of the country and goes beyond that. He was also an excellent writer, a provocative one, as if there are any others amongst the «good» ones.

LoL

Shall scan some of his collages later. Stas was a pupil of MM.

A couple of years ago I traveled to Liege to meet Jacqueline Ross (known in MA as Jack Ross, fantastic woman and collagist. We went to one of the many alternative pubs Liege has. We entered and in minimum time the whole pub was whispering: look, Guido from Kitoko is here! (Kitoko Jungle magazine was a zine I started BEFORE I got involved in mail art). I was a bit ::: and asked Jack, what the hell is going on here? How do these people seems to know who I am. Jack started gigling and pointed to a table. STAS was there with some of his buddies and started the TAM TAM. So we joined his table and he was like a dynamo, talked non stop, fire works all around. He was the director once of the CREAHM center in Liege (a center of outsider art, mainly working with disabled people, like Pascal Duquenne, the actor who played a major role in The seventh day (Le septieme jour, movie made by Jaco Van Dormael, who also made Toto the heroe and Mr Nobody, see these Belgian films if you like movies). Pascal is not really acting in that movie: he shows who he is: COPAIN COPAIN (buddy budyy) and then je jumps right into your arms, hugging and smiling! I experienced this myself when I bought in Creahm one of his artist books, he is an outstanding etcher! Disabled society says?! Pff ...

Anyway Stas was fired as director of Creahm because he drunk 2 much. I was pissed off during months when the TAM TAM reached Brussels.

Stas was also involved together with Michel ANTAKI (origins Albanian) in an ALTERNATIVE PUB AND GALLERY AND CULTURAL CENTER called Le Cirque Divers (The different Circus). I did my first poetry readings (in Flemish in a French town!) and art performances there. Amazing place. A Walloon drunk boo oo d me because I recited in Dutch. I had to intervene because he was nearly lynched on the spot by the other French speaking people. When the Circus disappeared the group behind that center continued with a zine called C4 (a C4 is the official document you get in Belgium when a company fires you!). C4 is Xtremely funny and provocative, well yeah, I know who is behind that, so no surprises here.

And so on and so on. Belgians at their best are WILD ANIMALS. They cannot be governemented !!!

Tried to Xplain that Lois Klassen, mail artist and Canadian, rebel but Canadian, so very sweet!

By stories of things I did as a teenager. the army tried to make propaganda by posting a tank in the middle of the market of a Flemish town , Mechelen to not name the town, during the night we pink sprayed the tank and that was the end of the propaganda tour, I was 16 or 17 perhaps.

Or the legendary declaration of the free state of a square in Antwerp. It was a square with many pubs and the pub owners collected money to buy ice. We barricaded the square with huge ice blocks, declared it a FREE STATE and partied for 3 days while the police tried to break the ice barricades. We partied for 3 days because it took them 3 days to ice free the square. All drinks were FREE and we all went to jail drunk as mad hatters, 24 hours in jail sobers you up. There was never a trial and history tried to erase that memory, never happened you know! I must have been 14 or maximum 15. My dad got a visit from the state security police (Belgian FBI if you want). He was so angry with me when I returned home he tried to hit me but missed and broke his fist and a door at the same time. Okay dad, I know which side you are on now I was singing.

 

 

Comment by De Villo Sloan on November 29, 2012 at 2:23pm

Guido, I've been the one who has written here at IUOMA - and it's strictly a personal opinion - that Belgium is the collage capitol of the world. I am continually amazed by the work I see from your part of the world, (I know it is unwise and probably unfair to make such considerations in terms of national identitfication; we don't really see it like that in mail-art anyway - it's maybe a way of focusing.) As for Marcel Marien, I was completely unaware until you have been so kind as to run through who these artists are. Many thanks.

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on November 29, 2012 at 2:07pm

The house where Marcel spend the last years of his life, near Vincottestreet where I live

Comment by Guido Vermeulen on November 29, 2012 at 6:46am

Yep, another example that Belgium is capital collage country of the globe, LoL...

since dada and surrealism in fact, my favorite is Marcel Marien who lived in the porlongation of the street where I live (no joke) and guys like Robert Varlez and André Stas who are in my close, almost intimate circle of friends.

I think I shocked Linda Pelati (Italy) who herself is a great collagist by giving her limited editions of STAS, unavailable on the market, when she visited Belgium.

André? You like André? How do you know him?? He is one of my friends since 1989! You want to meet him? No no, Linda, do you like alcohol (of course she does not, she is this ULTRA SOFT lesbian feminist animal liberation marxist, the sweetest woman I ever met in my life, no joke !!) because meeting Stas is like meeting the poet IZOARD (he died) and I have to take DRIOL, medication to protect the liver any time when i meet him ...

Photo 1: ANDRE STAS book, 2001 (including afterword text by Marcel M)

Photo 2: MARCEL MARIEN book, 1983

Comment by De Villo Sloan on November 29, 2012 at 2:30am

I think this Luc Fierens work is tremendous Guido. Thanks so much for sharing.