Jacques Moeschal by acampens

9 783753 300351 Walther & Franz König

Jacques Moeschal

ISBN 978-3-7533-0035-1

Kasper Akhøj, Angelique Campens, Francelle Cane, Adrien de Hemptinne, Maxime Delvaux, Valéry Didelon, Ann Veronica Janssens, Barney Kulok, Sophie Lauwers, Roxane Le Grelle, Jacques Moeschal, Iwan Strauven.

Architecture Curating Practice Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König

Architecture Curating Practice Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels ‒ BOZAR Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König

Ann Veronica Janssens, Untitled (La flèche du génie civil), 1958‒2003. Video projection, black and white, without sound, ratio 4:3, dimensions variable, 52 seconds (loop)

A Signals # Aalbeke Kasper Akhøj

Researching Jacques Moeschal Sophie Lauwers & Roxane Le Grelle

C D

Signals # Hensies Kasper Akhøj

Architecture by Way of Alibi Iwan Strauven

E F

Villa De Keignaert Kasper Akhøj

La Route des Hommes Jacques Moeschal

Signal Israel Barney Kulok

Jacques Moeschal, Concrete Signals Angelique Campens

Signals # Zellik Kasper Akhøj

113

The Man who Loved the Motorway Valéry Didelon

119

Signals # Mexico Kasper Akhøj

136

Jacques Moeschal A Body of Work Francelle Cane

145

Jacques Moeschal

Edited by Angelique Campens, Roxane Le Grelle and Iwan Strauven Architecture Curating Practice Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels ‒ BOZAR Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König

Researching Jacques Moeschal Sophie Lauwers & Roxane Le Grelle

Jacques Moeschal on top of the Signal in Zellik, Belgium, during the construction in 1963. Coll. Véronique Moeschal. 12

Sophie Lauwers & Roxane Le Grelle

Researching Jacques Moeschal

Jacques Moeschal (1913–2004) was a prominent figure in abstract monumental sculpture in the public space in Belgium—alongside Pol Bury, André Willequet and Jean-Pierre Ghysels—but was never a prophet in his own country. His concrete sculptures accompanying car journeys have become familiar signs along the Belgian and—in some cases—international motorways. Although these concrete pieces are known to all and embedded in the collective memory, the man behind these large sculptures remains mostly unknown to the general public. Before becoming a sculptor, Jacques Moeschal was an architect. This fundamental fact allows us to understand his sculptural work and his design methods, which are specific to the architectural discipline.

Construction site of the Signal in Hensies, Belgium, 1972. Private collection.

‘The principle of sculpture lies at the very core of architecture. Its laws are common to both, whether it be static or optical, material or harmony. [...] Because today’s architecture brings its simple volumes, its materials, its bold structures, its human concerns to sculpture, it can no longer ignore it and must find in it its true source of energy.’1 In his sculptural works, Moeschal binds form to technique, materiality to context to produce abstract ‘signals’ marking the motorways. With the help of the engineers with whom he closely collaborated, Moeschal focused on the elements required to erect his monumental works, whose materiality, scale and structural complexity demanded both architectural skills and precision engineering. The realization of his works often entailed spectacular construction sites, which the artist anticipated eagerly as a means of ‘expressing himself visually.’2 Together, these elements enable the artist to attain the abstraction indispensable for creating a pure and timeless form. The smooth, round aspect of his early works qui-

Signal, 23 metres high, reinforced concrete, poured on site, at the motoroway intersection of Brussels–Ostend in Zellik, Belgium, 1963. Coll. Véronique Moeschal. 13

Sophie Lauwers & Roxane Le Grelle

Researching Jacques Moeschal

34 Project for a Signal in the desert, commissioned by the Shah of Iran. Collage drawing, 1970. Coll. Véronique Moeschal.

35 Scale model, cardboard, 8 x 23 x 23 cm, c. 1975. Private collection.

Architecture by Way of Alibi Iwan Strauven

In the handful of interviews he gave during his lifetime, Jacques Moeschal made no secret of the fact that, of the two art forms that he had been trained in—architecture and sculpture—he explicitly preferred the second. The considerations that played a part in this were to do with the greater freedom sculpture offered him as a form of expression. That this was more difficult in architecture was, according to him, not so much attributable to the servile, functional aspect of architecture, but mainly with the inevitable interference of the client. As future residents, they often demanded a major say in the design process, without having any real feeling for the architect’s motives. On top of this came the increasing administrative burden. With sculpture, everything was simpler, even if, in the way Moeschal conceived it, it required a large contribution and dialogue with engineers and craftsmen. Moeschal’s own preference explains why he is mainly known to the general public for his sculptural œuvre. His name immediately brings to mind the Civil Engineering Arrow at Expo 58 or the Signals along the motorway in Zellik, Aalbeke or Hensies. His œuvre as an architect, on the other hand, has remained private. Apart from a number of unfinished projects for the former Belgian colony at the beginning of his career, and a handful of houses, it is mainly Villa De Keignaert near Ostend that has gained some notoriety. Integrated bronze sculpture in the interior of the Saint-Joseph Church built by Robert Schuiten in Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium, 1953. Photograph, Adrien de Hemptinne, coll. Architecture Curating Practice.

Moeschal may be listed in the history books as one of Belgium’s post-war sculptors, alongside names such as Pol Bury and JeanPaul Laenen, his monumental geometric abstract sculptures are inconceivable without his training as an architect. His design style, his fascination with modern materials and techniques, and his cooperation with engineers and craftsmen bear witness to a committed architectural approach. Moreover, he was given the opportunity to break through thanks to his involvement with the post-war Brussels architectural scene around the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Integrated wooden sculptures in the university reading room of the KUL, Leuven, Belgium, 1950‒1951. Photograph, Adrien de Hemptinne, coll. Architecture Curating Practice.

Moeschal was born in Uccle on 31 July 1913. His father, Jean Baptiste Moeschal, was a site manager and, when Moeschal was a young boy, he often tagged along to his building sites, such as the building for the Caisse Générale de Reports et Dépôts by Paul Saintenoy in the Rue des Colonies or the restoration of the Egmont Palace or the now demolished Philips building in the Rue d’Artevelde in the centre of Brussels. His fascination with building was complemented by a talent for drawing that he inherited from a cabinetmaker uncle who initiated him into the design of 17th-century furniture. In 1929, he enrolled at the Académie des BeauxArts in Brussels, where he studied architecture for eight years in evening classes,1 at the studios of Emile Lambot and Joseph Van Neck, who in those same years built the Centenary Palace on the Heysel. Victor Horta may have been the head of the academy at the time, Moeschal was never really passionate about his work.

Architecture by Way of Alibi

Iwan Strauven

Integrated stone sculptures in the front facade of a building bloc built by Henry Lacoste, Uccle, Belgium, 1946. Photographs, Adrien de Hemptinne, coll. Architecture Curating Practice.

There is no doubt that more than Horta’s way of handling reinforced concrete as he did in the Centre for Fine Arts, it was Van Neck’s daring elliptical concrete arches of the Heysel exhibition halls that must have appealed to the young Moeschal’s imagination. At the academy, Moeschal also studied architectural history with the charismatic Henry Lacoste. He would develop a long-lasting friendship with the latter after the war. Moeschal was a talented student and won several prizes with his student work, including the Prix de Rome at the end of his studies. His work was also followed by younger students who were in Van Neck’s studio at the time, such as Claude Strebelle, with whom he developed another close friendship. Moeschal then went on to study sculpture from 1938 to 1941 at the same art school in Jacques Marin’s studio. During the war, Moeschal was arrested by the occupier, probably because of his young age rather than his possible Jewish origins, but he managed to escape from the convoy.2 Thanks to the Strebelle family, he was able to go into hiding in Groenhove Castle in Torhout. After the war, this place housed the Atelier Groenhove, of which Carlo de Brouckère was the key figure and where we find, besides the three Strebelle brothers, also André Jacqmain and Jacques Moeschal. At the end of the war, he married Nathalie Daniltchouck, an immigrant from Belarus who had trained as a doctor. Together they had two children—Marc and Véronique—and settled in a small house that he built for himself and his family in the Rue Jean Accent in Auderghem after the war. The Moeschal residence was a stone’s throw from Henry Lacoste’s house in Rue Jean Van Hoorebeeck, where Moeschal had started work as an architect. He belonged to the group of young architects who joined Lacoste’s practice in the post-war period: besides Paul and Marcel Mignot (Lacoste studio, 1946 and 1947), we also find Valéry De Wilde (Lacoste studio, 1953) and especially the talented Claude Strebelle (Van Neck studio, 1941) here.3 In Lacoste’s practice, Moeschal took on the role as a draughtsman, scale model artist, furniture designer and sculptor. In 1946, for example, he designed the furniture for the entrance hall of the Preventorium d’Enfants Familia (1936-1946) in Coqsur-Mer and made a series of figurative sculptures for a number of other commissions from Lacoste: a copper Sedes Sapientiae above the entrance of the reading room of the Leuven university library (1944-1953), and two oak-wood animal sculptures at the ends of the balustrades of the stairs in the reading room: a lion and an eagle, symbolising Belgium and the USA respectively, which attack a monstrous reptile with their claws and beak. Moeschal also created sculptures of animal and human heads in natural stone, twelf in all, for the apartment building that Lacoste built for H. Marchand in 1946 on the Rue Marie Depage in Uccle.4 In the mid-1950s Lacoste would also involve Moeschal in his projects for the Belgian colony. Together, they worked on a Résidence royale in the port city of Banane, for which Lacoste had worked out an entire urban development plan. The residence consisted of a simple prismatic, two-storey volume, which accommodated a series of reception rooms on the ground floor, surrounded by a monumental, covered gallery. The private rooms were located on the upper floor, inspired by a series of patios and covered outdoor spaces. The symmetrical square plan structure contrasts with a modern volumetry that was surprising for Lacoste and that is particularly evident in the perspective drawing that Moeschal made of the project: the austere volume of the monumental ground floor is crowned by a lower storey with frivolous roof vaults that seem to have been copied from Brazilian modernism. A similar sensitivity to architectural topicality can be found in a project for a colonial home that in many respects is

Architecture by Way of Alibi

Iwan Strauven

At the front of the image, a sculpture Jacques Moeschal made in 1952. This sculpture is often seen as a premise of the Civil Engineering Arrow that can be seen in the background. Expo 58, Brussels, Belgium, 1958. Coll. Véronique Moeschal.

the Zellik Signal, concrete allowed him to realize his geometric forms on a large scale. It also allowed his geometric sculptures to tie in with the brutalism in architecture that celebrated its heyday in the 50s and 60s. The same also applied to steel (in all its variations: untreated, stainless steel, corten steel), the properties of which offered Moeschal the possibility of designing and executing his geometric figures on an—if possible—even larger scale. We could conclude that the specificity of Moeschal’s approach lies in the fact that, as an architect, he made largescale sculptures with the instruments and conceptual framework of his trade, which, against the background of the development of 20th-century sculpture, show a great coherence but also a high degree of self-referentiality. In any case, his own architectural background has had a much greater influence on the development of these sculptures than vice versa. By way of exception, this rule is also affirmed by the already mentioned Keignaert residence, a gigantic house which he designed for the Van Moerkerke family and which was to serve as a home for their art collection. This brick bunker rises from the polders near Ostend like a brutalist sculpture. It is one of the few buildings in which Moeschal, as an architect, succeeded in working in a sculptural way.

1 See enrolment register of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, ARBA Archives, Brussels. 2 Interview with his daughter, Veronique Moeschal, dated March 2021

De Keignaert, Oudenburg, Belgium, 1973‒1974. Coll. Véronique Moeschal, Moeschal Fund, CIVA.

3 See HENNAUT Eric, LIESENS Liliane, Henry Lacoste, architect (Brussels: AAM Editions, 2008), 138.

Architecture by Way of Alibi

Iwan Strauven

4 Ibid. 5 See MOESCHAL Jacques, ‘Le Bauhaus’, Bulletin de la Classe des beaux-arts de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, 1984. 6 BEKKERS Ludo, 1969, 477.

Villa De Keignaert

Kasper Akhøj, 2021

Signal Israel

Barney Kulok

Barney Kulok, Untitled (JM01), 2019.

Barney Kulok, Untitled (JM03), 2019.

Barney Kulok, Untitled (JM13), 2019.

Jacques Moeschal, Concrete Signals Angelique Campens

But without concrete, it must be admitted, most of my work would not have been possible. Jacques Moeschal1 Belgian artist and architect Jacques Moeschal (1913–2004) wanted to bring art to the urban environment, breaking down the boundaries between sculpture, architecture and the landscape. Although his work as an architect is under-recognized compared with his artwork, his background in architecture was fundamental to his creation of monumental sculpture. The thin line between sculpture and architecture defines Moeschal’s œuvre. Moreover, his few theoretical texts show how his work was embedded within the larger international discussion of the time: namely the ethical demand that art should be made available to a broader public and that it should be integrated with architecture, public space and everyday life. Moeschal gained international acclaim through his role as the Deputy-Chairman of the International Sculpture Symposium, his participation in several symposia, and through the Civil Engineering Pavilion at Expo 58 in Brussels. It was with his experience at the World Fair that his practice pivoted towards architecturally-scaled sculptures. The Civil Engineering Arrow, an urban relief map of Belgium was displayed beneath a hanging footbridge, Expo 58, Brussels, Belgium, 1958. Coll. Véronique Moeschal.

The sculptural aspects of this pavilion can be seen in Moeschal’s sketches. Moeschal designed the Pavilion of Civil Engineering in the form of an arrow, which was realized in collaboration with engineer André Paduart and architect Jean Van Doosselaere, with the assistance of Gustave Moussiaux. This concrete construction was the result of collaboration between an engineer, an architect and a sculptor, and was highly praised for the way it applied the enormous possibilities of arching.

Scaffolding of the Civil Engineering Arrow, Expo 58, Brussels, Belgium, 1958. Coll. Véronique Moeschal. 88

Angelique Campens

Jacques Moeschal, Concrete Signals

89 The Civil Engineering Arrow, Expo 58, Brussels, Belgium, 1958. Scale model, steel, 49 x 110 x 37 cm. Coll. Véronique Moeschal.

The Man who Loved the Motorway Valéry Didelon

During the second half of the twentieth century, Jacques Moeschal was an extraordinarily prolific architect and artist. His projects and prototypes have been shown many times in museums and galleries in Belgium and elsewhere, and have been acclaimed by critics, connoisseurs, and the public alike. While not always spontaneously attributed to the architect, a handful of his sculptures have become familiar to a much wider public. These are a few of the monumental sculptures that tens of thousands of motorists see every day and furtively along the motoroways and major roads of the Brussels region. While not attempting to reduce Jacques Moeschal’s work to these, but rather to emphasize the singularity of his motoroway art, I will contextualize it here in its historical perspective and examine its (in)relevance. Humanizing infrastructure After completing his architectural training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1936, Jacques Moeschal started studying sculpture during the Second World War and became famous relatively late in life when he contributed to the design of the civil engineering spire presented at the 1958 Universal Exhibition. Referred by engineers with whom he regularly worked and forged friendships, in the early 1960s he became involved in the Belgian motoroways planning scheme. As urban agglomerations spread and economic growth accelerated, the number of construction sites throughout the kingdom increased, and soon, under the ministry of Jos de Saeger, the motoroway reached its golden age. In fact, Brussels became the pivotal node of a network that rapidly stretched throughout Western Europe. The new motoroways were completely new infrastructures built on a functionalist logic, where speed and safety were the main concerns. Scientifically dimensioned and designed, these motoroways channel the increasing flow of vehicles with no particular consideration for the landscape they pass through and the users’ experience.

Signal, Zellik, Belgium, 1963. Coll. Véronique Moeschal, Moeschal Fund, CIVA. 119

Valéry Didelon

In a short manifesto written in 1959 and entitled Routes des Hommes (Roads of Men), Jacques Moeschal considers the construction of motoroways as a sign of a high degree of civilization and draws attention to their ‘incommensurable sadness’ and ‘monotony’ hitherto associated with them. According to him, motoroways must be ‘humanized’ by means of art. Thus, he advocates installing monumental sculptures along their route, celebrating the efforts made by those who build them, engineers and contractors. Here, Jacques Moeschal seeks to capture the spirit of the times—the Zeitgeist—that is behind the technical modernization of the Belgian territory and suggests giving it a de facto expression that is more abstract than symbolic. He walks in the footsteps of avant-garde protagonists such as Kasimir Malevich, Gerrit Rietveld and, even more so, the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, whom he revered during the lectures he had given at the Royal Academy since 1946. The Man who Loved the Motoroway

144 Scale model, wood, 70 x 20 x 8 cm, Undated. Coll. Véronique Moeschal.

Jacques Moeschal A Body of Work Francelle Cane

Jacques Moeschal’s work was prolific. However, the discretion of the figure perhaps affects the sometimes-nebulous character of his lesser-known works. This chapter is a contribution to the research of Moeschal’s œuvre as a whole. It is a first attempt to a systematic study of the author’s work in all project formats and scales. In some cases there are not just one but several versions of the same work, e.g. in his series of monumental sculptures. These projects may consist of several versions of itself, whether they are working models in cardboard, or reproductions and other forms of presentation carved in more noble materials such as wood or copper. The latter are now mostly in private collections throughout Belgium and beyond.

SIGNAL Zellik, Belgium Realized 1960–1963

156

27.

Project type: Monumental sculpture Material: Reinforced concrete Dimensions: 23 m The tremendous concrete sculpture is located in the urbanized town of Zellik (municipality of Asse) at the motorway Brussels-Ostende intersection. It is a lighthouse in the

landscape, a Signal, which catches the drivers’ eye from afar from the road and which stands at the confluence of many roads and a hilly landscape while offering them a new expression. The Signal takes on its full meaning when it is seen not as an isolated work of art, but as part of the motorway. It was initially planned to install another, equally important sculpture at the other end of the project, in Ostende, and perhaps at a few other locations along the way, but this did not happen in the

end. The unique Signal nevertheless constitutes a real landmark in the landscape, serving a collective experience— notwithstanding the planning it has undergone due to road adaptation. Bibliography: Callewaert, 1968, 2a– 2b; Bekkers, 1973, 16–17; Cramer, 1974, 31–33; Bekkers, 1983, 32–33; Pyl, 1999, 45–47; Bontridder, 2000, 211–213; Roberts-Jones, 2002, 26–29; Legrand, 2005, 2; Gribaumont, 2008, 166; Flament, Moeschal, 2013, 20–23; Campens, 2019, 64–71. Photograph, coll. Véronique Moeschal.

28. TABLE-SCULPTURE Mons, Belgium Realized 1961 Project type: Sculpture Material: Stone of Soignies Background: The stone table-sculpture, located at the entrance of Parc du Bois, was realized for the National Housing Institute in Mons. Bibliography: Cramer, 1974, 54–55; Roberts-Jones, 2002, 58.

30. LIGHT SENSOR Negev desert, Israel Realized 1962 Project type: Monumental sculpture Material: Reinforced concrete Dimensions: 9 m In 1962, on the initiative of the Israeli sculptor Kosso Eloul, Moeschal took part in a symposium in Israel.* With ten other guest artists, he tries to offer an answer to the vastness of the desert. The other artists eventually present works with stone and Moeschal introduces a reinforced concrete element, placed on the north-south axis. The nine-metre high sculpture is in the form of two pillars close to each other, with a narrow space between them, leading to a cone with a large round hole, which frames and shows the sun at its most powerful moment of the day. Several prototypes and reproductions of various materialities exist in smaller scales. Bibliography: Cramer, 1974, 36; Léonard, Moeschal, 1998, 57; Pyl, 1999–2000, 33–34; Bontridder, 2000, 215; Roberts-Jones, 2002, 30, 32–33; Legrand, 2005, 1; Flament, Moeschal, 2013, 80–85. Photograph, coll. Véronique Moeschal

29. SCULPTURE Brussels, Belgium Unrealized 1961 Project type: Sculpture Proposal for a sculpture dedicated to the parc d’Erasme in Brussels. Drawing, coll. Véronique Moeschal. Photograph, Adrien de Hemptinne. 157

* Kosso Eloul (1920–1995) was a post-war Israeli/Canadian sculptor known for his monumental abstract sculptures. He studied in the United States with professors such as architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy. In 1960, he got involved with the Sculptor's Symposia when he attended the second International symposium in St. Margarethen, Austria, leaving there two semi-abstract sculptures. He took part in the Sculpture Symposium in Yugoslavia in 1961, and thus organized a similar international event in Mitzpe Ramon, in the Negev Desert, Israel, in 1962: the Jegar Sahadutha Sculptor’s Symposium. He invited ten artists he met during the former Austrian Symposium such as Karl Prantl, William Turnbull and, of course, Jacques Moeschal, among other local and international figures. Mitzpe Ramon was chosen as a working site because of its desert and crater landscape, which is reflected in the works of all the participants of this symposium. The artists lived in the town under pioneering conditions for ten weeks. During this period, the inhabitants of the town—especially the children—were also full partners in the artistic process. Each artist chose the material they wanted to work with, such as limestone, gravel, locally-found dolomite, granite, basalt and concrete—Moeschal's favourite material.