Conversation with Jacques Charlier

Luxembourg, 5 October 2005 sophie richard I’d like to start our discussion by talking about the situation in the art world in Belgium in the 1970s. In those days, there was a dynamism in commercial galleries, particularly mtl and Wide White Space, and there was also a dynamism where collectors were concerned: people like Herbert, Daled or Matthys. But where museums are concerned, apart from a few exhibitions at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, they seem to have had no commitment to the new artistic trend of Conceptual art. jacques charlier After the early 1960s, the situation in Belgium was like this: in the southern, French speaking part, they were still tied to the Paris School. In the northern part, Antwerp was a pretty consistent international magnet. That’s why I did my first two exhibitions there. When I went to that city, I visited the Hessenhuis, where you could find Group Zero, as well as people like Manzoni, Yves Klein, the Nouveau Réalistes. Antwerp also welcomed people like Lucio Fontana, who did some actions. Not only at the level of the visual arts, but also at the level of Anglo-Saxon musical culture, Antwerp was a very important magnet. I’d say that the most advanced among the American Minimalist artists headed towards Conceptual art, including LeWitt. It wasn’t a matter of change. It’s quite natural that there should have been a perfect affinity between Conceptual art and Minimal art from the moment they started to make their approach more theoretical and to believe that the plan was enough. As Lawrence Weiner put it, each work could be fabricated by someone else, or not built at all; the project is the driving force. Well, you could say that formulas and attitudes like this on the part of different American artists, including Kosuth, established contact much more easily with certain landing spots, not in Germany, not in Holland, not elsewhere – they did it in Belgium. They found not only welcoming gallery owners, but also collectors who took an interest in that formula.

I think the first one, which might not have been the most purist, but was the most intuitive, was Wide White Space. Even in the 1960s, the protest movements and happenings that took place in Antwerp would influence the whole of the Belgian context. Because Bernd Lohaus was close to Beuys, it was easy to bring in a whole series of willing artists, both Expressionist and Minimalist. So everything was going very well internally at the gallery, and had a definite resonance with all the collectors and gallery owners, who gradually became familiar with the formula. Given that they felt there might be potential clients, people started opening new galleries. mtl was one of those. You couldn’t say that French speakers were left out of the climate completely. In the late 1960s/early 1970s the Yellow gallery would over time become a publishing house, and would also give rise to the activities of the Cirque d’hiver; all of that formed a central point in the French speaking region, especially in Liège, but everything revolved around the Fluxus movement, for which Ben Vautier acted as a kind of mainspring. Obviously there’s no comparison with what was going on in Brussels and Antwerp … sr Plus Kern. jc Plus Kern, quite. He and Debruyn tried to get set up and in a sense acted as intermediaries for the other galleries desperate to seduce the Belgian collectors … This adventure would only last a little while, though. Even the Xone Gallery and Marc Poirier would work with Spillemaeckers, but Debruyn was the intermediary for the Sonnabend Gallery. If, for example, you look at shows at Fernand Spillemaeckers’s first gallery, mtl , between 1969 and 1975 [he refers to a list of these exhibitions], you see people like Guy Mees who’s from Antwerp, Yves de Smet from Gent, Broodthaers from Brussels, Niele Toroni and Daniel Buren, who are French. So even there you can see the kind of direction he was headed in … The Sonnabend Gallery, which wouldn’t touch photographs – they’re not made by the artist, they’re so radically ordinary that you can’t imagine they’re art. So Spillemaeckers shows Philippe van Snick, Guy Mees again, Bernd Lohaus … and then he invites the gallery that’s going to be his rival, Wide White Space, Yves de Smet again, Gerard Hemsworth. Then in 1971–72 you sense that it’s getting more and more radical, with Stanley Brouwn, Ian Wilson, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, to try and get the trade going. Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Boetti, Broodthaers again, LeWitt … He was showing what was important right then, and he was clearly trying to make acquaintance with Gerry Schum, etc., from whom we