Left to right: Adriaen Brouwer's (c. 1605-1638) Old man in a Pub (Flemish Community) and David Claerbout's black/white projection Untitled (Carl & Julie, 1999) (MuHKA)
A Story of the Image, initiated by the non-profit organization SingAnt (SingaporeAntwerp), presents a collection of artworks from the Flemish city of Antwerp. The 150 exhibited works of art are on loan from the collections of three important Antwerp museums: the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum Plantin-Moretus/Print room that is recognised as UNESCO world heritage (also see this article in the yearbook The Low Countries), and MuHKA (Museum for Contemporary Art) that closely follows the developments in art and image culture. They provide a balancing act between the visible and the invisible, pitting old masters (such as Rubens and Van Dyck) against contemporary artists (a.o. Luc Tuymans and David Claerbout) in an attempt to probe the evolution of the image and its commercialisation.
According to Bart De Baere, director of the MuHKA, Antwerp was the first place were images were being fashioned outside their context, just like photographs nowadays. He also notes that by mirroring past and present, one creates something exciting in the resulting tension. A must-see exhibition with some ulterior motives (on the Story of Image website you can read how multifunctional Antwerp Port is, among others), but that's quite alright. After all, none of us can live by art alone. Or should that have been 'bread'? Whatever!
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