Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) preferred the omnipotence of dreams, hallucinations and obsessions to fuel his personal reality, which he transposed into bizarre, sinister creatures and shapes with “the most imperialist form of precision.“ Always aware of the restless inventiveness of Freud‘s theory of the unconscious.

Venus de Milo with Drawers and Pompoms (1936/1964) is a befitting metaphor for the reservoir of repressed urges, emotions and desires. The forehead, chest and left knee of the Greek goddess of love reveal six drawers, slightly open, with silky tufts, intended as an « anthropomorphic cabinet. »

René Magritte (1898-1967) would have called them « resolving problems, » although he disregarded the psychoanalytic decipherment. Along with the Belgian Surrealist Marcel Mariën (1920-1993) he has argued that the understanding of the unconscious is dependent on language and so, one cannot descent into it unencumbered.

The Treachery of Images (1929)—showing a pipe with the text written beneath, « Ceci n‘est pas une pipe »—exploits juxtaposition, the notion of cognitive dissonance that is meant to shake up the viewer’s senses, to force him to look closer and question recognizable signs and worn-out values, as well as the relationship between objects and words. Magritte « puts the real world on trial, » and employs illusions and mysteries to orchestrate it. A certain quietness transpires through his paintings, disruptive and poetic at the same time, redolent of the Flemish painter Hans Memling‘s enigmatic aura of orderliness.

The spontaneity of automatism, or the principle of untrammeled free expression, was as much an artistic credo for Dali as a powerful engine of his paranoiac-critical method. A myriad of fantasies are captured in images of burning giraffes, soft watches melting down like creamy Camembert cheese in the sun, or elephants with spindly legs, all bouts of « irrational knowledge » meant to entice the viewer into a hallucinatory state.

Faithful to the academic virtuosity of nineteenth-century naturalism, Dalí and Magritte depict the objective reality unembellished, but add their idiosyncratic touch and convert the real into an unreal scenery by creating visual absurdities in defiance of the laws of gravity. It was the French poet André Breton (1896-1966) who first mentioned the « juxtaposition of two realities » in the « Manifesto of Surrealism » (1924), which marked the movement‘s official beginning. Organic shapes and patterns infused with intuitive expression also inhabit the phantasmagoric worlds of Joan Miró (1893-1983) and the French-German artist Hans Arp (1886-1966), whose biomorphic images in garish colours both challenge and enlighten the viewer‘s gaze.

Giorgio de Chirico, the Italian painter and writer who inspired the Surrealist squad with metaphysical dreamscapes, once said that « one must picture everything in the world as an enigma…To live in the world as if in an immense museum of strangeness. » Dalí and Magritte agree and encourage us to do so as well by inviting us into their visionary world.

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The Jardin des Quatre Vents in Molenbeek, one of BAUKUNST’s projects nominated for the European Union Prize of Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award, is a positive example of built environment. A schoolyard, previously disconnected from its surroundings and open mostly to children, is reshaped by urban necessity and the lived experience of local residents. The courtyard-cum-garden now offers the flexibility of serving both as a recreation place and, with the help of an awning, a shelter from the whims of weather. The new public space paves the way for new dwellers, enabling them to build their own response to it. To Adrien Verschuere, the founder of the architecture office BAUKUNST, it is important to “understand the value of a place as a sign…a sort of time capsule where imagination and memory are intertwined”.

The expressive capacities of architecture are central to the work of BAUKUNST. According to the British philosopher J.L. Austin words and signs do not merely have a descriptive function but enunciate performative utterances as well. Thoughts, perceptions, emotions, all on stage, engaging the audience in their play. So does the completed project, The Centre Sportif de la Fraineuse in Spa, which epitomizes the idea of theatricality in architecture.

The roof of the new building gives the impression of effortlessly floating above the base of a nineteenth-century neoclassical castle. They blend into a unified scenery, all the way preserving their solitude. Each structure performs its own role, and the mise-en-scène helps create a characterful environment.

The philosopher Gaston Bachelard argues that the ‘state of impermanence’ is superior to the ‘state of finality’ when we choose our location in space. The former encourages us to dream, to embrace the probable and hence allow new impressions enrich our experiences. The BAUKUNST exhibition echoes this longing for the hidden, for the comfort of imagination. It does not shut down reality, on the contrary, it redesigns it, by leading us on towards a public imagination where we can freely move around.

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James Ensor (1860-1949) painted The Strange Masks in 1892, two years before Belgium introduced the universal male suffrage and compulsory voting. There is an aura of quirkiness to Ensor‘s figures that will haunt the viewer long after his encounter with the painting. Angular masks, coarse faces, witch shoes, and mannerist traces of elongated and distorted proportions imbue the atmosphere with suspicion, anguish and foolishness. The Belgian artist had an insatiable appetite for satirical caricatures, along the lines of Otto Dix‘ and Käthe Kollwitz‘ acerbic social criticism.

The crowd is depicted as obedient, with a ravenous lust for the oppressive policies of tyrants or the excitement of recklessness. In The Baths at Ostend (1890), women and men revel in their peculiarity, bathing and playing, undisturbed by the spectators who watch them closely. The compression of figures and the rendition of worldly gaieties echo The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510), a triptych by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, where temptations and indulgences unfold narratively to display a world of debauchery.

Ensor’s imagery is evocative of unconscious reverberations. Evil physiognomies mirror the power of urges and instincts and the individual‘s propensity towards chaos. A precursor of modern Expressionism, James Ensor disects one’s true identity until the inner evil is laid bare, in all its ugliness. The mask becomes a symbol of the wearer’s wickedness. Carnivalesque and macabre, at the same time. The aesthetic of ugliness exerted an unparalleled influence on the German painter Emil Nolde (1867-1956), who admitted to having been « attracted by decadence, by those who exhaust their lives in the shallow pursuits of pleasure. »

It was his grandmother’s souvenir shop in Ostend, a coastal city in Belgium, that fueled Ensor‘s passion for masks. Gewgaws, shells, mermaids, skeletons, each one a treasure and source of inspiration in the eyes of the small boy who blithely rebelled against the established order. In his work The Intrigue (1890), iridescent masks and flamboyant costumes in Venetian colours invite the viewer into the realm of liminal fantasy, where mystery and vagary become indistinguishable from reality, as in Franz Kafka‘s dreamlike world.

A symphony of light pervades all his compositions. Pearly shells from the shores of the North Sea dissolve into the canvas to give way to « dancing shimmering reflections. » In Pierrot and Skeleton in a Yellow Robe (1893), grinning masks intermingle with translucent layers of colour to dampen gloomy expectations. James Ensor offers a wretched version of reality, always aware of the menacing shadow of vitriol and frustration. He favoured the mask, with its ominous presence and frosty determination, to be his medium of expression. In the words of the French philosopher René Descartes, he would probably have said, « Masked, I advance. » And so, he did.

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Suzanne Lilar was born on 21 May 1901 in Ghent, the Flemish city in northwestern Belgium. Although her education was predominantly in French, she created an aura of mysticism around Flemish. The depths of the soul, euphoria, God, love, all these she explored passionately by delving into the poetry of Hadewijch, a 13th-century mystic from Brabant. In Soixante ans de théâtre belge, an essay published in 1952, Suzanne Lilar calls for a revival of the Flemish cultural heritage, characterized by idealism, sensuality, and a shrewd observation of individual feelings. The same year, she also becomes a member of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature, which further highlights her ethnic duality.

A feminist at heart, Lilar was the first woman to practice law in Antwerp in 1926. The emancipation of women is a recurrent topic in her writing, albeit without radicalism lurking within. In Le Couple (1963), she ponders conjugal love and the status of women. To her, eros is not simply passion, which is the lowest rank, but an endeavour towards completeness, une tentative d’atteindre l’absolu. Love is a sacral union. In comparison to Simone de Beauvoir, who deconstructs patriarchy and rejects the idea of a « feminine nature » —One is not born but becomes woman— Suzanne Lilar defends the female body, and marriage and motherhood if they are freely chosen.

Domesticity remains a form of oppression for de Beauvoir either way because a woman will always be seen as the Other, as an object. In Le Malentendu du Deuxième Sexe (1969), a critical analysis of de Beauvoir‘s Le Deuxième Sexe (written twenty years earlier), Lilar accuses her of misogyny. Her main objection is that the French thinker alienates women from their own uniqueness.

It is the myth of Androgyne that permeates Lilar‘s view of the dynamics of love, and underpins gender equality. Androgyne, a being with female and male traits, first appeared in Plato‘s The Symposium. As punishment for defying the will of gods, Zeus split these humans in two, and ever since, they long to reconnect with their other half. Two souls rejoicing in a primordial reunion. In Lilar‘s quest for unity, even Don Juan is being partially humanized (Le Burlador, 1945).

Lilar‘s disdain for conflict is flushed out in À Propos de Sartre et de l‘Amour (1967), directed at the existentialist‘s theory of love as struggle. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, love is a collision of desires to own the other that endangers our freedom, the highest value of all. There is always the fear that romance or the lust for possession will disappear, and this renders love vulnerable. Lilar‘s lover, on the other side, jumps into the unknown as a way of transcending the ego.

A surrealist view of the self, piles of images scattered around, might not have been to the liking of the Belgian writer, but she nonetheless attracted the admiration of the father of Surrealism André Breton, with Journal de l’analogiste (1954), a meditation on poetry and its power to convey beauty.

In her apartment at Sablon, a chic neighbourhood in Brussels, carnival masks in pastel colours watch her closely from the paintings hanging on the wall. Asked about their symbolism, she said that they are imbued with magical protective powers. They are part of life, where fantasy and reality intertwine. The kind of duality she enjoyed transcending.

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Memories, regrets, promises, moments tinged with joy or sadness, all fill up our reservoir of time. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle has argued that time is tied to change, that is, to temporal relations that occur between events. In this sense, time is characterized by its journey. The passage of time, subject to variation and transformation, and we, eager to get as many glimpses of it as possible. It is perhaps because we cannot fathom time without change that we scroll repeatedly through social media feeds, even if a feeling of ennui ultimately creeps up on us. The constant newness, the large chunks of information that we ingest might contribute to the impression that time lasts longer. Until we slip into the familiar, and time shrinks up considerably.

The neuroscientist David Eagleman said that the difference in how we perceive time consists in the way we process information. The unfamiliar requires us to break down many tidbits of information, and this prolongs time. The familiarity of the world does exactly the opposite. Memories are scarcer, less noteworthy, so the allotted time decreases as well. There is a painting at the Fin-de-Siècle Museum in Brussels that depicts the comfort of monotonous routine quite accurately.

In The Bather (1910), the Belgian Symbolist painter Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) pictures a woman sitting on the edge of a street staircase. She gazes into what seems to be the sea. We cannot see her face, but from her slightly crooked back and right arm propped on the greyish-blue stair stone, we can sense a feeling of weariness invading the space around her. The waves resemble the passing of time, in a circular, linear, fluid motion. She does not seem to care either way, avoiding any direct involvement. It is only the little dog next to her, ears pointed up, that is curious enough to be a part of whatever happens around it.

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much,” said the Stoic philosopher Seneca in On the Shortness of Life. He is a proponent of otium, leisureliness devoted to meaningful activities. Although Seneca encourages a retreat into philosophy, where introspection and intellectual pursuits are highly ranked, his primary focus is on leading an authentic life, free from vices that sink us into oblivion.

Procrastination is just one vice that we indulge in. The frenetic urge to do what does not need to be done is a welcome respite from the burden of busyness, the badge of honour we proudly display. Or so we tell ourselves, until procrastination and busyness become indistinguishable from each other.

We trifle with time at our behest. In the background, we hear the ticking sound of Mad Hatter’s watch from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. When we glance at it, we see that instead of the hour, it shows the day of the month, passing before our eyes.

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Distorted faces, pleasures of transgression, tormented souls inhabiting the bodies of thugs, prostitutes and war criminals is what connects the two artists together. In comparison to Francis Bacon, who received recognition in his mid-thirties with the Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, an unsettling triptych with writhing creatures set against an orange background, Stéphane Mandelbaum remained on the margins of the art world even decades after his death. The lack of notoriety did not though hinder him from pursuing his passion for drawing, a creative way to compensate for dyslexia.

Portraits and images are paired with words, phrases and scribbles, predominantly in blue ballpoint pen, that are scattered all over the paper. Mandelbaum’s drawings are reminiscent of George Grosz’s caustic criticism of society and the raw gestural style of Jean-Michel Basquiat, however in a rather monochrome version. There is an outpouring of messages on violence, sex, Jewishness meant to shock, offend, outrage. Stéphane Mandelbaum draws you into a phantasmagorical world that goes beyond traditional western representations.

According to museum researchers, the amount of time that an average viewer spends contemplating a work of art ranges from 17 to 27 seconds. This time can be considerably extended when in front of one of Mandelbaum’s drawings. It is as if he is challenging you to explore and decipher his dreamlike compositions. Arthur Rimbaud, the enfant terrible that inspired him, alongside others whose life also ended tragically, such as the writer Pierre Goldman and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, is pictured in a mountain-like shape with his head turned towards the viewer and scrawls flowing down around it. This gives the impression of a hunchback, and Rimbaud indifferently carrying its burden.

Francis Bacon was quoted as saying that “The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.” The work of Stéphane Mandelbaum attests to this belief. He preferred traumatic experiences and the unacceptable to fuel his art. It was maybe because his art became his life that he entered the criminal underworld as an art thief. The precocious child of Arié Mandelbaum, painter and art teacher, and Pili Mandelbaum, illustrator, remained true to this raw expressive style until the bitter end.

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Some would feel exalted at this sight. I feel confused, though curious enough to let myself challenged. Not for long. I try to look past it and focus on the nkisi sculptures from Congo in front of me. Hundreds of nails are hammered into the male figure, each one a prayer, a hope, a vow meant to defeat evil. The song playing in the background is comforting. I stop for a second to listen more carefully. My heartbeats in unison with the lively sounds.

Apart from the security guard who pops out unexpectedly next to me every ten minutes, I notice that I am alone at the exhibition. An aura of tranquility invades my world and in the same time heightens the presence of the other. It does help to see the world from another aesthetic view. To put on the other’s mask and explore your surroundings, engage in conversations, listen to the other.

Forget yourself for a while and remember the other.

Emmanuel Levinas, a French-Lithuanian philosopher, would say that when we encounter the other “face to face”, that is, when we experience the “living presence” of the other, we become responsible for the other, for the other’s existence. The Lumbu and Punu oval masks, decorated with white kaolin clay and almond-shaped eyes, invite us into an ‘Afrocentric’ world, expressive and reflective. Seemingly trivial objects in the Western world, such as a comb, take on a new significance to the Akye people in southeastern Côte d’Ivoire, who endow it with supernatural power. A world full of symbolism. The world of the other. Facing our own.

Sindika Dokolo, the Congolese collector, and the South African artist Kendell Geers have put together a fascinating exhibition that explores the beauty, essence and diversity of Africas’s art through themes like magic, power and desire.

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