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Throughout the history of the art of Northern Europe, there has been a tendency toward earthly realism; however, it is frequently realism with a twist. Sixteenth-century Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel painted highly detailed, mundane scenes of peasant life, often depicting debauchery and corporal excess. One of his best-known paintings, The Peasant Wedding (1567), features a humble wedding feast where food and wine are abundant; the guests and the bride and groom are clearly enjoying themselves. However, underlying the joyous scene of fun and revelry is a message about self-control, responsibility and moderation. For while the adults obliviously indulge in food and drink, a child in the foreground sneaks a gulp or two of spirits. In the European North, there is always more to a work of art than meets the eye.
Such is the case with Michaël Borremans' drawings, currently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Borremans, a prolific 42-year-old artist from Belgium, creates fastidious drawings in subtle tones, using watercolor, gouache, pen and ink as his media of choice. Like the work of his predecessors, his drawings have layers of personal and cultural meaning and symbolism. And, while the human subjects of his works are reminiscent of Western white men and women from the 1940s and '50s, the subject matter frequently relates to current events.
Borremans frequently distorts the sense of scale in his drawings, causing the viewer to question which of the humans is “real,” and which are contrived elements of architectural models. In The Journey (True Colors) , a white male figure is seated before of large-scale model of a simple architectural structure, as miniature human forms pepper the tabletop around the model. The scale of the human figures shifts as the drawing series progresses. In The House of Opportunity (The Chance of a Lifetime), there is a range of human figures of all different sizes, and the architectural model is displayed in a large, nondescript building. The effect created by the sundry-sized people is interestingly disconcerting. Borremans recognizes that as viewers, we are used to identifying with human figures in works of art, and he undermines this by making it unclear to us which of the figures in the drawing are “human,” and which are models. The artist's droll, ironic wit is ultimately apparent; clearly, all drawings are simply representational, far removed from reality.
Borremans also toys with the idea of artistic illusion by truncating highly detailed figures so that they take on the form of portrait busts or legless portrait sculptures. Conman is a drawing of a well-groomed white man straight out of a 1950s magazine advertisement. But his trim, well-tailored jacket is rendered in camouflage, and the man peers intently through binoculars. The man's flesh appears lifelike, yet his legs have been cut off at the hip. Beneath the drawing of the camouflaged everyman is the word “conman.” And below the word, the artist wrote in script, “You are one yourself.”
The ambiguity of the term “you” makes it unclear whom Borremans is labeling a con man — himself? The viewer? Or is he underscoring the treachery of the man in the drawing? The interaction between viewers and Borremans' drawings is never straightforward; this is the brilliance of his work.
Borremans' imagery is evocative of contemporary events, which have recently often been tied to the body. The Swimming Pool depicts a young white man's face and naked torso being painted with the statement, “People must be punished.” Beneath the phrase are four holes in the young man's chest, which appear to be bullet holes, yet no blood seeps from them. The scene is made even stranger by a swimming pool full of miniature people who stare at the young man as if watching a movie at a drive-in theater. His suffering becomes spectacle; unfortunately, this scenario is all too familiar. Created in 2001, the drawing is eerily prescient in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the constant flow videotapes of hostages in Iraq begging for their lives at the feet of their captors.
Borremans' drawings are not only smart, they are also stunningly beautiful. He is a master of watercolor and ink, as he creates rich scenes with subtle gray-and-black hues, interspersed with the occasional ruddy red or cool blue. At times, the drawings have a photographic quality, as with Friendly Rivalry, which depicts two white men engaged in a sort of game or competition with an unidentified phallic object or weapon. From a distance, the image of the men, who wear starched, formal suits and rapt expressions, appears to be a photo clipped from an old newspaper.
While the work is stunning, it is also sobering and at times disturbing; the dimly lit galleries in which the exhibition is mounted exacerbate this effect. The mood evoked by the work is apt, given the contemporary global political milieu. And, like Borremans' drawings, the world we inhabit is multilayered, complex and unfathomable. While it is difficult to examine the things that cause anguish and anxiety, it is also imperative that we do so.