ART in FULL BLOOM
I'm starting the thread a few hours earlier than usual this week, because I will be bicycling the next couple of days and I have to catch an early train to get to our jump-off point in East-Flanders.
A couple of images from last Saturdays (so yes, Iphone images again).
These are from a very temporary exhibition in the KMSKA (Koninklijk Museum Schone Kunsten Antwerpen - our Antwerp Royal Fine Arts Museum).
It is a gem of a museum (also architecturally, since its renovation - I may tell you about that some other time) that we visit regularly.
They have great temporary themed exhibitions and a stunning permanent collection, ranging from the early middle ages over the height of baroque painting (Rubens etc!) to masterpieces of 20th century modern art.
But the installations we went to see last Saturday were VERY temporary, because it was botanical art: 15 arrangements of live flowers and other plants and dried vegetation, by renowned floral and landscape artists, placed within the spaces of the permanent collection, where these floral pieces entered into dialogue with one or two of the conventional art pieces in the room.
Because the flower arrangements with live flowers will be slowly decaying, this temporary display is visible only between April 30 and May 10. We visited on May 2, and the tulip arrangements in one of the rooms (not on my photos) was already turning into a Memento Mori...
Some of the flower art was grotesque and rather kitschy, but there were also really beautiful combinations.
I photographed most of them, but will show you just four (I forgot the names of the botanical artists).
(Images are uploaded full size in order for you to be able to enlarge)
A painting of Antwerp artist Fred Bervoets (who has been active since the 1960s and is still alive) with a room-wide carpet of delicate flowers "rising from the burnt, ashen landscape after a wildfire):

One of the more kitschy and in-your-face, but still effective, installations: a mirror-mounted cross of wild deadwood, topped with a floral arrangement with a living flowery heart, combined with a medieval painting of Christ taken down from the cross:

An installation of wild field flowers, constrained within a strict frame, in dialogue with the painting of a mandril by Oscar Kokoshka:

In the gallery of the modern masters (where also Rik Wouters has pride of place): a recent acquisition of an Anish Kapoor blue disc (and an Yves Klein statue in similar blue, to the right of the photo vantage point and not visible in the photo because I had to move in really close and quickly for obvious reasons) combined with a delicate arrangement of small flowers in the protection of a large basket-type installation:

Have a great week, you all. I will probably comment on your images on next Tuesday.