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Les XX in the City: an Artists' Neighborhood in Brussels

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Les XX in the City: an Artists' Neighborhood in Brussels Artl@s Bulletin Volume 2 Article 5 Issue 2 Do Maps Lie? 2013 Les XX in the City: An Artists’ Neighborhood in Brussels Laurence Brogniez Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres, Université Libre de Bruxelles, [email protected] Tatiana Debroux Faculté des Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas Recommended Citation Brogniez, Laurence and Tatiana Debroux. "Les XX in the City: An Artists’ Neighborhood in Brussels." Artl@s Bulletin 2, no. 2 (2013): Article 5. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. Do Map Lie? Les XX in the City: An Artists’ Neighborhood in Brussels Laurence Brogniez and Tatiana Debroux* Université Libre de Bruxelles Abstract In this article we focus upon the spatiality of the artistic circle Les XX, in Belgium and in Europe. We study the installation of the circle’s members in both Brussels and the context of the city’s local artistic geography. One zone seems to have been a focus of the group’s creative and social life: the suburb of Ixelles, in particular, the neighborhood around the rue de l’Abbaye. This area was home to many artists, including Anna Boch, whose villa became a sort of second home to Les XX. Through cartographic analysis and the description of this environment, we bring into question the possible existence of an artistic neighborhood in Brussels at the turn of the 20th century. Résumé Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons à la spatialité du cercle des XX, à l’échelle belge et de l’Europe. Nous étudions ensuite l’inscription des vingtistes au sein du territoire bruxellois et de la géographie artistique locale. Un espace semble avoir polarisé la création et la sociabilité des XX : le faubourg d’Ixelles et, en particulier, les alentours de la rue de l’Abbaye. Celle‐ci a hébergé de nombreux artistes, dont Anna Boch, qui fera de sa villa un foyer pour les XX. A travers une analyse cartographique et la description de cet environnement, nous questionnons l’existence d’un quartier artistique au tournant du 20e siècle. * Laurence Brogniez is a professor of literature whose research interests include comparative arts, cultural history and literary representations of Brussels in the late 19th century. Tatiana Debroux is a geographer. Her work, focused on a period from the 19th century to the present day, investigates the social, spatial, and dynamic structures of urban zones as manifested through their cultural sites and actors. They are both part of the MICM‐arc project (micmarc.ulb.ac.be). 38 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (Fall 2013) Brogniez and Debroux – Les XX in the City This research was conducted as part of an during the same period, and to their clients and interdisciplinary project called “Culture, Mobility, patrons that frequented Les XX.2 Territory. Emergence and Transformation of Following this analysis, we continue our inquiry at Brussels’ Metropolitan Identity (18th‐21st a local level, focalizing on the area around the rue Centuries)” known by the acronym “MICM‐arc.”1 de l’Abbaye – address of choice for many members The project brings together historians, specialists of Les XX and their immediate circles. We focus in on art, literature, and music, sociologists, particular upon the house of an artist who, as a geographers and urbanists in the goal of painter, musician, and art collector, as much as investigating the possible convergence between through the circles of sociability generated by her notions such as cultural neighborhoods, sites of home and place of work, brought together artists mobility, and metropolitan identity, using maps and bourgeois art‐lovers in a liminal zone of the and cartography as the principal tool of dialogue expanding city. between disciplines. The fact that certain cities or neighborhoods of In this article, we seek to show what cartography today have greater concentrations of artists has can bring to the study of a celebrated group of caused researchers to question the limits and artists from Brussels, Les XX, as well as an conditions of these areas. Taking their place in a emblematic member of their group, Anna Boch. It line of theories on human capital and discourses is our intention to revisit the questions of Les XX’s on creative cities,3 much of this research has specificity by combining the study of art history resulted in city rankings showing gradations in the and urban history in a reflection upon the notion concentration of artists or cultural industries,4 of the artistic neighborhood. whereas others have been more concerned with Some of the questions we address include: Did showing the outlines of the zones occupied by there exist a particular “Brussels of Les XX” which artists on an intra‐urban scale in a desire to might be definable through notable concentrations analyze urban transformations and the economic of artists in particular zones? Do these areas redevelopment of particular neighborhoods.5 deserve the label “artistic neighborhoods”? What Still other authors take a different approach, can they tell us about the urban and social concentrating their analyses and reflections upon structures of the city at the end of the 19th zones of artistic activity as a subject in and of itself. century? The members of Les XX were influential The presence of artists and cultural institutions is on both a national and international level at the no longer seen as an element of economic growth turn of the century, but did they, in one way or another, leave their mark on the city of Brussels 2 See for example Tatiana Debroux, “Des artistes en ville. Géographie rétrospective through their choice of residence, mutual des plasticiens à Bruxelles (1833‐2008)” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2012). proximity, mobility within, and usage of the 3 Richard Florida, The rise of the creative class: and how it's transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life (New York, Basic Books, 2002); Marc V. Levine, cityscape? By seeking to reconstruct the space “La ‘classe créative’ et la prospérité urbaine: mythes et réalités,” conférence du 20 mai 2004 (INRS‐Urbanisation, Culture et Société, Montréal, 2004); Richard Lloyd, within which the members of Les XX circulated on “Neo‐bohemia: art and neighbourhood redevelopment in Chicago,” Journal of Urban Affairs, vol. 24, no 5, 2002, 517‐532; Jamie Peck, “Struggling with the creative class,” a small scale, by considering where they came International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 29, no 4 (2005): 740‐770; Richard Shearmur, “L'aristocratie mobile du savoir : quelques réflexions sur les from (in the case of international members) and thèses de Richard Florida, ” communication présented at the Congrès annuel de l'Association d'économie politique, novembre 2005 (Montréal, 2005). the areas which they occupied in Brussels, we also 4 Judith R. Blau, Peter M. Blau, and Reid M. Golden, “Social inequality and the arts”, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 91, no 2 (1985): 309‐331; Richard Florida, hope to question the specificity of this geography “Bohemia and economic geography,” Journal of Economic Geography, vol. 2 (2002): 55‐71; James Heilbrun, “Art and culture as central place functions”, Urban Studies, in comparison to both that of artists in general vol. 29, no 2 (1992): 205‐215; Ann Markusen, and Greg Schrock, “The artistic dividend: urban artistic specialization and economic development implications,” Urban Studies, vol.43, no 10 (2006): 1661‐1686. 5 Cultural clusters and neighborhoods defined notably by John Montgomery, “Cultural quarters as mechanisms for urban regeneration. Part 1: conceptualising cultural quarters,” Planning Practice and Research, vol. 18, no 4 (2003): 293‐306; S. Ryberg, M. Salling, and G. Soltis, “Putting artists on the map: the geography of artists in Cuyahoga County, Ohio,” Journal of Urban Affairs, vol.35, no 2 (2013): 219‐245; Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert, “Cultural clusters: the implications of cultural assets agglomeration for neighborhood revitalization,” Journal of Planning Education 1 http://micmarc.ulb.ac.be/ and Research, vol. 29, no 3 (2010): 262‐279. Do Maps Lie? 39 ARTL@S BULLETIN , Vol. 2 Issue 2 (Fall 2013) Brogniez and Debroux – Les XX in the City or the result of policies of urban renewal, but comprehensive analysis, such as the activities studied as an important, structuring dimension of which brought together artists, antique dealers, contemporary cities. The work of geographers and a bourgeois clientele in the developing Boris Grésillon and Camille Boichot belongs to this suburbs of late 19th century Paris.9 As artistic category.6 Through the mapping of artistic neighborhoods are also spaces of human activities in Berlin and Paris, both authors experience, other kinds of sources (interviews, interpret the creation of these centers of artistic correspondence, fictional stories, documentaries, activity (centralités artistiques), their interactions, etc.) can lend insights beyond those revealed and their insertion within the urban landscape. through statistical sources. Although Grésillon and Boichot use different Through the information found in the exhibition methods and have different ambitions, as with the catalogs of Les XX and recollections of Anna Boch’s first two groups of studies, the contours of the home, we attempt to retrace the spaces of Les XX zones they define result from the superposition of and La Libre Esthétique and their ramifications on multiple dimensions of artistic endeavor a national and international level before (education, creation, dissemination, etc.).
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