DAVID HOCKNEY IN BRUSSELS

Most people are familiar with Hockney's work which has been on view everywhere. The frisson of the bigger Splash period is a given in the contemporary arts lexicon.

The show in Beaux Arts suffers from the well-known Brussels ailments.

Despite the efforts from Paul Dujardin, Beaux Arts is a sad place, aged, unpleasant and user/visitor unfriendly. Nevertheless, Horta's virtuosity in this play of volumes and overlapping levels was again rediscovered. Unfortunately, the circus-like programation Rue de la Régence is vulgar and superfluous. The proximity of the new hideous Fortis building is totally unacceptable. For some who had hopes that "brutalism" in Brussels was a thing of the past, this wake-up call must be a slap in the face. Fortis looks like a whale ready to swallow Beaux Arts.

The Hockney exhibition should be a luminous affair, a hint of southern California but, alas, the skies, light and pools, the alluring boys and ambiguities are swallowed by the cavernous environment made for still lives from another age. The gloom outside invades the space inside and visitors walk aimlessly through a funeral home which offsets the pleasure one remembers from previous shows in Paris, London or New York.

Other venues in Brussels suffer from the same mix, wherein lack of money, rule of politics and absent sponsors only aggravate a feeling of dereliction. The Palais de Justice saga and Brussel's decay are emblematic of the urban clogged arteries. Some will answer that the Beer Museum and the Cat Museum are on the way....quod demonstrandum est.