Is Walloon Culture too self-effacing?

There are many things that attract our particular attention in this book. This photograph of a dance presentation by Frédéric Flamand, Moving Target, showing us a dancer wearing an extremely long dark blue skirt, who finds herself “reflected” in a subtle arrangement using mirrors. Or this work by the artist Jacques Charlier, Novassima Verba, which references the Pornokrates of Félicien Rops we spoke of earlier, showing the same nude woman wearing a blindfold and pulled-up stockings, but this time without a pig on a leash. And there are also photographs of magnificent works of goldsmithing and tapestries, little known treasures from a past that is also too little known.

It appears that this is a characteristic of Wallonia’s cultural history: it does not call attention to itself. And its long-standing inferiority complex in relation to its neighbours (whether they are Parisian, Flemish, German, Dutch or from Brussels) is part of it. Evidence is provided by the many cases of artists who in every period emigrate in favour of other countries, where they expect their work to flourish: Rogier de la Pasture, a Renaissance-era painter from Tournai who preferred to work in Flanders; the composer César Franck, born in Liège but who later became a French citizen; and of course, Georges Simenon, who also ceded to the attraction of France… “At the beginning of the 20^th century, some people definitely had the feeling that our artists had been taken from us,” said Bruno Demoulin. “But over the years, we see only that they went to earn a living in places where they were welcomed. Wallonia was the second greatest industrial power in the world during part of that time, but undoubtedly the greatest artistic vitality was to be found in France. Later, Wallonia had the image of an area of social unrest, in an uproar because of strikes… All that undoubtedly interfered with the feeling of pride in relation to Walloon cultural history, which is very rich in itself. Today, although the industrial prosperity of the past is no more, we may have reached a sort of tipping point past which people have a desire to turn back toward the past, to rediscover things we had forgotten in order to rekindle hope.”