For 23 years, Berlinde De Bruyckere has been making her haunting wax sculptures in a 19th-century neo-Gothic former Catholic boys school in the harbor district of Ghent, Belgium.
Her face wears the intense, thoughtful expression you might expect from someone whose work grapples with the universal themes of life and death, suffering and solace.
She filters the imagery and emotions of the greatest Old Master works through the lens of present-day atrocities, creating life-size wax and horsehide figures that are, as she puts it, "both frightening and comforting." It’s impossible to walk the length of her studio without glimpsing her sources of inspiration.
Pinned to the wall opposite a bookcase overflowing with monographs on Giotto, Dirk Bouts and other masters are reproductions of paintings by the likes of Lucas Cranach the Elder, whom she studies for "how he paints skin, how he deforms his models," and Matthias Grnewald, whose Isenheim Altarpiece she describes in rapturous tones. Next to these are placed ephemera, such as a magazine clipping about an Abu Ghraib torture victim. "Not so much has changed," De Bruyckere tells me, looking at reproductions of two paintings by the 17th-century master Luca Giordano depicting bound, writhing figures: Saint Bartholomew about to be flayed and Prometheus awaiting the eagle that will gouge out and devour his liver.
"There is still brutality. You see the same things in Guantánamo, in Iraq." From an interview by Sarah Douglas All content © Copyright by Berlinde De Bruyckerehttp://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/berlinde_debruyckere.html
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