Exhibition "The Anatomy of Vanities" (Erasmus' House, Brussels, April 24-July 13, 2008)

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton got published in 1621, and the Erasmus' House in Brussels currently has an exhibition called The Anatomy of Vanities (April 12, 2008-July 13, 2008). Burton's medical treatise and the exhibition have in common a medical subject and an unusual breadth of approach. In the case of the exhibition, we add staggering beauty.

The son of a French luxury goods scion quipped that he sees the best contemporary galleries in each city he visits on business. Why not a pars pro toto at the Erasmushouse with the works of Jan Fabre and Marie-Jo Lafontaine, in rooms that have recently been repainted. Why not the museum's garden with permanent works of art, amongst others Les larmes du ciel by Marie-Jo Lafontaine. With a spoonful of contemporary art, a medicine of memento mori goes down.
This exhibition fits one of the themes that the Erasmushouse under its director Alexandre Vanautgaerden sets out to explore as of 1998: the cabinet of rarities or vanities, which it sees as a predecessor of the museum. The cabinets brought together works or art, natural or exotic fauna and flora, and scientific instruments.

Such cabinets were in vogue after Erasmus' time, but, as gathered from Vanautgaerden's introduction to the catalogue, Erasmus' contemporary Albrecht Dürer started his Wunderkammer with elements from a trip to.. the Netherlands. Cabinet elements are present here, organised around the concept of idleness or vanity.

In Erasmus' days, death was more pressing than in ours, the reminder more common. Erasmus, who was somewhat sickly, wore a ring with the Latin inscription 'concedo nulli', 'I yield to no one', a direct reference to man's natural fate from the standpoint of a personified Death.

The take on death in this exhibition is to understand it with a certain jubilation, by lingering to take in past and present moments of beauty, and by seeing the attempts to fixate or represent life in the name of curiosity.

Bright green parrots from the Museum of Natural History at Tournai are laid around a skull in garland fashion. The skeleton and the snake are omnipresent in delicately wooden or ivory sculpted figurines or heads. There are plant arrangements by a Brussels florist, leaving room for ongoing microscopic processes in glasshouse conditions. and there's the human desire to push the limits of technique in exquisite mechanically turned objects of ivory and wood.

In an essay from the catalogue, Jean-Marc Mandosio traces man's preoccuption with the anatomical model through time. The models of women, the Venuses or Evas, as he explains, were always represented full-bodied, with skin, unlike the Adams. Their shape was an ideal, and in stark contrast with the entrails and organs you could still remove.

The collector who gave these strange and beautiful objects on loan, acutely phrases how despite our ability to prolong life, and to taunt it with the most fantastical creations, clinging to it will be as vain as in the time of Erasmus. If to the vistor this comes as too great a shock, there are always the editions of Erasmus on view on the second floor, or a moment's pause in the philosophical garden of the museum to regain spirits.

As a visitor, you take these beautiful objects home in the shape of the catalogue: Anatomie des vanités. Anatomie der ijdelheden. Sous la direction de - onder leiding van Alexandre Vanautgaerden. Bilingual catalogue French-Dutch. Le Cabinet d'Erasme VI (2008). 93 p. color ills. ISBN 978-2-930414-22-5. Exhibition until July 13, 2008. Erasmus House and garden, open every day except Mondays (Photos: museum website).
PS: Belgium is a country of collectors-the exhibition Hout in boeken (see our March 10, 2008 post) featured another collector's 17th C set of thinly turned woodcups -a marvel. See Charles Indekeu's article "Ornamentdraaiwerk. Machinekunst voor vorsten" (p. 315-325) in the study Hout in boeken (see our April 24, 2008 post) as a complement to the catalogue of the Erasmushouse exhibition.