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the culture briefi ng Creative Accountancy
07
lections push up the price of the art market?
Yes, without question, says Pick Keobandith
of QuArt. “Some invest in art, some want to
show their power and money. It’s like possessing
a Ferrari, it’s part of the element
that wealthy corporations need to have.”
" It’s like possessing
a Ferrari, it’s part
of the element
that wealthy corporations
need to have. "
The collection of Cera started ten years
ago, when the cooperative bank became a
holding as part of the KBC group. As the
major shareholder in KBC, Cera decided
to use its income to return to its responsible
roots. As well as its social and agricultural
projects, it also started buying up the work
of young artists in tandem with making grant
payments to help them at fragile moments in
their careers. “If you see the art scene at the
moment and the artists that are travelling
everywhere- they are often artists who were
in our collection from the start of their career,”
says Lies Daenen, who is responsible
for Cera’s social and artistic activities. “We
made a difference for those artists and the
Belgian art scene, and that’s our goal.”
Although no doubt conducted without
a hint of cynicism, this is a neat trick if you
54 — THE THIRD WORD
can pull it off. Cera selected its artists under
the advice of Bart de Baere of MuHKA and
art critic Luc Lambrecht, creating a kind of
win-win situation for itself. The artists start
their careers with some heavy endorsement
and an injection of cash to put towards a
specifi c project, while Cera, in turn gains
not only kudos, but also a collection that
will grow in value and reputation.
Those operating in the creative world
tend to see their comparatively inspiring
environment as a kind of payoff for shoddy
remuneration, but no one can really object
to people from the fi nancial world wanting
to surround themselves with beautiful and
inspiring things. Perhaps the next time you
need a little wriggle room with the mortgage
repayments, you’ll fi nd that your banker
will suddenly have engaged with the powerful
ideas of exclusion emanating from the
Juan Muñoz bronze next to the front door,
and become a little more lenient. What does
rankle with many in the art world, however,
is both the rather soul-less, train-spotterish
attitude to assembling some of the collections,
and the fact that the artworks are kept
hidden from the public eye.
08
01. Dexia’s Entrance Hall,
with Jacques Verduyn’s Figure Assise
and Aguire y Otegui Philip’s
Homme Devant un Mur.
02. Dexia’s Staircase, with Jan Fabre’s Mur
de la Montée des Anges.
03. Dexia Curator Patricia Jaspers.
04. ING's Meeting Room,
with Nobuyashi Araki prints.
05. ING Curator Patricia dePeuter.
06. ING's Entrance Hall,
with Anja Schrey’s Hockende III
and a Richard Deacon sculpture.
07. Cera's Vaults.
08. Cera's Head of Artistic Activities
Lise Daemen.
© SABAM