Het Huis Stoclet in Brussel - Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten Aalst

taste. It also highlights key moments in the creation of the Musée National d’Art Moderne
and its collection.
A huge mirror hanging from the ceiling of the monumental nave shows an inverted
image of the gallery space, thus visually including the visitor in the exhibition’s endeavour
to examine the nature of a masterpiece.
Stories Behind Masterpieces
The second part of the exhibition, Stories behind Masterpieces, is presented in
Galerie 1. What is a masterpiece, other than the product of converging stories – those of
an artist, a creative process, a work, and its critical fortunes ? Once passed Respirare
l’ombra, by Giuseppe Penone, visitors can choose between two possible directions : a
series of rooms dedicated to the main avant-garde movements, or so-called ‘ isms ’
(Fauvism, Cubism etc.) or a different historic narrative revolving around lesser-known
figures and movements from the 20th century. This gallery is subdivided into a series of
various sized rooms, providing for numerous visual correspondences.
Masterpiece Dreams
The exhibition continues in Galerie 2 with the section entitled Masterpiece Dreams,
a proposal for the ‘dream museum’ that draws a parallel between the museum as a
‘container’ and the artworks as its ‘contents’. Upon entering the gallery space, visitors face
a chronological display of emblematic works from the 20th century. The reverse side of the
wall features the first-ever historical outline of modern and contemporary art venues built
in France since 1937. Some thirty architectural projects are highlighted in a unique
presentation of models, original drawings, and filmed interviews.
Masterpieces ad infinitum
The final part of the exhibition, Masterpieces ad infinitum, analyses how the notion
of masterpiece has persisted throughout the 20th century at a time when images became
easily reproducible.
With the development of new media such as film and digital imagery, contemporary
artists have adopted a different approach to the concept of masterpiece. Many have made
copies and reproductions a part of their work, prompting the viewer to reconsider the
essential characteristic of any masterpiece : its uniqueness.
And finally the exhibition’s scenography calls the visitor’s attention to the scenic
view of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, an architectural masterpiece by any standard. The optical
illusion created - the cathedral diminishes, as the viewer draws nearer to it – offers a
visual allegory of the unfathomable essence of the masterpiece, the definition of which
eludes us while accommodating the most contradictory interpretations.