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Distributed for McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College

A New Key

Modern Belgian Art from the Simon Collection

Distributed for McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College

A New Key

Modern Belgian Art from the Simon Collection

The Simon Collection, housed in London and France, is the finest assemblage of modern Belgian art outside Belgium. Accompanying an exhibition held at Boston College’s McMullen Museum, A New Key presents fifty-three works never before displayed in North America, including important paintings by René Magritte, James Ensor, Frits van den Berge, Paul Delvaux, and others.
Full-color reproductions of the paintings are accompanied by seven essays that illuminate their significance and the distinctive contribution of Belgian art to the development of modernism. Addressing themes like the rise of Freudian psychology, the influence of carnival, and the trauma of two world wars, A New Key forges a new understanding of Belgium’s long-neglected role in the development of modern art.

233 pages | 53 color plates, 81 halftones | 8 x 10 | © 2007

Art: European Art


Table of Contents

Director’s Foreword
Nancy Netzer
 
Preface and Historical Outline
Jeffery Howe
 
Pauvre Belgique: Collecting Practices and Belgian Art in and Outside of Belgium
Sura Levine
 
The Simon Collection - a Personal Perspective
Patrick Derom
 
A New Key: Modernism and National Identity in Belgian Art
Jeffery Howe
 
Ensor’s Parrot
Katherine Nahum
 
"Laughter Liberates Us from Fear" - The Place of Carnival in Our Lives
Susan A. Michalczyk
 
Occupied Belgium: The Art of War
John J. Michalczyk
 
Freudian Themes in the Symbolist Work of George Minne
Claude Cernuschi
 
Works in the Exhibition

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