Meet the collection: 'The Ten'

MEET THE COLLECTION

THE TEN

'The Ten' is the name of a special collection presentation that will remain on display at M until 2024. It shows the favourite works of ten museum visitors.

In 2021, M picked ten art lovers from different generations and backgrounds. The idea was that they would come together and choose ten works from a selection of 30, half of it old and half of it contemporary art. The works were from the collections of M, Cera and the Flemish Community.

Because of the pandemic, we had to switch approach and used a digital game in which each participant had to try to keep their favourite work in the selection. After each round of play there was a vote, and in the end the ten favourites remained.

You can see the ten works in the final exhibition. The other twenty works are on display in another part of the hall, set up as a kind of depot. Below, we introduce you to a selection from those twenty. Perhaps there is a work among them that really appeals to you?

Katrien Vermeire

In 2016, Katrien Vermeire (born 1979) created a photo series and a 16 mm-ﬁlm on the theme of play. They were first shown at M in the 'Twisted Strings' exhibition and were subsequently acquired by Cera. Central to the work is an ancient game in which people use strings to make ﬁgures between their hands. Vermeire became fascinated by this tradition and decided to explore it. "String ﬁgures are like a language," she says. "Every culture has its variations. It's not just children who are involved: the ﬁgures also have wider meanings in religion, astrology and mythology." Her photo series and ﬁlm shows not only the graceful rhythmic movements of the strings, but also the poetry of patterns and ﬁgures.

‘Murphy’s 3D Ten Men Figure, Forum Romanum’, Katrien Vermeire, 2016, 51 x 51 cm, Cera collection at M Leuven © the artist

‘Inuit Net, Carlo, Vatican City’, Katrien Vermeire, 2016, 51 x 51 cm, Cera collection at M Leuven © the artist

Marie Collart

Marie Collart (1842-1911) achieved international success at a very young age. Art dealer Arthur Stevens, who would later marry her sister, recognised her talent and in 1865 introduced her at the Salon in Paris, in those days the centre of the art world. She caused a furore there with a (different) painting of a farm girl spreading pig manure around on the farm. At the time, Collart was still an unmarried middle-class girl but that did not stop her from painting in the Brabant countryside. In 1871, at the age of 29, she married a soldier from outside the artistic milieu. Ten years later, she became the first woman to be appointed a Knight of the Order of Leopold.

'Cattle herdsman with cows', c. 1860-1910, oil on canvas, collection M Leuven, photo: artinflanders.be, Dominique Provost

Emmanuelle Quertain

Emmanuelle Quertain (born 1987) explores in her work what forms painting can still take today. She starts from photos she takes herself or images she finds online. For Quertain, however, a painting is not a single image, but a succession of choices, brushstroke, colour, composition where each leaves traces. Her paintings are therefore not copies but rather recognisable forms that refer to the original images.

These three works can be shown as a triptych, but can at the same time be taken alone. At first glance, they are reminiscent of weather maps, but a closer look reveals that they are not really 'readable': the words here and there are more paint stroke than text, the geographic markings are a play with colours. The titles refer to the actual date and weather conditions on that day but each painting is a stand-alone image. Quertain thus explores our contemporary (digital) visual culture, and how art relates to it, where the painting and the original image separate, or collide.

‘Friday 16th September 2016’, Emmanuelle Quertain, 2016, 25 x 39 cm © the artist

‘Tuesday 20th September 2016’, Emmanuelle Quertain, 2016, 25 x 39 cm © the artist

‘Traveller's Forecast ou Printemps 2011’, Emmanuelle Quertain, 2015, 25 x 39 cm © the artist

Pieter Puyenbroeck

Anna Boleyn (1507-1536) is etched in the collective memory. Her notorious marriage to England's King Henry VIII, the resulting break with the Catholic Church, and Anna's beheading on suspicion of witchcraft and adultery (the latter most likely unjustly) have been extensively highlighted by historians and portrayed by ﬁlmmakers. Yet only a handful of historical paintings and drawings of Anna Boleyn are known. These inspired Pieter Puyenbroeck, a sculptor from Leuven, to create this melancholic-looking marble portrait bust with hairy elaborate clothing and jewellery. The statue was presented to the public at the 1839 Brussels Salon and was in the same year donated to the museum in Leuven by mayor Guillaume van Bockel (1789-1863).

'Anna Boleyn', c. 1835, marble, M Leuven, photo: artinflanders.be, Dominique Provost

Michael Van den Abeele

Michael Van den Abeele (born 1974) works in various media and paints on canvas and panel, experiments with audiovisual media, digital design and animation, as well as writes texts. Each time, he explores how we relate to our environment and what stories we construct around it. Philosophy, science, science fiction and popular culture are recurring themes. His works oscillate between ﬁgurative and abstract, material and immaterial.

For 'Optical Denim', Van den Abeele applied a process in negative. The work is a canvas of jeans fabric (185 x 185 cm) from which he has created an optical pattern using bleach, as if it has been depainted. Jeans, a material characteristic of recent pop and fashion culture, repeatedly comes back in Van den Abeele's work. The psychedelic pattern is reminiscent of the op-art (optical art) from the 1960s and 70s.

‘Optical Denim #06’, Michael Van den Abeele, 2019, 185 x 185 cm, Flemish Community Collection at M Leuven © the artist, photo: Dirk Pauwels for M Leuven

Unknown sculptor

Medieval representations of the Sedes Sapientiae, the 'Seat of Wisdom', go back to the majestic Madonnas of Byzantine art. The term 'seat' does not refer to the throne, but to Mary herself as the mother of Christ, Wisdom incarnate. Mary and Jesus sternly look ahead of them. Mary's hands appear to protect her son, but does not touch him. Here it is not a mother's love for her child that is depicted, as in later Madonnas, but Mary showing Christ to the faithful as their future saviour. A subtle detail further emphasises this: the small apple in Mary's right hand refers to Eve, who seduced Adam in earthly paradise with an apple, bringing original sin into the world. It is precisely from that original sin that Christ will redeem mankind through his death on the cross.