Introduction
The 1960s were for Belgium, as for other Western countries, a decade of economic, scientific, and technological growth and development. As a result of the growing purchasing power, a new technologized, materialistic lifestyle was encouraged and facilitated. As welfare increased for the middle class, so evolved their personal development and their political awareness. This led towards demands for more political participation and an acceptance of new, pluralist world views.1 Paradoxically, starting in the mid-1960s, this heightened social awareness resulted in critical analyses of the prevailing growth-oriented ideology.
Many intellectuals now accused the growth-oriented, capitalist lifestyle of annihilating the social fabric. They observed a fragmented, modernist (or postmodernist) society that was obsessed with individualism, pluralism, specialism, and material status. If each person and social sector focused only on themselves and every kind of known or ‘universal’ value was discredited in favor of personal growth, how could one experience their direct environment other than as a tool for personal enrichment? Moreover, the 1960s were also typified by a growing mobilization of protest movements. Countercultures, driven by (the children of ) the growing middle class, started to assemble in, amongst others, peace movements, feminist groups, and as Third World advocates. These groups acted against everything capitalist, antisocial, technocratic, and uptight that suppressed their individual freedom.2 When the first ecological setbacks due to financial exploitation became visible, these new social movements started to embrace the environmental cause.
In Belgium, the intersection of conflicting views on environmentalism and modernization manifested itself mostly in the field of urban planning (or landscape management). Protesting voices criticized policy makers for cultivating the landscape so as to generate as much economic profit as possible, regardless of the consequences for local livability. Instead of promoting a healthy and social environment or safeguarding the natural elements of a landscape for its inhabitants, the Belgian government was accused of preferring a paved, polluted, uninviting, and unorganized monoculture, which looked desolate apart from the traffic.
In 1971, the renowned Belgian artist Roger Raveel contributed to this debate by co-organizing a protest happening titled Raveel op de Leie (Raveel on the Leie). Together with various groups, he sailed an artwork down a meander of a local river (the Leie) to safeguard it from being reclaimed as a construction site. I argue that the artwork, the happening itself, and the aftermath of the protest are perfect examples for illustrating the then-prevailing conflicting views on landscape cultivation, as well as how an artist could participate in the social and environmental debate and even influence Belgian policy making.
To answer the research question: “how is Raveel op de Leie an illustration of the conflicting views on Belgian modernist environmental planning?” I will first sketch how issues around urban development evolved in Belgium during the 1960s and 1970s. Here, I will also introduce the theoretical framework for a landscape-sensitive approach coined by Swiss urban planners and sustainable development scholars Jean-David Gerber and Gérald Hess. Secondly, I will use this framework to explain how environmental action groups organized themselves and what their motives and stances were. Thirdly, I will discuss how a new wave of urbanists-intellectuals continued this critique of modernism and proposed a new holistic view of landscape cultivation. In the second part of the article, I will illustrate how Raveel was capable of both supporting environmental protests and the critical voices of these urbanists against modernism, as well as disseminating a landscape-sensitive approach through his practices. The article ends with a close reading of Raveel’s protest happening which builds on the aforementioned accounts of environmentalist policy making, landscape criticism, and environmental art.
A Belgian Identity Set in Stone: Regularizing the Extraction of the Landscape During the 1950s and 1960s
How did the so-called estrangement between the Belgian people and their surrounding landscape develop during the second half of the twentieth century? One of the key factors in the evolution toward this troubled relationship can be attributed to the management of the landscape for housing development, which demonstrated a predominantly consumerist and hegemonic attitude towards natural open spaces. In the early 1950s Belgium’s urban planning was vastly influenced by two pieces of legislation introduced by the Christian-Democrat politician Alfred De Taeye in 1948 and 1953. Amongst other things, the laws allowed for the awarding of grants for building in rural areas and facilitated the allotment and buying of land. Given the urge to stimulate the country’s economy and to modernize its infrastructure after World War II, housing became the newest consumer product.3 Whilst the governments of Belgium’s neighboring countries stimulated concentrated building and high-rises, throughout the 1950s and 1960s the new suburban Belgian houses evolved from enclosed and semi-detached houses to detached houses with a private garage (all eligible for grants).4 Turning rural land into private property became an excellent opportunity for the growing middle class to showcase their personal taste and capital.
By providing additional grants for builders who returned to or stayed in the municipality in which they were born, De Taeye envisioned a well-balanced spread of urban development. However, the location of housing projects in the municipality was nearly unrestricted. Instead of building new houses in urban centers, most were erected in arrays outside the municipality, close to main roads and in new rural allotments funded by local governments.5 Next to affordable housing in distant green areas, the boom in affordable, private commuting instruments led to the increase of traffic and road constructions. This, in turn, led to growing expanses of concrete all over the country. Although the De Taeye laws were abolished in 1973, ribbon development and allotments continue to be the standard even today.
Whereas laws for urbanization were provided, laws for environmental regulation were lacking and thus could not prevent the spread of concrete. During the same time period, the Belgian government had little interest in environmental protection. Competence on environmental matters were long divided between Ministries such as Agriculture, which were more interested in gaining profit from the landscape, such as through fishing or lumber extraction.6 In spite of this, in 1962 (relatively late compared to neighboring countries) the law for environmental planning was signed. Although the first article stated that “[environmental] planning will be designed from an economic, social, and aesthetic point of view as well as with the aim of keeping the country’s natural beauty untouched,”7 there was little control on the last two objectives, making the text purely symbolic.8
In their often-quoted analysis of Belgian environmental policy between 1945 and 1985, environmental scientists Antoon De Geest and Pieter Leroy go to the root of why Belgium struggled with writing and executing a grounded policy to protect the environment. The authors depict a political culture that was unable to fully wrap its head around the environmental debate and that was characterized by flawed policy making.
First, there was a lack of knowledge and commitment within political parties to communicate consistent stances on the complex matters of environmentalism and ecology. They struggled to find stances that could be supported by both their parties and their constituency. Therefore, political parties preferred to propose ad hoc solutions to specific environmental affairs instead of writing long-term policies.9 Secondly, they defined environmental problems as technical and scientific affairs that could be easily solved with technology when they occurred. Politicians tried to “take the politics out of the debate” and to circumvent discussion of environmental policies that could restrict economic profit.10 Thirdly, the communication between legislators was askew. Many urban development projects were negotiated and legislated in a secluded manner, making the process towards establishing a policy or environmental permit unclear to ‘outsiders.’ In an ‘informal circuit,’ policy makers, local governments, and interest and pressure groups tried to negotiate policies and permits in their favor before discussing them in the official circuit.11 As the authors note: “It has become almost self-evident that allotments, renovations, exploitations, and waste disposal projects start solely on the premise of an informal agreement, before an official permit is granted or even requested. […] [T]he ‘fait accompli’ will be legalized afterwards by all kinds of pragmatic and ad hoc solutions.”12
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, it became clear that policy makers and a big part of the population experienced and agreed with a view of the Belgian environment as merely an extractable resource and disregarded its so-called non-utility, intrinsic values. I refer here to two terms borrowed from an account of the notion of landscape commons by Swiss urban planners and sustainable development scholars Jean-David Gerber and Gérald Hess. Gerber and Hess position people’s understanding of the landscape as a resource within a continuum that runs from extractors to conservators: extractors focus on exploiting, destroying, and regulating the land (mainly for profit), whilst conservators argue for closing off parts of the landscape to human interaction and excluding it from real time in order to enjoy its romantic, aesthetic values (e.g.: natural parks and the tourist industry).13
The two Swiss scholars argue that both resource-focused views lead to troubling policies for the cultivation of landscape: If a milieu is perceived as a finite economic resource, extractors will reduce it to just that and try to extract as much and fast as possible before discarding it. This is contrary to the preservationist view, which positions itself against the perception of landscape as a dynamic plane of interaction between humans and nature and, instead, values an archaic caricature of landscape in whose constitution humans would play no role.14 Both views will lead to humans becoming estranged from their daily environment. According to Gerber and Hess: “[In extractors] we see […] the adoption of a ‘laisser-aller’ approach to the landscape, which fails to see it as a truly singular object because the rapidity of the change of milieu prevents the users from truly experiencing it. [In conservators] we observe a process of rigidification of the living landscape and its fixation in a representation which has the fatal result of its museumization or Disneyfication.”15 In both cases we forget that we need to haptically and visually experience all facets of an environment in order to fully understand it as the place in which we live and act.
Such a ‘laisser-aller’ approach is clearly what the Belgian government applied and promoted with the lack of environmental regulations. Not only did one ignore the environmental setbacks that would result from covering the land with concrete, one also failed to realize that this would lead to an estrangement from the landscape. Firstly, the landscape is experienced as always in change and as evolving towards a concrete-covered space. Secondly, suburban communities were no longer organized around an inviting space for encounter (a lively town square or a park), but alongside traffic roads enclosed by detached housing and industry. The social alienation between actors in the landscape was thereby accelerated.
The 1960s and 1970s: Aiming to Cultivate the Common Landscape
The First Protest Groups
Inspired by the novel insights into ecological and environmental awareness all over Europe, during the 1960s actors from different disciplines started to voice their opposition to the ‘laisser-aller’ attitude. On the one hand, the first Belgian local environmental action groups started to organize as they began to notice the pollution of their milieu and its disappearing biodiversity due to urbanization, industrialization, and heavy traffic.16 On the other, there was a wave of intellectuals, urban planners, and architects who noticed the antisocial consequences of this unregulated building in both urban and suburban contexts. Both groups thought that a new ecological, sustainable approach to the landscape had to be sought. This new approach can be described as a landscape-sensitive attitude, using a term coined by Gerber and Hess.
Gerber and Hess try to harmonize the two poles of the resource view of a landscape by introducing a view based on non-utility. This approach starts from an objective appreciation of the landscape before any significant human interaction. Gerber and Hess build on environmental philosopher Allen Carlson’s often-quoted cognitive aesthetics. Carlson argues that to make an aesthetic assessment of a landscape one needs to have scientific, factual knowledge to perform an ontological reading of the landscape.17 An example of cognitive aesthetics at work is the assessment of a forest as filled with ‘ordinary trees.’ If one knows that a forest purifies carbon out of the air, helps regulate the temperature of the local environment, and is a natural buffer against flooding, one could find pleasure in seeing those trees as part of our complex ecosystem, and this could lead to an urge to protect them from cutting, as they are now deemed valuable. Or else, if one discovers that a forest is the product of a distinct geological evolution in the landscape, one will then reassess the landscape in light of its uniqueness and historical value.
Cognitive aesthetics enable us to reconnect with our surroundings as we learn that a landscape is a complex, living ecosystem that has intrinsic functions apart from being a resource for humans to extract for (economic) profit. Yet, in order to prevent cognitive aesthetics from being used as a tool for the conservative approach, Gerber and Hess argue for a circular landscape evaluation process, which opposes the negative effects of both extractivist and conservationist approaches and provides a sustainable interaction with the landscape. Firstly, the intrinsic, non-utility value of a landscape as a singular object will be determined (through cognitive aesthetics). Based on this assessment the human actors involved in the landscape will adapt and negotiate their resource-based understanding of the landscape with the idea of sustaining its valuable intrinsic qualities whilst living within it. The landscape will thus be thoughtfully cultivated (a form of extraction) without erasing its intrinsic values (a form of conservation). In other words: “the circular evaluation model requires that the [human] actors agree to impose restrictions on their use of the landscape without renouncing its use.”18 I would like to emphasize here that the methodology of Hess and Gerber (and Carlson) opens the opportunity for different readings of one landscape, as different cognitive analyses (geological, historical, biological) will result in different opportunities to connect with, and experience, both mentally and physically, the non-utility, intrinsic qualities of a landscape.
This circular evaluation model is key for a landscape-sensitive approach that centers on the conception of landscape as a common resource and therefore bases landscaping on a consensus-oriented model. Here, different human stakeholders defend the value that they assign to a landscape whilst recognizing other’s assigned values and, importantly, find a consensus wherein all stakeholders can thoughtfully extract and conserve the landscape. Hess and Gerber conclude that, in the long run, this democratic model can strengthen the ties between different actors in a landscape since they will come to balance out each other’s demands. This could lead to a society that sustainably manages the landscape with a shared “political recognition of the symbolic, inalienable, and irreplaceable nature of the landscape.”19
In Belgium, the first environmental action groups which formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s were almost exclusively bottom-up initiatives responding to very local issues. These action groups mostly disbanded once their environmental issue was solved or as interest from the activists waned.20 Yet, despite their sporadic and unorganized characteristics and their variety of methods, these action groups present the perfect example of how new, unheard actors now wanted to express their assessments of a landscape and criticize the dominant ‘laisser-aller’ attitude of other actors in that landscape. The action groups mainly protested against shortsighted adequations of the landscape that disregarded its unique fabric and its inhabitants, such as the construction of high-traffic roads near (or even straight through) a forest or the placement of polluting chemical plants near densely populated villages or natural spaces.21
These action groups took great strides in preventing the further alienation of humans from their landscape as they faced urbanization and pollution and, more importantly, focused again on experiencing a landscape rather than turning it into a transit space for traffic and profit. What most of these early activists had in common was the organization of playful protests or occupations of the landscape. Here, different, more sociable and sustainable experiences of the landscape were promoted and inhabitants were invited to reconnect with their surroundings. Apart from temporary protests, most action committees also provided suggestions for different uses of the landscape that would promote social and environmental interaction.22 Building petting zoos instead of industrial facilities, for example, was a popular proposal by action committees to introduce an environmentally friendly, educational, and recreational element in the landscape.23 Although these proposals sometimes sprung from emotional and social (and sometimes even naïve) arguments instead of scientifically grounded ones (a more cognitive approach, one could argue)24 they mostly followed the ideology that one should not deplete the intrinsic qualities of a landscape but rather to try to cultivate them. Action groups questioned if the proposed economic interference, that policy makers blatently legislated, was the most sustainable one for the livabilty.25 With proposals based on a circular landscape evaluation process, local action committees could not be accused of being anti-modernist nature conservatives who aimed for a museumification of the landscape.
Yet, due to the local and temporary attitude of these activists, they were not too concerned with changing the country’s environmental policies. These activists did not want ‘polluting actors’ to interfere in their landscape and regarded politics and lobbying mostly as a necessary evil with which to interact only when it was absolutely necessary.26 In addition, some activists were rather hostile towards other actants, lacked debating skills, and were not always taken seriously by their ‘opponents,’ making consensus and dialogue quite difficult.27 Therefore, Belgium’s environmental policy oscillated for a long time between a ‘laisser-aller’ attitude (sometimes disturbed by local action groups) and a museumification of certain segments of aesthetically and historically valuable land converted into national parks removed from living areas.28 It would not be until the 1980s that activists started to organize themselves as lobbyists to negotiate (in the ‘informal circuit’) for sustainable environmental policies by searching for consensus.29
Intellectuals Critical of Modernism: Art Should Disseminate Holistic Forms of Living
A new, landscape-sensitive approach such as Hess and Gerber promoted was also upheld by a group of intellectuals, utopian architects, artists, and urban planners who wanted to redesign the contemporary antisocial, allotted landscape. One of the first to explicitly denounce these alienating spaces was the socialist architect Renaat Braem in his influential manifesto Het lelijkste land ter wereld (The Ugliest Country in the World) from 1968. Just like the environmentalists discussed earlier, Braem noted that landscapes were being reduced to resources for profit and dumping sites when they were no longer of economic value. He writes: “Our air gets spoiled. Why? For economic profit. […] Our brooks, rivers, and streams are becoming sewers due to industrial waste. [Our rivers] are not unknown, they are unloved!”30 Belgians had neglected to appreciate the non-utility, intrinsic qualities of the landscape.
Braem starts his manifesto by comparing the Belgian landscape with the Flemish painters of the Renaissance, as they too loved chaotic compositions and left no space untouched on their canvases. Tasteless housing and other constructions strip the landscape’s unique character and the only element that draws attention to our immediate surroundings are the dangerous traffic roads that have replaced historical monuments and further add to the chaos.31
What the environmental action groups and the utopian urban thinkers had in common was their opposition to views that reduce the landscape to an economic resource and the urge to find a way of benefitting from the landscape by sustaining and cultivating its unique, non-utility, intrinsic values. The main difference lies in their broader societal positions. Temporary action groups focused on solving their own problems and for the most part failed to question the systemic causes of their problems. On the contrary, the new wave of intellectuals used their critical analyses of architecture, culture, and urban planning to lay bare the wider societal and systematic problems they suspected to be the cause of environmental disruptions. Their proposed, long-term architectural solutions had a much more ideological and utopian background, as most of them focused on socialist and ecological ideals.
Braem finds the root of the problematic relationship in the loss of a synthetic vision of our world. In the same vein as other skeptics of modernism during the 1970s and 1980s, he notes that Western ideas and values have become detached from the Earth’s material capacities and the intertwined composition of the world. Modern humanity, with its urge for specialization and observation, has unwound the threads of daily life and thereby erased its understanding of a holistic view of the (potential) implications of its actions. By prioritizing (unrealistic) material needs and realizing that they can derive profit from alienating society from the intertwined world, policy makers have forgotten that their task is to promote a life in unity and not infinite economic profit.32 They have become incapable of an ontological judgment of the landscape because they have embraced the extractor’s view of landscape management. Therefore, they tend to approve of a ‘laisser-aller’ attitude.
Braem concluded that this modernist attitude reduces humans to instruments of profit who are not expected to experience their surroundings: they go to work and afterwards they sit in front of their televisions, removed from the outer world. Architecture and culture, here, are not supposed to be meaningful or social, they are supposed to facilitate rationality, functionality, and transit.33 Braem’s manifesto urges architects and policy makers to create a new urban planning and architecture that sacralize all aspects of contemporary, everyday life in order to rediscover the importance of meaningful human interactions with each other and the landscape.34 A change in the modernist lifestyle was necessary in order to facilitate a worldview that rediscovers the intrinsic values of a landscape and that profits from it sustainably. One could note that this is comparable to learning how to apply a circular landscape evaluation process.
Braem’s utopian, holistic vision echoes through several architects and artists during the 1970s. In 1973, for example, the monthly magazine A+ was founded to critically reflect on contemporary architectural space. The interdisciplinary editorial board consisted not only of architects and designers, but also sociologists, and contributors included policy makers and artists. In his contribution to the special issue on urban planning, “Onze dagelijkse omgeving, van vervreemding tot…beleving” (Our Daily Environment…From Estrangement to Experience), sculptor Jean-Paul Laenen lamented modern society in terms comparable to Braem. Laenen notes that everything and everyone in contemporary society is attributed a defined function with no space for transgression. Because we have become so focused on productivity and infinite economic growth, everyone in society is reduced to a tool for profit and must function as such. This results, Laenen argues, in strict modernist urban planning which is too narrowly focused on facilitating economic profit and rationalization and has no interest in dialoguing with the complexities of the unique surroundings in which it is implemented.35 One should not reflect about oneself and one’s surroundings other than as tools for functionality and profit. Laenen also advocated for a circular landscape evaluation process in response to this. He argued for more community involvement in urbanization projects in order to prevent these from fragmenting complex realities. He intended to promote an environment that celebrates the complexity and diversity of its intertwined social and natural structure.36 A higher level of participation will lead to a more consensus-oriented and landscape-sensitive cultivation of living spaces.
Laenen envisions the artist as an important agent capable of stimulating these forms of social and sustainable urban living. He warns that artists have become victims of modern society: where they once lived amongst the poor, they now reside in the enclosed art world where their practice is estranged from daily life and is formed by a privileged group.37 Art is now only available to the wealthy and therefore becomes a decoration that represents the economic hierarchy of the fragmented society. Instead, (public) art should use its qualities to foreground the reciprocity between all actors that constitute life and give higher meaning to the practices of everyday life. Laenen takes inspiration from the Bauhaus school and proposes that artists should be involved in the creative process of architectural works, because their creative consciousness can overcome the fragmentation between architecture, the environment, and daily life and weave buildings into the fabric of local milieus.38
In short, art is capable of highlighting the non-utility, intrinsic values of an environment, such as community making, and the capacity to motivate an aesthetical and sensible experience of participation in the constitution of a space. Disseminating this heightened awareness of oneself and others (both human and non-human) will in turn also contribute to a landscape-sensitive form of living.
Roger Raveel
A Life of Picturing the Everyday Complex Landscape
Roger Raveel’s art practices could serve as a facilitator for the holistic and landscape-sensitive forms of living encouraged by critics of modernism such as Braem and Laenen. With bright and vibrant depictions of everyday life and the incorporation of mundane objects and mirrors to implement real life in his art and vice versa, Raveel created a unique visual style dubbed “de Nieuwe Visie” (the New Vision). This made him one of the most recognizable Belgian post-war artists. Although fairly unknown outside Belgium, Raveel gained international recognition during the 1960s and 1970s as his visual style was associated with the then-trending pop art movement. Although Raveel appreciated American pop art’s way of incorporating objects in artworks, he was little interested in its recurring themes, such as cosmopolitanism, decadence, or celebrity culture. Moreover, he was critical of these artists’ superficial imago and flattening images,39 motifs that, not coincidentally, facilitate an alienation from daily life. Raveel was convinced that contemporary art needed a “bathing in reality.”40
Therefore, it is important to contextualize Raveel’s art within his affiliation with his Heimat, the local Machelen-aan-de-Leie (Machelen), where he resided up until his passing and which served as the main inspiration for his so-called “local pop art.” Whereas Andy Warhol found inspiration in the cultural metropolis of New York, Raveel was inspired by the residents of the mundane village on the banks of the river Leie. It is due to this fascination that Raveel wanted to create a new visual language for the “ordinary, contemporary man,” arguing that “because they remain untouched by intellectualism or aesthetic conventions, the people from my village do not hesitate to implement […] low culture in their lives. […] [T]he pure contemporary expression of the contemporary and daily, not aesthetically bound human, has inspired my artistic vision.”41 The artist focuses only on depicting themes he knows from his daily life, without disregarding the mundane or overly romanticizing rural life. “Even the most trivial objects deserve to be painted,”42 Raveel stated.
It is in this local reality that Raveel finds infinite inspiration. The artist observes how different compositions of both manmade and natural objects and subjects constantly constitute a different version of the mundane, making it anything but boring or unremarkable. When in composition with each other, things influence each other in how they appear to us. The things an sich in the works of Raveel have their importance, but he is also interested in how they appear in comparison to each other: “if you paint a person with a suit, he becomes a man in a suit. But if you paint him in his garden or next to a closet, he becomes a different person.”43 In Raveel’s works, one notes the same themes over and over, but always in different compositions, sceneries, and colors: the artist’s father gardening or standing in front of his window overlooking the neighborhood, or a pet cat sneaking up to some birds, walking around in the streets, resting on a table. The daily activities of his local landscape are always regarded as worthy of aesthetic attention and enjoyment.
Raveel uses different styles in one painting, depicting some elements realistically whilst reducing others to mere flat geometric shapes. A recognizable feature would be abstracted to bright colors or covered by a floating white square. From the 1960s onwards, Raveel would sporadically mount real-life animals or mirrors onto his works in order to let his paintings “flood over into reality.” Mirrors in particular created an opportunity to integrate audiences and surroundings inside Raveel’s vibrant vision of daily life, but they also added to his idea of a dynamic everyday as they would alter the composition of a work depending on where it is exhibited. The world of Raveel never seems finished or perfect. It invites the audience to reflect on the complex constitution of their own surroundings. Raveel’s oeuvre emphasizes the importance and pleasures of experiencing a landscape as a dynamic living space and being aware that all things in it actively take part in constituting it. The artworks, therefore, serve as an antidote against estrangement from the landscape or the reduction of living space to a single facet. Notably, throughout his career, several modernist and internationally-minded critics dismissed his art as “too local” and “backwards.”44 But as Raveel’s Amsterdam gallerist Eva Bendien notes: “a village we would call ugly or paltry becomes, through his eyes, beautiful.”45 Or as Roland Jooris, art critic, close friend, and poet, notes: “the power of his art lies in the exceptionally varied way in which he attempts to give shape to the complexity of life.”46
Throughout the 1960s and later, Raveel could thus not look past the modernization (both mental and material) of his village. This interest in modernization was twofold. Firstly, modernization and an unorganized urban planning inspired Raveel’s understanding of the dynamic composition of the rural environment, as they integrated new objects into the fabric of daily life. The cattle and the car, the grass and a billboard, they all became equally important for the inhabitants of Machelen.47 As a true painter of the mundane, Raveel implemented the new signs of modern living in his vibrant works—an asphalt road, utility poles, and the concrete walls that people started to use to enclose their backyard—as they slowly infiltrated the rural village. Secondly, with his depiction of modern, unartistic themes, Raveel could take a stance against his artistic predecessors of the Leie area. These turn-of-the-century painters, like the impressionist Emile Claus or the expressionist Gustave Van De Woestyne, moved to the rural landscape to escape from the hectic city life. These artists depicted the Leie area as an idyllic, premodern natural space. The popular Disneyfication (as Gerber and Hess might describe it) of the landscape by these artists contributed to the idea that the area was an enclosed, romantic, archaic world apart from hectic daily life and should be conserved as such. With his contemporary and holistic view of the Leie area, Raveel wanted to break with the pastoral and “musealized” imago of his Heimat.48
Raveel’s position towards the modernization of his Heimat is rather unclear during the 1960s. At first glance, one could argue that he remains uncritical of it and even embraced it as inspiring the creation of his lively visual language, allowing him to confront the area’s art-historical, conservationist heritage. Yet, as environmentalists started to call attention to the repercussions of the unthoughtful modernization of the landscape, Raveel noticed how it led to a reduction of his much appreciated diversity of the milieu as well as of the connectedness between it and its inhabitants.
Raveel op de Leie: An Artistic Activist Reclamation of the Landscape
Throughout the 1970s, Raveel would become more vocal about the negative results of modernization as his Heimat risked being reshaped by plans for urbanization based solely on economic profit and likely to deplete the intrinsic, non-utility qualities of the Leie area. Around 1971, plans to straighten a part of the meandering Leie (which was highly polluted at the time) in order to facilitate cargo transport were announced. With the earth that would be removed to create the new waterway, local policy makers proposed to fill up the meandering part of the Leie that could now be circumvented and to flatten the rest of its riparian zones. The reclaimed land would serve as farming land, for traffic development, and as a construction site near a natural area.
Right during the upsurge of environmentalist activism, these plans for the exploitation of the Leie area did not go unnoticed. Whilst adversaries admitted that the straightening of the Leie was an economically valid idea, they opposed the reclamation of the meander. Several recreational water clubs protested this planned reclamation by emphasizing recreational uses of the river and argued that the waters should be purified instead. They organized under one protest group and were joined by Raveel. Together they organized the protest happening Raveel op de Leie on August 29, 1971. The event consisted of an artwork by Raveel sailing down the threatened meander, under the guidance of the artist, his entourage, and the local consortium of water sports. Roland Jooris broadcasted poems about the Leie from one of the boats. Jooris also took on the task of editing a small newspaper to be handed out during the protest. This newspaper is an important archival resource to understand how the happening was organized, contextualize Raveel’s work, and dissect the motives of the different parties that joined forces.
Let us first take a closer look at the artwork and examine Raveel’s reasons to advocate for protecting the Leie meander. Raveel mounted a painting on top of a raft hemmed by blue plastic sacks. The painting depicts a red flag with a small white square on it (this flag is mandatory for sailing vessels) and an interpretation of a stretch of the Leie’s banks. Behind the flag is another white geometric shape. At the bottom there are two painted plastic sacks that mimic the real ones. In the middle of the painted flagpole, a small mirror is mounted with the ‘pole’ partly covering it. Already in 1969, Raveel had toyed with the idea of sailing a different artwork, a blue, blown-up sack with two blue squares mounted on it, down the Leie. His plan was to photograph it as it drifted between two blue poles installed by the artist on each side of the riverbank. Originally, the artwork and photograph were meant as a study on how a contemporary artist could depict the Leie.49 In the latter version of the artwork, these different artistic interpretations of water are still present and even updated with the addition of the mirror.
The artwork follows Raveel’s vibrant style of depicting the contemporary environment that is constituted by the composition and interplay of everyday objects. With the incorporation of the real-life plastic sacks and the mirror, art floods over into ‘reality’ and the Leie dialogues with its painted version. The area is elevated to something artful as the line between the mundane and art is blurred. Notably, there were also plans for an aircraft that would fly a colorful banner with the word “Lucht” (air) on it and spread leaflets with words by Jooris. Although it would incorporate the air into the artwork, or turn the air into art, this idea was abandoned because the polluting effects of the paper outweighed its artistic value.50
What is important here is that Raveel refers to a “contemporary artistic view of the Leie.” This view is, once again, a provocation directed against his pastoral predecessors. Raveel attempted to counter the conservationist and bourgeois appropriation of local nature by elevating mundane objects, such as plastic, to artistic material, and by incorporating the ‘true Leie’ in his artwork through the mirror. Moreover, Raveel also aimed “to reconquer the Leie for the contemporary human. The Leie now […] has become the possession of the followers of the [artists of the] Latemse school, who are ruining the entire mental climate.”51 The artist refers more specifically to municipalities close to Machelen which are characterized as living areas for a wealthy, nouveau riche population who he accuses of living a ‘luxe bohemian’ lifestyle near the Leie, pretending to live in a romantic bubble away from their hectic daytime jobs. The artists active there continued to work in the romantic tradition of the painterly school that disseminated the dreamy, “Disneyfied” view of the Leie landscape, reducing it to a romantic, picturesque scenery. Raveel’s statement shows that he not only wants to chide his predecessors, but also to protest the proposed construction site, as it would further transform the area into a pastiche: a flattened luxury image for a select group to enjoy.
It is no surprise that Raveel also criticizes the extensive extraction of the environment with this happening. Although his artworks and visual style around this time remained uncritical towards modernization, when contextualized in this happening the work does become political as his artistic celebration of the everyday environment is now being used to mobilize the community against its projected alteration. In the happening’s newspaper, art critic Karel Geirlandt notes: “[The protest] is a moment of contemplation about art and the world we live in.”52 The notion of contemplating an environment can be linked to the first step of the landscape-sensitive approach as defined earlier in light of Carson’s idea of cognitive aesthetics. Although Raveel’s art does not provide factual knowledge about the landscape, the happening wants to let the audience (re)engage with the threatened meander. Raveel thus guides his audience to a circular landscape evaluation. The sailing artwork aims to draw attention again to the Leie as the common waterway that connects and cuts through the different municipalities in the area and helped to shape its unique riparian zones. The audiences should experience the Leie as one of the aesthetical and multifaceted actors that co-constitute their unique daily environment. If the audience can experience anew the importance of the meander and its surroundings as if it were a unique contemporary artwork, they would want to save it from erasure and instead opt for a landscape-sensitive cultivation: cleaning it up.
Secondly, we should look at how the other organizers of the protest experienced the Leie and why they would want to safeguard the meander. Their landscape-sensitive approaches were likewise outlined in the happening’s newspaper. The provincial fishermen’s guild and water sports consortium called not only for keeping the meander but also for a purification process in order to create a local recreational and touristic zone. Theater director and author Freek Neirynk also mentions the health benefits and inspirational factor of experiencing the area. Yet, the contribution of Jean De Maeseneer, professor in the field of hydrobiology, is worth mentioning in detail as he follows the steps towards a landscape-sensitive approach very clearly. De Maeseneer argues that “the landscape is a common good and should not be altered, let alone destroyed, by technology in order to reach only one goal. This means that every artificial intervention should be integrated as best as possible in the landscape or damage the landscape as little as possible. Certainly so for an area that is famous for its environmental beauty, recreational value, and biological significance.”53 De Maeseneer’s argument is grounded on cognitive aesthetics as he emphasizes that a unique ecosystem is being endangered. He also emphasizes how, if the ecosystem is maintained correctly, it could create a landscape that both benefits water sporters and recreationists as well as fostering diverse animal populations.54 Just as Raveel’s visual language, the newspaper combines different accounts and experiences of one environment: a circular landscape evaluation. By emphasizing both utility and non-utility, intrinsic values, they show the meander’s multiple influences on the environment and they propose how to safeguard it from estrangement or from being reduced to a mere economic actor.
Thirdly, let us consider the aftermath of the happening. The newspaper might lead us to assume that the different actors who organized the happening managed to find a landscape-sensitive consensus that could safeguard the intrinsic qualities of the landscape without leaving it untouched. However, those who were in favor of the reclamation, including farmers and certain municipal authorities, were not represented here. The local farmers were particularly in favor of the reclamation as it could deliver extra farming land. Consensus between the two parties was unthinkable due to a hostile attitude and completely opposite proposals. The farmers entirely disregarded the values assigned by others to the meander and even threatened Raveel for his actions by dropping a wick in his mailbox. After the happening, the city council continued to decry the polluted state of the Leie and how it was a nuisance that could be resolved by reclaiming it for city development rather than engaging in a costly purification process.55
With Raveel’s involvement, the action group managed to attain national attention. During the happening, the national public-service broadcaster interviewed the artist and Roland Jooris about the reclamation and numerous newspapers reported on it. The happening managed to mobilize a large audience around the area. However, despite all efforts, the protest alone was ineffective on its own. As a journalist noted: “We have never heard a meeker voice in defense of nature. […] Although considered a protest, the event remained rather tame.”56 Yet, Raveel and his partners did manage to safeguard the meander by entering the ‘informal circuit of environmental legislation’ themselves. The opponents lobbied behind the scenes by pressuring the importance of the natural area to the minister of public works ( Jos De Saeger) through different channels. Raveel, through his reputation and connections, contacted the minister of culture and brought up the case. The minister then urged his fellow party member. De Saeger later discarded the plans for the reclamation, much to the lament of the local farmers and municipalities.57 The meander was later purified and carps were introduced in it.58
Conclusion
In this article I have tried to present an overview of how environmental awareness came into collision with Belgium’s relentless urge to exploit and urbanize the landscape during the 1960s and 1970s. I conclude that policy makers ignored or trivialized environmental problems in order to push an economic-oriented growth ideology and due to a fear of losing their constituencies. Given the lack of both regulation and a clear understanding of this complex problem, environmental issues were treated ad hoc and their long-term and broader, societal and scientific consequences were neglected. For a long time, it became typical for the population to disregard negative environmental consequences in favor of their own enrichment, and for lobby groups to remove the environmental debate from the political agenda.
In the terminology of sustainable development scholars Jean-David Gerber and Gérald Hess, this negligence opened the door to a culture where a resource-focused view of the landscape is embraced along with a ‘laisser-aller’ attitude towards the depletion of natural resources in the immediate environment. Coupled with an archaic idea that nature and culture could be separated, and following the vision that the living environment should move towards a concrete monoculture (such as ribbon development), people became unable to connect with the landscape’s intrinsic, non-utility values.
During the second half of the 1960s, environmental awareness started to gain traction in the Western world as more knowledge about ecosystems spread and environmental pollution and degradation became visible to the political-ly-aware middle class. Voices in favor of a landscape-sensitive approach, which finds a consensus on safeguarding a landscape’s multiple intrinsic, non-utility values whilst still cultivating it, rose. On the one hand, following a ‘not in my backyard’ principle, action groups assembled when their close environment was under threat. These groups mobilized support through attention-grabbing protests. They emphasized a renewed experience of the landscape and proposed alternatives to safeguard the intrinsic, non-utility values of their living environment. Yet, due to their amateur and activistic character, these groups were not always able to change the course of things.
On the other hand, a wave of socialist urbanists, artists, and intellectuals were much more interested in finding long-term solutions that could allow people to experience their immediate environment again. They argued that the environment was being organized and modernized solely to generate quick economic profit. Inhabitants were expected to experience the environment solely in light of monetary goals. Instead of fragmentation and rationalization, they proposed an urban architecture of social mixing, diversity, and the integration of nature’s non-utility values to create a healthy and cohesive living space. They argued that contemporary artists should create art that emphasized the connection between man and environment and enable them to morally experience their surroundings, instead of creating an elite product that facilitates social and environmental estrangement.
The art practice of Roger Raveel, and especially the happening Raveel op de Leie, serves as a perfect example of art disseminating a landscape-sensitive attitude, to illustrate Belgium’s confused environmental policies, and to show how protest groups operated. Typical of Raveel’s art during the 1960s was the vibrant depiction of a contemporary suburban life. Raveel showed how modernization added to the complexity of the everyday landscape by introducing new objects and materials. When attempting to depict contemporary life, familiar, natural elements are as necessary as new, modern objects. With his art Raveel wanted his audience to experience the (aesthetic) pleasures of this mundane complexity and to reengage with their surroundings instead of being estranged from their living space.
Whilst Raveel embraced a rather positive stance towards modernization during the 1960s, partly in order to protest the Disneyfied view of his Heimat promoted by his artistic predecessors, during the 1970s he began to voice a disdain for a modernization that had no respect for the complexity of the landscape or for a landscape-sensitive cultivation. Just like the new environmentalist action groups, the artist started to note how modernization would reduce environmental complexity to a monoculture unless inhabitants took action. And just like the socialist urbanists and intellectuals, Raveel became conscious of how the landscape was organized from an extractor’s point of view, thus estranging people from a cohesive environment.
Raveel’s artistic vision managed to function as the spine of a creative bottom-up protest against the reclamation of a Leie meander: Raveel op de Leie. As his collaborator Roland Jooris noted, “what is unique about Raveel’s action is the artistic starting point. It is first and foremost an artwork filled with poetics and it is by no means pamphleteering.”59 Raveel tried to persuade his audience not through aggressive action but by using his art as a facilitator to experience being a part of the unique and complex, contemporary Leie environment. The newspaper that was distributed with the happening further emphasized the various intrinsic, non-utility values of the meander and the landscape it was a part of. Water recreational clubs, biologists, and artists explained how they experienced the landscape (recreationally, scientifically, aesthetically) and why it should be safeguarded from aggressive exploitation. Between the lines, one can read their consensus on a landscape-sensitive cultivation. Despite this relatively well-organized, original, mobilizing, and high-profile protest, Raveel had to enter the ‘informal circuit’ of environmental legislation to promote his cause. With his reputation he could lobby with policy makers for an ad hoc intervention that allowed him to neutralize his opponents.
In conclusion, a close reading and contextualization of Raveel op de Leie illustrates how new insights on environmentalism during the 1960s and 1970s inspired new approaches to landscape cultivation, mobilized the population, and inspired artists to protest, but also how these new, landscape-sensitive insights clashed with Belgium’s economically-oriented and untransparent environmental policy-making practices.