Reflections on the 20th century. That is what L’Archange – De Aartsengel Mural offers us. This mural is on Rue des Chartreux. It is based on Bernard Hislaire’s XXe ciel.com comic series. The series ran from 1997 to 2004.
Bernard Hislaire is a Brussels-based writer and artist. He presents a bitter view of the 20th century. He does so through the eyes of a 98-year-old woman. She is a retired psychoanalyst. She receives strange emails. The emails are from someone called @nonymous. They contain images from her past. These images reopen old wounds.
The mural shows a solitary angel. This angel appears when her brother dies. He died on the Austro-Hungarian front in Vienna in 1916. The angel is amidst the death and suffering of World War I soldiers.
Hislaire introduces a reflection in tome 0 of the series. It concerns the color of angels. Byzantines imagined them as red. They had red clothes, hair, and wings. Renaissance Christians represented angels in white, gold, and light. This aligns with the duality of Angel and Demon and Light and Darkness. More recently, the image of white tunics with golden sashes has reappeared. It is seen in visions of trench survivors buried alive in mud.
The angel is a recurring figure in Hislaire’s work. His work is influenced by Romanticism. Romanticism is both a literary and artistic movement. Hislaire was born in Brussels in 1957. In 1975, he joined Journal de Spirou. There he launched his first series, Bidouille et Violette. In 1986, he radically changed his career. He created the Sambre series with Yann. It explores the impossible love. Bernard Sambre is from a wealthy background. Julie is a strange, poor young woman with red eyes. The realistic drawings are in black, white, and red. They present characters with deep psychology.
The families oppose their union. This occurs during the 1848 Revolution in France. The story spans generations. This has led to comparisons with Balzac, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo. Hislaire distinguishes himself through artistic experimentation in XXe ciel.com. He uses different media. These media are comics, painting, drawing, and photography.
The unusual construction of the plates takes readers into the elderly woman’s mind. These reflections appear on the mural’s lower part. They consist of tags with existential questions. “Sky is the limit” is one. “L’avenir n’est plus ce qu’il était” meaning The future is not what it used to be. “Verloren illusies zijn gevonden waarheden!” Lost illusions are found truths. “La pensée du profit obscurcit nos émotions” The thought of profit obscures our emotions. “Dès le début il n’y avait pas de commencement” From the beginning there was no beginning. “Tijd bestaat niet” Time does not exist. “Dieu est-il mort?” Is God dead? “Vaines grandeurs. Silence?” Vain grandeurs silence? “God: Nietzsche is dood!” God: Nietzsche is dead! “L’homme est un pont entre l’animal et Dieu” Man is a bridge between animal and God. “Ecce Angelo” Behold the Angel. “Regarde! Le ciel au-dessus de Bruxelles” Look! The sky above Brussels. “Angel walking on cloud 9.”
Yslaire created the original XXe ciel.com. He was the writer and artist. The publishing house is Delcourt – Humanoïdes Associés. XXe ciel.com was created in 1997. Take a moment to reflect. What does this angel mean to you?