Arcadia & Metropolis

Urbanization, industrialization and speed. Since the Enlightenment and the arrival of the train in the first half of the nineteenth century, no one has escaped the modern desire for ever faster.

In Arcadia and Metropolis, the long-held cult of a Flemish idyll collides with the less beautiful reality of the big city and industry. From the second half of the nineteenth century, people in Flanders could no longer close their eyes to this reality.

The current debate about a concrete stop for the country that Renaat Braem described as the ugliest in the world cannot be seen separately from that history.

With works by, among others, Jozef Linnig, Theodoor Verstraete, Louis Van Engelen, Constantin Meunier, Jacques Boonen, Louis-Hilaire Carrand, Constantin Guys, Jaak Gorus, Gustave Sorel, Renaat Braem, Luc Deleu, Joseph Willaert, Robert Geenens and Edgar Farasyn.

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