Installation: The Flemish School. Part 3. Joardaens: The Bean King

“It was important for me that the works were … distorted, elongated – like Holbein’s skull. The space is tight. We seem to be looking at things in a foreshortened perspective. We change the lens…. And these enormous frames, which are, of course, a tribute to the museum... A frame is something necessary not only for an interior ensemble, for decoration, a natural addition. For the layman, the frame is a mark of quality, the final touches made by a good museum, value, protection,” Shishkin-Hokusai says about his works. The theme of Jacob Jordaens and his famous painting The Bean King in the Hermitage collection immediately provides the context – here we are dealing with insincerity, distortion, the transience of all things, from health and clear thinking, to wealth, success and status. The gloom of an unrestrained celebration, a feast in time of plague, dancing on bones, a daily carnival that is more exhausting than any job – this is the maelstrom of images that seizes the viewers and makes them shudder. On this floor of the pavilion a red light keeps going on and off. It is physically cramped – the many visitors jostle one another. It is visually cramped– one’s gaze wanders and dashes about, but all around there is nothing but paintings from a nightmare Hermitage and no way out.