THE FRIENDS OF ‘HET PAND’
On the occasion of the preview for the exhibition De vrienden van het Pand on Saturday, 17 March 2018 at Atelier José Vermeersch in Lendelede, Jan delivered a speech reflecting on the memorable years around 1970. During that time, the Pand and the Patershol district in Ghent served as vibrant meeting points for young artists. His text offers a vivid first-hand account:

It remains fresh in my memory still: that first day of classes in October 1969 in the painting department of the Higher Institute of Sint-Lucas in Ghent. A tutor called Maurice Tilley, an older man quite close to retirement, introduced me to my new surroundings with the sort of unbridled enthusiasm nowadays encountered rather less commonly. Ablaze with fervour, he held forth on the young wolves in attendance who seemed a good deal less conventional than my fellow students had been at previous educational institutions.
As he went from one to another, he praised their qualities just as Homer did in depicting his heroes. “And this is a surrealist,” he said as we came to the most fearsome looking of the students. He towered head and shoulders above us and shot an appraising glance in my direction while, with a toss of his head, sweeping aside a lock of hair. He wore a pale jacket, a black shirt and a white tie, in my view looking like someone in cahoots with the local underworld. He stood rather assertively next to a large canvas painted so expertly that I started to feel very small. In conclusion, Mr Tilley pointed out to me a less striking, somewhat timid young attendee peering out at the world from behind the lenses of his spectacles. “And this fellow here is a poet, pur sang!” he cried out proudly and led me over to a painting at the back of the large studio space on the right-hand side. It attracted one’s full attention owing to the powerful perspective used for a black-and-white tiled floor that led the eye to a blackboard. Behind this there was a large window that gave out on to an idyllic landscape. Alongside this Arcadia, a portrait of the poet Rimbaud dominated the whole classroom. The portrait looked like a 1960s screen print using only the colours yellow, blue and pink. Flowers and clouds framed the poète maudit like wayward splashes of psychedelic colour. I understood immediately why that attendee had chosen a painter’s studio above boring classrooms. Wasn’t the same true of me as well?
After the class, the two aforementioned students started chatting to me in friendly fashion, enticing me to head off with them to one of the oldest and – at that time still – shadiest neighbourhoods in the city. We passed by the imposing medieval castle of Gravensteen, and lying in its shadow was Patershol (Priests’ Burrow), the last bit left of truly medieval Ghent. On the way we had bought a roast chicken, which, with some croquettes added to the mix, we chomped our way through while in one of the monastery cells formerly belonging to the fourteenth-century Friary of the Calced Carmelites also known as ‘Het Pand’ (The Cloister).
So began my Ghent adventure. Arnold and Rufijn each had a snugly furnished cell of their own bearing the unmistakable stamp of their personality and taste. A stove, a table, chairs, a bed, an easel in the middle and on the walls and mantelpiece reproductions of works by favourite artists, as well as all manner of treasured trinkets. The smell of oil paint and turpentine merged with that of french fries and slightly overdone cutlets. A window looked out on to a verdant courtyard hemmed in by the somewhat more generous living quarters of a few elderly residents and the concierge. That image can be found in one of Rufijn’s self-portraits.
His rather overstuffed room with its eclectic collection of everyday objects, paraphernalia and props served as the background for a whole series of portraits. These started off being the close friends of the Pand, but its circle expanded afterwards. In the end, half of Ghent had had Rufijn paint their portrait while enjoying a cup of coffee or glass of wine. People gladly came over to Rufijn’s place as it was somewhere they felt at ease; there was a reassuring feeling about him. Over time the once timid young man blossomed into a true humanitarian, focussing much attention on society’s disadvantaged and misfits.

Rufijn De Decker during the Pand period, c. 1970

Rufijn De Decker (1949-2018), Self-portrait with white hat, 2014

Portrait of Jan by Rufijn, 1969 or 1970
In that respect he is a kindred spirit of Jules De Bruycker, a Ghent artist from a few generations earlier and one of the most important etchers in the first half of the twentieth century. De Bruycker also had his studio at the Pand and felt a strong connection to Patershol, which was his natural habitat. He was unequalled in depicting the dismal hardship of Ghent’s working class neighbourhoods. His grotesque, ironic and caricatured sketches display the razor-sharp and bizarre reality of what was then everyday Ghent. Tragic scenes, which he must have experienced close at hand in Patershol, sometimes took on a hallucinatory form in symbolic imagery.

Overgrown wall of the Pand in Ghent, c. 1970

The old tower of the Pand, c. 1970
On that subject, symbolism is overflowing in the works by Rufijn and Arnold dating from their years spent in Patershol. For that matter, I can also see in their art something of the paintings by Camille D’Havé, a full-blooded son of Ghent who was born in Patershol in 1926. His fantasy style laden with symbols denounces unjust and absurd situations in this world. It is just as if something in the air and streets of Patershol permeated the souls of artists and conceived those images.
Not far from Rufijn’s pad was Arnold’s convivial two-room pied-à-terre. I can still clearly envision in front of me the large painting with the head of a roaring black panther. Its fur was a sort of organic spongy texture, neat little blue-black flames, and from its wide open jaws flew a small white dove. Other paintings displayed beings and heads in a state of decay and degradation. It was the time of the Cold War with the threat of nuclear weapons, the war in Vietnam and protest songs. A study trip to Mexico, organised by the college in 1971, had a major impact on Arnold. The landscapes, nature, the indigenous people and, above all, their culture – already a source of fascination to him previously – gave him renewed inspiration. From that point forwards his colours became fiercer and fresher.

Arnold Verhé during the Pand period, c. 1970

Arnold Verhé, Flying Dog, 2014
Arnold’s two rooms were pretty much the most welcoming and tidiest of the Pand. Might this have been because he – more so than the others – played host to female callers? It was from among these female visitors that he found his models. When I look at the gorgeously sensual female nudes by Jules De Bruycker, which form a respite between his dark monstrosities and images of misery, then I think inadvertently of Arnold and his models, how he would paint them in his cell just as many predecessors had also done in their studio or in the intimacy of their modest digs.
I came rapidly to the realisation that the bulk of the residents were a motley hotchpotch of picturesque types: artists, musicians and art students. And as a rare exception the occasional university student, but the likelihood of their running aground on the nightlife was high given the excess of temptations on all sides. If you found yourself in a hypersensitised state, it could seem as if you were seeing in the gloom of the hallways the wandering shadows of monks in their dark habits. When in a certain ‘state of mind’, I personally saw the building vibrate and move as if it were a living entity. Strangely enough, the walls and houses in works by Jules De Bruycker often have something organic about them as well. Rather than taut and straight, their lines are shaky and mobile like tendrils. It is as if they possess a soul. The stone walls cannot restrain the internal tragedies longing to erupt. There is something alive and warm in the old buildings, but at the same time something threatening too.
During our time there, a vibrant spirit reigned in the Pand among a young generation of bohemians, beatniks, Provos from the eponymous Dutch counterculture movement and other ‘long-haired, workshy riffraff’. A synergy developed between these birds of different feathers constituting the artist population and the unique character of the local neighbourhood. Each of these two worlds cast its influence over the other. Moreover, it so happened that the flower power movement spilled over from America in that year. On some sunny days the streets around the Blandijnberg hill evoked images of neighbourhoods in San Francisco. In Rufijn’s work from that period, you can sense what it meant to us to hear the music and lyrics of the likes of Boudewijn De Groot, Leonard Cohen, Donovan and the Beatles post-Sergeant Pepper. There was also Bob Dylan, and it was the time of the celebrated British Blues Boom.

Jan in his Ghent years, autumn 1972
From a large monastery cell on the corner came the resounding blare of the blues by John Mayall. Little furniture was found within, only the absolute essentials, and the walls were home to large torn-off advertising posters. Here, there lived a bearded chap, in my eyes a genuine Provo. Tjokke was a diamond in the rough. With a harmonica in one hand he would sit behind the wheel of his little Citroën 2CV without a care in the world.

Tjok Dessauvage during the Pand period, c.1970

Keramiek van Tjok Dessauvage, Echo of a Distant Star
Some three decades later, at the exhibition titled ‘Epiphany: contemporary art and religion’ held at the Park Abbey in Heverlee, I found myself in the abbey building unexpectedly standing opposite one of Tjokke’s works. His refined and tranquil ceramics had found in that place the ideal location. The closed bowl shape, on to which graphic elements had been applied, made an impression on me: that harmony of form, colour and decoration in a perfectly rendered object. It evoked something of the Japanese aesthetic, I felt. I experienced its perfection as an oasis of wholehearted peace. Tjokke has become a past master at the ancient technique of terra sigillata. As a rule he creates geometric forms – a hemisphere, an upturned cone, a cylinder – and incorporates motifs such as squares, triangles or circles. Owing to the purity and introversion of these forms, his ceramics move beyond the fleetingness of ‘now’. They acquire a transcendent nature. Man has always wanted to create his own little universe within the immense and mysterious Universe, says Tjokke. The ceramic structure becomes a signifier; ceramics become meditative objects.
Back in the day, however, the souls making up the Pand had not yet quite reached that state of inner peace and contemplation. Parties were organised regularly in Tjokke’s spacious room, and the atmosphere could sometimes get wild and heady. Everyone played to their strengths. Silence would fall for a moment when Rufijn did his performance dressed and made up as a mime artist. Others played music on one or more instruments. Koen had a masterful ability to act out sketches, having everyone in absolute stitches. Once, Koen used Tjokke’s room to craft a monumental sculpture. For a long time afterwards you could see running through the corridors a long white trail of plaster of Paris beginning at Tjokke’s door.

Rik Vermeersch during the Pand period, c. 1970

Rik Vermeersch, Vera, 1969

Rik Vermeersch, Bonnard, 2017
Koen and Rik made a roguish duo together. They were very much on each other’s wavelength, playing practical jokes where they would make victims not only of unsuspecting tutors but also of the ordinary residents of Ghent on the street. Their studio was right at the end of the corridor. There, they would sleep and eat amid the disarray of chunks of plaster moulds, painting equipment, and huge panels and canvasses. It was one big working space made from two adjoining rooms turned into one thanks to a hole quarried through the wall.
With intense devotion, Rik would stand on a ladder, like a latter-day Michelangelo, and paint large white panels portraying whole families of gigantic Amazon Indians. Brushstroke after brushstroke, dab after dab, he would build up the bodies as if smoothing or moulding them with his brush, a little in the style of the pointillists, yet not at all static or contrived. From 1967 onwards, his drawings were characterised by highly agile doodles, such as shading, and by a fluid use of line. That style evolved still more into a swarming tangle of erratic, meandering and vibrating lines, dots, stripes and smudges: Van Gogh’s dynamic brushstrokes. By painting in the primary colours of red, yellow and blue, Rik allowed the most extreme of colour contrasts to compete with one another, wildly and with a great lust for life. Later, his handling of colour gradually became more cautious and he began applying strokes and dashes of paint with greater patience because, in his own words, he wanted to ‘capture’ reality.

Koen Muller during the Pand period, c. 1970
Koen came from a family of antique dealers and grew up in the midst of bygone works of art. Above all it was Renaissance art that captivated him. He was a virtuoso sculptor and painter. For someone of his age he made very fine Renaissance-style drawings and studies in the manner of Dürer and Rembrandt, but at the same time he was also bursting with highly exuberant expressionist works that proved to be the precursors to innovative paintings and life-size, often polychromatic, sculptures in the 1980s and 1990s. Afterwards, there followed a series of abstract paintings, both lyrical as well as minimalist in style, always replete with mystery as if the painter wanted to touch the boundlessness of the universe. Recently, Koen has been painting ‘skies’.

Portrait of Jan by Koen Muller, c. 1971

Koen Muller (1948-2023), Clouds 3

Atelier José Vermeersch, Lendelede
Unlike today, Paterhol was then an obscure neighbourhood with rather more the smell of poverty about it than the splendid culinary aromas that nowadays come wafting one’s way from its bistros. Ghent’s posher citizenry would stay away, particularly after nightfall, when here and there a streetlamp would cast a faint glow over the cobblestones. This eerie chiaroscuro served as the backdrop to local festivities such as the annual Patershol festival. Pallid light illuminated drunken faces with distinctive character. There were tough looking fellows dressed in women’s clothing and, in the midst of this, working-class women successfully holding their ground. Ensor would have been in his element there. Some of Rufijn’s ceramic heads remind me at times of those peculiar, lunatic faces looming up out of the gloom.
Lurking beneath the roof of a Pand building on Plotersgracht, grinning masks lay in wait in the dark. With their contorted mouths, squinting eyes and protruding tongues they looked down from above at the festive throng. These are the thirty-three black sculpted corbels under the eaves of the seventeenth-century infirmary. Evening after evening from their observation post, those baroque satyr’s heads would have witnessed the pugnacious or lecherous customers in the pubs and bordellos that thrived in this neighbourhood long ago. Many artists would seek entertainment there. Karel van de Woestijne, for example, wrote about the simmering atmosphere in the rough pubs where life was quite dissolute.

Forbidden Fruit, 2006

Tango d’Amore, 2007

My Mind Wanders to
Strange Places, 2007
In the early 1970s, snippets of music would waft in the late hours from a corner house whose old gables stood out quaintly against the night sky. The image of a Rasputin-like sorcerer had been painted on the windows and, in letters like tongues of flame, the ominous name ‘HELL’ – a favour that Rufijn did for Juul, the café owner. Inside, wooden benches were ranged against the walls which had been decorated with scenes of hell. The taproom was usually well stocked with its motley crew; they ranged from the usual boozers, old legionnaires suffering depression, short-tempered street fighters with a surfeit of testosterone, artists successful or otherwise, poets seeking intoxication, and musicians trying to drown their sorrows to lovebirds in their own little cocoons, adventurers washed up from some strange shore, stoned or tripping hippies, bucks looking for a mate and vice versa, drama queens seeking attention, and so forth. Adriaen Brouwer would certainly have revelled in it all.
Many other celebrated artists once lived in Patershol besides Jules De Bruycker, including Frans Masereel, who took classes in the neighbourhood at the academy and learned etching under De Bruycker, and also George Minne and Jules De Praetere. From 1906 to 1907 Frits Van den Berghe occupied a studio in Trommelstraat where, together with Permeke, the De Smet brothers and Albert Servaes, he laid the foundations for the second Latem group.

However, Ghent is also a city in the sign of Scorpio with secretive and dark sides to it, and depths in which violent passions churn like lava beneath the surface, heaving with intrigues and less lovely human emotions that, ratlike and hidden from sight, wreak their havoc. It is as if vapours were rising up from its dark waters and having a poisoning effect on the soul. This sinister side is well represented by the writer Jean Ray. In 1971, the filming of his novel Malpertuis took place in – how could it be otherwise – the Pand and Patershol. For the residents at whose doors the footage was literally and figuratively taken, the book and the film continued to be hyped for a long time afterwards.
In those years, there were a great many visits to cafés, and pubs suitable for artists were to be found spread throughout the whole city centre. Semi-subterranean medieval cellars such as ’t Korenmetershuis and ’t Schippershuis, the minuscule Galgenhuizeke, the Trefpunt from which the Ghent Festival was re-inaugurated in 1970. For anyone seeking something extra there was the café linked to the Studio Skoop or, after 1973, the Hotsy Totsy. On Kuiperskaai you could dance at venues such as the Blow Up and the Aquarius where hippies would gyrate trancelike, their hands like butterfly wings waving and flapping, raised to the heavens in adoration of Dionysus, the god of intoxication. The most original of them would give their all to a uniquely expressive dance style, after which Rufijn, spellbound, would sit staring at them from his barstool. Everyone got to know everyone else there, and Ghent seemed to be one big village back in the day …
Jan Smets, Korbeek-Lo, 19 February 2018
The text was included in the publication accompanying the exhibition (De vrienden van het Pand, 2018, published by Atelier José Vermeersch).
Many thanks to the friends of ‘Het Pand’ for the photos from that period
(© cf. colophon De vrienden van het Pand).