Hans Theys

 

 

 

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Hans Theys

 

 

 

Troubadour

A detailed description of some paintings

 

 

The first giant painted by Jacques-Vossen. Overpainting of one panel of a triptych, the central panel of which depicted a Pietà and the side panels each depicting a saint. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the painting seemed too explicit and was overpainted with green paint left over from a monumental work displayed at Le Salon d’Art in Brussels (see p. 213). The hairdo, the ‘whites’ of the eyes, and a spot on the right shoe remain green. The torso and trouser legs were first painted over with Chinese ink, then horizontal and vertical stripes were added in oil paint, reflecting the light differently, creating depth (as in the work of the French painter Pierre Soulages).

      The red background creates an unbalanced horizon reminding us of the landscape in the Mona Lisa. It creates a kind of perspective because of the giant looks toward the lower horizon. In the upper right corner, we see the Venice flag with the inscription ‘Biennale di Venezia 2024’ instead of their motto.

      We also see crossed-out parts of the underdrawing in Posca marker: the right boot which was drawn too high.

      The giant is wearing a real medal.

 

On the left, we see the giant of Philip the Good, which is preserved in the Marolles district. It is almost five meters tall and weighs 100 kilos. On the right, we see the giant Clem le Fou. On its torso, we recognize the lions of the Gilles de Binche. The yellow goat refers to the Golden Fleece, which was founded by Philip the Good. It’s a cheap sheep. We also see Tintin’s rocket.

      In the centre, we find a kneeling figure. It is the remnant of a self-portrait at an easel, which was painted over in red.

      Philip the Good’s cheeks and Clem le Fou’s irises emerge from the red background. The red of Clem le Fou’s cheeks was added. Both figures have a shadow base made of Chinese ink.

      Philip the Good’s robe is painted in Payne’s grey, to which a little white has been added on the canvas, creating a beautiful greyish blue. 

               Philip the Good wears a real pin in the shape of a crown. He has no neck, so he can’t wear a chain.

 

The background is based on La Dame à la licorne, where the damsel appears from an open tent that evokes a vulva. The unicorn refers to an erect penis. The character wears a horse-costume, as sometimes seen during the Brussels carnival. The checked pattern of the trouser legs refers to Scottish tartan. Jacques-Vossen has Scottish roots. Tartan is a great motif for a painter, especially if you replace the original colours with colours that have a different, for example heraldic, origin.

      We see three bees, three shells, three moons, and three hearts: a reference to the painter and his two brothers.

      The fox (for the first time in a large painting) refers to the painter’s family name. At the bottom right of the costume, we see the stylized Saint Michael. Demon and angel are united. The unicorn’s profile is based on a horse by Picasso.

      The bees are attracted by the daffodil, which bears the Belgian colours at its heart. The first yellow stripe also has a red border. The banner with white moons on a light blue field comes from the person who commissioned La Dame à la licorne. The hearts come from a Scottish coat of arms.

      The sweater refers to ‘Where’s Waldo’? The narcissistic character longs to be seen, but barely exists: the figures’ eyes are hollow, as is the unicorn’s body.

               This is the first of four works dedicated to the horsemen of the apocalypse: the others are Zotter dan zot, Le secret de la Licorne and For Gallantry.

 

The white St. Andrew’s Cross of the Scottish flag is there to poke the painter’s maternal grandfather André Vossen. The fox wears a crown of angels above its head, as if it were a martyr. The yellow lion next to it represents the town of Zottegem, where this work was exhibited. In Bosch’s work, the funnel rests upside down on the head of the quack who removes a stone from the fool’s forehead. Later, the funnels were placed on the heads of the fools themselves. 

      The joker is the most versatile card in the deck and also symbolizes the jester, an important figure in the royal court because he was allowed to proclaim truths disguised as jokes without being punished, except by the king himself. To the left of the joker is the Fool of the tarot cards, who represents a striving for freedom, creative power, and self-truth. Above the portrait of Captain Hansdock and Clemclem, we read the well-known rebus: “The world feeds much”. Next to it we see a Belgian flag with the black field not filled in.

      The donkey is the Golf GTI of yesteryear. The jester’s costume also has donkey ears. The green stone in the jester’s forehead refers to the stone in the foreheads of fools and to the video game The Sims, where a green stone indicates excellent health. The jester’s costume also features real pins, collected at the flea market of Brussels. They refer to the Prince Carnival of Schaerbeek, the green figure we see at the bottom.

               The base is made with a mixture of many shades of brown, dirty water, dust, grime, sludge, and glitter.

 

Sometimes a painting is mulled over for months. This work emerged without much hesitation from an encounter. It was created for a solo exhibition in Ostend, at Galerie P. It references Ensor and the sea.

      The orange eyes come from a booklet Alechinsky wrote about Ensor, after Asger Jorn introduced him to the then-lesser-known Ostend painter. The watching lighthouse comes from a painting by Walter Swennen in which a man has an eye like a spotlight. The title comes from a Tintin album. The mermaid is from the song Jean de Bruges. It is an angel, a mysterious creature.

      We also see a coat of arms with the keys of Ostend, the sign for La Clef d’Or, a restaurant in the Marolles district, and a mask that can be seen in the Ensor House.

      The Venetian mask threatened with being trampled refers to a love rival.

The mount’s horn extends beyond the frame, like the hand with the tongs in Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross.

      In both previous paintings, the skull and the pumpkin have heart-shaped eyes; here, this is the case with the mask, and in the next painting, with the helmet.

      The frames of the four paintings discussed here are gold, silver, copper, and bronze. Each frame contains engraved elements.

               The butterfly speaks of love.

 

Saint George comes to succour an unfortunate princess and, to do so, makes a pact with the dragon: a serpentine Viking ship, whose prow is based on a Playmobil dragon. Knights are engraved into the frame on the top and left, dragons on the right and below. The helmet belongs to Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan. The Sforza banner features a dragon and the St. George’s Cross from the Milanese flag. To its right, “Homme, le dragon et le doudou” is written, along with the Alfa Romeo logo. Below the Sforza banner is the orange Welsh dragon, and to its right is a coat of arms designed by Jacques-Vossen featuring the Belgian colours. The yellow shell on a yellow field is a heraldic error. The fox with three tails refers to the three brothers. The three-headed dragon comes from Game of Thrones. The transparent sword at the bottom is Excalibur. (Saint George is always depicted with a spear and sword.)

               The heart-shaped eyes in the helmet are black because a helmet has a backside (in contrast with the mask in the previous painting). Like most paintings, the construction of this work began with several layers of diluted Chinese ink. Then, blotches of pure Chinese ink. Then a layer of green acrylic paint thinned with water, and over that, interventions with more concentrated green acrylic paint. The more concentrated layer lets less black through, making it appear luminous. The light green man thus created (at the very top) is a retracing of the initial sketch, which deviates from the final composition. A spider used to dangle under the knight’s nose, which you can still see.

 

In the song Intoxicated Man, the French singer songwriter Serge Gainsbourg sings about “Des éléphants roses / Des araignées sur le plastron / D’mon smoking / Des chauves-souris au plafond / Du living- / Room”. Gainsbourg describes a delirium. The pink elephant in this painting is taken from the logo of the beer brand of the same name. The bat comes from a medieval miniature.

      The spider hanging from the elephant’s leg is painted with Chinese ink. The base is made with dirty water, which contains many different colours and produces a beautiful brown. (In Congé annuel Walter Swennen calls this ‘sauce’).

               Gainsbourg’s trousers are hollow. The seat of the stool is the same colour as the frame. The leg is in front of the frame, and the shoe rests on it.

 

Created after discovering the song Jean de Bruges by Jacques Brel, found on an LP commissioned by the city of Brussels. Other songs on this album are about a mermaid and about a whale. The album tells a story. Jean de Bruges sees a mermaid, an angel, a strange creature. 

      Jacques-Vossen worked at the KVS, a theatre in Brussels. There he saw six performances of Brel’s L’Homme de la Mancha, which is referenced here. For Jacques-Vossen, the musical is about a quest, a search for meaning, a longing for a meaningful era that seems out of reach. It speaks of the importance of dreams, candour and folly.

               The yellow and black checks on the shoulder pieces refer to Flanders, the red and white to Wallonia, analogous to the differently coloured traffic lights in these regions. Below the right shoulder, we see the flag of Jean de Bruges. The yellow, flower-shaped suns are an interpretation of the flag of Schaerbeek, where Brel was born. Schaerbeek is also an important place for Jacques-Vossen, who is a member of the Royal Guild of Saint Sebastian, a shooting club. At the bottom, we see the lion of Bruges and a figure of Michael and the dragon, stylized by Jacques-Vossen, which refer to Brussels. Saint Michael has horns because we all have something devilish about us; we all rebel against our fathers, against patriarchy. On the trouser legs, you can read Brel’s name, spelled in the form of signal flags. Each flag represents a letter.

 

In the background, you can see a line from Beckett stating that nothing is more beautiful than an artist who fails.

      The archangel Michael fights a dragon, which is said to represent the devil, the fallen angel. He is God’s helper, the father figure, who tolerates no rebellion. “Don’t rebel against me,” says the father, “for you will fail anyway.” 

      The red coat of arms in the lower right was a quality mark for Brussels tapestries, but Jacques-Vossen has never seen one.

               He added the wings at the end with a Posca marker.

 

The figure comes from an anonymous wood cut from 1566, probably based on Bruegel, titled Masquerade of Ourson and Valentine. It depicts a legend about two brothers, the first raised at court and the second by a bear. Together they embark on an adventure, back to nature.

      The Wild Man appears to have become a tree, but he is acting, wearing a costume. It is reminiscent of the many monster costumes in almost all traditions, which in Europe often accompany the approaching or fading winter.

      The spectacles come from the Gilles de Binche: their masks feature painted spectacles with green eyes. The Wild Man also wears a crown of thorns.

      The green spots are created with paint left over from painting the lower part of the painting. The gold frame extends over them. Medicinal flowers were drawn on the frame with a posca marker, based on miniatures in the book of hours Les Grandes Heures d’Anne de Bretagne.

               The dark spot above the figure was created with dirty water left over from cleaning brushes. The frame is painted with acrylic, on top of oil. As a result, a shard of acrylic came loose at the top right, which was recycled into the next painting (the golden hill). The figure and the club have been given a shadow that creates depth, with the lower shadow serving as a pedestal. Where the red background and the green foreground meet, you’ll find an upside-down Brussels flag with a Saint Michael.

 

Peau d’Âne is a children’s musical from 1970 starring Catherine Deneuve, based on a fairy tale by Charles Perrault in which a princess, forced to marry her father, disguises as a donkey and flees into a forest where she encounters a handsome prince. The film is a Gesamtkunstwerk, over-the-top kitsch, with very realistic elements. It’s all very old-fashioned, but very surprising as well. Deneuve’s costume is fascinating. They tried to make her ugly, but in vain. She remains stunningly beautiful.

      On the horizon, we see a red castle and a knight fighting a giant grasshopper. In the upper right corner, we see a collage with three figures cut out of empty paint tubes. (The less waste the better.) If you look closely, you can still see paint residue on the golden aluminium. Two of the figures are birds based

on guild necklaces, the bottom one consists of residual shapes of the birds. The mouth is the residual shape of a cut-out beak.

      If you let paint run back and forth on a canvas, it dries faster. Hence the drips that run horizontally and upwards. The trick is to stop just before the drip spills over the edge. Together, the drips form a free grid.

               There is a round opening in the easel skin that reveals a golden mound. (The paint fragment that detached from the frame in the previous painting.) The dark green that forms a pedestal was painted at the very end, sparing the white stripe at the bottom left.

 

Overpainting of a work created in memory of a painter friend who died of an overdose. Figures in the first painting included a cartoonish horse and a skull with Mickey Mouse ears, two images the friend used in his paintings. The overpainted work was created while mourning his sudden death, which evoked feelings of guilt. The acceptance of his disappearance involved an awareness of chance, the insight that any of his friends could have died, and the feeling that we must continue regardless. This gave rise to the overpainting, which is no longer about the loss of a single friend, but about how we deal with temptation and all forms of dependency.

      We see a self-portrait in the guise of Saint Anthony. The yellow band was originally a heart rate monitor. Now it is an eye-catcher, a sign of hope or life, which simultaneously evokes the image of a prisoner by referring to the Dalton brothers and their eternal attempts to escape. The devil’s form was taken from people participating in the Ommegang. 

      The devil appears in several paintings. Here he is painted with Chinese ink. At the top, you can see a capital “O,” the “o” for Jerome, made with diluted Chinese ink and a very thin layer of red paint. The untreated canvas is still visible through it.

               Jacques-Vossen learned how to paint with YouTube tutorials and received useful tips from Nora Theys and Tamsir de Halleux.

 

Created for an exhibition in the off-programme of Art Brussels, which was celebrating its fortieth anniversary.

      Jesus spent forty days in the desert; the COVID era had revived the idea of ​​quarantine, just as people used to have to be quarantined for a while in ports. The port of Arcachon is located near Bordeaux, a former holiday destination of the painter.

      The flag of Arcachon is black, white, and yellow, like the jersey. The “white” stripes are not painted; they come from the background. At the top left, you can see the colours of the signal flags indicating quarantine: a flag with four yellow fields and a flag with two yellow and two black fields. The black, yellow, and red motifs at the bottom are loosely based on the floor tiles in The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin.

               The inscription ‘XL’ can mean extra large, but it can also mean forty. Below, you’ll find stripes indicating days: one more day to go. The figure’s position, entangled in the grid, stems from a comment from an older colleague who observed that Jacques-Vossen “locked himself up in his frames”. Since then, he has done this even more explicitly. Only the figure’s hands and head are free. But the figure is painted in oil and the grids in acrylic. It’s possible that the acrylic will flake off, and the figure will be free within forty years.

 

This work concludes a series of paintings of armoured knights, which originated in rather bleak school memories. In retrospect, the armour served as protection from toxic teachers. The painter is speaking to himself. The helmet has been removed. The armour has been discarded, but prison garb has emerged.

The old complications have given way to new ones.

      The red background with flowers refers to La Dame à la licorne. The green spot is an accidental remnant of the background: a heavenly meadow where no battle had yet taken place. The rest of the meadow is soaked in blood.

      The sweater and pants together bear the colours of the Belgian flag.

               The table leg rests on the frame, but the chair legs fall in front of it.

 

This work began with the sentence “La faim justifie les moyens” (Hunger justifies the means). Jacques-Vossen explains that, as a dyslexic, he doesn’t care whether you write “fin” or “faim,” because the sound is the same. But this work was born from the realization that the same sound can have different meanings.

      At first, he forgot to write the ‘s’ in ‘moyens’. He added it later. He still fears making spelling errors, even in his sketchbooks, though he knows he can simply accept that his mind has a greater sense of colours, scents, tones, atmospheres, rhythms, and patterns than of the order of letters or the often coincidental spelling of sounds.

      The French expression “il s’en mord les doigts” means that you die of tension while waiting for something.

               The lobster comes from a work by Dalí. The table refers to furniture by designer Christophe Gevers, which is sold by Jacques-Vossen’s maternal grandfather. Other paintings depicting people dining are set in the Brussels restaurant Au Vieux Saint-Martin, which Gevers designed. “That style is often imitated,” says Jacques-Vossen, “so I also imitate it in my paintings.”

 

This painting arose out of necessity. Jacques-Vossen needed a work measuring one by one meter for a solo exhibition at Salon d’Art in Brussels. The head had already been painted when the castle was added, somewhat like Jean Brusselmans.

      The flag with the black eagle on a yellow background is the coat of arms of the city of Mechelen. The yellow and red stripes around it come from a knight in the service of the King of Aragon who asked for and received three red stripes as a reward for winning three battles. The portrait is somewhat reminiscent of the photo of Broodthaers with the long nose on the cover of the Waterloo booklet Theys made thirty years ago for Maria Gilissen.

               On the tabletop, you’ll find Broodthaers’ initials, Alechinsky’s spectacles, the Fool from the tarot cards, and two glued-on chocolate coin wrappers. ‘SPQR’ refers to the Romans, the two-headed eagle to the Holy Roman Empire, and the ‘N’ to Napoleon.

 

Created as an overpainting of an older work featuring two hands with eyes like stigmata, it was inspired by Baudelaire’s poem Les Ténèbres about a painter condemned by a mocking God to paint in a dark cellar until a gloomy yet luminous muse appears. The painter cooks and eats his heart.

      The old, dark work was first covered with a thin layer of gesso. Then, one or more layers of diluted Chinese ink were applied. The woman’s profile is the only place where no Chinese ink was added after the gesso layer; the hands are covered with a single layer of ink, the other areas with several.

               The shadows of the arms were created with a thin layer of oil paint diluted with Shellsol medium.

 

The background consists of several layers of Chinese ink. The more layers, the darker it becomes. The rocking horse’s eye has a shadowed depth, as rocking horses often have hollow eyes. The figure’s eye doesn’t come from the background, but it appears to do so because it’s painted with grey oil paint. The furthest leg is painted over with light grey oil paint diluted with Shellsol medium, so it appears shadowed.

               Jacques-Vossen later discovered that the figure’s nose and ear, the rocking horse’s ear, and the elbow together form a dance of triangles.

 

Created as a repainting of a woman’s portrait. One of the first paintings to have a golden frame and the first to have no frame at the bottom. The frame is not decorative but architectural.

      The profile on the coin is of Philip of Belgium.

               Roman emperors were depicted in profile on coins. This is likely why many people were depicted in profile in paintings during the Renaissance.

 

The horse’s robe consists of two identical flags, with the left one slightly shrunk (the flags meet each other below the figure’s wrist), true to the medieval principle of leaving no surface unused, even if this leads to repetition. The flag in question is that of the Dukes of Burgundy at the height of their power. It itself consists of several flags corresponding to the gradually expanding territory. 

      The French lilies in a red and white frame form the flag of the Princes of France. The yellow and blue diagonals in a red frame form the original coat of arms of the Dukes of Burgundy. The yellow lion on a black field is the coat of arms of the Dukes of Brabant. The red lion on a white field represents the Duchy of Limburg. The shield with the Flemish lion represents the County of Flanders. It is smaller because it is less prestigious than a duchy.

      The horse’s mask, the figure’s ear, and the blue fields of the coats of arms come from the background.

               The furthest legs are darker (they contain less titanium white) so they appear shadowed and more distant. The black areas are painted with unmixed black oil paint.

 

The ground of almost all Jacques-Vossens’s paintings consists of several layers of diluted Chinese ink. This is also the case here. White stripes were then added. An elegant grid was then woven by loosely flowing diluted blue acrylic paint both horizontally and vertically from one side of the canvas to the other. Next, the gold-coloured frame was applied, also with acrylic. The ground of the frame is made with a quick-drying paste used to give paintings a rougher texture. Stars were scratched into it with the hard end of a brush. 

      Some people are not French-speaking, Dutch-speaking, Walloon, or Flemish, but have “le cul entre deux chaises”. They consider themselves to be Belgian, or from Brabant. The feet of the figure on the left are the claws of a Walloon rooster, the hands of the figure on the right are the claws of a Flemish lion. These claws, together with the sleeves, form one of the first Belgian flags in Jacques-Vossen’s work. The iris is a Brussels symbol, a marsh flower.

               Erroneous lines in the basic drawing, drawn with a Posca marker, are crossed out so the painter knows which lines not to follow when painting.

 

Jacques-Vossen has a brother named Théo, who has a knack for business. They visit exhibitions together.

      The background refers to Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows, also known as Wheatfields under Threatening Skies.

      The figures’ eyes are orange and blue; they have a complementary gaze. The red ears are a nod to Chaim Soutine and Van Gogh’s ear story. The characters have overheard something they shouldn’t, or it’s too hot. The flowers on the straw hat refer to a self-portrait by Ensor. A feather is missing, which will be added later.

               The position of the raised hand and the ring refer to rock ‘n’ roll, a twentieth-century art form. A text by Damien Saez is sprayed in the background: “On a pas la thune mais l’espoir. Pas le blé mais l’envie”. (“L’important, ami, c’est d’aller jusqu’au bout de la nuit.”)

 

Created after a visit to an exhibition about the interwar period, where the children’s section was presented by a dog named Whisky: a stuffed fox terrier. A stuffed pet as a guide for children? Quite confronting. Captain Benoît Vossen, the dog’s owner, turned out to have actually existed. Jacques-Vossen found a painted portrait of the man and his dog. Vossen is the surname of Jacques-Vossen’s mother. Benoît is his father’s first name. Belgian Owl is his father’s favourite whisky. The shape of the bottle is a reference to the painter Roger Raveel, who evokes glasses and bottles in a simple yet clear way. In the background was the text “Vacciné mais pas castré” (Vaccinated but not castrated). 

               This painting became defining for many subsequent paintings, thanks to the hand that remains ‘empty’, the background preserved within the contours of the bottle, and the first medals.

 

This work was created during the first Israeli attacks on Gaza. Direct reference is impossible, but not taking a stand as well. On the figure’s forehead, we see a visor, because Jacques-Vossen feels targeted as an artist: he should take a stand, but he believes that raising questions is sufficient. The stars around the head come from comic strips, where they indicate that someone has been punched in the face. He is stunned.

      Scottish breeches are a symbol of freedom and independence. Ridley Scott, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce. The tartan in this painting has the Palestinian colours. On the left shoulder, we see the American flag, on the right, the European one. We see the Flemish lion and the Walloon rooster united in love. The eagle on red-yellow stripes is the coat of arms of the city of Mechelen, where this work was to be displayed. At the bottom right, we find the coats of arms of the Dukes of Burgundy, who were important to Mechelen. The exhibition in Mechelen focused on the Golden Fleece. The shadows are created with diluted Chinese ink. In this painting, the bottom is painted over the frame for the first time.

      The red ears and nose suggest rebellion and annoyance.

               The tears speak of heartbreak.

 

This work depicts a painter adding something to a finished, already signed painting. Is it a self-portrait? Do we see this scene through the mirror he uses to observe himself? The signature on the back of the depicted canvas indicates that the painting was created after the publication of the booklet L’Ange du Bizarre (The Angel of the Odd), in which the author depicts an alter ego (Jean Casque-Enfer) walking and talking with René du Goupil, an avatar of Clément Jacques-Vossen.

      The character in this painting appears as a contemporary avatar of Velázquez, who added a self-portrait to the already finished painting Las Meninas. In the earlier version of this painting, the heiress to the throne was handed a sceptre by a boy positioned on the left of the canvas. When a male heir to the throne was born, the painting’s original purpose had to be concealed, and Velázquez inserted himself, seemingly working on the double portrait of the royal couple, visible in the mirror at the center of the painting. Las Meninas thus acquired two new subjects: the royal couple and the art of constructing paintings.

               There’s nothing regal about Jacques-Vossen’s painting. The figure depicted is bald under his hair, the sweater is borrowed from another Spanish artist, and the tartan on the trousers comes from the posh clothing brand Burberry, whose logo, depicting a galloping knight, appears on the back of the painting.

 

 

Montagne de Miel, 2 July 2024 – 14 December 2025