“Abstract” is a label that is often applied to the work of Raoul De Keyser, the Belgian painter who died in 2012 aged 82. Its use here doesn’t seem entirely helpful. Almost all of these 40 or so colourful paintings and objects, which date from the late Sixties until the year of De Keyser’s death, have some direct relationship to the observed world. At first glance, De Keyser’s work can seem slight, even simplistic. The paint, often in primary colours, has no depth and the paintings themselves have an air of the unfinished. But this was precisely De Keyser’s intention — to deny his work beauty (a term with which he struggled) in order not to distract from his true purpose.
So, what was De Keyser attempting to do? His work is full of conundrums. An early piece, Camping V, from 1971, consists of a painted canvas stretched over a wooden box. It’s a large work, about a metre high and wide, with a depth of 20cm. At the corners, large stitches join the canvas together. The link between the title and the work seems obvious but there’s more to this than first appears.
It’s part painting and part sculpture. As one looks at it there’s a temptation to visualise it hanging on a wall, its six sides reduced to one dimension. The flat, bold colours of green, blue and cream seem derived from grass, sky and tent canvas. But is De Keyser’s roguish sense of humour at play here? Do the stitched sides in some way mock the viewer struggling to “stitch” together “meaning”?
De Keyser loved language. However, he often struggled with the way words were used to describe and distort his work.
The term art historians give to work such as De Keyser’s is “abstract figuration”. It suggests that the basis of the painting lies in observation but emphasises the honing process and precision of the finished work.
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De Keyser claimed that too much was read into his work while at the same time making clear that it was supported by a sturdy intellectual framework.
And so it is when we look at these paintings.
At the point when we grasp an apparent superficial meaning, a simultaneous notion of underlying complexity begins to take hold.