Souffleur, what is the meaning of 'Bas-relief'?
Wael Shawky, 'Cabaret Crusades: Relief of the Siege of Jerusalem 1189-91' (after Jean Colombe's After the capture of Acre 1189 by Bourges,1475), 2018 © Wael Shawky; Courtesy Lisson Gallery
SOUFFLEUR
Bas-relief
Like all domains, art has its own vocabulary. In ‘Souffleur', employees of M explain and give background to professional terms that may sound familiar to you, but of which you may not know, or no longer know, exactly what they mean.
Wael Shawky, 'Cabaret Crusades: Relief of the Siege of Jerusalem 1189-91' (after Jean Colombe's After the capture of Acre 1189 by Bourges,1475), 2018 © Wael Shawky; Courtesy Lisson Gallery
Marjan Debaene (Head of Collections): "A bas-relief or low-relief is a sculpture: a representation that emerges slightly from the material. It has some depth, but not much. There is also high-relief where the image is almost completely detached from the material - as if it is barely connected to the background and the difference between high relief and low relief comes down to the amount of material you cut away."
"Bas-reliefs are found in many cultures. In the West, they were especially popular in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance."
Lore Boon (Head of Exhibitions Department): "It is also exactly what Wael Shawky, a contemporary artist from Egypt, makes use of. One of the important themes in his work is how coloured we look at the past. The visual sources on the Crusades, for example, almost all come from Western art history. We do not know the view of the other side, the Arab world, because it has not been portrayed very often. Shawky believes that this can affect historiography, and that we should be aware of this. That is why he works with that western medium, but from a different perspective. He creates bas-reliefs in wood or glass, often with literal copies of well-known works from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Tintoretto, Giotto... And then he adds fantasy elements, like dragons or mythical figures. It takes a long time of looking at those works before you notice that something is not right. That is exactly the intention. You can discover the bas-reliefs for yourself until 28 August at 'Dry Culture Wet Culture', Wael Shawky's exhibition at M."
