Prints : Frank

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"Atomium: Le futur du passé" - Frank

FRANK PE’S VISION OF THE FUTURE PAST AT THE ATOMIUM !

No-one knows the hidden Brussels better than does Frank Pé, and he brings his unique vision to bear on the mythic properties of Expo ´58. His memorable image has the force of the opening scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, where a mysterious, monolithic entity intrudes on the primates’ world.

For the creator of “Broussaille”, the Atomium “symbolises the world just before my consciousness of being! I was born in 1956. I was too young, in 1958, to be brought to see the Universal Exhibition. But I never heard the end of it afterwards! And then, as a child some years later, I often wandered among the early ruins of the Expo. I remember very well the “Civil Engineering Arrow” that marked the Brussels skyline. I really liked that purposeful world there, all metal and concrete, and yet in a way playful, mad…”

Its mystery held great appeal for the young Frank, who saw in it the last traces of a disappeared civilisation! But of that world, only the Atomium itself has survived. “And yet, as with all great symbols once past the hour of their glory, the Atomium joined the ranks of outmoded artefacts. It was outdated and unwanted…But the restoration work has brought it up to date and now it seems ready to face eternity.” It has to be seen in all its reality, like the Eiffel Tower “or like the gorges of the Tarn valley” adds the creator of Zoo, “because the physical impact is part of the experience.”

The shadowy presence of bande dessinée’s founding fathers hovers over the nineteen-fifties and thus over the Universal Exhibition of 1958 in Brussels. “The style of the ´fifties was magnified and transcended by Franquin and Will, who lived it to the limit with openness and wonder. There’s no trace of that with Hergé, who always struck me as being somewhat behind the times.” So what graphic possibilities and problems does the Atomium present to an artist at the beginning of the 21st century? “It was in placing it at the centre of my composition that I realised that it was actually a kind of cube balanced on one of its edges. I had never before seen it quite like that!”


The theme of his screenprint, Le futur du passé imposed itself from the start. “I enjoy placing our modern-day epics in a broader context. What meaning would the Atomium hold for Neanderthal man? Certainly, it would fascinate; it would be a shock, a mystery.” Something mysterious seems to hover over the graphic composition. “There is indeed an ambiguity about time. The image blurs the boundary between our prehistoric beginnings and an apocalyptic future. It might also be read as the “traditional Belgians”, the Belgians of the “Belgique de papa” rediscovering, with awe, traces of one of the most iconic symbols of their disappeared world.” The composition in question is conceived around a souvenir of Expo ´58: a little helicopter circling a miniature Atomium!