Freddy de Vree: Antiquaire du surréalisme
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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This is a diary account of my visit to the exhibition Freddy de Vree: Antiquaire du surréalisme.
2007 October 28, at around 16:00 pm, I visited Demian Antiquariaat for the official opening of the Freddy de Vree expo: Antiquaire du surréalisme. The exhibition was opened by Christophe Vekeman who had never met de Vree but who had been contacted by him on several occasions to react to his De Morgen columns. Vekeman's angle was the mask-wearing of de Vree, sliding into his argument via a recent purchase of Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, which had also been a favorite of de Vree. The mask-wearing practices were represented at the expo by several "literaire mystificaties" (pseudonymously published works or "literary mystifications") by de Vree such as Conny Couperus's Sneeuwwitje en de leeuwerik van Vlaanderen (with Hugo Claus), a send-up of the crime thriller genre.
Afterwards I overheard the widow of de Vree, Marie-Claire Nuyens, talking to a man, a friend of the family. Her remarks shed more light on the character of de Vree than the speech or the exhibition. The man asked how the expo had come about. Marie-Claire replied: "It all started with a couple of e-mails by René" (owner of Demian). Marie-Claire remembered René because Freddy had said that he liked the young book shop owner. Continuing: "You know how very rarely Freddy expressed his appreciation for someone, so I figured, let's do the exhibition." With this de Vree's widow confirmed that - as was to be expected from being a very close friend to the sometimes labeled arrogant Willem Frederik Hermans - de Vree may not have been "De aardigste man van de wereld".
Antiquaire du surréalisme features a wide selection of original editions by de Vree; photographs; recordings of his interviews with Roland Topor, William S. Burroughs, Pierre Alechinsky; photographs of the play Masscheroen (1968), in which de Vree stars nude. Notably absent at this opening was Sylvia Kristel, the last companion of de Vree. The expo at Demian is is on until December 1; 2007, an appropriate celebration of one of the only intellectuals worthy of that title in Belgium.
