Art on the move for its own sake

turn-of-the-century European art.

TWO small exhibitions -- Belgian art from the last two decades of the

last century at the Royal Academy and Bonnard, at the Hayward on the

South Bank -- are representative of a number of similar shows in London

at the moment which deal with turn-of-the-century European painting.

What they demonstrate is that while there might have been a change in

technique influenced by the French Impressionists which began from the

1860s, with much lighter and brighter colours, looser brushwork and an

interest in everyday subject matter, the reasons for producing work were

as varied as ever.

It is not entirely clear that the organisers of the Royal Academy show

have recognised this but have pulled together a selection of paintings

and a few sculptures whose only common feature is that they were

produced within 20 years of one another in the same geographical region.

To achieve a sense of coherence the pale yellow of the walls in the

exhibition have been stencilled with curving art nouveau designs as if

what was really a very disparate group of artists was held together by a

regard for that style. The effect is rather frivolous especially given

the deep social commitment of some of the artists whose political agenda

far outweighed their aesthetic interests. They are grouped together

under the heading of ''social realism'' and the main themes are of

poverty, hard work and the dignity of labour, depicted with an

unflinching realism.

Constantin Meunier's Return from the Mine, 1895-7 is a small

bas-relief sculpture with a frieze-like procession of miners who manage

to convey both fatigue yet also a sense of strength. Theodoor

Verstraete's Barge Haulier 1890 represents a single figure seen from

behind, dragging a rope. Like their French or British realist

counterparts, social critique in these works is tempered by a vision of

the heroism of the working classes. In the same room a subsection

entitled ''painterly realism'' represents those artists whose subject

matter is presumably harder to classify and doesn't include the same

social commentary: James Ensor's Still Life with Vegetables or The White

Cloud both thickly painted and seemingly more abstract.

One of the real pleasures of this show is that so many of the works,

often from small provincial museums or private collections, have been

displayed with their original frames. There are still some unsympathetic

large gilded monstrosities, but several of the works have a frame that

has been selected or decorated by the artist and demonstrates a desire

to question the role of the painting in its immediate environment. In

Georges Lemmens's Portrait of Emile Verhaeren, 1891, which is painted

with the characteristic neo-impressionist ''dot'', the appearance of the

frame has been worked out in relation to the picture and treated in the

same pointillist manner. Even Henry van de Velde's Pere Biart Reading in

the Garden c1890-1, is shown with its simple white frame which would

have been positively revolutionary at the time.

* IF the Belgian show manages to capture the early modernist debate

about whether art should serve a social purpose or not, by the 1920s

when Bonnard began painting at Le Bosquet, the issue appears to have

been resolved in favour of those who thought it was sufficient that art

be beautiful and pleasing.

Bonnard bought Le Bosquet, a villa in the hills overlooking Cannes, in

1926 and spent the final 21 years of his life there. If those were some

of the most turbulent years in European history, there is not the

slightest glimmer of anything other than endless sunny days and domestic

harmony in these paintings. The first room is quite breathtaking.

Landscape views of the Provencal countryside exude a familiarity which

is heightened by their small scale. Only Landscape at Le Cannet, 1928,

is larger and covers one of the end walls, but manages to seem intimate,

for there is no sense of a larger world in which pleasure and beauty do

not exist.

And it is a world in which people too are frozen. His wife, Marthe,

whom he had met in 1893 is portrayed as a girl in works like The French

Window 1929 although she was 60 years old by this time. A remarkable

series of studies produced in 1938 entitled Crouching Nude show a still

sprightly Marthe in the bath and demonstrate Bonnard's working technique

from first sketch to finished work. The painter Matisse once famously

suggested that above all painting should serve like a comfortable

armchair at the end of a long tiring day. If so, there can be no more

soothing and pleasing show in London than this.

* Impressionism to Symbolism, The Belgian Avant-Garde 1880-1900, is at

the Royal Academy of Arts, London to 2 October 1994.

Bonnar at Le Bosquet, is at the Hayward Gallery, London to August 29,

1994