La Bellissima BRAFA Sensations
Tuesday 24 January 2012By Anna Vvedenskaya
Visiting the Brussels Fine Arts Fair is more, than a regular visit to a museum or a gallery to admire the artifacts on display.
It is about an experience of floating through epochs and cultures; about the sensation of being a traveler and a theatre spectator at once. From crossing the threshold of the fair, gilded like fairy-tale Sesame from ‘Thousand and one nights’, one enters the dreamy space of artistic creations. From huge origami’s flying above to exotic flora, captured by giant sea-nets upfront – installations are staged to tune visitor’s feelings in line with the magic performance to encounter the beauty. From exotic entrance square at there are three avenues named after van Eyck, Breughel and Rubens, along which 122 dealers show the marvels brought from all over the globe.
However magic BRAFA might seem, all the artifacts are for sale, obviously not for an average purse. Some of antique dealers told the ‘EU Reporter’ that the meticulous and costly work to prepare the setting is worthwhile, because the exquisite atmosphere attracts the collector’s elite, and not only from Europe. Although many hinted that they particularly count on passion for arts and generosity of Belgians, phrasing their eye for beauty and refined taste, cultivated through generations.
Many of the dealers said that already had an experience of making up to a half of the year profit in one night at ‘La BRAFA’. The visitor’s attempts of comparisons with Maastricht’s European Fine Arts Fair (The TEFAF) in the neighboring Netherlands are inevitable, but irrelevant, because each of the fairs reflects unique cultural atmosphere of a hosting place: Dutch rigor and perfection versus warmth and generosity of spirit of Bruxellois. Moreover there is always a special Belgium touch in passion for African prime arts, which adds a special note to the fascination of the fair, originally conceived around Flemish and Dutch Old Masters.
The fascination is the word, as the description of all the objects is impossible, while singling out some artifacts is unfair. Fortunately modern technology offers an answer to this daunting task, proposing the guided visit on-line, but as the dealers say, it will ‘always stays as the Persian carpet inside out’, - one who has passion for arts should come to see it real.