La Libre Belgique · Vers 1997 (année non imprimée sur la coupure) · Pascal Sac (text)
Midas is back, I met him...
- 1997
Full-page portrait of Mon De Rijck: the sculptor and bargeman who "breathes life into everything he touches" - into bronze, into barges bound for the scrapyard, into a slum in the Quartier Nord and into art itself. The article details his Le Grand A project (a 150 m long, 50 m high sculpture made of two barges raised vertically in the shape of an A, linking two further exhibition boats, to be erected in a Quartier Nord dock), his working stays in Carrara, the Château Malou art lending gallery launched in 1972, Mécénat démocratique co-founded in 1970 and Art Pool, the monthly-subscription artwork acquisition scheme launched in late 1989.
Context note
Dating note - The clipping carries no printed date. Internal clues place it around 1997: Art Pool, launched in late 1989 (per Le Soir of 11 April 1990), has been running acquisitions "for seven years"; the Quartier Nord slum has had a reprieve "for seven years"; Mon De Rijck, born in 1943, is described as being in his fifties; and Le Grand A is still at model stage. The year is an estimate, to be confirmed with La Libre Belgique. Article by Pascal Sac, photos LLB and PG. Document kept in Carl De Moncharline's family archive.