In Moloch, it is Sylvia. As I ascended the steps to Antwerp’s Old Masters gallery, I was thinking I do not really like these old pictures, as they seem so alien to us today. We cannot see ourselves with them as they are so unrecognisable from people as we are today; but every so often you will see an old picture that looks so startlingly modern—like Caravaggio’s Victorious Cupid in Berlin’s Gemaldegalerie. And no sooner had I thought these words than I entered the first room and saw staring me in the face Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim, 1452. How can you believe that this picture was laid on this canvas 554 years ago? I was pleased while walking around the Royal Art Gallery to get so many erections. Especially in the room with the George Breitner, and Paul Delvaux’s De Roze Strikken. Standing amidst all this Belgian and Dutch art to come face to face with George Grosz’s “Portrait of the Writer Walter Mehring”—you look at it and see Berlin. The same way a Francis Bacon will stop me in the tracks because it is London.
The Stripper 