This mural confuses me. The explosion of colours mixed with the diversity of the themes represented makes its meaning mysterious. What's for sure is that it covers these miserable concrete walls. From what I've been told, the designers of Louvain-la-Neuve, Michel Woitrin and Raymond Lemaire commissioned the artist on the theme of the seasons. They probably knew that their grey concrete walls were not very sexy in a student town! As financing was slow in coming, the artist became inspired by his own life and the chance encounters he had with the passers-by, which opened out on the theme of the seasons of life. So, in this painting you will see the artist's house at Nodebaix, the artist himself with his wife, his daughters playing music, holiday souvenirs...as well as the first the first married couples in Louvain-la-Neuve as they passed him whilst he was up on his scaffold.
Date created
1977 and renovated by the artist in 1995, just before his death.
Artist
Claude Rahir.
Function
Public art, work commissioned by Michel Woitrin and Raymond Lemaire to cover their large grey concrete wall.
Characteristics
Very colourful painting in a naïve style.
To see
The representation of the Phoenix, a bird that rises from its ashes, evokes the rebirth of the Walloon Brabant thanks to the arrival of the university, at a time of economic decline, with the closure of the paper mills, the Henricot steel works...
The hidden side
If you go across the passageway which leads to the Agora auditorium towards the Place des Doyens, you will able to admire what is left (around 1/10th) of another painting by the same artist “ "Petites histoires d'une Grande Université“ (Small stories from a large university). Painted on a large concrete wall whilst waiting for the current “Louvain School of Management“ to be built, this mural had 85 scenes in which poems written by foreign students in 25 languages were inserted. It represented the university's key characters and events. On the remaining part you can see the Leuven town hall, Pope Martin V, author of the papal bull authorising the founding of the University of Leuven in the 15th century, as well as the reproduction of a scene drawn by a student in his notebook at the end of the 15th century.
