‘Sterven in het bed waarin ik geboren ben’: Een biografie van Felix de Boeck (1898-1995)

This PhD thesis is a biography of the Belgian artist and farmer Felix de Boeck (1898-1995). He was active in different domains, like the avant-garde movement in Brussels and the catholic family in which he grew up. During his life, art and politics became inextricably interconnected. How did he choose between the apparently incompatible values that were cherished in these domains? In this biography, I’m arguing that his individual choices can be used as a framework to assess the validity of a large-scale narrative of Belgian cultural history.
De Boeck lived and worked during his whole life in Drogenbos, just south of Brussels. I was the first to use the extensive private archive of De Boeck kept at his farm. When zooming into the individual life, many contradictions came up that cannot easily be solved by visiting the archives only. During my research, I got a lot of information by just observing carefully and talking to people who knew him best.
The people I interviewed were very much aware of their own role in history. They were eager to convince me of their view of the past. As an outsider, I tried to relate their stories to each other in a disinterested way. I discovered how biography is able to bring along a debate on the interpretation of public history and a shared cultural heritage.