Even by Belgium’s surrealist standards, the sprawling steampunk squid that emerged from the cobblestones in Brussels on Friday is an extraordinary sight.
With its green-blue tentacles flailing, its machinist headgear and its juxtaposition in Place Poelaert, in front of the Palace of Justice, it is an outlandish conception.
Which is what it is meant to be, according to its creator, comic book grandee François Schuiten. "I want to revive the creativity, the imagination, the visionary instincts in Brussels," he told The Brussels Times as the sculpture was inaugurated.
"It is an ode to Brussels. It is now an international city, the capital of Europe, which is great. But it has become banal in many ways. I want to see more of the raw inventiveness that we once had."
The inauguration of Nauti-poulpe. Friday 29 November 2024 in Brussels. Credit: Belga / Nicolas Maeterlinck
The 12-tonne bronze sculpture stretches across the square: it is 9.5 metres by 5.5 metres and is 6.50 meters high. While it looks like a squid in a helmet, it is entitled the Nauti-Poulpe (or Nauti-Octopus) and is described as half-machine, half-cephalopod. “I’m not going to say there is a political message in the sculpture, but it is there to show that we need to be more bold and creative in how we think about our city and our surroundings,” Schuiten said.
Schuiten, a fan of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, illustrated a graphic novel Le Retour Du Capitaine Nemo last year with his longtime collaborator Benoît Peeters, which picks up the story from Verne’s 1871 novel. “The sculpture is a hybrid of sorts. It takes parts of the squid from the story but also parts of the submarine,” Schuiten says.
The inauguration of Nauti-poulpe, an artwork designed by Francois Schuiten in The Return of Captain Nemo and inspired by the world of Jules Verne, Friday 29 November 2024 in Brussels. Credit: Belga / Nicolas Maeterlinck
The shift into sculpture is an easy one for the multidisciplinary Schuiten, who has worked as a production designer on movies like Toto the Hero (Toto le héros), Taxandria and The Golden Compass - designed the Porte de Hal metro station in Brussels.
The location, beneath the Palace of Justice, is no coincidence: the building has fascinated Schuiten for decades and has featured in many of his books, including 1992’s Brüsel, co-written with Peeters, and his 2019 Blake and Mortimer album, The Last Pharaoh (Le dernier Pharaon).
Francois Schuiten pictured during the inauguration of Nauti-poulpe. Credit: Belga
“We’re hoping that the scaffolding will come down next year – that will be an amazing moment,” he says. “We need this as the building is so magnificent but has stayed hidden for so long - and the inability to make progress has engendered cynicism about Brussels and Belgium.”
The Nauti-poulpe was sculpted by Pierre Matter and commissioned by the French city of Amiens to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Verne’s death. Cast and assembled in local foundries over two years, it will travel back to Amiens in March where it will remain.
