Author | Lightnews

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 5h

Cashmere Fascism

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 9h

The Amsterdamse School showed the same care for the working class as for the wealthy

Because everyone deserved beauty

Now architects only want to push their wicked ideas

And make 'statement' pieces

While living in houses like this...

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 10h

Stop scrolling

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 11h

Peak Dutch design...

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 11h

Berlage believed architecture should express its structure honestly

Brick, iron, and glass doing exactly what it's meant to do

Modern architecture hides everything behind glass and drywall

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 14h

Sauna Fascism
x.com/leusinkrobb...

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 17h

H. Funnekotter (Rotterdam, 1883-1967) hand-embroidered chasubles

Gold thread on silk damask
Neo-Gothic designs with passionflower motifs

Responsible for neo-Gothic vestments in almost every Dutch parish
Now priests wear crappy polyester vestments from Poland

Craft replaced by decorum

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

Self-expression, combined with anti-ideologism is the cancer of today's art world: thekitschinquisition.substack.com/p/the-age-o...

The Age of Conceptual Masturbation

How fake depth replaced authentic experience

thekitschinquisition.substack.com

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

Faith is laced with irony and ambiguity
Masculinity stands as a target for ridicule

The problem with today's art isn't just ugliness...
It's greatest flaw is its weakness

Soft. Boring. Void of anything worthwhile.

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

He died in 1956.

Today, he’s a footnote.
The modernist church ignores him.

But he laid the foundations for:
– Christian comics
– Catholic nationalist aesthetics
– The revival of sacred imagery

All Jos Speybroucks's heritage

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

During WWII, he stayed in Kortrijk.

And kept drawing, teaching, and building.

After the war, he designed processions, costumes, and floats.

Not for roleplaying: for real culture, real people, and a real faith.

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

In the 1930s, he joined De Pelgrim, a circle of Catholic artists seeking to rebuild sacred art.

They believed beauty isn’t for art galleries, but made for the soul.

They understood what today’s Catholics have forgotten:
-Art should catechise.
-Beauty should convert.

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

He lived through the horror of World War I.
And hated the war but not the courage.

Always walked the line between pacifism and duty.

But unlike today's men, he never abandoned his culture, God, or his people.

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

While “modern Catholic art” chases clicks and grants, Speybrouck built a visual exegisis (with Jos Keulers) by hand:

800+ biblical illustrations
Hundreds of devotional images
Woodcuts, prints, stained glass

All rooted in truth, beauty, and reverence.

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

But he never chased politics.
He lived by his conviction.

Didn’t run for office.
But vernacularised schools.

Carved Marian statues.
And illustrated saints and martyrs.

Catholic influencers are noise compared to him...

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

And he wasn’t just an artist. He was an activist.

In 1910, he drew Noch rust, noch duur, zonder zelfbestuur ("No rest, no permanence without self-rule").

And in 1919, he painted Alle volkeren bieden België hun hulde aan ("All nations offer homage to Belgium").

Where is your propaganda?

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

Born in 1891 in Kortrijk, Belgium, he studied at the Ghent Academy of Fine Arts.

Unlike fellow studenten pursuing the avant-garde, he found inspiration in Albrecht Rodenbach: a poet & symbol of the Flemish revival.

His art served his Faith, people, and God.
It wasn't modernist self-expression...

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

Jos Speybrouck wasn’t just an artist.
He was a builder of Catholic identity.
And a draughtsman of the Flemish soul.

He didn’t paint for galleries.
But carved virtue into the hearts of his fellowmen.

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 18h

You probably don't know Jos Speybrouck

Because they won't teach you about him in school.

He's everything they hate:

– Catholic
– Anti-modern
– Flemish Nationalist
– Man of tradition, duty, and beauty.

A thread 🧵

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 19h

🍄 🍄 🍄

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 20h

De Noolseweg in Blaricum has some of the most beautiful houses in the Netherlands

Dutch excellence...

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 22h

A relic of the past.
Lost standards.

Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 22h

Established in 1884 by two Italians brothers and a family business since Arthur Boon took over.

Antwerpians used to buy their gloves at A. Boon: Fanfares, first communions, and businessmen.

The Antwerp Six got their first gloves here
So did Jean Paul Gaultier

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 22h

Buy leather gloves

Gloves were part of being properly dressed
They were sign you noticed the details

One of the few glovemakers remaining is Ganterie A. Boon in Antwerp

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Robbert Leusink @robbertleusink.bsky.social · 1d

Ferrari F40 Fascism