Who Is Michaël Borremans? Artist's Work Resurfaces Amid Balenciaga Scandal

Artist Michaël Borremans has become a talking point on social media after a book based on his work was seen in the background of a photo shoot for Balenciaga, the recently beleaguered luxury fashion brand.

In the past several days, the company has been criticized for images in an ad campaign on its website, which included toddlers holding the brand's teddy bear handbags. The stuffed toys appeared to be dressed in bondage gear, such as fishnet shirts and studded leather harnesses and collars.

On Sunday, Balenciaga brand ambassador Kim Kardashian said in a statement shared on Twitter that she was "disgusted" and "shaken" by the controversial images. Other public figures have also criticized the photos.

Amid the social media backlash over the images last week, a Balenciaga image from a different ad campaign has resurfaced. It showed an adult woman posing with her feet on a desk cluttered with documents and a small stack of books.

In that pile sat the book Michaël Borremans: As Sweet as It Gets. A Twitter user zoomed in on the artist's name and shared a link to other works about him, highlighting Michaël Borremans: Fire From the Sun by Michael Bracewell.

A description of Fire From the Sun posted on Amazon says that Borremans' artwork features children who are "presented alone or in groups against a studio-like backdrop that negates time and space, while underlining the theatrical atmosphere and artifice that exists throughout Borremans' recent work."

"Reminiscent of cherubs in Renaissance paintings, the toddlers appear as allegories of the human condition, their archetypal innocence contrasted with their suggested deviousness," the book's description says.

A selection of the images in question was shared on social media last week, leading detractors to suggest that the Borremans paintings were evidence that something more sinister was at play in Balenciaga's inclusion of the book in its shoot.

Who Is Michaël Borremans?

Borremans, 59, is an acclaimed Belgian painter and filmmaker who was born in Geraardsbergen and lives and works in Ghent.

He was described in The New York Times earlier this year as perhaps "the greatest living figurative painter." His painting technique is noted for drawing on 18th-century art and shows the influence of artists Édouard Manet, Diego Velázquez and Edgar Degas. Recently, Borremans has used photographs and sculptures as the basis for his paintings.

After receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree from Ghent's Sint-Lucas Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst (College of Arts and Sciences St. Lucas) in 1996, Borremans trained as a photographer before moving to painting and drawing.

Before finding success as an artist, he worked as a teacher at the Stedelijk Secundair Kunstinstituut Gent (Secondary Municipal Art Institute of Ghent).

In a 2016 interview in art magazine Apollo, Borremans said of his work: "Drawing...offers me the most freedom because it's only pencil and paper and there are no boundaries. You can do whatever you want in a drawing—not in a painting. Not in my case."

'Fire From the Sun' Paintings

Borremans' work at been widely displayed, including a solo showing in Hong Kong of his Fire From the Sun series of paintings, which showed blood-covered toddlers playing in fire and what appeared to be human limbs.

A review of the 2018 exhibition on the website Elephant.art said that the "perceived meaning of the works is difficult to voice or uncomfortable to admit."

The review went on: "In the most evident terms, Fire From the Sun portrays children aged two or three in various stages of play with fire and what appear to be human limbs, even hair. The children are all light-skinned Sistine-style cherubs, sometimes covered in blood. The children do not appear to be distressed or disturbed (though some viewers at the gallery may be)."

Another part of the review said, "While the fire and (probable) cannibalism imply some sort of ritual, the works are most chilling as sketches of random violence, causal and instinctual. The depicted characters break with one typecast (angelic) while fitting another (demonic)."

In an excerpt from his book on Borremans' work, Bracewell wrote: "The scenes depicted by the majority of paintings comprising Fire From the Sun show a state of being or society in which the primal is uncontrolled, without bearings, in a state of anarchy."

In his 2016 interview in Apollo, Borremans spoke about how his relationship with religion may have informed some of his work, telling the publication, "I was raised Roman Catholic, but then I lost my belief.

"I still like the idea that people come together in a building to reminisce about life and death.... But every religion that is institutionalised is bad. It should be like Buddhism: only in thoughts. Otherwise it's about power, and then you miss the point."

Newsweek has reached out to Borremans for comment.

Balenciaga Photo Scandal

Balenciaga has come under fire for its Balenciaga Objects collection ad campaign, titled "Balenciaga Gift Shop," that was shot by Gabriele Galimberti.

Galimberti told Newsweek he was not responsible for the content of the images in the photo shoot, including the children with the toy bears in fishnet shirts, studded leather harnesses and collars. "I am not in a position to comment [on] Balenciaga's choices, but I must stress that I was not entitled in whatsoever manner to neither chose the products, nor the models, nor the combination of the same."

He continued, "As a photographer, I was only and solely requested to lit the given scene and take the shots according to my signature style. As usual, the direction of the campaign and of the shooting are not [in] the hands of the photographer."

In a Balenciaga photo shoot for its new joint campaign with Adidas, shot by Chris Maggio, people noticed a pile of papers that included a page from the 2008 Supreme Court ruling United States v. Williams.

The ruling upheld the PROTECT Act, a 2003 federal law that criminalizes advertising, promoting, presenting or distributing child pornography. Its acronym stands for Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today.

Update 11/29/22, 12:30 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to identify the book seen in a Balenciaga campaign image.