forever state supported kitsch

Wiertz died poor, but the Belgian state is legally stuck with all 220 of his works—dreadful though most of them are—and an obligation to display them forever. In 1866, when Belgium’s parliament gratefully accepted Wiertz’s estate, it bowed to the artist’s strict conditions that his paintings should never be moved, loaned or placed in storage, but should remain “invariably fixed” to the walls of the studio Belgium had built for him.