Collage shortcuts

This collage came without being announced. I like it so much that I must understand why. Maybe because it came so easily. Maybe because the fragments go so well together that I can forget them. Or is it the presence - absence like in Manet's paintings? Or is it the gavroche-like face? Or the Pinocchio nose? The more I question the picture, the more it escapes me. There is no special trick in it and the original painting is not important enough to play a big role. I try to go deeper inside: is it the fracture in the face, a sort of growing out of childhood? Too complicated. I give up. Some pictures just exist, that's all. Others are constructed and when I look at them, I see the patterns and forget about the subject, not unlike the way I look at an abstract painting. And in collage this represents a real danger. Because when the edges are too sharp and uncorrelated, the picture is split up - broken - and the mental associations don't function. I have the same problem with some modernistic paintings, where I can't put the puzzle in order - let's say in "scribbled" painting à la Twombly. So this collage is my sweet girl.

This collage has been inspired by recent affairs in French football and my reading of Verhaeghen's Omega Minor. It's definitely not a direct link to it, but rather an unconscious workup.
Another inspiration is my recent questioning about my way of making collages: a very "realistic" one with smooth transitions or a more syncopated one as here. The reference here is - of course and more than Basquiat - Picasso. I am not sure that this is my ultimate style, the alpha and omega of my art, but I try to integrate more heterogeneous elements, to make the picture look more aggressive.
The first version of this collage still used the original background.

But then I realized that this background was too atmospheric and distracting from the figures. The change a more neutral background - in gray as in Guernica - makes the figures pop out of the picture and that's the effect I was looking for, as in all my collages.

I must confess that I am more attracted to ancient masters than by contemporary art these days. I ask myself why I am so fascinated by painters like Ribera for ex. One argument is their mastership in suggesting the appearance of things and in arranging a painting in order to make it stunning. But in this they are not superior to ou modern movies, So there must be more. It lies in the subject itself, I think. And this question has been mine too during all my life as an artist. If we take the Allegory of Touch (Prado) the painting is very unusual. I immediately think of my own workshops where I make people draw what they touch - eyes shut, or let them draw, paint, sculpt without seeing what they are doing. At the same time the painting tells me something about the relationship between the artist and his work: he sees but he sees not during his work - at least I am not. So maybe I am really old fashioned, looking for meaning, for impulses to think. And these paintings seem to me as enjoyable as any comedy on stage or on screen. But why don't I paint any more? Because the times for this kind of art are over and luckily there are many masterpieces to enjoy as forever. But an artist of 2010 has to try something different, like all other forms of art. And lastly these artists surely had a more direct relationship to other humans and the world than our Western multimedia world. And that's what I feel when I look at Ribera's paintings.

In the need of going back to basics - political collage was the first subject of my collages in the late 60ies, I chose news pictures for my new works. If the formal aspect is perhaps not at the core of them, I care a lot about it.

Here I took up a theme I already worked on, but I tried to give it a very aggressive aspect by tearing the pictures I used. This is counterbalanced by the praying hands, something which came quite suddenly in the picture. I then thought of those poor guys out there, fearing for their lives and surely praying some absent god (of war?).

Another collage is the one inspired of a picture of a Kyrgyz wedding and the reportage on the abduction of the bride.

I just thought of Grosz and his caricatures of the German bourgeois - here I am quite insulting for the male ...pig.

The link to the gallery