Collage shortcuts

In my precedent posts, I am analyzing what happens with inspiration. In my actual life, I am waiting for the hospital to fix the operation I must undergo. After several months of looking for a letter from the hospital in my mailbox, I now stopped that game and think about everyday life. But still, this fore coming event is still in my mind, but lighter than before. In a recent dream, I had to cross a big pond during a walk. OK, when I woke up, I understood the message. It is a pond, not an ocean!
Does this influence my work? Somehow yes, but I’d rather say not much. While I was making a collage, I stumbled on a skull. I decided to put into the collage, thinking about Schubert, Baldung Grien,
Klimt,
Schiele,
Kokoschka… but not about my personal situation. My references are iconographic, literary and musical. When something happens during the work, I welcome it, try integration into the collage or put it elsewhere. I don’t WANT a certain collage; I let things happen with thoughts about other art works I know.

And that’s what happened here. As I had got stuck in my work, I took a photo and tried something new, as I usually do in this kind of situation. Putting the skull here and there, with reminders from Baldung Grien, I remembered a photo I had seen in one of the magazines on my desk: a crying woman (Picasso!) in front of a TV screen. And there I had it, at once! Death comforting the living, but holding it tight! This is not my situation, of course, but there is a feeble connection, I must admit. As for the other collage, I changed it later into something about war and casualties. Am I personally concerned? Not in my knowledge. The only souvenirs from war are the Spitfires and the bombs, later the ruins. But I surely see the news on TV.
So the link between personal life and art is not automatic, it’s an elaboration to express one’s inner state. And it’s not enough to paint a pond for ex. in order to express the expectation of the operation. Nobody can understand this metaphor without an explanation. A pond is a pond, period. If I want to say more, I’ll have to do more: tell a story.

In the previous post I wrote about the verbal elaboration that takes place after the making of the collage. But it happens very often now that I am trying to “push” the collage even if the picture is already quite seducing, also semantically.
The first idea was that grotesque dance of a man with a half-naked woman, the contrast between the two, but I missed something on the left side where one could see a male torso and a head above the outstretched arm. I couldn’t find a formal solution for that strip. I thought about cutting out the background above and left side, but I didn’t like to put the black and white figure against a colored background. I preferred sticking something over it, leaving the head partly free. This transformed the picture in a hint to crucifixion, the man clings his arm around the suffering woman. But the left side wasn’t resolved, so I modified it completely, the picture becoming a deadly dance (Totentanz) with reminders of Böcklin for the red dress and the morbidity of the subject. By this, the main figure became less dominant, but better linked to the left side. The final touch just stressed the left figure so that the whole became a possible father-mother-child constellation as well as the dancing figure, making it do a tango-like step and I cut off the big tit.
What did I gain?
First of all more confidence. Indeed, I managed to finish the picture to my satisfaction. Secondly a more conscious elaboration process which remains as open as possible for innovation. The book I discussed in the former post shows collages that go a straight way, with few mods – all the conception is done when the parts are glued together, whereas my ways are in zigzag, with many important changes during the making of the collage. I’m an improviser, not a planner, but as in music, improvisation is always confined in borders – otherwise, there would be chaos. But the picture must undergo transformations – in my eyes this is the essence of collage. Otherwise I could just as well paint after some collage. I am conscious that working this way means taking some risks, but I am granted with deep satisfaction when it works. In fact, I very seldom tear a collage up, I mostly can handle the situation. Do my unconscious processes help me? For sure, after some 40 years of collage, there must be some specialized area in my brain. But there is also a lot of consciousness at work. Not like – “Let’s make a collage on a dancing woman”, but “Oh, this woman in a red dress needs a partner, yes, there’s a head with a hand at the shoulder, let’s put it against the woman’s breast. Nice, like a baby. And now, what legs?” Etc. One association gives birth to others. I never succeeded at it in painting.
Behind the picture, there is work and inspiration and … knowledge of what other artists did and do now. And the many “repentirs” (= regrets or repaints) underneath the final collage which marks the end of the zigzag.
My personal fate – a kidney operation is underlying the picture, but not directly. Maybe I am the dancer? Death smiles at me, a little man trying to seduce her. It won’t be my last tango, I am sure this time, even if I am reminded that life comes to an end.

Just read some pages from a book on collage (Living into art). What I like is that these artists meet in a common place, work and discuss together. But where I disagree is when it comes to the meaning. Roughly said, I make a difference between private meaning – what the collage means to me, what I discover through it etc. and a general meaning – what everybody can see or discover in the work. In this book, the author handles the meaning i-king-like: it is as if the all-knowing unconscious – generally well hidden from our conscious mind – somehow leaks through the collage, giving us a stream of information so that we can better understand ourselves, our lives etc. Here it is named “unconscious thinking”. But when I look at those collages, I only see symbolist works, a rebus that I cannot really understand: a finger pointing at a tombstone in the sky with a mourning woman: If I don’t know the intentions or the life of the artist, I am as lost as in front of a contemporary art work. But mostly those symbols are quite common, like in a dream book (as in Freud’s for ex.).
For my collaging is playing with pictures. It is not a means of knowing me. I like to improvise, the spirit being void as in traditional Chinese or Japanese drawing in order to let things happen. The interpretation comes afterwards. And the latter is done with words. In my eyes, this writing or telling is a sort of story writing. The collage itself is only a canvas of associated elements, a mosaïque offering plenty of interpretation possibilities. It is not a message from another world. It is art, which means inspiration, innovation, form, color etc. together with possible interpretations or “stories”.
Here an example. In these days I am waiting for the decision on a probable kidney operation. As one can understand, this is no.1 of my preoccupations. Some of my collages are somehow linked to this fact, but others not. Hey, my dear unconscious, what are you doing? You should stick to the most important issue, not be playing around with pictures! You behave like a child! Please be serious! Give me messages! Anyway, what should I do with them? They won’t change what is.

To make it short: collage is playing with art. It’s easy to learn and the results are often stunning, because this technique induces surprising associations if we can get rid of the symbolist crap inherited from painting, and work without preconceived ideas. The neurobiologists tell us how the brain works: there is no author-postman inside who throws his messages in the collage-box, where we have just to pick them out and understand them. No, meaning is a construction. Free to me to link it to my own experience, but this will be the work of the onlooker. And when I am finishing a collage, I become an onlooker, I start looking for a meaning – to quote Robert A. Burton: less there is an obvious meaning, the more we try to get one. I guess that that’s the way collage works.