Collage shortcuts

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COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE
Ces jours, Art/Basel vient d’ouvrir ses portes. Pour fêter dignement cet évènement d’importance planétaire, j’ai conçu un petit collage intitulé : Commedia dell’arte. Je suis désolé de faire des collages futiles de taille tellement modeste, de ne pas porter un nom célèbre et surtout, de ne pas avoir été au « preview », comprenez un gigantesque cocktail avec 2500 artistes présents. J’aurais pourtant su faire l’artiste, au moins aussi bien qu’un autre ou même mieux peut-être. J’aurais discouru sur la profondeur de mon inspiration, mes nombreux admirateurs célèbres, mes projets pharaoniques etc. Mais voilà, au lieu de cela, je suis petitement assis à mon ordinateur, dans les 5m2 qui me tiennent de bureau et d’atelier, l’odeur d’une tarte aux groseilles qui cuit dans le four dans les narines.
Mon collage montre bien ma petitesse devant les géants de l’art contemporain. Béat d’admiration, je renverse la tête devant tant de fougue et de grâce, mon petit piédestal do-it-yourself n’est qu’un support bricolé pour rêver d’une miette de l’aura de ces 2500 artistes. Simple mortel, je n’ai pas accès à cet Olympe, seuls les demi-dieux ont le droit d’y pénétrer. Tragique destin !

These days, Art / Basel has just opened its doors. To celebrate this event of global importance, I ‘ve made a small collage titled Commedia dell'arte. I'm sorry to make futile collages so modest in size, not to wear a famous name and most importantly, not having been at the "preview", which is a giant cocktail with 2500 artists present. But I would have known to behave like an artist, at least as well as another or even better maybe. I ‘d have spoken on the depth of my inspiration, my many famous admirers, my gigantic projects etc.. But here, instead, I am sitting at my
computer, in the 15squf. Serving as office and workshop, the smell of a gooseberry pie that bakes in the oven in the nostrils.
My collage shows my littleness before the giants of contemporary art. Enraptured with admiration, I reverse the head before such passion and grace, my little pedestal do-it-yourself is just cobbled together to support my dream of a crumb of the glory of these 2500 artists . Mere mortal, I do not have access to this Olympus, only
demigods have the right to penetrate. Tragic destiny!

Cette semaine, je n’ai pas grand-chose à dire sauf qu’en voyant les images de la salle de tribunal de NY, j’ai pensé au Procès de Kafka, à une machine à broyer l’accusé.
Tout d’abord, j’ai montré la danse d’un salaud ricanant sur les seins d’une femme de chambre, un comportement qui parcourt les siècles et les pays et que j’abhorre. Mais enfin, que celui qui n’a jamais pêché… comme le dit si bien Jésus.

Si je m’identifie aussià l’accusé, c’est que le passé familial pèse lourdement : les lois dites de Nuremberg furent bien des lois scélérates, mais des lois quand-même. Devenir accusé est donc toujours possible, même si on est innocent. L’autre raison est que j’ai moi-même passé une heure dans une salle d’interrogatoire de police – innocent bien sûr – et dont la nudité absolue m’a impressionnée. Et enfin, c’est ma lecture de Kafka. Dans mon collage on voit l’accusé mis au pilori (les pieds) et son isolement.

Ce n’est donc qu’un « sauveur » invisible qui peut libérer l’accusé et c’est ce que j’ai voulu montrer.
A notre époque hystérique où l’on peut lâcher une meute de femmes hurlantes sur le présumé innocent, où les touristes français se prennent pour des grands reporters en prenant des clichés au vol de l’accusé où le fait de violenter une femme de chambre est puni davantage que les crimes contre l’humanité, je reste perplexe.

This week, I do not have much to say except that seeing images of the courtroom in NY,I thought of Kafka's Trial, a machine to crush the accused.
First, I showed a dancing bastard grinning on the breasts of a maid, a behavior that runs through the centuries and countries, and that I abhor. But finally, that he who is without sin ... as Jesus said.
If I identify with the accused it is that the family past weighs heavily: the so-called Nuremberg Laws were villainous laws, but laws anyway. Become accused is always possible even if one is innocent. The other reason is that I myself spent an hour in a police interrogation room - innocent of course - and what impressed me was the absolute nudity of the room, even not a glass of water. And finally, it's my reading of Kafka. My collage shows the accused pilloried (feet) and his isolation.
Only an invisible "savior" may discharge the accused and that's what I wanted to show.
In our era of hysteria where you can drop a mob of screaming women on the presumed innocent, where French tourists believe that they are international reporters taking pictures on the flight of the accused, where the act of assaulting a maid is punished more severely than the crimes against humanity, I remain perplexed.

After giving leave to my faces and being concentrated on the landscape, once I found my dear studio in Burgundy again, faces have returned, more monstrous and savage than ever. Certainly, the landscape gives me a rest, but only for a break. This is not disturbing to me, it only proves that I/it still have/has things to express through these figures. At the same time, I feel certain lightness in these pictures from a weekend, about the farcical aspect of the tragic - comedy of life.
What is amusing to note is that my studio in Burgundy multiplies my creativity: I'm fine since the room is better insulated from the heat; I listen to classical music relatively realistic level while working and I have a large table to work on several collages at once. After each weekend over there, I return with a dozen collages. That may be because our holidays there are now limited and my creativity adapts to the short stay.
How come the monsters returned? Just at the bend of a few illustrations devoted to Easter Island. One thing leading to another, the images are chained, the most explicit is one that diverts a Magritte painting. I could not help but think of Swift and ... Avatar, but especially remember my beloved painting of Henri Rousseau: The Sleeping Gypsy that I cherish from my childhood, because it symbolizes for me the dream and escape into serenity.

Le retour des monstres et des songes
Après avoir donné congé à mes visages et m`être concentré sur le paysage, une fois que j’ai retrouvé mon cher atelier, les visages sont revenus, plus monstrueux et sauvages que jamais. Décidément, le paysage m’offre une aire de repos, mais pour une pause seulement. Cela n’a rien de dérangeant pour moi, cela prouve seulement que j’ai (ou ça a) encore des choses à exprimer à travers ces figures. En même temps, je ressens une certaine légèreté dans ces images d’un week-end, comme si c’était du grand guignol dans la tragi – comédie de la vie.
Ce qui est amusant à noter, c’est que mon atelier de Bourgogne décuple ma créativité : j’y suis très bien depuis que la pièce est mieux isolée de la chaleur, j’y écoute de la musique classique en travaillant, à un niveau relativement réaliste et je dispose d’une grande table pour pouvoir travailler à plusieurs collages à la fois. Après chaque week-end passé là-bas, j’en reviens avec une dizaine de collages. C’est peut-être aussi parce que nos séjours là-bas sont dorénavant limités, ma créativité s’adapte à la brièveté du séjour.
Comment les monstres sont-ils revenus ? Tout simplement au détour de quelques illustrations consacrées à l’île de Pâques. Et de fil en aiguilles, les images se sont enchaînées, la plus explicite étant celle-ci qui détourne un tableau de Magritte. Je n’ai pu m’empêcher de penser à Swift et à … Avatar, mais surtout à mon tableau tant aimé du douanier Rousseau : La Bohémienne endormie que je chéris depuis mon enfance, car il symbolise pour moi le rêve et l’évasion dans la sérénité.

I do not know how but I know where and when I started gluing a landscape. It was the last weekend. As I've written before, it threw me back 10 years, to my series of "drips" transformed into gardens or landscapes with the addition of pieces of pasted paper. At the end of this series, I felt that the loop was completed and that I had to do something else. What I did. And now I find myself in the landscape again, as at the time. Till now I thought that the possibilities of landscape were more limited than the work on the human figure. Now what I find there is that I can play with the landscape, provided I free myself enough of physical laws, something that I could not quite imagine 10 years ago. This does not mean that I start making surrealism –the latter remains a simple ingredient, nothing more. So what does that to me getting back into the landscape? A pleasure to handle bits of images. I only have to go to the bottom of my pile of magazines to find Geo or National Geographic, but that is a detail. So for some collages to come, I'll continue to move through the landscape, giving my faces a little vacation.

Je ne sais comment, mais je sais où et quand j’ai commencé un paysage collé. C’était le week-end dernier. Comme je l’ai déjà écrit, cela m’a projeté 10 ans en arrière, vers ma série de « coulures » transformées en jardins ou en paysages grâce à l’ajout de morceaux de papier collé. A la fin de cette série, j’ai eu l’impression que la boucle était bouclé et que je devais faire autre chose. Ce que j’ai fait. Et maintenant, je me retrouve dans le paysage, comme à l’époque. Alors que pensais que les possibilités de faire des paysages collés étaient plus limitées que le travail sur la figure humaine. Or ce que je découvre là, c’est que peux jouer avec le paysage, à condition de m’affranchir suffisamment des lois physiques, ce que je n’arrivais pas très bien à faire il y a 10 ans. Cela ne signifie pas que je mets à faire du surréalisme – cela reste un simple ingrédient, rien de plus. Alors, qu’est-ce que cela me fait de me replonger dans le paysage ? Un grand plaisir à manipuler les bouts d’images. Il faut seulement que j’aille au fond de mes tas de revues, pour retrouver des Geo ou des National Geographic, mais ce n’est qu’un détail. Donc, pour quelques collages encore, je vais continuer à cheminer dans le paysage, donnant à mes « visages » un peu de vacances.

When I'm alone in my studio at 200 km from here, in a relatively isolated house, collages flow like out of a mysterious source, but always ready to quench my thirst. The crazier is that this heightened creativity does not exhaust me, does not put me in a very nervous state, as formerly. I'm quiet. Maybe it's because I put no barrier to this flow, do not judge what comes. Thus, the landscape has reappeared. I immediately thought of my series of gardens of the 2000s, the magic it creates. It is an oasis of peace away from all these tormented figures that haunt my collages even if the picture seems to vacillate. I am capable of such images for sure even if the i nature of collage strives for tearing, breaks and mutilation. Somewhere in me, there are also deep waters populated by monsters over unfathomable depths. And they come to the surface, providing a staggering spectacle.
The image of Medusa, which is terrifying, a power of the image I jealous. But sometimes you have to release your grip, letting the image grow quietly and, after a rest, go out on an adventure in search of monsters.

Quand je suis seul dans mon atelier à 200 km d’ici, dans une maison relativement isolée, les collages coulent comme d’une source mystérieuse, mais toujours prête à m’abreuver. Le plus fou, c’est que cette créativité exacerbée ne me fatigue point, ne me met pas dans une fébrilité extrême, comme jadis. Je suis tranquille. Peut-être est-ce parce que je ne mets pas d’obstacle à ce flot, ne juge pas ce qui vient. Ainsi, le paysage est réapparu. J’ai immédiatement pensé à mes séries de jardins des années 2000, à la magie qui s’en dégageait. C’est une oasis de paix, loin de toutes ces figures tourmentées qui hantent mes collages, même si l'image semble vaciller un peu. Je suis capable de telles images aussi, c’est vrai, même si le collage de par sa nature appelle des déchirements, des cassures, des mutilations. Quelque part en moi, il y a aussi des eaux profondes peuplées de monstres difformes au-dessus d’abîmes insondables. Et cela remonte à la surface, offrant un spectacle sidérant.
L’image de la Méduse qui pétrifie, un pouvoir de l’image que je jalouse. Mais quelquefois, il faut relâcher son emprise, laisser l’image s’épanouir tranquillement, puis repartir à l’aventure, à la recherche des monstres.

This collage doesn’t look very complicated, doesn’t it? Yet there’s not much left of the original idea.
10:29 It starts with a cut out lying randomly on a reproduction (Uccello). And I decide to fix that idea, thinking about Arcimboldo, saying to myself, well that’s not a great idea, but let’s try to do something with it.

10:30 Having shaped the chin, I look for another suit.

10:36 This changes the whole picture a lot, as it covers partially the turban.

10:39 But I have to go on: the face seems too distant to me. It’s a feeling that I know from other collages. I need the collage picture jump into my face. (I wrote on this in my former post). So, let’s do it with this fragment from a huge face. Yes! It looks really weird. I might stop here, but the turban is… disturbing me.

10:44 Another big fragment from that same face will give the right expression to the face and somehow, I’m back to Arcimboldo who demonstrates so well the passage of time in his paintings. But the underlying Uccello is hidden, no more princess, no more dragon, but in fact the dragon has won since he is the profile now. Or is it death?

Confusion
This collage was so messy that I decided to fix 2 moments before the final picture.
When I was much younger, this kind of process, not knowing what’s coming out if ever, feeling that things are going wrong, out of control, just made going nuts, confronting me with my incapacity of resolving the puzzle.
This time, I let it go. I still feel a little uneasy about this collage, but I decided to baptize it “Confusion” because I think that this reflects my own state during its creation and what is displayed.
Making a collage is always at the risk of confusion. All these alien fragments fight one against the other and deserve some artistic tricks to hold them together, to tie them up in the picture field.
Here the collage seems to “work”, but the meaning is so … confusing! It started with a ganja smoker and a baroque nude with a Disney head. And it finished with the big girl behind them. I won’t dare to speak about trinity (a religious term totally inadequate here), I prefer to say: trio or threesome because of the ambiguity of the relationship between the figures. My wife thinks I might be the naked man but then who’s the other guy? I am confused does she really think that I am that helpless comic-figure? After all, why not, it’s only a messy collage anyway. The next one is already begun and, for sure, nobody will ever think that I projected myself in it – even though…

I am currently reading David W. Galeson's : Old masters and young geniuses ,The two life cycles of artistic creativity. He distinguishes between conceptual artists (young geniuses)who"find" new ways of making art and experimental artists (old masters) who search for perfection their whole life long and make their best works rather late.
I must range myself under the second definition.
But here is a citation from Paul Valéry :
For any given artist, what does his work signify? A passion? A pleasure? A means, or an end? For some, it dominates life; for others, it is part of it. According to their natures, some will pass easily from one work to another, tear up or sell, and go on to something quite different; others, on the contrary, become obsessed, involved in endless revision, cannot give up the game, turn their backs on their gains and losses; like gamblers, they keep doubling the stakes of patience and determination.

Well, I feel concerned by the comparison with the gambler. I just cannot give up, completely hooked on my collage,
it’s an obsession and the more I am gluing, the more I feel compelled to do so, sacrificing social events, exhibitions, vernissages etc. Luckily, I feel compelled to play golf too, pulling me from my desk. But I don’t dream of travels, the dream is on my desk. Where does this lead me? I have not the slightest idea, living from one collage to another, obsessed with the idea of making more and more of them. Like a collage machine. (Till death or illness will do us part.

add.: I'm really not desperate about this. On the contrary: this categorization helps me to understand why I couldn't find my "way" at once . Velazquez painted his Meninas at the age of 57, that's quite late isn't it? I discovered collage in the 60ies and practiced it a lot, but I became really conscient about it when I was myself in the 60ies... And I feel free now to make my collages in every way I want to or can imagine. That's why I make so many of them and particularly this year.

Well I am fine, I underwent yesterday a small operation of the eyelids below, I couldn’t see well after it for the rest of the day. Today, I’ve made another collage, called “Borgne” (one-eyed).
Any connection to what happened yesterday?
For sure, but it was more about making disrupted faces. But you’re right. The eyes stare indeed out of the picture.
You often make eyes that stare at the onlooker. Do you have any explanation for that?
Well, I guess it’s because it makes the picture behave like a face. Deleuze compared a picture to a face, I agree with that and would say that this effect is even stronger when the picture is hung up, that it is vertical like a person without a body. A picture is a ghost. Or an apparition if you prefer.
But you lately made some collages filled with figures, a sort of panorama, where the point of view seems far away.
Yes that’s exactly the opposite, often used in miniatures or religious sceneries. In fact, those collages come from such material. They are more distant, you can dominate them easily as you’re supposed to have a large view. The interest in making them is to create arabesques; like in Carolingian miniatures for ex. There is no real foreground, only background. Modern photography goes very close to the people in order to fill the foreground. In my near field collages there is no real background, just a presence. Régis Debray would speak of religious aura or something like that. As I am always searching something strong, there is only the foreground, deformation and shrill colors. But color doesn’t go so well with human faces or bodies – it becomes Avatar-like or sci-fi. And I don’t look for that. That’s why I consider myself as a realist not as a surrealist.
But some aspects of your art are connected to surrealism.
Yes, the experimentation around Breton is something I cherish very much, but my roots lay in German expressionism, with a zest of Dada. But when I reflect about that, I think much more about mannerism and baroque painting, because of the madness of these paintings, without their religious program. But maybe I am too blind to see that on behalf of myself. I just go on making my daily collage, at least when I am inspired, and let the rest be.

THE OLD MAN AND THE DOLL
It’s curious how the collages’ flow goes. Today, I said to myself: I’m tired, I shot a hole in one, it’s 24°C and I don’t have the slightest idea about making a collage. To set my mind on rest (why do I have to do that?), I lazily put half of a picture on another – definitely not inspiring! So I went to other occupations when shortly before supper, I returned to the desk. I got the idea of putting a greedy man with an ad of a girl in underwear. Soon I found the corresponding picture of a proud male on a red background. I cut out his arms and hands and placed the girl like a Barbie in his arms. But the man was looking away from the doll, he wasn’t involved. I quickly changed the head into an oversized fragment, which transformed the gesture in a clasp. At this moment I remembered what I had been told about an elderly man married to a much younger woman who calls after her when she disappears from his view, fearing to be left alone and dependent, after so many years of bullying, commanding and criticizing her. The woman is still there, but she’s inanimate. I felt quite sorry for that and when I look at my collage I am frightened myself. But isn’t that the proof that my collage is a good one?