Collage shortcuts

In my house, I am very inspired. I have a large table on which I can spread my magazines, a nice stereo to work in music and especially a large separate room in the house. The collages succeed and I do not think too much by doing this. Only for a short wake in the middle of the night I'm trying to make the point: are they all good? Do I still have things to express or is it that I'm just repeating myself? What good is creating every day - it'll have to stop it one day anyway. And for who are these thousands of collages that almost nobody buys? Finally it is only in the moment of creation that I find my happiness, as also said H. Hesse. I know now that I am an experimental artist (Galenson) progressing continuously, but slowly in contrast to the conceptual artists who find their way in the 30ies. Me, I'm still looking, hoping to find the total artistic freedom down the road. This freedom, I associate it with the art of outsiders, without repeating their repetitive side of course, without creating other ways as my own requirement. It pushes me in a margin of the art world that I fully assume, even if the rejection of wealthy clients at Barclays still pains me a little - what is so disturbing and even repulsive in my pictures? I've been looking for the "picture", a perfection in the continuity of tradition ... For cons, it seems that having to fight to exercise one’s art is a guarantee of quality (Daniel H. Pink: Drive) whereas rewards incite ease. So I continue to arm myself with courage and discipline to continue my "late spring".

This collage reminds me of my childhood, when I spent six months in a kind of sanitarium in the Bavarian Alps, an institution called “High Light”, with Dutch nurses, sort of protestant nuns. I was five and my parents weren’t allowed to visit me because we lived in the British part and Bavaria was under American government. I was sent there because I was small and there was a risk of tuberculosis. These six months alone in this house were a terrible experience, as the nurses were more Sade-like creatures, having chosen me as their scapegoat. Elsewhere I described the horrible meals I was forced to swallow and that I spew out in the toilet at least once per week. I do not remember any pleasant moment, any kind word, any friend. I remember the snow at my arrival and that my father drove away. And the glorious prairies in springtime, as if heaven had come down into this hell. I guess that from this experience dates my mistrust of any religious institution or school and that this conviction has been reinforced later, when after a three months stay in paradise (Switzerland) with friendly people and my first love I integrated a first class at Waldorf school a couple of months late where a whole bunch of little devils cursed me every day. No, reality was terrible indeed, inside our home as outside, with a jealous, sadistic elder brother who would beat me up always every day and this horrible school where the teachers pretended to be good but weren’t. No wonder that I preferred to be sick instead of being in class. In those days, my parents never asked me how I was going, or how I felt. They just let me grow up, that’s all. I learnt self-suggestion, got fever and could stay in bed with books. And this so often that everybody thought that I was in a bad shape. My memories from thirteen years in this school are very poor: whenever I could I daydreamed and escaped reality. My emigration to Switzerland was a return to the three months paradise in Ouchy near Lausanne when I was six.
Now to the collage. How do I identify with the young infirm? It’s the isolation in a chaotic world where things aren’t how they should be and persons not what they were meant to. Later, when I started teaching, I was sure about one thing, to be never a Dutch nurse or a Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) teacher. As for my art, for sure it’s strength roots in my childhood, in the necessity of escaping a cruel world.

This collage reminds of another one that I have painted in 2004. The spirit is quite the same, but I see some evolution – if there were none it would mean that I am repeating myself and that would be a terrible statement.
So, 7 years after, what changed? The trick of changing the human head into an animal is identical. It’s the way the pieces are put together: in the painting, I have tried to smoothen the borders, in the 2011 collage, the torn pieces alternate with unbroken parts. This gives a different effect: bestiality and frailty, barbarism and doom. For sure that since 2007 things seem harder now and the hogs are getting fatter and fatter and many hopes are drowned. So I feel that my 2011 collage is less funny, less optimistic and much cruder. This won’t arrange my selling prospective, for sure. But my route goes in the direction of stronger expression, with the risk inherent to this choice.

18.4
These days I have been very creative - one collage follows another, sometimes several the same day. There is no link between them except me and the date. I doubt that there will be any big exhibition of them - anyway there are too many of them. So what is this for? There is no answer, I am just doing it, that's all. And I try to share my works with other people, hoping for some resonance somewhere.
One word about painting: in my workshop I could see that painting like an outsider artist frees the person and gives a lot of joy. If I should ever paint again, that's how I'd try to do.
19.4/20.4
A collage(111/2011) that changed quite a lot. At first, there was a text saying : et après? I felt that it was about making art. But then I found it too direct.I don't like preaching. So I hid it. I then sacrified two boys at the left for another picture of struggling men, creating a sort of melancholic god with many arms on one side as he unfolds some human history. But one can see in it the 2 sides of man - a kind of a dance between action and contemplation. (I'm not sure that this hits the nail...)
B.t.w. I feel a real urge to write something every day.

20.4
Today I transformed a Renoir. Funny because of the age of the dancers. And the man has no feet to stand on, he relies on the girl. Am I the same?

I must say that I very rarely get any comments here, so I am asking myself if there's any use continuing this blog. In fact, I have shown with pictures how I elaborate my collages, written down my doubts or interrogations, and from time to time something on the art of collage. In fact it all started with my “morning papers” (Julia Cameron) which soon became this blog. I conceived it as my diary and as the continuation of my teaching. Most of what I wanted to say has been said here and meanwhile, I moved to Facebook and Twitter where I post almost daily. So, for the moment I’ll make a break and see how I can live without this blog.

VICTORY ?
This collage starts with a picture of the Libyan rebellion. I choose it despite the two lifted fingers.

I than add another picture that hasn’t any connection with it except the fact that it fits well. The idea is the men’s figure taking over the women’s (left border).

I then put on the left arm again that I had taken off in no.2. This gives the central figure a nasty smile. But still, those raised fingers!

In the next picture, I am trying to work the space at right.

I like the strange, duplicated figure but it has nothing to do in this picture, I feel. So the next step is radical:

This fragment gives an outburst to the collage, it shouts. All I have to do now is cropping the right side and I will be done.

At the end, I am quite happy with this collage: one can see the “V” in it which gives it a strong composition despite its apparent disorder. And the meaning is a little mean, there’s a feast with drinks, burgers and a laughing woman, but the man at the left border with his rifle seems threatening. It’s not a definite victory, only an instant displayed here.

This collage goes quite easily. I choose a picture with "savages" and start hiding the letters on the bottom.

I then have the idea of introducing a white man in a sarcastic way with a mask (cf. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon).

I introduce a mix of white colon and savage.

But this makes me destroy the white man on the left, he's too present. I try an introduction of a tiny figure (Courbet) in the foreground.

The left side being too weak, I introduce a new element: better!

The collage is OK now, but a little bit boring in my eyes. I have to do something radical.

The final picture displays the idea I had when I introduced the white man: the church weighs when savages are missionized mixed with a bit of tourism, nepotism etc. That reminds me the book I made the cover picture for and the French translation of which we revised: The white man's burden, by W.Easterly.The disconnected picture of the cathedral wants to be the alien element in the collage, at the risk of disorganizing the whole. But I feel that it is worth the risk.

This collage escaped from destruction. The first idea is the cry with the projection of the hand:

The bottom of the picture doesn't satisfy me. I cut everything out, take the projecting hand away and look for a different context. I soon find it and stick the remaining mouth with some remainings of the baby face on the ad.

The slap appeares! The rest is only a matter of minor adjustments. I mean that the basic expression has been fixed by now. The change concerns the hair, I make it brighter in contrast to the men's.

The final picture is quite the same, just à little trimming of the upper boarder, some minor ajustments with PS and here it is:

As usual, the picture has changed a lot, it is like feeling some's way along in the darkness and finally getting to the light. Seen as it is displayed here, you can find that this is of little interest to because there is no visible connection between the beginnings and the outcome. Yes and no. The cry was an appeal to the onlooker, the picture addresses him with his pain, whereas now its passive and suffering, only the gesture has become less evident: a slap or a caress? Agression or consolation.
But that's up to you to decide, dear visitor.

These days I am making "narrative" collages. I understand by this word a collage that it is more on the illustrative side than on the formal, edgy one.
The question is: Am I a traitor to myself? Am I going back to simple illustration or surrealism?
Well, I hope not. It means to me that I am not the prisoner of any manner. Art, as I see it, is playing with forms and contents. The difficulty lies in the danger of repetition of artistic formulae or patterns. So I must experiment something different as often as I can and collage is very helpful to achieve that. So I am surprised to see what’s coming out and quite delighted. And looking closer at my latest collages, I see the shift in realism that I adore: exaggeration or highlighting, changes in scale etc.
So these collages are just coming to/from me and go their own ways. Am I free?
Well...

I was working on this collage today and from the start found it interesting to comment on it, so I took several pictures.

It started with a fragment lying ramdomly on the cover of a magazine yesterday night. I liked the geometrical shape of it.

This morning, I glued it on the cover and looked for some other pieces to fit. I took the skull that had been on my desk for several days. There I had a figure.

This made an urge for some legs. Easily found.

But now the figure and the background didn't match. I cut out the figure, glued it on a new background, took off the skull and tried a Caravagesque composition.

I intensified the gesture of holding the dead man, in order to express concern.

I might have stopped here. But the picture looked too "baroque" or "ancient" in my eyes, It missed some wit. This lead to the final picture.

Finally, death reappeared in the picture, holding its prey and greeting the audience. I acknowledge again the way collage works and how my hidden artists has its own ways, driving me by the means of insatisfaction. I started with an abstract pattern, just so and ended up with THE question - I had no intention to deal with this subject, nor am I oppressed, depressed, sick or so. But all these dead people in North Africa, in Japan get inside me by some invisible means.