Collage shortcuts

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.

The man in the train is a theme that I painted years ago. It was the picture of woman leaning against a train window, with a very melancholic Scandinavian landscape behind: mountains and in-between a gap with white light. The whole painting was monochrome, in cold blue. At that time I liked to travel alone but could feel solitary at moments.

Maybe too that the outlook of my life wasn’t so enthusiasming as it should have been. Another version of this theme vas a horizontal painting figuring a again a man in a compartment with an egg on a tablet and a futuristic scenery behind the window. Images of melancholy, of missed occasions, of mysterious fore comings? I was in my 30ies then and just after a terrible drama and divorce.
My collage has reminded me (after completion) of these fore runners. And I see some differences. First of all in the general Stimmung : it looks much funnier to me. The figure is a bit nosy, its napoleonesque gesture , haircut and clothes seem quite outdated compared to the outfit of the bathers. It’s a tourist coming from another time, let’s call him Memling. Memling doesn’t pay attention to what’s going on behind and under him, he doesn’t care about swimming, sunbathing or other holiday attractions. He just passes by. Only the bored left eye might give a hint to some melancholy whereas his nose is already on the beach.
I must say too that the collage seems more improvised to me than my paintings, I am tempted to say that I gained some pictorial freedom and a greater sense of humor, looking at life with some distance, at least sometimes.

Reading Robert A. Burton’s book On being certain, I feel comforted about my many doubts concerning what I am creating day after day. For example, passing at my brother's after several years of absence, I discovered on the walls some of my earlier works. Looking at them, I felt pleased for the fact that displayed them but I was tempted to "better" them. Indeed, as I see it now, these works are a little maladroit. But when I made them, I felt like a king. Since then, I guess I instructed my hidden artist to be a harder judge, at least I hope so. In those years, I resented some vanity in saying or thinking that I was an ARTIST, a chosen human. Thank God, this is gone now so that I can focus on the work itself and leave my ego not out of the game but not interfering too much. What I learn in this book that the Buddhist conception of reality (maya) is a brilliant insight in the way the human conscience functions. So why do I do what I am doing? Because I don't know a more pleasant way to get some insight in the creative possibilities of the human mind. And then of course, the temptation of building up an opus magnus, or better of trying to reach for perfection, to go farther. Collage means to me expression, not a quest for beauty and harmony. When there is harmony it occurs despite of expression, a the result of a long struggle with the fragments. Whereas painting refers to beauty and harmony – at least as I see it. I always had to struggle to squeeze out the expression. The only paintings that privileged expression over beauty were from artist like Caravaggio or Goya. And my search is for expression over harmony, surely because beauty is often an illusion in my eyes and it becomes so easily stereotyped.
Here is the link to the bigger picture.

I like this grotesque collage because it is quite amusing. And that’s what I am looking for in these days before my hospitalization. The figure is jumping across the bourgeois interior, sailing through the room - where to? I don’t know how and where he’ll land, if he’ll hurt himself or just get safely on the ground. Or does he just pursue his flight? And he’s looking a bit awkward, quite surprised by his sudden power. And hope this will be same for me. I don’t care what kind of leap I’ll do, but, please, let it be a big one, Mr. Chairman.

And here is the making of it:

In the weeks before my operation, I continue making collages. The previous post "Angst" has been a kind of expression of my worst feelings. Since then, I have been at my desk again, at my daily collage. This one is quite joyful. It started very differently!

The most important change for me is from 3 to 4, where the fearful expression changes into a smile. I feel that this is the way to go in my life, whatever may happen.

Something is nagging me deep inside: fear. Because I have to undergo an important operation. When the doctor told me the bad news, I couldn’t believe it. But when a friend mailed me lots of articles entitled “Cancer…”, I felt worse and worse. What can I expect? What can I do now?
Anyway, as much as I reflect on it, it doesn’t change the fundamental fact, the mortal issue of life. So all I can do is to go on, do my job and put some distance between this idea and my everyday life. The Jewish philosopher Rosenzweig explains that we only manage to live by forgetting that we are mortal. Till now, I managed to make one collage related to my inner state. It is called ANGST, a word that expresses what’s going on in my guts. I prefer “angst” to “fear” because it’s existential, not about a precise menace. As I tend to focus on myself and my misery and to forget the others, some humor becomes mandatory. Beside its tragic expression, my collage becomes comical because of the exaggeration – a sad clown, helpless and lost but proud. Ah, artists…

Some associations with this collage:
Surrender to a "divine" message, losing one's reason: a grin, an open mouth. Manipulation: the string which is pulled from above, always ending with death. Not very optimistic a collage, but there is - of course - some black humour. It might, for ex., figure a kind of opera. A high pitched soprano with a man pulling the string to get the curtain down or trying to fetch a mini spear in order to shut her down. Many interpretations are possible because collage stimulates associations. I, the author, suggest some of them but there are more. Another example: the white grinning face with a white shirt - Rembrandt's so called Nightwatch (it's daylight)? Did I think at Rembrandt? Yes, I did, but afterwards. And what about the three hands of the character pulling the string/lance? He looks so contradictory: retreating and going foreward at one time - what's going on in him? Contradictory feelings I guess. Is the circle of the hill between them the rest of a halo? If it is, then there are maybe some religious connotations, for ex. what remains from the original message is pure gesticulation (as it used to be in many paintings of the past). Another idea: Gulliver? The flagellation of Christ?
Collage is a wonderful means of creativity!

PS I don't know if I'll be back here in the next weeks as I have to undergo an operation. Nothing terrible, but a couple of days in hospital. Till then, keep glueing, cutting or just thinking.

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.