Collage shortcuts

This time, I started taking pictures in the middle of the work. As I wasn't satisfied with it, I started modifying it. I must say that many of my recent collages are the result of a fierce battle, more than in the previous years. Is it the mark of constant urge to do something different? The loss of an easy creative vein? When I am fighting with my collage, I always refer to Picasso, in the Clouzot movie, struggling with a big painting and leaving it finally at one moment. As my fingers were a bit shaky, please forgive me the low quality of the pics.

This collage illustrates what I said about sacrifying a quite satisfactory state of the work. Enjoy!

Coming back from a family meeting in Hannover/Germany and sitting in the plane for Paris, I heard some French words and immediately, violently felt at home, free. Why did I experience this sensation of imprisonment in Hannover? I can identify two reasons. The first is the way how people of my German family deal with norms, their narrow-mindedness, their lack of humor and of wit. The second reason is biographical. I was born in 1941 under Hitler from a Jewish mother whose family came from Russia, and a German father deeply rooted in Northern Germany. I learned my origins by chance from a third person, at home origins were no topic of conversation after the war. I felt torn between two origins and decided later to choose the French language as my home country, a sort of middle way. So, my roots: Germany (Europe) had trapped my family; the only issue was death (the frontiers to Switzerland and the US were closed to us). Staying in the country would have implied an unbearable proximity with the possible accomplices of a tradition that had aimed at wiping me out. When I was 19 I made a break and went to… Switzerland and made French my primary language. I cannot say that I feel like a Frenchman or a Swiss or a German, my roots don’t reach the common ground. That’s why I prefer the term “routes” (that is, “roads” instead of “roots”), even if this entails some difficulty in understanding the behavior of other people whose roots are nurtured by elements I reject. Being confronted with the habit of talking and acting as if roots could be taken for granted makes me feel like an alien intruder who has no air to breathe. « Being confronted with the habit of talking and acting as if roots could be taken for granted makes me feel like an alien intruder who needs to hide

Does this explain my collages and why I create them? I don’t think so. My mother liked to draw; her brother Leo was an artist and one of her sisters- Anya- too. But maybe the split in my origins could have exerted an influence behind my back? Indeed, in my opinion collage is often about putting things together. And here again, I favor routes over roots, preferring the mobility of collage over more established means of expression. Even an installation seems grounded to me. But this doesn’t mean that I reject any roots, on the contrary, I cherish the great masters, the great schools of the past, but I try to follow my own route.

The following snapshots from the making of this collage seem to me quite interesting, as there were many transformations before the final picture. I experienced it like a fight (about 1.30hs without lifting my head from the desk), and the outcome illustrates it somewhere. Enjoy!








For the bigger picture of Sumo

I must confess, my life is desperately eventless these days. Nothing romanesque or romantic. Just plain days.After two weeks spent in our house, enjoying my spaceous studio, gardening, leisuring in the sun, playing golf on a course or in our garden, I am just fine. The weather is so beautiful, so warm, that I want to be outside, not at my desk. But still, I make my daily collage. Those are not banals, they're getting weirder every day. Banality is not in my brain. Maybe there's a relationship between banality and collage? But no, in the past, they were associated with big interior revolutions. So there must be something going on, a sort of automatic pilot for collage. But how does it know its route? Maybe all the inspiration comes from my childhood. When I am making greedy mouthes with bare teeth for ex., my mind gives me a hint to fairy tales (Grimm of course), scary looking people, or just imaginary monsters that made me hide my feet and hands under the blanket at night. There were no special events going on neither, but in my head...

I just have achieved my 2000th collage and put on my web site. Frankly, I am really surprised by this number, counting the last 50 in "years". Now I am in 2001 already, getting closer and closer to 2009. How many will I be able to make in the future. Can I maintain the quality I am after? When I was young I dreamt of one single masterpiece, bringing me glory and wealth. And there I am, with my A4 sheets, which are fragile, to be handled with care, away from direct sunlight (I refuse to varnish them - they would become a painting). But I love them all. And if I can, I'll go for another thousand.

I am working on babies because there are suddenly so many pictures of happy couples with new born children. Sometimes, I suspect them of just posing for the camera , like that women with an octuple breed.
And I remember what one of my students - who was living alone in a flat while her mother was living abroad - told me about it: "It's just while we are young that they are so good parents, when we are getting older, they abandon us." I feel anyway that there is too much baby care, too much focus. And when the child doesn't behave corresponding to what he got from his parents ("everything" they get Ritalin.
Have a look on my site from no.1991 to 1994

Dear Berni,
As I was looking at your collection of collages from the sixties-seventies, I felt that you have made some progress since. Indeed, your former works are illustrative- narrative or a mere patchwork – they seem quite naïve to me I must say.
I understand much better some negative reactions from professionals that you received so badly then: they surely saw immediately the shortcomings, whereas you were blind to them. Because you were sure making some great art. You were stuck in illusion about yourself and your works. I know I can tell you that rather crudely because it’s remote in the past.
I think that this a real chance for you to get rid of an erroneous conception of yourself and your artistic biography. In fact you were born to your own style in 1999 and all the rest is a long and difficult way to it. And a different attitude regarding your work: always as important as ever, but more relaxed and more lucid. Traces of your ancient “style” subsist in several of your paintings with collage: they resemble too much to your old style by their illustrative manner – you should leave painting and concentrate on collage, at least for some time. And, please, go to the attic and discard the old rubbish, it makes no good keeping those unworthy paintings.
Sincerely yours
Inreb

Making some order in my slides, I found some pictures of my collages from the sixties and seventies which are all lost. Some of them, I remember, were made with authentic documents I inherited after my father's death in 1974. The one I want to talk about is an enquiry sent by the German Gestapo, the secret policy of the Third Reich:
In fact they wanted to talk about my mother. And the problems began. I mixed the document with the cut out silhouette of an SS officer through which you can see some architecture. The inhuman character of the institution is meant to be demonstrated by this artifice. 35 years after I must say that I wouldn't handle the subject in the same way, but I still feel the sincerity in it. Still there is some ambiguity between the silhouette and the main character of the collage: my father. He had been a German officer in world war I, and one of the rare righteous during the Nazi period, saving his family and several people from deportation and death. So the collage is more about the persecutors than about the heroes, a comprehensible sin of a descendant of a family that has suffered a lot during those times. Today I feel more about building a monument to the glory of those who dared/chose to resist.

I am currently participating at an exhibition in Longview Museum of Fine Arts Texas. The title of the exhibition proposed by Cecil Touchon is Under Influence. My contribution, as you can see is quite disrespectful because I think that many (famous) painters painted just for their living, often without real commitment. Of course I could have chosen another collage that pays homage to Picasso for ex., but this is quite evident in my eyes as the forerunners or great defunct masters don't deserve my tribute and I don't want to glorify myself with their prestige. Ad my personal trait is a certain taste for mockery. I just can't see art as a kind of modern religion, I see it more as a road to perfection.
And to close this post, a Picasso-inspired collage.