Collage shortcuts

Sometimes I am on an erotic collage and as I show some on my website, here is my position.
Looking at erotic pictures has always been quite a pleasure for me, at least since puberty. Making an erotic picture is quite enjoyable even now, but not my primary goal at all. I am after form and expression through it. Most erotic works seem all too conventional to me, and erotism need new stimuli. A recent collage I'd qualify as erotic shows a girl.

Why does it seem erotic to me? Well there are some stereotypes like the eyes looking at you, a bare breast, the gesture of undressing, as in so many ads. Erotism comes here from a promise, from an extrapolation of the situation.
This is different from porn, where the sexual act is crudely shown. No art in my eyes. The only collages where I did so were taken from japanese prints where the scene is despicted in a refined manner. Anyway, cinema has - logically - taken over still pictures. But let's go back to my collage. Looking at it, I feel that there is some mystery in it. And that is it what turns me on - as in my other collages. Because I always want to surprise myself.

Another collage. I have been working a little on manipulation in collage 1971 and came by chance to the theme of the scapegoat. First I saw the ropes and the rest followed quite easily. The victim is a theme I treated several times in painting and collage. Surely because my family has been persecuted by the Nazis and the fundamental question about it: why?

The link to the collage.

I try to work every day, to make at least one collage, that’s my rule. It is evident that I can’t hold this rhythm exactly, but I keep it as my stake. Even if I don’t feel like it, I just move some bits of paper on a sheet – in order to keep in touch. This discipline is very hard to initialize, but after some time, it becomes a routine. Maybe it is easier for me now that I am older. When I was young, I worked like a volcano – sleeping mostly with sudden violent outbursts. I didn’t like the intermezzi, they scared me, I used to question myself filled with doubt. Creative outbursts are very strong experiences and I love them when they occur. But I have tried to discipline myself in order to produce a constant flow of pictures. And the outburst? They still occur when I am on a collage that stands out from the others. Yesterday, when I was awaiting the verdict of my doctor, I couldn’t sit down and make a collage. So I moved pieces of paper, my small desk is now in a mess, I go on moving bits of paper here and there, nothing fabulous happens, so I’ll publish a photo of this mess.

Well, 2 hours later, I made it! But not with the pictures on my desk... A sudden outburst.

The link to the bigger picture.

This collage has been lying around for two days at least. I was looking for a twist of the head. I tried different solutions but none worked to my satisfaction because the new head looked quite uninteresting (2). So I tried something radically different: the footballer.The placement was evident, I just needed to complete the head, get the red heart and a bit of hair. The result seems rather inspired to me, so I decided to publish the - very approximate - making of it. An interesting idea that led me was the art of cutting fish for sushis: I tried to be very "japanese" in my cuts.

For a bigger view

Saw a painting of Sophie Taeuber-Arp reproduced in a German newspaper . I was stunned how this triptych from 1918 appears today after September 11th. The 2 planes circling in the sky of the city seem like vultures. The form of the triptych goes back to altar pieces. The angels have retreated, leaving a trace in form of mere birds - who feed on carrion. And the city is empty. Time seems suspended, just before or after a calamitous event. We are alone and the sky is threatening us. I have tried to illustrate this in a collage where it is the human madness that causes destruction and distress, namely the “inspiration” from sacred texts taken as a means of destruction.
In 2009, we can say that the disaster has occurred and that we may expect more of it. So far for the pessimistic side. Maybe this painting resonates in me because I have experienced a little bit of war myself with air attacks. And because I am waiting for the result of a biopsy (which turned out to be excellent - march 9th)). I am not scared, just anxious to know. It blocks a little bit my creativity but luckily not my sense of humor.

After those very serious considerations this is a joke about Brad Pitt and French pitre=clown. A pitrerie is an innocent joke like children do so often. The collage came without premeditation, my camera was just at hand and I wanted to share this smile with you.

The link

Well after the emptiness, here's another collage in progress. Nothing special about it, just the trigger for making it: the picture of the man and the bracelet and then the fingers in the hair. I usually don't like long adverts in my collages, but here the word "sérénité" made me muse on the meaning of this word. What is the condition for serenity? You might think from my writings that I am not really serene, but luckily I am an optimistic pessimist, so maybe that's why the face is making a wink.

To see the final collage enlarged click here

Sometimes there is no inspiration, the well is dry. As I am familiar with that,I’ll share my thoughts on it.
When I was young, I went through “phases” of intense creativity, painting every day and, some months after, felt completely burnt out. I then figured out that inspiration had left me for ever and I stood before nothing. I would go through something like a brief depression that lasted about the same time as my creativity phase. I usually turned to photography as some sort of replacement. And then, miraculously, the inspiration was back etc. More than I wished, the emptiness between creative periods lasted longer than it should. I ruminated about my lack of artistic power, the end of my artistic career etc. In brief, it was horrible. Every three years, after a long time of nothing, I radically changed my way of painting, because I was empty: when I started painting, I would feel like a beginner. I lived with these cycles till the 90ies. I then worked with industrial lacquer, letting it mix and flow with stunning outcomes. After a couple of years of this experimentation, I felt like repeating myself and I started gluing magazines photos in these abstract paintings, transforming them into “gardens” or “landscapes”. What struck me, was that the neighborhood of a photo transformed the abstract field into a something meaningful, realistic, in phase with the photo. The “emptiness” of the spot turned full. But again, I felt like being caught in a repetitive pattern. Apart from this gestural intermezzo, almost all my paintings were based on collages, but I considered the latter only as a way of finding new subjects for my paintings, destroying them when the painting was done. From 1999, after a discussion with a former student who told me that I was more present in my collages, I concentrated on collage as my principal means of expression, the paintings being a simple blow-up or a support for collage. Since then I have never experienced again the post-intense-creativity-depression or emptiness. The only thing that happens is dragging my feet when the weather is fine, when the sun smiles at me - I don’t feel then as to lock myself up in the studio.

With collage, inspiration comes quickly, day after day, I feel free. But when I have the impression that I am messing around, that nothing interesting will come out from my work, the fear of emptiness creeps again in my heart. Not for a long time, but still…

Continuing making order in my working space, I have found a painting from 2000 lying under paper rolls and other garbage on my cupboard. It was a shock.

The painting seemed so perfect to me that I immediately asked myself: am I on the right way? Was it a good thing abandoning this kind of painting? So, in order get my ideas a little clearer about that, I'll try to analyze the situation.
These paintings came after a series of abstract paintings made with industrial lacquer. I liked the hazardous outcome of these paintings. Later, I took them up and glued some figurative elements in them. The result seemed stunning to me. But after about 50 paintings in that style, I got bored of it and went over to "pure" collage. Looking back after 9 years, I consider this as a very happy period. But as all delights, I felt that I was repeating myself, that my paintings became too pleasant to my eyes. Comparing them to my collages, I felt that there was much more to do than landscapes. But I retained the idea of collaged (I said: "upgraded") paintings.

During a long discussion with my friend Chantal, she said that this painting was on the material aspect of painting, the flow of color. I said that it reminded me somewhere of Soutine's landscapes, a burst of energy. The painting is completely coherent in spite of the fragmentary character of the composition. This means that there is still "a painting", even if it is scrambled. Or, there is harmony. My later works are less coherent, they are disrupted. I think that I felt that these "gardens" were a bit of paradise in my artistic work, but that I had to go out in order to discover new territories, with stones and thorns I must admit, but I like - from time to time go back to this paradise lost: making very coherent collages or looking at these paintings from 1995-2000.

Recently, after moving a bookshelf in my working space, I discovered a Polaroid taped to the wall showing this collage:

And I went into some reflection. The collage dates from the seventies, from my first marriage, my two children being a little older than on the collage. What strucks me is the way the collage was done, if I compare it to my actual ones.
It seems to me much more “realistic” with relatively little intervention in the pictures themselves. But, looking at the content, there is much to say. First of all, the family is split – the “father” is up in the air whereas the mother and the children are on a deck, playing, sunbathing. But the deck is not level and its inclination menaces the group. Their base is not solid. Furthermore, the big waves from behind are another menace to the idyll. And the father is doing a somersault way up in the sky. In fact, the marriage was wrecked and my life took another turn some years later, a leap into freedom in fact. As to the newer picture:

even if the persons are distorted, they keep well together, with their differences and personal inner life. And the father is there. So the apparently “realistic” collage which appeals more easily to the beholder is in fact showing an endangered world whereas the deconstructed one is much more solid.