Collage shortcuts

I must confess that I am more attracted to ancient masters than by contemporary art these days. I ask myself why I am so fascinated by painters like Ribera for ex. One argument is their mastership in suggesting the appearance of things and in arranging a painting in order to make it stunning. But in this they are not superior to ou modern movies, So there must be more. It lies in the subject itself, I think. And this question has been mine too during all my life as an artist. If we take the Allegory of Touch (Prado) the painting is very unusual. I immediately think of my own workshops where I make people draw what they touch - eyes shut, or let them draw, paint, sculpt without seeing what they are doing. At the same time the painting tells me something about the relationship between the artist and his work: he sees but he sees not during his work - at least I am not. So maybe I am really old fashioned, looking for meaning, for impulses to think. And these paintings seem to me as enjoyable as any comedy on stage or on screen. But why don't I paint any more? Because the times for this kind of art are over and luckily there are many masterpieces to enjoy as forever. But an artist of 2010 has to try something different, like all other forms of art. And lastly these artists surely had a more direct relationship to other humans and the world than our Western multimedia world. And that's what I feel when I look at Ribera's paintings.

For a long time, I have been wondering about the possibility of blowing up my collages which are generally A4. The solution I adopted had been painting the collage on canvas, as one can see in my paintings galleries, with the outcome that the original photographic character was lost. Later, I mixed painting with collage on canvas, but I felt limited by the size of the raw material which comes from magazines. Some people told me to make prints of them, but I feared that the imperfections of the original collage, like raster and moiré would make the result look awful. Still I always hoped to find a way to get bigger pictures. But a couple of days ago, I ordered two A4 collages as photo prints on canvas, each 60x90cm, in order to see what my newer collages would look like. The result is way above my expectations: it’s somewhere between a photo and an aerograph painting.
I’ll show them to my friends and see when I can show them in an exhibition. I intend to sell the original collage with a good scan so that it can be printed abroad (300$) or directly on canvas in Europe (350e).

AGRANDISSEMENTS DE COLLAGES
Pendant longtemps, j’ai réfléchi à la possibilité d’agrandir mes collages qui sont généralement de format A4. La solution que j’avais adoptée était de transposer le collage sur une toile peinte, avec pour effet la perte du caractère photographique de l’original, comme on peut le voir dans mes galeries de peinture. J’ai ensuite tenté de mélanger peinture et collage, mais j’ai souvent été freiné par le manque de photos de grand format. Quelques personnes m’avaient suggéré de faire des agrandissements photo, mais je craignais qu’on voie en grand les imperfections de l’original – trame et moiré –et que le résultat aurait l’air horrible. Mais il y a quelques jours, j’ai franchi le pas et j’ai commandé 2 tirages de 60x90cm chacun sur toile photo. Le résultat est au-delà de mes plus folles espérances : il se situe entre la photo et une peinture à l’aérographe.
J’ai l’intention de les présenter à mes amis et de voir si je peux les montrer dans une expo. En attendant, je vais les offrir à la vente, accompagnée de l’original pour une somme en-dessous des 350 €.

Having stopped painting, I acknowledged some changes in my way of making collages, as I am longer on my collages, paying more attention to the tiny details, esp. the junctures between the fragments. I just ordered two enlargements of collages on photo canvas in order to test the possibility of bigger prints in order to make an exhibition. More on that in a week or so.
Another change concerns my way of taking photos. This has been another passion of mine since I was a little boy. With my new camera, I feel that I look at the world through the viewfinder like a painter. And I would like to compare two paintings with very recent photos. In fact, I like my photos better because they are more graphic, more abstract.

My conclusion is that having left behind me easel, canvas, brushes, colors and palette, I have in fact opened the door to other possibilities.
Ayant arrêté de peindre, j’ai constaté quelques changements dans ma manière de faire des collages, puisque je porte mon attention maintenant également sur les détails, notamment sur les jonctions entre les fragments d’images. J’ai d’ailleurs commandé deux tirages d’après collages sur toile photo afin de tester la possibilité d’agrandir mes collages et de les présenter ainsi dans une expo. Davantage dans une semaine env.
Un autre changement concerne ma manière de prendre des photos, ma passion depuis mon plus jeune âge. Avec mon nouvel appareil, je regarde le monde à travers le viseur comme un peintre. Et j’aimerais comparer deux peintures avec 2 photos. En fait, je préfère les photos qui me semblent plus graphiques, plus abstraites !
Ma conclusion est que l’abandon de mon chevalet, de la toile, des pinceaux et des couleurs et de la palette, m’a ouvert la porte vers d’autres possibilité.

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

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.

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.

If one may think that some women are attracted to artists – I don’t know if the reverse is true – the question is if it’s rewarding for both parts. In my personal case, I must say that I never met a woman who took me for a genius or had an uncritical admiration for my artistic work. But I came to meet some of those male artists who succeeded in being the point of admiration of a flock of women. Is there any difference in quality of the work of worshiped artists to those of less sexually attractive ones? From my little experience I must say that it is just the contrary. Maybe I am jealous, so let’s go over to the point of this topic. In a traditional conception like in Henry James’ The Lesson of The Master, man is hindered in his artistic pursuit by marriage because of the everyday needs of his family. And women are mainly made for having children… Well, for me it’s just bullshit. It depends only on organization and one can learn that. That has been my case. And it hasn’t hindered me of making art while taking care of my family. What if both are artists?. Well, I think it would be better for them to work in different fields. In John Updike’s Seek my face we can see how one (male) artist blocks the work of his spouse. Only after his death she will be able to make her own career. But still there are many examples of couples of artists working together. Coming back to myself, I must say that my wife doesn’t interfere at all with my work. She respects my needs and my work and gives me the emotional comfort I deserve. And I, in return, I try to do the same. So, marriage is not the problem, it’s the artist(s) and their companion.

In his book Auge und Wort (“The Eye and the Word”) Werner Spies opposes the pretentious & massive nazi-art made for eternity by the pompous sculptor Arno Breker to the fragility of collage. Assembling heterogeneous elements of tawdry stuff is in his eyes a fight against the norm, against the “purity” of art, of human races etc. and against the mania of being always right.
I cannot agree more. The fragility of a collage is one of its main virtues. Collages won’t last, art speculators shun them and even propagandists keep their hands off. Collages capture the instant, not eternity. By mixing things up, they fail to illustrate slogans. As for the purity, when I hear this word, I associate it with sterilization and void - or with “pure pork” in a sausage where it may be appropriate and enjoyable. But art – not unlike a sausage - is never made out of completely "pure" ingredients, all its parts carry the traces of countless modifications acquired throughout the history of pictorial representation. Indeed, just as in biological evolution, every new product is a mix of second-hand ingredients. And a collage, to my mind, is diversity displayed, without the ideological domination of a central point of view. I wouldn’t pretend fighting totalitarianism but I pretend doing works of art that cannot be read in an ideological way, in one unique way of thinking (Manichaeism). The trick I employ is to make the beholder hesitate between several possibilities, for example between the interpretation of a form as being the subject or the background.

Or, with respect to the content, a thing may be either this or that, or it may be both this and that, like being old and young at the same time.

Speaking of Warhol, Spies sees in his work an analogy with cloning, everything being essentially the same and … pure. One can wonder why this art appeals so much to everybody. Collage is always uncertain, it reproduces but it messes everything up. That’s why it puzzles the beholder. My problem is that I am bewildered with Breker, Warhol etc. and not with Goya, Dix and dada… Am I normal?

When I started painting – I was 15 – my mother showed me a flower still life in our living room and asked me why I didn’t paint that way. And my father looking at a beautiful sunset suggested a painting. I must admit that I disappointed both of them quite a lot. But I felt already that my personal taste was quite different from theirs - even if I have found out that you can make more money with painted flowers or sunsets than with my style.
Can’t I appreciate a bouquet or a sunset? Sure I do, but I wouldn’t paint it as I see it. It remembers me that when I travelled, I found the places less interesting than in the books where they were described. Grass is always green, and you have to be a genius to see/paint it red (Gauguin, Jacob’s struggle with the angel) or like Kandinsky in his early paintings. What I mean is that it is difficult to render a sensation in a very conventional way. Imagine a British gentleman in a silent movie declaring his (muted) flame to a mute dame.
When I started painting, I started with color. Green heads, orange hair, like German expressionists. Some ten years later, I was in a deep crisis. I couldn’t put the colors together anymore. There was always something wrong. I chose to paint monochrome for over a year, adding slowly one color , then two and so on. Now I understand that I didn’t know how to escape sweetness. At the same time, I started making collages, in black&white .In collage, I think forms and content, edges, cuts and fragments becoming a whole. I don’t build on color because it would lead to Matisse, or something that would become so sweet, so nice - a lollypop. Dramatic paintings are without much color, like Caravaggio, Goya, Doré. I feel closer to them. When I appreciate a sunset in a Munch painting it’s because of the strange colors in the sky, the dramatic feeling I read in it.
When my mother died, my brother brought the painting she had shown me to an expert – it was a worthless copy. That’s exactly what I feel about painted flower bouquets. I prefer the real thing. Same for the sunset.
I stick with collage – nobody can copy them and you will never meet the real thing.