Collage shortcuts

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.

Very often people ask my wife if it isn’t too hard for her to live with a man like me (nobody asks me about my wife). Well, the fact that we have been married for over 20 years now seems to prove the contrary. But she might be a masochist or my slave. So let’s talk about the idea behind that question. It is the romantic view that the work of art and the artist are the same, the work being the mirror of his soul, or mind. In literature this is known as the theory of reflection, saying that a novel reflects for instance the social conditions etc. Or in psychoanalysis, consider C.G.Jung’s remark about modern art and Picasso, which states that unconventional forms must be seen as the expression of deep rooted chaotic sentiments. Deformation of the “natural” form (= the usual way of representing things) is seen as the expression of an inner disorder – the extreme being madness – revealing deep suffering. And this can happen (Van Gogh) but this direct link between the author and his work is not automatic. Think of sexual fantasies: if they were the expression of our inner disorder, we might justify the existence of some sort of Inquisition because of the danger they would represent.
So, what’s about me? I would describe myself as quite balanced in character,as terribly normal. What I experiment in art has no relationship to my character, save my curiosity and joy of playing with pictures. I am not my picture, my "children" are different from me. But I am the (artistic) child of Picasso. Going back to 19th century academism, to a sort of idealized form would be boring, sterile. I feel myself as an explorer of new forms, new possibilities in art. Is that insane?

Aragon’s famous word: “It’s not the glue which makes the collage” means that the content of a collage is independent from its material. In the same way we can say that it is not the material that matters but how it is employed.
This struck me when reading the report on the latest Saatchi exhibition. A chinese artist, Zhang Huan is praised for his use of “incense ash collected from Shanghai temples; a laboriously involved process of weekly gathering and sorting, isolating the vestiges into the indexical categories of texture and pigmentation which Zhang uses to 'paint' his images. This medium has multiple significations: it is the actual substance of prayers, the dust of death and rebirth, the allegorical weight of spirits. Emitting an overwhelming scent throughout the gallery space these pieces recycle the hopes and wishes of others, sharing a cathartic ambience of cleansing and purity.” .

What do we exactly SEE? A photographic painting. Nothing more, nothing less. So it is the “glue” that makes the artwork here.
Nothing against that. And the artist is very skilful, his painting nifty. His intentions surely of high standard. But still, as Aragon says…

Everybody speaks about the economical crisis, just like wakening up from a nice and comfortable dream. As if things were to go on like they were before. As if one might speculate on the future. In my eyes, the crisis is only a moment of lucidity, where illusions are confronted with reality. (Indeed, as Samuel Johnson said : “When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four”.
Another crisis is the changed status of art itself, from a kind of elitist ideal to a luxury brand, artists changing from giants into commercial labels. We can deplore it but we can't change it. For the traditional artists inoculated with artistic purity, this race for money looks like treachery. Though I tend to distrust their high ideals, I am certain that many of them were at least firmly attached to the humanistic tradition. And nowadays? No doubt, artists are very instructed, they graduate from universities. But I ask myself if they cultivate a fresh look on art, like a child for example. The worst example for me are Chinese neo-pop artists, whitewashing the old Western standards.

On a personal level, as an artist, I am familiar with crisis, because I experience it with every work I am on. I mean that while painting or gluing, I am seized by doubt. I am questioning myself about originality, quality of inspiration, the point of making another collage or painting. In spite of being in a dream-like state, I am unavoidably depicted in my work. I cannot avoid looking at a mirror, whatever it reflects.

Would it be better to be stuck in complete illusion, as many artists are? To me, it would sound false, I would feel like performing in a soap opera (like at a vernissage). I must admit that this would be much more comfortable, if only I could lock out my conscience. But then, what would my works look like?

Back to crisis: in Mario and the Magician Thomas Mann shows how a manipulator makes illusions. A contemporary example is Bernie Madoff, with whom I share the first name and a bit of his origins. But whereas he would bewitch the rich to get their money, I only want to charm your minds, for pleasure and contemplation.

Most paintings are politically acceptable, at least for an open minded or instructed person. If they weren't, just let time pass by and, oh wonder, they loose their power of disturbance. Let's take Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, a scandal in 1863. And now? Maybe it would be an affair in Teheran, but not in our Western countries. Painters have a hell of a time now to shock the public, because we have learned to accept anything from art. The only shocking media is photo or video or sometimes theatre, because of the universal belief that they directly, without human intervention, reflect reality. So, artists commit shocking photos and very disturbing videos. Does that mean that paintings are less interesting now than photos or videos? No, if artists accept the fact that painting is relatively innocuous to society and that if they want to shock, to wake up, to focus on unexpected aspects of visual esperience, they should reflect on the choice of their media. This is what I did in the sixties. I looked at my paintings, then at my collages and found the latter more exhilarating. The language of collage is understood by all and the elements I extract from magazines are photos or art reproductions. So I get a mix of respectability ("painting") and of reality ("photo"), chic and shock if you want. And the manipulation of the photographic fragments gives me some mastery over the flood of printed matter, the freedom of how I associate them and about I want to talk. My subjects? They are of our time because they come from fresh magazines,they are ore have been news. In collage, I can speak about everything that's hot, and to everybody, instructed or not. In painting I conversewith the masters, with museums, with art history to connoisseurs. So I came to combine painting with collage. And I noticed that, under the influence of collage, my paintings began to look fresher, more vivid, as coming alive. Often I ask myself if I am such a bad painter that I couldn't even kiss the feet of let's say Picasso. This is surely true. But still, the fact remains that paintings don't give me the link to what's going on now, they don't provide the kick collage does. Strange indeed, because it is made of prints, secondary stuff.
(Thanks to my friend Markus Haller for reviewing this post)

Can collage save the world? No. Can collage change the world? No. Can collage be used for propaganda? No (I know, the soviets tried so, but they soon preferred a more traditional way of illustrating political ideas, like all dictatorships). Let's play a little game and try to associate: Pop art & Mao ? Yes, no problem (Warhol who even thought of many other dictators as subjects), Jeff Koons and … maybe Mugabe in a golden, polished giant blowup? Yes, possible. Collage and Putin? Collage glorifying a dictator? You bet. A contradiction in pics. You do it and your end is near. Christian symbols in plastic, neon, balloon … yes, why not. In collage? Rather not as you cannot annoy and approve at the same time.

This shows that collage is something very special by itself. The only thing to do is to be aware of that and not to transform collage into a photo-mosaic from holydays or a quilt.