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Nativities, 1984 to 1985 |
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About this series
10 paintings, vinyl on canvas, almost all large in size, inspired by birth in general.
What Micheline LO said about it
When I painted Annunciations and Nativities, it was for the gap between
the natural and the divine, much more than for their reconciliation.
It seems to me that the unity of my paintings is achieved
outside of themselves, suspended somewhere in the fantasy of myths.
Hence, perhaps, I paint ensembles, series.
This series attempted, in a few paintings, to visualize the gap between two perceptions: the natural and the supernatural, without favoring one over the other. What Henri VAN LIER said about it
It behooved an artist devoted to neuronal formations to be focused also
on Birth in general.
Christmas 1985 was close at hand. The magi of the gospels, with their star and their gifts, naturally continued the realistic delusions of the Tentation de saint Antoine. But the essential thing was that the star, here, was La Nativité en croix, in which Eve, pregnant, was depicted with her hands on the right, and her feet on the left, torn apart in the shape of a Saint Andrew's cross which filled a 4.6 feet square canvas. Its center was occupied by a radiating vulva, showing the Child come to life, with gloriously spread arms. Amidst her loose hair, the Mother's face was elsewhere, contemplating from afar an action that was beyond her, from the end of the world and things. Between the legs spread apart, the muffles of the Nativity donkey and ox were a reminder that generations are a continuity of the animal and vegetal pulsions from thousands of years ago, and a reference to Saint-John Perse's Amers in which she had read that "this breath had in olden days been imprinted from far and wide from us." Below the eruption, we see a male whom we can call Joseph, who is busy writing, for through writing alone can an event be established. |