"L'éveil du printemps" huile / toile. 130x340cm 1978 ref : H-78-07

cliquez sur l'image pour voir la peinture agrandie

détail du haut de la partie centrale

détail du bas de la partie centrale

 

I pink washed a canvas of 130x162 cm and two of 130x89 cm. (This pink remains very visible in many places.)
Then I quickly brushed draped shapes
(It was some clothes figured on a clothes line )
For the background, the mauve pink called the sky blue, and the sky called some blurred stains suggesting distant leaves.I seated the shape reminiscent of a head-shoulders-and-bust on paw-or-leg looking branches.
Then, just in the way of the game the surrealists devised and named
" the exquisite corpse" (le cadavre exquis),
the side panels extended the central shape; on the right side, a cloth wrapped on itself stays rounded like an egg, and on the left, it takes the form of a children of whom we already see the head, the legs, and who unfurl his upper limbs.

état de la toile en juin 1978	état de la toile en juin 1978

 

 

Did you ever seen the birth of a cicada ? Did you see it as it comes out of the ground after many years of larval life? It's trapped in a carapace it will get rid of, as soon as it will reach a blade of grass to hook at. The carapace split on the top and the insect get out, bended to go through the small aperture.It's pale green, flabby and very frail.That's about the time of the summer solstice, around June 20th.After an half hour or so, the cicada is above its old wrapping (see picture bellow); its body is still green, but darker. It stays two hours in the sun, browns and flies away to the nearest tree. At the end of June, the cicada comes out of the ground, get itself free from it keratin carapace (on which it is still clung on this picture). It is soft green, and will brown before it could fly.

Vers la fin du mois de juin, en Provence, la cigale "Lyristes plebejus" (une des huit espèces de cigales présentes en France) sort de terre après 4 ans de vie larvaire souterraine, elle se libère de sa carapace cornée (sur laquelle elle est encore agrippée sur cette photo). Elle est de couleur vert tendre et brunira avant de s'envoler.

That's what inspired me the shape on the left panel of this painting.

 

détail de la partie gauche	détail de la partie gauche

 

The painting made just after this one is on three panels of 130x89 cm each;
with draped shapes, too.
The central shape is feminine and the shapes at the sides are masculine.

"Desdemona et les prétendants". Huile sur toile. 130x267cm. 1978.

 

détail du personnage de gauche	détail du personnage central