{"id":230,"date":"2016-01-10T17:09:48","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T16:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/?page_id=230"},"modified":"2016-01-26T15:36:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T14:36:33","slug":"art-as-punk-by-hiroshi-egaitsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/art-as-punk-by-hiroshi-egaitsu\/","title":{"rendered":"Art as punk"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cSaid welcome to the spirit of 1956\/ Patient in the bushes next to \u201957\/ The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick\/ Suburban trees, suburban speed\/And it smells like heaven (thunder)\/ And I say roadrunner once\/Roadrunner twice \/I\u2019m in love with rock\u2019n\u2019roll and I\u2019ll be out all night\/ Roadrunner That\u2019s right<\/p>\n

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\u201cWell now Roadrunner, roadrunner\/ Going faster miles an hour\/ Gonna drive to the Stop \u2018n\u2019 Shop\/With the radio on at night And me in love with modern moonlight\/ Me in love with modern rock\u2019n\u2019roll\/ Modern girls and modern rock\u2019n\u2019roll Don\u2019t feel so alone, got the radio on Like the roadrunner OK, now you sing Modern Lovers<\/p>\n

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\u201c(Radio On!) I got the AM (Radio On!)\/Got the car, got the AM (Radio On!)\/Got the AM sound (Radio On!), got the (Radio On!)\/Got the rockin\u2019 modern neon sound (Radio On!)\/I got the car from Massachusetts, got the (Radio On!)\/I got the power of Massachusetts when it\u2019s late at night (Radio On!)\/I got the modern sounds of modern Massachusetts (Radio On!)\/I\u2019ve got the world, got the turnpike (Radio On!), got the I\u2019ve got the, got the power of the AM got the (Radio On!), late at night\/rock\u2019n\u2019roll late at night. The factories and the auto signs got the power of modern sounds (Radio on!) Alright\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>[vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

\u201cRoadrunner\u201d Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers1<\/p>\n

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\"Egyptian<\/a>

Egyptian Reggae<\/p><\/div>\n

The works of Robert Combas are not just influenced by the lyrics, gestures and vocal textures of Patti Smith, the Ramones and Jonathan Richman (and many more), but also by the different ways in which he perceives these rock stars \u2013 in other words, whether they are heard live, recorded, over the radio or seen in a blister pack. Not only does he listen to music, but he also collects and plays it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLa Figuration Libre, means relaxing \u2013 having fun, as they say in English. That\u2019s a term from pop music.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u201cOriginally, I wanted to call my painting \u2018fun painting.\u2019 That was a problem for me because it\u2019s an English word. I didn\u2019t have a name for my painting because I was the only person doing it, but at the Beaux-Arts I called it \u2018fun painting, amusing, light-hearted painting.\u2019\u201d I still call it \u2018amusing and relaxed\u2019 painting, which means the same thing.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n

As he explains here, Combas broke Figuration Libre down into different com -ponents, revealing its nature and its relation to the visual arts, but also to music. In 1978 the artist formed a group, Les D\u00e9mod\u00e9s, with Ketty and Richard Di Rosa.<\/p>\n

\"ISTAMBUL\"<\/a>Today, he has been working for going on two years with fellow musician, artist and friend Lucas Mancione and Pierre Reixach. In one of their videos, Combas sings with a mask on his face. He plays the guitar, usually rather simple melodies. In the 1950s, says Lou Reed, \u201cthere was the four chord school, C, Am, F, G. If you knew these you could play 400 songs and the top 20 \u2013 \u2018Blanche,\u2019 \u2018Why Don\u2019t You Write Me,\u2019 \u2018In the Still of the Night.\u2019 Elvis was three chords, E, A, B.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n

Combas says: \u201cI work in releases of paint, a kind of abstract expressionism. The figurative is the fun side.\u201d5<\/sup> His aesthetic was formed in the age of pop music, that is to say, music that is mass distributed in the form of records. Right from the start, even before Bill Haley and His Comets6<\/sup> came along, the contents of pop music were determined by its means of distribution. Popular culture needs to repeat simple structures and actions, not only for commercial reasons but also so that these actions can be duplicated and imitated. Apart from his sculptures and prints, Combas\u2019s works are not produced in series, but there is no denying that, like pop music, they are \u201cinspired\u201d and of the moment. The elements of his art vary with the influence of the rock icons of the time, but also with that of comic book characters, illustrations for children\u2019s books, personal events and historical happenings: his work is truly tied to pop culture images, and more generally to the Zeitgeist.<\/p>\n

Just as Susan Sontag sees a connection between Patti Smith and Nietzsche7<\/sup> (\u201cIn the way she talks, the way she comes on, what she\u2019s trying to do, the kind of person she is. That\u2019s part of where we are culturally.\u201d8<\/sup>), it is possible to see Combas\u2019 work as in part a carryover from the Romanticism of the 18th and 19th centuries. There is not, then, some radical break between history and Combas\u2019 work. \u201cFiguration Libre is when I do a cartoon with a funny hero and then next morning I drop it all to make a big canvas about the Battle of Waterloo.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"1979<\/a>At the same time, Combas\u2019 work resonates with the writings of Marshall McLuhan, with whom he shares a desire to achieve a universal language. \u201cHowever, I think that the message of my paintings is totally abstract: it\u2019s a mixture of images, colours, false Asian, Arab and South American writing, painting that is an attempt at a universal language.\u201d10<\/sup> Images of death and sex echo the violence done to the innocent in real life. But real life cannot be effectively approached in a realist form, only by means of a deliberate \u201cformal imperfection\u201d. (\u201cFiguration Libre, it\u2019s putting colour on a badly done drawing, it\u2019s hiding the imperfections of a painting with black and in that way bringing out the colours by surrounding all the forms.\u201d11<\/sup>) It goes without saying that this imperfection is not the result of a technical weakness. On the contrary, it is a choice, a conscious answer to the thorny problem of the visual arts in the postintermedia era from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, a time that witnessed the emergence of various Neo-Expressionist forms around the world: Bad Painting in 1978, the Transavanguardia in 1979, the Neuen Wilden in 1980 and Figuration Libre in 1981 (but then, Combas began in 1977).<\/p>\n

\u201cDistortions in the use of the figure are related to the element of fantasy, of the difference between the way the mind imagines things and the way they are actually seen,\u201d writes Marcia Tucker in the catalogue to the 1978 exhibition Bad Painting at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, which featured the works of artists who, at the time, were virtual unknowns in New York: William Copley, Neil Jenney, William Wegman, Shari Urquhart and Robert Chambless Hendon. In the works shown in this exhibition, \u201cthe psychological, formal, emotional, and intellectual imbalance created is part of the function of all advanced art\u201d12<\/sup> and veers towards parody because \u201cconvention is the opiate of the masses.\u201d13<\/sup> While Combas\u2019 art has a number of things in common with these practices, it is in fact a mixture of the sophisticated (high) and the popular (low): \u201cDadaism Art Brut, Art N\u00e8gre, the art of naive public painters in Haiti, Africa, South America, Jamaica, naive art, Arte Povera, rock\u2019n\u2019roll, rock culture, the art of misfits (Down\u2019s syndrome), Picasso, Expressionism, Impressionism, comix: mix it all up and you get Combas, figurative because I live in a world of realities.\u201d14<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"1990_VELVET\"<\/a>Combas\u2019 work and the culture that influences it are too immediate, too spontaneous and too \u201chonest\u201d to be about parody, nudges and winks and posturing. That was how rock\u2019n\u2019roll, especially in the \u201cNo Future\u201d15<\/sup> movement, came into the world. It was an \u00e9lan and an incitement. Lou Reed, one of the founder members of the Velvet Underground, sums up the situation thus: \u201cWe are all made to love the music. And the word love was used and used and used in all music. Overused, again and again, because that\u2019s where it was at.\u201d16<\/sup><\/p>\n

Apart from a few bluesmen who came before, Reed was part of the first generation of rockers to be fully aware of this essential and universal human dimension which goes beyond the commercial aspect of pop music. They were the first \u201cmodern\u201d rock musicians. As Reed says, \u201cReal people are coming up fast. Real because they\u2019re here now, alive, while the others are dead, and because they wouldn\u2019t give Robert Lowell a poetry prize either.\u201d17<\/sup><\/p>\n

Combas puts it like this: \u201cIt\u2019s the feeling I look for. The feeling is the rhythm, the wild drummer in the jungle and voodoo dances. It\u2019s the Rolling Stones copying old pieces by blacks, bluesmen, and creating a new music without even meaning to. It\u2019s a bit like that for me with painting, getting the rhythm (feeling) of writing and painting from advertising, from China, the Arabs and the Mediterranean. My painting is rock.\u201d18<\/sup><\/p>\n

Hiroshi Egaitsu<\/strong><\/p>\n

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  1. Robert Combas\u2019s favorite proto-punk rock band.<\/li>\n
  2. See the artist\u2019s website: www.combas.com<\/li>\n
  3. www.combas.com<\/li>\n
  4. Johan Kugleberg, ed. The Velvet Underground New York Art, New York: Rizzoli, 2009, p.104.<\/li>\n
  5. www.combas.com<\/li>\n
  6. Bill Haley and His Comets are recognized today as one of the most important rock\u2019n\u2019roll groups of the 1950s.<\/li>\n
  7. Leland Poague (ed.), Conversations with Susan Sontag (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. 1995) p.115.<\/li>\n
  8. Ibid., p.115.<\/li>\n
  9. www.combas.com<\/li>\n
  10. Ibid.<\/li>\n
  11. Ibid.<\/li>\n
  12. \u201cBad\u201d Painting, exhibition catalogue New York, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1978, p.19.<\/li>\n
  13. Ibid.<\/li>\n
  14. www.combas.com<\/li>\n
  15. This slogan was in the chorus of the Sex Pistols single \u201cGod Save The Queen,\u201d 1977.<\/li>\n
  16. Johan Kugleberg (ed.), The Velvet Underground, op. cit., p.104.<\/li>\n
  17. Ibid., p. 105. Robert Lowell (1917\u20131977) is widely considered the most important American poet of the postwar decades.<\/li>\n
  18. www.combas.com<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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    by Hiroshi Egaitsu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/01\/1979_FemmePimentsEntier.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378,"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.combas.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}