Translation: Performance in Contemporary Art

Yoko Ono, Cut Piece 1964

Is performance essential to our understanding of contemporary art?

Link to original article in French: https://www.bonart.cat/fr/n/46537/la-performativite-est-elle-essentielle-a-la-comprehension-de-l39art-contemporain

Translated from French into English by Bora Mici

Contemporary art often makes us uncomfortable because it no longer suffices for it to reflect reality like a mirror. In many cases, it intervenes in the world and modifies certain things: it creates situations, influences behaviors and creates new perspectives for relating to others. In this sense, the notion of performance becomes central. It is however important to specify that we are not talking about the same thing as the performing arts, which can be understood as simple “performances” in front of an audience. Here, the main idea is different: the work of art does not only create, but it encourages others to create too. As part of a constitutive logic, it functions like an apparatus that puts into motion the actions, decisions and relationships between people and which creates the conditions that favor the emergence of these phenomena.

Therefore, a work of art is performative when it mobilizes another’s actions and decisions, when it generates unexpected audiences, when it turns spectators into participants, and when it redefines what it means to be a creator, a work of art and a community. This point of view helps us understand that the way a work of art functions does not only depend on the artist because the audience and its degree of involvement, an institution and its norms, a space and its apparatuses, as well as the protocols and languages that assign roles and orient possible actions, also play a role. In the same way, the sociopolitical context with its material and emotional tensions shapes its effects.

However, there are no neutral actors. Performative art, in as far as it involves people and generates relationships and situations, cannot ignore the consequences of its implementation: it has to accept its responsibility. It is precisely for this reason that it becomes necessary to monitor its application and the conditions under which it is produced because performance can degenerate when it becomes stereotypical through eventification, instrumentalized participation or predictable and domesticated transgression.

It is why we must redefine our concept of its effectiveness, no longer to be seen as an immediate impact or a mediatic buzz, but as the ability to mobilize learning processes, to create relationships and modify habits, while leaving a mark as a process and not as an object. At a time when everything tends to devolve into quick consumption and fleeting attention spans, the crux of the matter shifts elsewhere: we no longer ought to ask “what this work is about?” but rather what it activates, what it transforms, how it affects us and what it encourages us to do. In this sense, we can perhaps understand performativity as a poetics of consequence: a way of articulating forms and situations that not only have meaning but also produce effects and leave a mark on our way of perceiving the world, our way of interacting with it and acting within it.

Translation: Back to the Origins of Art Brut

"Art does not lie down in the beds we have laid for it; it escapes as soon as we say its name: what it likes is being incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets its name."

This article by Laurence Chauvy was originally published in French on Le Temps on March 7, 2016.

For its 40th anniversary, the Art Brut Collection in Lausanne returns to the genesis of its foundations and pays homage to Jean Dubuffet, artisan behind the recognition of autodidactic and marginal practices.

After having founded Art Brut, in a way, Jean Dubuffet shaped it with his own hands, or at least, he made the concept essential until it was considered a form of art — sure, a slightly unusual and marginal form but one that was accepted and even popular. On the occasion of its 40th anniversary — the museum opened in 1976 — the Art Brut Collection suggests going back in time even further, to the year 1949 to be exact, when Dubuffet was exhibiting Art Brut — the title of this historic showing — for the first time in a gallery.

Well-located and frequented, the René Drouin Gallery, Place Vendôme in Paris met with a skeptical, even hostile public. The exception was the small Surrealist circle of aficionados. While most (164 out of 200) pieces shown at the time have been reunited because they belong to the Lausanne museum, we are not talking about a reconstitution, clarifies the museum’s director Sarah Lombardi.

Without viewing rooms, the hanging system is unprecedented: unprecedented and well put together, with an introduction allowing us to discover Dubuffet's still extensive interests in the field of autodidactic practices during that period, as well as the curiosities of his collection, like children’s drawings (in the absence of explanatory signage, we bet that we would confuse them with the work of certain Art Brut creators), naive paintings, primitive or extra-Occidental art. All this is followed by the work stemming from different psychiatric institutions in Switzerland and France. We notice that the “little story” that retraces the journey of the pieces toward the collector and theoretician, and his own journey toward the creators, is often charming and enlightening because it is made up of meetings, word of mouth sayings, friendships, and love at first sight. But it is also made up of deals — I will give you the material if you give me the artwork — which today would probably no longer be possible.  

Genius DIY Artists 

Indeed, explains Sarah Lombardi, the property laws have changed. Formerly, the drawings, bricolages, hand knittings and notebooks, filled to the brim, belonged to hospitals or doctors, who destroyed them or at least neglected them, excepting the psychiatrists with whom Dubuffet dealt on an exploratory trip to Switzerland in 1945. Today, the patients, often encouraged in their practice, are also the legitimate beneficiaries of their work. Doctors who appreciated their patients’ talent, the intensity and originality of their expression, such as Charles Ladame at the Bel-Air asylum in Geneva, Walter Morgenthaler at Waldau near Bern (his collection included the work of Adolf Wölfli), Paul Bernard at the Saint-Jean de Dieu hospital in France, or Jacqueline Forel fascinated by Aloïse’s work, played the role of trailblazers. 

However, we must state that only half of the work presented in Paris in 1949 came from psychiatric hospital “clients,” and that Dubuffet himself came out against the association of Art Brut with “art by the insane.” Certainly, children, conditioned through their learning, such as through academic subjects or life; naive painters, who took up conventional techniques and subjects; the representatives of the popular arts, necessarily tied to traditions, have been excluded from this body with ectoplasmic borders that Dubuffet called Art Brut. Nevertheless, we are left with all those who are marginal. They are inventors and genius DIY artists grouped in the current exhibit in the “And…” category — and Pascal-Désir Maisonneuve, a mosaic artist by training who created art out of the shells from the masks collected by Breton or André Lhote; and Robert Tatin, who headed a building company before creating sculptures as refined as the Breton with the bird on the shoulder; and Fleury-Joseph Crépin, ironmonger and spiritualist, who painted 345 “marvelous pictures,” the 300th of which, dated May 7, 1945, would have marked the end of the war.

The Same Mechanisms of Creation

This reinterpretation of the 1949 exhibit testifies to the taste of a man, Jean Dubuffet, himself an artists who was definitely influenced by this “other” art he defended (the Dame de Moire de Gaston Chaissac, a statue made of carbon, is very similar to some of his sculptures). But it also testifies to a unity that adds to its value. The catalogue of the 2016 exhibit includes extracts from the pamphlet published in the 1949 catalogue, a text in which Jean Dubuffet does not mess around, and where he pays homage to the creators he was exhibiting: “All the relationships we have had (there have been many) with our friends, more or less with bells, have convinced us that the mechanisms for artistic creation in their hands are exactly the same ones that are in the hands of people thought of as normal … Our point of view on the question is … that there is no more of an art by the insane than there is an art by those who are dyspeptic or those who are suffering from knee pain.”   

To see:

«The Art Brut of Jean Dubuffet». Art Brut Collection, Lausanne, until August 28. Tuesday-Sunday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. www.artbrut.ch

Translation: 'International Graphics,' the Art of Political Posters

This article by Olivier Rogez was originally published on RFI on March 7, 2016 in French. 

How do you protest through art? In the 1970s and ‘80s, the poster was often the preferred vector for political and social struggles. In Paris, the exhibition “International Graphics” is showing more than 170 political posters of this period until May 29 at the Library for Contemporary International Documentation (Bdic).

It was before the invention of the Internet. In order to protest, to launch a confrontation, there were posters. Graphic designers, painters and graphic artists combined art and politics in order to create a cultural product in its own right.

The political poster has seen many Golden Ages — the 1920s with the Russian Constructivists or the European Springs of the 1960s. 1970 to 1990 was a period of great planetary movements, against the Vietnam War or against apartheid. This prolific period is what the Bdic is commemorating. At that time, we saw some of the iconic figures of the 20th century emerge. 

From Che Guevara to the Peace Dove

“Of course, we think of the figure of Che Guevara or the conical Vietnamese hat,” says Valérie Tesnière, the exhibit curator. “We must not forget the peace dove. A peace dove that walks with Grapus, but that is in prison with Klaus Staeck. There is also the theme of three continents, of non-aligned countries …”

But in the 1970s, there was not just the rhetoric of the raised fist or the brandished weapon. The era is also about social struggles “and signs of citizen mobilization, peace marches,” continues Valérie Tesnière. “When I see this Grapus poster that reinterprets Picasso’s dove by adding feet to it, I am struck. Indeed, we find ourselves much more within something that speaks to us today than within the slightly simplistic rhetoric of the raised fist or brandished weapon. Sure, this rhetoric exists, but it has been running out of steam these past two decades.” 

Schools and Collectives

The international graphics exhibition sheds light on networks, schools and collectives — the Grapus group in France or Wild Plakken in the Netherlands. The graphic designers draw their inspiration from the Constructivists but also from American Pop Art. Two countries both become references and sources of inspiration, Poland of the graphic designer Henryk Tomaszewski and Cuba.

“During this era, the island is rather illiterate when Fidel Castro carries out his revolution. It’s very obvious that the poster is a means of propaganda through images, something that is not at all true for Poland. The graphic designers there are in a much more ambiguous situation. For them, the poster is also a means of having a certain freedom of expression that does not necessarily have a political message. Moreover, the Poles invested a lot in the cultural poster.”

With the tightening of the laws about public posters, activist artists slowly deserted city walls. Today, the political poster has become more of an intimate object, poster or work of art.

Translation: Gérard Fromanger, or the Forgotten Generation of Contemporary French Art

This article by Laurent Boudier was originally published on Telerama on February 22, 2016 in French.

Distanced from the traditional circles, too rebellious for pop art, the activist work of this French painter finally finds its place in a successful retrospective currently on view at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Just a few months ago, all you had to do was take the Eurostar to London to get the latest on Gérard Fromanger. At 76, the French artist was part of large thematic, colorful and searching exhibition, as was written by the Tate Modern to evoke a section of art that strays far from the marked pathways. “The World Goes Pop” featured a colony of international artists who are in the margins; or rather the mirror opposite of the Pop Art movement, initiated in the 1960s by the dandy king Andy Warhol and his partner in crime Roy Lichtenstein.   

A Biting and Engaged Art

The exhibit’s picture rails were each decorated with blood-red graphic slogans, encouraging you to view the off-beat work of a generation of French artists apart: the simple posters on India paper, likewise glued to the wall belonging to Gérard Fromanger, showed peaceful demonstrations against the Vietnam War (Album, le Rouge, 1968); the work of his friends — Erro, Rancillac or even Henri Cueco — evoked a much more political use of the image than the consumerist alignment of Brillo soap boxes; a rereading that The Guardian heralded through these words: “Is this Pop? Or a biting, intellectual, engaged art, in the image of interiors painted by Erro, where we see a Vietcong group descend upon a domestic bathroom.” 

A Lot More Than Pop Art

You just need to visit the terrific Gérard Fromanger retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, delicately condensed under the skillful direction of curator Michel Gauthier, to realize that the Fromanger line goes far. 

From the first screen prints of flags with bleeding colors, to the huge canvas dedicated to the activist Pierre Overney (a Maoist worker activist killed in 1972 by a Renault factory security guard), the exhibit allows us to admire much more than a “popular, ephemeral, easily forgotten, cheap, serialized, made-for-the-young, spiritual, sexy, superficial and seductive” art, to paraphrase the description of Pop Art given by Richard Hamilton, an English pioneer of the movement at Warhol’s side. 

Sentimental crowds, road scenes, portraits of active thinking comrades like Barthes, Deleuze or Foucault — Fromanger provides a colorful relationship with the world he includes himself in, the world he fights for, brushes in hand (or through the use of electrical tape), by using printed photographs that he projects on canvases of figures connected by a winding line or tattooed with tints of primary color, a little cold, purple or aqua green. This way of combining warm and cold, of spreading the signs of a modern world, offering it as a spectacle by detailing it under the scalpel of existential activism, has probably and astonishingly isolated the hardworking boxer Fromanger from the international scene a little. 

The Fromanger Curse

It’s that in his work Fromanger shows the marks of a double effort: distinguishing himself from American art by criticizing its expansionist politics; and founding his relatively familiar painting on a visual joy that is completely retinal and which, far from the sales records and prestigious collections, aligns itself with artists like Gilles Aillaud (who paints empty zoo scenes to evoke spleen), Jacques Monory (who combines cinema and photo-realism) or even Hervé Télémaque (who reinterprets in his own way collages of daily objects). Curse, or a lack of understanding of a forgotten generation? Or at least an isolated [generation] — too old for the young guard of the Actionists, Philippe Parreno and Thomas Hirschhorn — who are well-supported by their galleries — and not enough glamor, like in a Hockney, so voyageur. This group has probably lacked the help or perseverance of conservators or curators able to export, beyond its own borders, a history that has inherited an oblique gaze. A philosophy prevaricating between Courbet and Godard, between Foucault and Derrida, which removes the real, evokes identity, weaves ties everywhere between the social field and the solitary position of the artist-thinkers who are scarifying conventions, whether pigmented or not.  

Translation: This 16-year-old Artist Paints Her Dreams, and the Result Is Fascinating

This article by Amélia Labiod was originally published by The Huffington Post in French on February 5, 2016.

You can work at talent, and genius has no age. Dimitra Milan proves it. This young, 16-year-old artist expresses her dreams, ideals and memories through painting. And the result is fascinating.

Dimitra Milan, who comes from a family of artists, grew up surrounded by works of art and creativity in her parents’ Milan Art Institute in Arizona. Having gotten her high school diploma at a very young age, she took courses at home in order to be able to explore her artistic creativity without constraints. Today, the young woman cultivates this passion for painting and has her own style, both soft and hypnotic.

For her, art is a spiritual rather than intellectual activity. “I want the paintings to be like a door to a new world, a heavenly realm where there are no prey and there are no predators, just beauty, hope, adventure, confidence, and of course love. All of this I think I do on a subconscious, right-brain level. It's not calculated or predetermined. It sort of happens organically and naturally. I don’t want to be limited by technique or a missing skill,” she admitted during an interview with MyModernMet.

Her Instagram account is like her work — ethereal and colorful. She regularly posts photos of her paintings on it.

“I think the places I see in my head and then paint are a combination of places I have been to and also what I dream at night. I have had many dreams where I am swimming underwater and able to breathe underwater.” 

“The most important advice I received is the demonstration of a work ethic. They taught me that you don’t always have to be in the mood to paint. You just paint. Every day, for eight or nine hours straight just like any other career choice. Like everything else in life, it's hard work, passion, and commitment that will make you successful.”

“It used to be like this: when I became stuck on a painting and didn’t know how to resolve it, I would quit and move on to something new. Now, I realize that, in order to become more skilled, I need to confront my comfort zones and push through the wall that's blocking me because a breakthrough is on the other side. I paint women and animals/nature together to create a dreamy atmosphere and to give you a feeling that anything is possible.”

Dimitra Milan’s work is available on her website.

Translation: Alexander Tinei, A Painting Genius in Leipzig

This article by Mélanie Gentil et Thomas Schlesser was originally published on NovaPlanet in French on January 14, 2016.

Discovering one of the most puzzling artists of the current scene. 

Long ago, it was a cotton spinning mill … But 10 years ago, Leipzig’s Spinerrei was transformed into a creative and exhibition space. The Guardian has called it “the hottest” place on the planet. The Sam Dukan Gallery hosted in this space has become unavoidable and welcomes one of the most puzzling artists of the current scene.

Alexander Tinei was born in Moldavia in 1967. He left the country he deeply loved — because he wanted “to give a chance to his painting” — to go to Budapest in 2000. There he developed figurative work, which features mostly portraits and youth. The beauty of the models (which includes his idols Nick Cave and Louise Bourgeois) is both seductive and bizarre. His palette is cold and pale, rather in the black tones for some time and now on in the pastels. Blue has also played a major role in his compositions, tracing networks of lines evoking, in an uncertain way, veins and tattoos on the marble skin of his models.

He has yet to be featured in very big international museums. Similarly to Michael Borremans, whom we met in 2014, Tinei is surely — we are betting on it — one of the painters who will go down in the history books. Upon his arrival in Budapest, Alexander Tinei was already 33 years old. His work was not selling. It had been too influenced by Soviet culture. Discovering Gerhard Richter and Luc Tuymans, two eminent players — one German and the other Belgian — of contemporary painting, he noticed the gap that separated him from them. “My paintings were mostly inspired by the Fauves. They sent you back to a period that had ended nearly a century ago.” Rather than being discouraged, he decided to start from zero. “Since I did not come from an artistic family, I did not have my parents’ support. They did not imagine being able to make a career as a painter. I had to get by on my own. My mother would not stop telling me to get a real job. She still does … despite my success.”  

Alexander Tinei’s trajectory in certain ways resembles that of the romantic image of the 19th century artist, who is ready to abandon everything except his vocation. So, without pity, Alexander tells of the privations that marked his journey. Before being noticed by some amateurs, Tinei was well-acquainted with poverty, and even hunger. He cheated it by eating toothpaste (without this being a diet, either), thought about suicide in order to finally return to God. And it was He who, according to what he concedes, always saved him in extremis. He sincerely declares, “I am not religious.” Nevertheless, every morning, without fail, he picks up his guitar and bursts into pious songs before going to his studio in order to muster up the courage to work.  

After some very difficult years, Alexander Tinei managed to carve an important place for himself. Like most of the painters of his generation, his iconographic references are equally prevalent in newspapers, on the Internet, in art history or in personal archives. He explains, “Starting from these images, I make montages that I then touch up in Photoshop. The compositions are approximately transferred to a white canvas with charcoal before I work on them for several weeks. Certain works are put aside, sometimes even for an entire year; others are destroyed. It happens that I stop painting for a month or two: At that time, I visit exhibits, I read, I make collages, drawings, but I do not touch a brush. Then I get back to it, as much out of pleasure as out of duty.” 

The works on view at the Sam Dukan Gallery in Leipzig’s Spinerrei show formal and thematic changes that have happened over these last few years. Collectors especially like the paintings where pale silhouettes are contrasted against a dark background. But Tiney has abandoned this aesthetic now, “I am not afraid of white anymore,” he says, amused. The canvasses have gotten lighter: the violence subtly peeks out here or there. The aloof figures with arms hemmed in blue — which made him famous — and which used to be peaceful, fleeting and idle, today seem more threatening. One of the major pieces in the exhibit, in its monumental dimensions, depicts a lynching scene overlooking the flight of aggressive birds.  

In the next two years, Tinei wants to take his research in the direction of political overtones resonating with current upheavals and brutalities. And to conclude, “Too bad if that’s not what’s expected of me. I hope to have made this change look like nothing. In the image of that priest who proposed removing a piano from the church where he preached and met only with the protestations of his parishioners. Day after day, and inch by inch, he moved the instrument without their knowing it. Finally, after a year, the piano had disappeared. And so no one found anything to say again…” 

METONIA, Alexander Tinei & Johan Tahon

Galerie Dukan, Spinnereistraße 7, Halle 18.I, 04179 Leipzig - Germany 

Wednesday - Friday : 1 p.m. - 6 p.m.

Saturday 11a.m. - 6 p.m.

From January 16 to March 30, 2016

Translation: Fleur Pellerin Wants to Put Contemporary Art in Your Building

This article by Quentin Périnel was originally published in French in Le Figaro on December 16, 2015.

More than 1,000 works of art per year will be integrated into the construction of a building over the whole of French territory. Thirteen developers are joining this process in order to encourage contemporary creativity.

Bringing together artists and construction so that a building becomes a work of art, whether it’s a commercial or residential building — this is the ambition of the new program “One Building, One Work of Art” inaugurated with great pomp at the Ministry of Culture this Tuesday. In total, thirteen great actors in the real estate sector (including BNP Paribas Real Estate, Eiffage Immobilier and also Vinci Immobilier) have signed a specific charter. These companies are committing to commissioning or buying a work of art from an artist for all real estate projects to be built or renovated. 

“In our professions, we are not concerned with art a priori. However, when the minister spoke of this project, we were taken,” explained with enthusiasm Alexandra François-Cuxac, president of the FPI (Fédération des promoteurs immobiliers [Federation of Real Estate Developers]), before the different developers each signed the famous charter. “This rapprochement between art and construction is symbolic. We must no longer employ Manichean thinking: putting in opposition the new and the old, the owner and the renter … This project is both visionary and fascinating,” she added.

A Measure that Is Being Launched Over the Entire Territory

“By mobilizing its regional and central directors, my ministry will support this measure intended to be launched throughout the entire territory,” explained Minister Fleur Pellerin, citing the architect Walter Groupius, who as early as 1919 was already inviting his contemporaries to consider art an integral part of architecture … That was nearly 100 years ago. What exactly is behind the “One Building, One Work of Art” project, apart from the desire to provide the most people with the opportunity to live and/or work in contact with a work of art?

Minister Fleur Pellerin’s yearlong policy of supporting contemporary art is at its homestretch, and there are more than 1,000 works that will be created or bought each year and exhibited all over French territory. They are projects that should provoke a dialogue, inspire a sensitivity, as well as promote contemporary creativity — a creativity that is “our future heritage,” according to the words used by the ministry’s press release.

“Today, contemporary art carries undisputed weight. It’s the fight for creativity that I hold dear, at a time when contemporary artists see their pieces ransacked in public,” concluded Fleur Pellerin. Now it remains to be seen how the French people will take this innovative project.

Translation: Freestyle. The Racist Face of Art History

This article by Roger-Pol Droit was originally published in Le Monde on November 26, 2015 in French.

The Barbarian Invasions. A Genealogy of Art History, by Eric Michaud, Gallimard, « NRF Essais », 304 p., 23 €.

What is the relationship between the arrival of the barbarians in the Roman Empire and contemporary aesthetic theories? At first glance, none. If there were a connection, it would be vague, marginal, not vital. Wrong! In fact, there is a profound relationship of great consequence. For better or worse, art history, in its birth as in its development, has many lasting connections with “the spirit of peoples,” racial classifications and anti-Semitism. In a constitutive, not accidental, way. These affirmations can surprise, even shock. When we read the exceptional work of Eric Michaud, they reveal themselves as not just intelligible but enlightening.

Let’s go back. The classical version of the Roman downfall can be summarized as the dismantlement of a civilized world by successive waves of unsophisticated hoards, more or less wild, from the North and East. Slow corrosion, long decline. But this lack of organization wound up conquering its knowledge, art, the Pax Romana and prosperity. Rich and refined centuries were succeeded by dark times and famines. Order gave way to chaos. In all areas, a dreadful regression had struck Europe for a long time. In a nutshell, what the classics were describing.

In the 19th century, the axes of this story were reversed. The barbarians had brought new blood to a gasping society. Therefore, they did not destroy it, but on the contrary, regenerated it. Without them, the sterility of Classicism would not have been broken, Gothic inventiveness and its impassioned genius would not have emerged. This new life is conceived as a indissociable cultural and racial mutation: the ordered tepidity of the Latin races gave way to the vital strength of the Germanic races. This “astounding Romantic inversion, which was aesthetic, political, racial and religious, all at the same time,” according to Eric Michaud constitutes “the real matrix of art history as a discipline.” He demonstrates this persuasively with an unusual level of erudition in the course of an essay that leads from one surprise to another.

Insidious Presence 

With abundant detail and references, this director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences brings to light the inclusion of art history in the great myths of the 19th century, such as the clash of Aryans and Semites or the Indo-Germanic invasions as civilization bearers, respectively studied by Maurice Olender and Jean-Paul Demoule. Still, his most astonishing contribution is his demonstration of the persistence, up to today, of ethnicism in art, of its insidious and morbid presence even there where we do not see it. 

“Honor to savage values,” proclaimed always Jean Dubuffet in 1951, while Andre Breton in 1955 saw a vital resistance to the “Greco-Latin contagion” in the art of the Gauls. Since then, we have not stopped celebrating native arts (African, Inuit, Aborigine, etc.) as signs of an authentic spirit of peoples. In essence, art history is less concerned with forms, individual creators, artistic ruptures and schools than with ethnicities. Less politely: It was born racist and it remains that way. The best-intentioned progressives, defenders of first peoples, are therefore, unwittingly, in a shaky position. There's something to talk about.  

Translation: Peace for Paris: Jean Jullien Tells QG How His Drawing Was Born

This article by Gonzague Dupleix was originally published on GQ France on November 16, 2015 in French.

An Eiffel Tower in the Peace and Love logo. This drawing with a clear message, immediately posted on social media, became the symbol for the outrage of Internet users after the attacks of November 13 in Paris. Its creator speaks with GQ.

Friday evening, an unprecedented wave of attacks hit the city of Paris. Jean Jullien, a 32-year-old French artist who attended Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and the author of illustrations for many prestigious publications, took a brush and drew the first idea that came to his mind before posting the sketch. “Peace for Paris” immediately became everyone’s symbol for showing solidarity with a murdered nation. 

What were you doing at the moment you found out about the attacks?

I had just come back from vacation.

At what time did you say to yourself that you must bear witness, participate, express yourself?

Everything happened very quickly. Those close to me were communicating through writing. I wanted to respond too, in the only way I knew how, by drawing.

How did you conceive of associating the symbols (as timeless as they are old-fashioned) of Peace and Love and the Eiffel Tower?

It’s the first thing I drew on a piece of paper in my notebook, on my knees, as I was listening to the news and understanding the scale of the horror. It’s not an illustrator’s drawing with personal ends in mind, it’s the drawing of an individual trying to show his solidarity with the victims of the horror. The social media are now part of our mores. Expressing oneself online, instantaneously, it’s a positive thing in this kind of case. It allows us to not remain silent and to show that we are there.

Did you have any other ideas?

No, this is all that came to mind.

Are you able to understand why among image professionals, the drawer is the one we especially pay attention to?

I think there is something immediate and universal about the image. Contrary to language and languages, which can create a barrier, we can read an image without needing more information or knowing anything. It’s a powerful vector of communication in that sense.

Do words have a symbolic significance for you too?

Of course, but for others. I express myself through drawing more naturally. 

Had you already faced the idea of reacting to atrocities?

Yes, unfortunately, in January during the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. But I am faced with it everyday during the massacres that happen all over the world, not only in France.

Was Charlie a revealing case?

I don’t know. In France yes, but as I was saying, massacres happen everyday in the name of the same “causes.”

How can a drawer overcome the absurdity of the pencil as weapon relationship?

I don’t think a lot about it. It’s an honest gesture. I just want to show my united and touched thought process. Now this image belongs to all those who want to communicate a message of peace and solidarity. 

Before that day, was your work inspired by ideals, humanism, politics?

Yes, like everyone else, I have opinions. My work is not to strike down people through my images. I like speaking of people. My work is always based on observation, and I try to create visual commentaries through humor. I am not a politician, my work is to communicate positive things, to make people smile, and I hope, to also make them think from time to time.

Translation: Alfredo Longo, Citizen Artist

This article by Margo D’Heygere was originally published in Le Vif on November 1, 2015 in French.

In Mons, in the workshop of his fashion designer wife, Alfredo Longo, painter and sculptor, receives us a few hours before the inauguration of his gigantic heart made of 30,000 cans at the turnabout of the Havre woods, one of the most beautiful entrances in the city.

“My father came to Belgium at the behest of the state in order to work in the mines. My mother joined him. I have three brothers and a sister, we were all born here,” says the artist of Italian origins. “I would say that I was perhaps the most DIY among the group.” While he was working in a factory, he enrolled in a night course where he was trained in technical drawing. “This allowed me to leave factory work after three years to work in a design office. Then, since I was drawing all the time, I decided to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts, again in continuing education,” continues the sculptor. Remy van den Abeele, Belgian surrealist painter and professor at the academy, noticed “a sort of talent” in him and let him skip to the third year. “I left there as the highest-ranking student,” recalls Alfredo Longo. “From that point, I began to exhibit my first paintings and drawings, and I got a few medals.” While he specializes in sculpture today, the first love of the artist was for painting. “Since I was a rather experimental painter, I only worked with a brush. I would lay down several layers that I scratched. There was a certain relief in my work. I thought of continuing with cardboard collage and then I wanted to go on to working with volume.” The fragility of cardboard gave him the idea of working with a more solid material.

Can you explain your concept of Transform’Art Kompress?

It’s the transformation of form through compression and implementation to create art. In the Recup Art movement, which has been around for 20 to 25 years and even more, certain artists took objects and mounted them together. The objects were not transformed. The difference in my work with cans is that I reclaim the cans and transform their form and mold them. Which is where Transform’Art Kompress comes from. There are several intermediary stages in this. I begin by reclaiming the cans, which are generally washed by the public. Then I sort them by color, and then they are compressed lengthwise to one centimeter. At this point they are workable. I started with small pieces and then I refined the strategy for bigger ones. That’s what they are inaugurating today, a large heart, five meters high, for which I had to construct an armature. This one must be the brand for what we want to represent, it should appear perfect in form. Then, I dress this skeleton with all the flattened cans, which will circle the armature and turn it into a single block. 

You say you are self-taught.

In sculpture, you do a lot of internships: you can learn pottery, claywork, ceramics, how to sculpt in bronze, etc. As far as sculpting with cans in concerned, you can look everywhere. There are no books, no Internet articles. There is artisanal work done with cans, toys, etc. but not sculpture. In order to get to a solid structure like a block of metal, but that remains visibly made of cans, I had to refine a certain technique. It was at the end of the second year that I began telling myself that the technique was becoming more habitual. I evolved from the small pieces, and it was only working from there that I began to think that I could go far in the public space.

How did you get the idea to use cans?

Cardboard is ephemeral, it’s not resistant enough. It also took up a lot of space in my painting studio, so I had to get away from it. Then, while driving in my car, I could see spots of color on the road, on window ledges, overflowing from trashcans. It was metallic cans. They are one of the products that we consume and then throw away the most in the world. Belgium has one of the highest rates of can consumption compared to its population size.

I was also intrigued by this idea of wrappers that come from all over the world. I began my first sculpture by mixing wood, bronze, iron debris and cans only to wind up working just with cans. What I like about this material is that I am dealing with a constant challenge. I have to stay vigilant. I injured myself three times and was hospitalized. I also love the can because it changes every year. There are can collections, new brands on the market, new drinks that lead to new graphic designs. There are artists who work hard on them so that the product attracts us. The luminosity of the cans is fabulous. For my material as a sculptor, I wanted something that I did not have to mold completely. If I want, I can leave the can as it is. In my small pieces, the colors are often as is. The logos are barely recognizable, and this makes for an enormous impact as far as brilliance is concerned. Even crushed, the can is beautiful.

Why don’t you work with plastic bottles?

I’ll get there. It’s true that the plastic bottle has been less developed as far as ornament and color are concerned, but there are still possibilities. There is also a lot of plastic pollution. Bottles are not always well-recycled; there are islands of bottles that float on the oceans. In order to be able to complete a work made entirely out of PMC (plastics, metals and cardboard), I will have to study another technique; it will perhaps be necessary to refine other tools, but I am tempted.

Were you able to get the number of cans you needed very quickly?

Yes, they were overflowing! I even had to remove the sign I had put up front on which I was asking people to bring me their cans. I put another one in its place, stating that I needed some time to manage the stock. People listened to me, so it was cool.

Do you think that it’s the environmental angle that made your project successful?

In all cases, citizen participation comes from two things. First, from the desire to get rid of one’s waste and to reduce the volume of one’s trash bags. When I asked people to give me their cans, many were interested, and some even called me to go pick them up at their houses. I did that many times, but then I quietly stopped because the network grew as a result of my exhibits and my messages in the media. I reclaimed 400 cans per week more or less, and I stored them at home. They were then reduced to the volume. The citizen takes pride in participating in something noble. Other than nature, art is what can remain that is beautiful on the planet. It’s important to have this culture of the environment and this artistic culture at the same time. This project connects environmentalism, participation and the beautiful. People are proud, they say “we are happy, there are two cans from us in there.” An artist can become popular very late. In this case, I think it happened very quickly. My language is universal. Despite the difficulties, there is a positive outcome after all these years. I told myself “You did this all by yourself, you were not discouraged, no one understood you, but now everyone understands you immediately.”

Is that what you call “citizen” art?

Yes, exactly. We often hear that the artist remains holed up in his studio, and art vendors deal with selling his work. I am a little against this. If I can make a living out of it, it’s awesome, but I have done it out of passion. I’ve had a lot of nourishing subject matters, which have allowed me a certain freedom in my creations. It would be utopian to say that an artist can make a living out of his art at 20 years old. This means he will be locked into galleries, contracts and must do precisely as he is told. I am of a certain mature age. I can do a little bit of what I want. Some say “if you don’t own a Cartier at 50, you have missed out.” I do not agree.

You have worked with several themes, such as hearts, human heads or superhero faces. Is there an underlying meaning behind these pieces?

The heart is a huge, universal symbol. I asked myself quite a few questions looking at the work of other sculptors: on abstraction, on aggressive or warrior-like depiction, etc. I decided that the simplest forms are sometimes the best, and that’s why I created a heart. I started with small pieces in the shape of a heart, which attracted the public. At the same time, I wanted to graft a project onto all of this. Not just love, friendship, but a project with an environmental sense, the planet. This heart is the heart of the planet. A gesture for the planet, a heart made entirely out of tin cans. Without this planet, we are nothing. It gives us everything, and we don’t pay much attention to it. The project spanned years, and I think that now it is getting to its bloom. Married couples have already photographed themselves next to the heart; a group of elderly people posed in front of it to signal their friendship. This heart is no longer mine. There are plenty of themes within it. This heart represents a lot more than a work of art.

The superheros — that’s collective memory. They are transpositions of what I see as the future of man. Super guardians. The heads are African faces. I would love to develop them into human bodies in order to conceive of a certain humanity on the edge of our waste. We have to deal with our waste. The symbol is the future of man.

Did you even second-guess yourself in this project?

Marc Darville, deputy mayor for heritage and public works in Mons, always believed in me and this project. He would come to see exhibits in my gallery, and one day, I proposed to him a larger piece for the turnabout of the Havre woods. He was confident in me and defended this project; he submitted it to the city and to the association. There were a prioris, doubts, obstacles, but he was always with me. For a moment, we thought of changing its location because it could have been risky as far as accidents were concerned. Thanks to the heart, the turnabout was lit up.  

Elio di Rupo, the magistrate, was minister during this entire period, but he oversaw the project and always knew to write at the right place at right time in order to overcome certain situations. It’s the first city to welcome a work of art made out of cans. It’s a world first. Each city should have a public testimony, citizens who have participated in a project saying “that over there is us.” It could snowball.

How long did it take you to complete this heart?

Not working everyday, it took me four years to complete two hearts. The other has been installed at Lac de l’Eau d’Heure, and the second at this turnabout of the city of Mons, on the outskirts of the Havre woods. There is nothing like showing the heart of the planet in such a pretty setting.

The French media have also written about you. Do you think you will take your projects abroad?

The difference between France and Belgium is that our country is walled off by this linguistic barrier. I cannot express myself in Dutch at all. In France, I have a lot of artistic works in galleries or artistic salons. There, I have received many compliments from other sculptors and galleries that take their works around the world. Thanks to this, I have been able to make myself known little by little outside of Belgium. Belgium is a difficult country: you must go there with great things. Belgium is a great artistic country, but it is not astonished right away by its artists. Therefore, it was necessary to go there with something strong. There, I think I scored some points. 

What is your next project?

I am perhaps speaking early. A large exhibit will be put on in the coming months in order to retrace the entire story of the large heart because I have many archival photos of the beginning, the construction of the armature, of the installation of the first cans. There is a can collector who just gave me his collection, and I would love to add this to the exhibit in order to show to the public the beauty of cans. This will be an exhibit on the history of the can and at the same time a transition toward art with my personal work.

At the moment, I am also in an exhibit dedicated to Andy Warhol in Cracovie, Poland. I sent them four pieces. Being beside Andy Warhol is not so bad. Over there, they consider me a contemporary pop art artist.

Translation: Evol, Facade Artist

This article by Hugo Vitrani was originally published on Mediapart in French in October 2015.

Evol is a master unlike any other: through trompe-l’œil effects, his prefabricated construction sites make appear anonymous and popular facades in the public space. Nothing that is inhabitable, nothing new: these facade habitations are painted through aerosol bombs and stencils. By dissimulating these clandestine mini-monuments in certain dead zones in our environment, the German artist pays homage to the invisibles, located in the periphery of the cities, and the urban policies on housing from the RDA (African Democratic Assembly) era to ours. 

01

Disillusion. “The trompe-l’œil does not represent, it reconstructs,” writes Claude Levi-Strauss in “Look, Listen, Read" (1993). He adds, “The trompe-l’œil seizes upon and shows what we had not seen — or what we had not seen well, or in passing — and that now, thanks to it, we will always see.” Through his interventions founded in the often dirty background in ruins, Evol reveals the social tension that plays out in our ghost cities with their back against the wall. 

02

Home sweet home. Evol works in the abandoned zones of our cities marked by the passage of time (strictly utilitarian urban real estate, industrial wastelands …). A decrepit subject that he uses as a backdrop. His tools palette is reductive: paint bombs and some basic stencils that he can organize as he wishes, a way of creating a precarious and prefabricated painting, just like the architecture he paints. 

03

Urban. Born in Heilbronn in 1972, Evol now works and lives in Berlin. Having studied at the Kupio Academy of Arts and Crafts in Finland and then having pursued design studies in Germany, Evol cut his teeth with grafitti with Pisa73, his collaboration with the CTink Collective. Rather than repeating the classical canon of the field, Evol prefers to discretely distort and disrupt public space. In the book “A/React” (Drago, 2007), we find the presages of his work up to the first Blocks painted on electrical cabins, which he imagines as “monuments to the invisibles.” 

04

Visual tool. It all began with unemployment, when the broke artist was clocking in at an employment center. The architecture of the place, a former Stasi building, caught his eye and struck his conscience. So, he took several photographs of the windows of this facade, which he has been deconstructing and remixing since in his paintings. For Evol, the windows are just “symbols.” Their HLM (affordable housing) bars thus function as Daniel Buren’s lines: they are “visual tools” that change our perspective of the public space. 

05

Thoughts. Nature and concrete, dwellings without inhabitants, macro and micro … Evol makes his paintings by confronting opposites. Sometimes, the windows are broken or walled up, like in this diptych, "Broken Window, Theory and Praxis," as an echo of the repressive Broken Windows theory.

06

Recycled. Evol does not limit himself to working outdoors and also works in a studio. His miniature city installations, his films and stencils on recycled cardboard are on exhibit at various institutions today. In 2011, he received the Slick prize given by Beaux-Arts Magazine in France. Although he has received recognition, Evol remains discreet, does not make much of his project and appears very rarely in the media. His very complex stencils on worn out cardboard have elevated him to the level of one of the best stencil creators in Europe.

07

In the news. Evol is exhibiting in Siberia at the “Touching Practices” Biennale at the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center until Nov. 30, 2015…

and in Berlin in the “Radikal Modern” exhibit at the Berlinische Gallery until Oct. 26, 2015.

More than anything, you can discover, by chance, vestiges of his paintings in the streets of the cities he has passed through, from Paris to Istanbul.

Translation: Japan: An Anti-migrant Drawing Causes Controversy

This article by Charlotte Oberti was originally published in France 24 on October 8, 2015 in French.

In Japan, a drawing by a conservative artist who accuses “fake migrants” of landing in Europe outraged part of the population at the beginning of October. Tokyo is famous for its intransigent policies toward asylum seekers. 

“I want to live safe and sound, eat refined dishes, wear pretty clothes and lead a luxurious life … at someone else’e expense. In order to accomplish this, I have an idea: I am going to become a refugee.” A drawing gave rise to a lively controversy on social networks in Japan. The sketch in question shows a young Syrian girl with a malicious smile on her lips, who plainly affirms her ambitions: to live comfortably as a refugee.

The overtly anti-migrant tone of this image is that of a conservative Japanese artist, Toshiko Hasumi. This drawing, which was posted on Facebook at the beginning of October, is inspired by a photo of a young Syrian refugee in Lebanon and has caused anger among anti-racist activists who started a petition on change.org, which has been signed by nearly 11,000 people, in order to appeal to the social network to withdraw this drawing. While Facebook concluded that this content does not contravene its rules, Toshiko Hasumi decided to remove her work, but without expressing any regret. 

“I don’t want European countries to fall victim to this situation or that people who work hard come under the influence of these fake migrants,” said the artist to BBC on Thursday, October 8, all the while admitting that she chose the image of a young girl with the aim of provoking. “I don’t deny the fact that there are refugees who live in misery. I am simply denouncing the ‘fake refugees’ who pass for victims in order to pursue their own interests.” 

“A country that closes its doors to refugees”

While this manga image caused a general outcry in the Japanese archipelago, it defines the firmly anti-migrant position displayed by this country that features the third largest GDP in the world.

As the NGO Amnesty International points out through data published in September 2015, Japan has not offered any shelter to the migrants fleeing Syria.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced last September 29 that $1.5 million would go toward helping refugees from Iraq and Syria and supporting the peace efforts in the Near East and Africa, but in parallel, he remains intractable toward the requests for asylum in his country. In 2014, only 11 people obtained refugee status in Japan out of 5,000 requests Tokyo received.

This is a position that the left has been denouncing more and more. In an editorial published Tuesday, October 6 in the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, Japan is described as a “country that closes its doors to refugees.” “We need to change this closed nature and plan to accept refugees from conflict zones in a pro-active manner,” it reads. “It’s not just up to Europe to resolve this humanitarian crisis.”

Translation: Bertrand de Miollis: A Painter’s Trip to the Opera

This article by Antoine Michelland was originally published in Point de Vue on September 14, 2015 in French.

From Lake Baikal at -30°C to the conflict in Afghanistan, this insatiable artist weaves together extreme situations and projects that are a little crazy. With his accomplice, Olivier Delvaux, he is the first painter in a century to risk a long-term immersion in the world of ballet at the Paris opera house. For an astonishing dance on canvas, the story by Point de Vue.

An atelier that almost touches the Parisian sky. Everywhere, tubes of paint, palettes layered with all the colors of creation. And paintings, canvasses and boards, small, large, medium, dozens of paintings, where the dancer from The Young Man and Death smokes a cigarette, where from the shadows of backstage, subjects and leading dancers observe the fluid steps of the ballet troupe under the lights.

Painting the Opera

Leaning on a stack of frames, Bertrand de Miollis searches for the ones that would be suitable for his initial sketches. "It all began in 2013 with the 300th anniversary of the Paris Opera," says this eternal youth with eyes the color of the ocean and a shock of hair tousled by the winds of adventure. "The event intrigued me and made me want to explore this Garnier palace in the middle of Paris, enormous and mysterious, to penetrate its codes and return them to a state that corresponds with how I perceived them. In short, to go on a nice trip." Bertrand wrote to Brigitte Lefèvre, then dance director for the Paris National Opera. She gave him carte blanche.

For more than a year, he would live inside the walls, infuse himself with the designs, rehearsals, shows, both on- and backstage. Bertrand shared this adventure with another painter, Olivier Desvaux. "We had already worked together following John Eliot Gardiner and his musicians. We complemented each other perfectly. Olivier is more interested in working with what goes on in the rehearsal studios, with natural lighting, while I am more interested in what goes on on-stage, the lighting design, choreography, vibrations, movement, and the emotion that it all releases.

The Voyage as Inspiration

The experience proved to be as fascinating as it was complex, a real lesson of work, discipline and humility, "virtues that the dancers, for whom art is an absolute demand, inspired in us. Sometimes I would put my easel three meters away from them in an effort to forget myself, most often in the dark, painting with a headlamp, looking for the right angle, the current that would lead me to the heart of the story, watching for the contrast between the beating bodies and a rather frozen set. It's necessary to be able to grasp the immediacy of a gesture, the vivacity of the rhythm, the ephemeral harmony of the moment. I would have never been able to take on the challenge if I did not already have 15 years of travel notebooks behind me."

It's true. There is nothing ordinary about Bertrand de Miollis's journey. He descends from a councilor in the parliament of Provence; in his family tree, we also find a general who fought in the American Revolution, as well as the bishop Bienvenu de Miollis, who inspired Hugo to write the character of Mr. Myriel in Les Misérables. On his mother's side, there are many artists. However, Bertrand initially went to business school and then took up marketing at L'Oréal, "before being struck by a furious appetite for travel and paintbrushes at the age of 30."

His direction? Art school and other places on Earth, his sketchbook in hand. From Saigon to Saint-Malo on a junk, around Africa or in Iraq with the journalist Arnaud de La Grange, at the four corners of the planet with Sylvain Tesson and the photographer Thomas Goisque ... never stopping developing his artistic vision in the service of luxury brands nor coming up with evermore more personal projects and challenges. Among the most unusual of these is his journey into the intimate depths of the Paris Opera.

The Third Stage Project

Bernard turns his gaze equally on all the ballets, whether classical or contemporary, of Swan Lake, The Story of Manon, The Lady at Camélias, Park, The Song of the Earth or Darkness is Hiding Black Horses. "The pitfall of the classical repertoire is ending up with a bad Degas. You need to bring something personal and current to a subject that has already been broached by a master. I focused on the luminous trace, the long pose, human breathing in a world of contrasts. The long period of time was suitable to this work and allowed me to enter into the rather closed circle of the dancers, to tame them little by little."

The new dance director, Benjamin Millepied, also showed interest in Bertrand's process, which echoes his third stage project for virtual design on the web. "I used a digital palette to capture movements in flight and touches of color. This process of digital painting, instinctual and available on-screen, could feed this third stage."

Meanwhile, Bertrand de Miollis is displaying his oil paintings at the Taylor Foundation until September 26, 2015. It's an opportunity to see dance escape the walls of the opera, to contemplate the canvasses full of stars, to discover the magic of an attitude, an atmosphere, a choreography, like the ghostly procession of the gardeners who carry Aurélie Dupont who has fainted in Park. Let the emotion overtake you.

Dance In All Its States, an exhibit of the painters Bertrand de Miollis and Olivier Desvaux, Taylor Foundation, 1, rue La Bruyère, 75009 Paris, Tel.: 01 48 74 85 24. 2 pm to 8 pm, Tuesday through Saturday, through September 26, 2015. 

Translation: When Sarah Levy, An American Artist, Recasts Donald Trump's Portrait in Her Blood

This article by Sylvie Braibant was originally published in TV5 Monde on September 21, 2015 in French.

An American activist, artist, journalist, feminist and lesbian responds through a "performance" to a sexist remark by Republican primary candidate Donald Trump: a portrait of the billionaire in her own menstrual blood. The buzz and debate.

For some, she is crazy, a "bitch" or even "a sick whore." For others, she is cool, courageous, heroic. On September 12, 2015, by posting on her Facebook page a red, vibrant and sepia portrait of Donald Trump — the controversial candidate for the US Republican primaries preceding the 2016 presidential race — Sarah Levy probably knew that she would provoke a chain of reactions. In the legend accompanying the image of her painting, the artist mentioned the title and attributes of the work: "Whatever - menses on mat board."

This is not the first time that painters, men or women, use their blood or even other human fluids as primary material. The aftertaste of provocation permits their work to gain another meaning. Sometimes pompous artists statements accompany these undertakings. Sometimes the attempts are talented.  But for Sarah Levy, any artistic pretext in this work, ultimately resembling its model, was above all a political gesture. Tit for tat, the anger of a young painter from Portland (in the American Northwest), journalist, feminist, "artivist," after an offense too many from the billionaire who even strikes fear in the hearts of his own party. And a nice media stunt in the social media with the hashtag #BloodyTrump and even a Twitter account @bloody_trump ...

"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever," said Donald Trump on Friday, August 7, 2015 about Megyn Kelly, star journalist of the very conservative Fox News, who had co-presented the first televised primary debates on standby. The remark provoked a wave of indignation even within the Republican camp.

This portrait came to her all at once, like something obvious, as she was returning from an art course, or so she explained in a long text published on September 16, 2015, following the reactions of enthusiastic approval or hateful rejection that this work inspired. Normally using charcoal to draw, she collected her blood in a menstrual cup and went to work.

*"It seemed obvious. It came to me for the first time during the last day of my period. I had to paint Donald Trump's head with my menstrual blood in response to his comments against Megyn Kelly of Fox News during a televised debate because he could see blood coming out of her eyes, coming out of her from everywhere possible.

It seemed scandalous to me that someone aspiring to become president of the US — not just a minor regional governor or billionaire like many others, but president — could have said that and continue to be in the race. Thinking that he could speak in such a way about one of the most basic functions of women’s reproduction system, not in order to point to political issues but to insult Megyn Kelly's intelligence and that of all other women, was an insult and needed to be called to order.

Think about this: if the Fox presenter had been a man, would Trump have said, 'Oh maybe this man needs a colonoscopy?' Certainly not.

Women reacted by tweeting about their periods with the hashtag #periodsarenotaninsult, which was a good start. But for me, it was possible to multiply the strength of the counterattack with even a little more humor. I think that we can use art, especially if it's funny, to start to deflate Donald Trump's arrogance and give back some confidence to all those who are terrified at the idea of seeing a racist idiot like him lead their country.

This could seem minor, but I think that this shame brought upon menstrual blood is part of that general bodily shame that we want the girls and women in our societies to carry. Fighting against this shame is a small step in giving back confidence to the women who have the courage to fight for equality.

… Numerous reactions to my portrait of Trump that have circulated on the internet come from people who have been outraged, disgusted by this piece, and therefore, they think I am disgusting too. But what’s really disgusting are Donald Trump’s racist comments against Mexicans or other immigrants and the sexism he flaunts. What is really outrageous are the thousands of refugees from Central America, among them many women and children, who hope to find a better life in the US and whom we put in detention centers. 

There are many outrageous things in this world, but my little work of art is at the bottom of the list.”

Consistent all the way to the end, Sarah Levy has announced that the money from the sale of her work on Ebay will go to an organization that takes care of refugees and other migrants.

And here is “how to paint Donald Trump in five easy steps,” proposed with a humor that the author, an internet user, would like.

*Translator's note: This is an approximate translation. To read her actual words follow the link earlier in the article.

Translation: Artificial Intelligence: When the Machine Imitates the Artist

This article by Morgane Tual was originally published in Le Monde on September 8, 2015 in French.

Some paint like the great masters, others improvise on jazz … Endowed with a kind of imagination, some artificial intelligence programs manage to compete with the human mind.

An algorithm capable of generating works like Picasso’s and Van Gogh’s: it’s what a team of German researchers has recently come up with. They detail their invention in an article published at the end of August 2015. By analyzing the canvases of these prestigious artists, the machine is capable of “learning” their style through deep learning and tracing it on any photo with impressive results in less than an hour.

Are machines in a position to compete with people in the area of creativity? Conscience and emotions, creativity is part of the attributes often put forth in order to distinguish humans from machines. Would a program be able to come up with moving paintings, to imagine thrilling stories, or to rival Mozart’s composition genius? Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are working on it.

A Recurring Question

But what are we talking about? The notion of creativity is the subject of debate in the research community. Are we talking about artistic ability? Imagination? Invention? Or even the capability to problem-solve? It’s a recurring question in the AI field, where even the notion of intelligence causes debate. “When Alan Turing wrote his foundational article on artificial intelligence, he was confronted with this problem of definition,” explains Mark Riedl, AI researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology. “Instead, he decided to invent a test, which basically says that if the behavior of a machine is impossible to distinguish from that of a human being, then the machine is considered to be intelligent.”

Mark Riedl used the same procedure for creativity, designing the Lovelace 2.0 test in 2014. In this experiment, the judges ask a program to create a work (a painting, poem, architecture …) that has a theme, which has not been defined in advance. No machine has succeeded in passing it for the time being. But Mark Riedl thinks that it’s possible. For him, machines are already capable of creativity, to a certain extent:

“Many people think of the great artists when they use the word creativity. But each human is creative to a certain extent, and this creativity manifests itself daily, dozens or hundreds of times per day. We show our creativity when we play Pictionary, when we use a paper clip to fix a pair of glasses, or when we find another way to get home if the road is blocked. Computers already possess this kind of creativity.” 

Combining Already Recorded Elements

But beyond this, a certain number of programs are already able to show their creativity in the artistic field, appealing to a kind of imagination. “All imagination is understood as the recombination of pre-existing elements of memory,” explains Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, researcher at the Paris-VI computer science laboratory, in his book “Ideas Received on Artificial Intelligence.” He cites the example of the unicorn, “produced par excellence by our imagination,” which combines two real beings known to man: the horse and the narwhal. The artistic creativity of machines will generally work in this way, by combining already recorded elements to create new ones. With interesting results.”

Emily Howell composes classical music 

David Cope, professor of music and computer science at the University of California, has worked over these last few decades on a machine capable of composing classical music. Its first program, called EMI, “gets its inspiration” from the great composers to create its own music. Basically, David Cope “feeds” EMI several musical pieces by Vivaldi, for example, which it will analyze with the aim of identifying patterns and rules. From these diagrams, it is able to put together its own compositions in a style that approximates that of the composer.

David Cope decided to go further, inventing another program called Emily Howell. It works in the same way, but it feeds off of EMI’s output to come up with its own music, which gives it a more “personal” style, approximating contemporary music. Emily Howell put out its first album in 2010.

Shimon improvises on jazz

On a similar principle, Shimon, designed by Guy Hoffman, is able to improvise on jazz live, starting from a statistical model based on the improvisations of the pianist Thelonious Monk. In this video, the robot adapts in real time to the music it discovers, played by its designer.

Scheherazade writes stories

Nourishing itself on the works of others in order to notice recurrences: this is also what Scheherazade, a program able to write short stories of one or two paragraphs, does. Its designer, Mark Riedl — the inventor of the Lovelace 2.0 test — feeds it writing on bank robberies, for example, if he wants it to come up with a story on this topic. “It does not use any preprogrammed knowledge, it learns everything it needs to know to create its story.” He assures that the writing it produces “is difficult to distinguish from human writing.”

Watson invents kitchen recipes

This technique also allows Watson, the star artificial intelligence program of IBM, the concoct kitchen recipes after having analyzed thousands of them. Chefs have implemented the recipes invented by the machine. They are more or less strange, like a cocktail of cider and pancetta, or the beef burrito enlivened by chocolate and soy beans. The best have been collected into a book, “Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson.” “This resembles a very strange fusion restaurant,” says in an article a CNN journalist who had the chance to taste this cuisine. An app is even available to allow internet users to “create unique dishes with Watson.” After a weeklong test period, a rather convinced blogger nevertheless clarified that it was necessary to make some adjustments, “Ask yourselves if you really want to add mashed potatoes to lasagna.”

“A Unique Point of View” on Humanity

Artificial intelligence is thus already capable of certain kinds of creativity, but it nevertheless has its limits. “While humans can be creative in different fields, most algorithms concentrate on one thing,” emphasizes Mark Riedl. “A poetry generator cannot draw for example.” But above all, machines perhaps lack attributes of human beings that are potentially essential to match their creativity. For Michael Cook, an associate researcher a the University of London who has created a program capable of inventing video games, machines do not feel emotion, which represents a limit to their creative capacity:

“This kind of thing is really important for creativity — it’s in this way that we feel connected to others, that we are touched by artists. We often understand the work of artists by comparing it to our own lives. Experiencing war, love, having a history with a city, a country … AI has trouble having this kind of impact because we share fewer things with it than with other human beings.”

Still, he emphasizes, this fundamental difference could also present an advantage, “AI can offer us a unique point of view: a view of humanity from the outside. We have not really begun to exploit it, but I believe that one day we will.”

Strange and Unpredictable Results

Ultimately, artificial intelligence could also permit human beings to learn more about their own creativity … This year, a research team from Google has invented a program, Deep Dream, which creates impressive, phantasmagoric, dream-like images that sometimes recall the paintings of the Dutch painter Jerome Bosch. However, this program has not been designed to be creative; Deep Dream is part of a research project on machine learning. 

Created by a Google team, it is “fed” millions of images in order to learn to detect forms. Then, by giving it a new image, the engineers ask it, “Whatever you see, we want more of it!” “If a cloud looks a little bit like a bird, the program will make it look even more like a bird,” they explain on a blog. And this provides strange and unpredictable results that, more than two months later, continue to fascinate internet users. 

The experiment, with impressive results, has given rise to new lines of questioning for researchers. For them, Deep Dream “could become a tool for artists — a new way to remix visual concepts — or maybe even shed a little bit of light on the roots of the creative process in general.”