Everything has a beginning

Neo Valen

Introduction

These pages are the first pages written, like an intimate notebook, whose deep birth follows a romantic breakup which gave me this creative impulse. It is often through pain that things take shape.
I publish these pages, like a memory page, only for me.

It is March 16, 2004,

more precisely, it is March 16, 2004. It has now been several weeks since I discovered what I had to discover: the absurd. This word came to me from reading about stories of couples who unite, separate, then unite again. Why all this? No one knows and will never really know.

But after all, who cares. What is important to me is the discovery of this word, ABSURD, because I consider life absurd, but unfortunately, I have not yet experienced it. To consider life as absurd and to live fully from the absurdity of life is to be above it, to reach a level that no one has ever reached, because it is absurd to want to make life absurd ; and I consider that it takes a lot of humor to consider life absurd.

From this absurdity of life will perhaps be born in me a new philosophy. I feel like I’m on a path that I love, that challenges me, and I will do everything possible to lead an absurd life.

From this absurdity several sheets were born (it is more painterly to talk about canvases, but I am a painter of pastels).

Since life is absurd, my works will be absurd too. There is nothing to understand, absolutely nothing. No meaning, no hidden messages, NOTHING! As a result, I consider them to be universal, being able to adapt to every philosophy. This line of pastel is there because it is there, nothing can explain it, but if we see a tree or a rocket there, why not.

Two spheres representing eyes are placed anywhere, once the drawing is finished. It’s absurd, but that’s how it is. It is curious to note that Man seeks to interpret the painting once the eyes are placed. “He certainly wanted to mean something”, “He looks like a man”, “Oh, a bird”; this search for interpretation is only the observation of the rejection of the Absurd which is disturbing, which makes us uncomfortable, we do not understand it.

But don’t think it’s easy to create the absurd, it’s a daily struggle. It is very easy to get caught up in meaning, and this will be a lifelong struggle.

An absurd painting is beautiful because it can be interpreted by everyone, and each person can do it in a unique way. My interpretation of a finished painting is unique. Please note, I am not saying that there is a single interpretation, but that the interpretation is unique.

A painting is therefore made up of absurd shapes, whose composition and colors are absurd.

All forms and assemblages of forms need to live, because if they die, the absurdity disappears. Thus, in none of my paintings, I seek to eliminate a form or an assembly, on the other hand, nothing prevents me from hiding them with another. Doesn’t society try to hide those who have an absurd existence, with something that is just as absurd?

Page 2

When I give birth to a form (ex: one thousand two hundred and thirty-three), I would be extremely sad to kill it. Poor thing, giving it life to destroy it. Only the form has the choice to destroy itself, but for the moment, I have not yet seen a form commit suicide.
 
One day in March, I discovered Miró’s work by chance.
 
“Prades, the Village” and “Siurana, the Path” are surprisingly similar to the things I like to do. The colors are wonderful there. I am even saddened in the sense that perhaps I could have made these paintings. But during the exhibition, Miró’s approach turns out to be totally removed from my approach.
 
Miró and the surrealists are completely wrong, because they consider “working in the absence of any control exercised by reason”, “according to the omnipotence of dreams”. Only the absurd allows us to work in the absence of reason. Miró hated Cézanne for his slow maturity of motifs and non-spontaneity and admired Van Gogh. I hate Miró for the same reasons. Miró transforms real objects. My forms are not transformed, they exist as they are. They are assembled to form an absurd, thoughtless whole.
 
An atmosphere constitutes my starting point, it comes from my own experience, or from my desire to experience it.
 
First study:
 
It was one evening when I was trying out my new pastels given to me by my sister on Christmas Day that I encountered Absurdity.
 
My tables:
 
1: one thousand five hundred and twenty-four
 
2: two hundred and thirty-seven
 
3: eight hundred and eighty-eight
 
4: six thousand three hundred and twenty
 
5: eight hundred and twenty-eight
 
6: one thousand two hundred and fifteen
 
7: one thousand two hundred and thirty-three
 
My shape searches:
 
There are an infinity of shapes, my first ones are very straight, squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles, on my painting entitled “Eight hundred and twenty-eight”.
 
I’m trying curves, which hadn’t occurred to me! And what a surprise, a sort of calm came over me.
 
I cannot be constrained by a reason for the shapes, the curve constitutes a step forward in my research. I’m sure there must still be shapes.
 

Thursday May 13, 2004

An ABSURD approach can only exist as such if the construction is infinite. At some point, construction inevitably results in something beautiful.

It is good to note that the construction available to me is extremely limited, because I only have a restricted vocabulary of shapes and colors. As a result, the ABSURDE approach is doubly biased:

– Over the duration of the process (finite period)
– On the vocabulary used (finite spectrum of shapes)

When I initialize my painting with one shape and one shape only, this shape is beautiful by nature, considering the universe limited to the canvas.

Then add another shape, and the beauty of the first shape becomes relative to the second.

Add a third shape and a triangular and overall comparison is established:

– Form A to Form A
– Form A to Form B
– Form A to Form C

– Form B to Form A
– Form B to Form B
– Form B to Form C

– Form C to Form A
– Form C to Form B
– Form C to Form C

At a certain level of “entropy”, the whole thing becomes ugly. It is necessary to stop the absurd approach to restore a balance tending towards beauty.

I don’t yet know the limit number of shapes, because it is determined by several criteria:

– The starting geometric shape
– The geometric shape of n+1 shapes

The more similar the shapes are, the higher the degree of entropy can be.

I don’t know if all the shapes I use when creating a painting exist in nature, but it seems so.

Thursday May 13, 2004

Pascal Bourgeois Moine, a talented painter, more than talented, advised me to take up oil painting again, which I tried this morning.

I have some experience with oil painting, but the distance between the canvas and the raw material is much greater than with oil pastel. So I tried to apply the paint directly with the tubes. The sensation of sliding is extraordinary, but oil paint does not allow you to make joyful shapes; on the one hand, this technique is too fast and on the other hand, the drying time is too slow… you have to try another technique.

Thursday May 13, 2004

 
I think that if I had to qualify myself, I would consider myself more as an artist-poet than as a painter, because painting is too reductive and only presents a result made from a system that is specific to me. Poetry adds a dimension. Nor is it necessary to use words to be a poet. What bothers me about poetry is the rules.

Les Règles de la Poésie 

La poésie, cet art ancestral, se drape de règles et de formes,
Un cadre structuré, un jardin de normes.
Pour être poète, il faut d’abord comprendre,
Que chaque mot, chaque vers, peut faire naître ou fendre.

1. La Rime, Musique des Mots :
La rime, c’est l’écho à la fin des vers,
Qui lie les mots en doux ou féroces univers.
Rimes embrassées, croisées, ou plates,
Elles rythment le poème, en douces acrobaties délicates.

2. Le Rythme, Cœur Battant du Poème :
Le rythme, c’est le souffle, le battement,
La cadence qui pulse au gré des sentiments.
Iambes, anapestes, dactyles, spondées,
Chaque pied danse et fait vibrer l’idée.

3. Les Figures de Style, Ornement du Langage :
Métaphores, allégories, personnifications,
Hyperboles, oxymores, et autres alliterations.
Ces figures de style sont les pinceaux du poète,
Pour peindre des images, émotions en fête.

4. La Strophe, Architecture du Poème :
Quatrains, tercets, couplets, ou sonnets,
La strophe structure le poème en secret.
Elle organise les idées, les émotions,
En blocs de sens, en harmonieuses partitions.

5. La Forme Libre, L’Esprit Rebelle :
Mais n’oublions pas la forme libre,
Où les règles s’effacent, où le poète vibre.
Ici, pas de contrainte, pas de limite,
Seule compte l’expression, pure et inédite.

6. L’Essence de la Poésie, au-delà des Règles :
Car être poète, c’est avant tout être libre,
De suivre les règles, ou de les écrire.
C’est capturer l’essence fugace de la vie,
Dans un écrin de mots, avec mélancolie ou euphorie.

Thursday May 13, 2004

Pomme, même feu monte tard

Une tête, un poids, une jaune pomme, tombée du miel,

Vigoureux et moussant de toute cime,

Dès les œillades, initier la voilure.

Le foehn lui perçoit chaleurs, et de cette flûte en rayon,

Naquit la plus belle des passions.

Bille, merci mon leurre,

De m’offrir dos ré tendre lueur,

Si tard roule que je droiture,

Recollant à j’allais,

Tous, je ne vous oublierai jamais.

Belle si le lévrier est dur,

Pour sûr, Genet gratte rien,

Pour la pause méritée, mon âme,

Jeu de pomme et d’orchestre ordure,

Nourrir le fruit déjà dur.

Vivez ! Vivez… Car la veillée n’est pas sourde.

Ne croisez pas la lame éclairée.

Si bien cette sucette air, que nourrissons tous de robes fières,

Des robes guidées par une sauce en gelée,

Sauce en gelée qui tente de ronger Vincent à la vitre,

Alors que nous ne sommes que des peaux versées dans le dôme,

Oubliez la société, car après tout, nous ne sommes que des vertébrés

Friday July 2, 2004

Qui survit où neige, pomme même de la déesse en enfer.

Je ne suis qu’impôt vers l’être, mort de fin sur cette planète,

Personne ne choisit en moi, mais je crois en toi,

Tant de caisses-pions, tant d’intergestations,

Marin de la vie, marin de sable à la station,

Passez votre chemin, montez plus haut.

Ne me rappelle pas ce que je fête,

Je ne peux pas voiler à vous le rire,

Je fuis fou, c’est cette pause île,

Nous le sommes tous, ça c’est certain,

Ici haut ? Non, montez plus haut.

Notre pensée et nous montrent,

Personne ne la jette,

Pourra vert idée,

Point neuf,

Montez !

Friday July 2, 2004

Today, I question my notion of the absurdity of life.
Life is not absurd, it is real. This thought that life is absurd is not true; life is just as absurd as life is not.
The poorly chosen word led my thinking towards error. I think there are two things to consider:
Thought and reality.
There is a reality that is external to us, we cannot influence it, we cannot change it. Reality is what it is, period.
By mastering it, by controlling, by interpreting thought, I can change my perception of reality.
We can’t change reality, so let’s change our thoughts.
In my paintings, I represent a reality, there is nothing to understand, it is reality that imposes itself on us.

We will interpret this reality with our thoughts. We will be able to see one thing rather than another, we will hate, love, wonder. But isn’t our thinking distorted? Aren’t we playing scenarios to give ourselves an interpretation of reality that is not true?

Tuesday July 20, 2004

On this day, I decide to prepare for a fast until September 8, with the aim of rediscovering a state of joy and perpetual slowness. Become a tree, figuratively speaking. The tree is a wonderful being, which takes the time to become one with nature. It adapts to its environment much more easily than humans. He doesn’t create scenarios, he is in the truth.

I felt this state when creating a painting. It is essential for the work I have to do for the September exhibition. I leave the period of the Stone behind me to turn to the period of the Tree. I think I’m an extremist of thought: wisdom is becoming a tree. If all men could be trees, life would be much more beautiful.

The tree is a perpetual enjoyer, which has no positive thoughts, no negative thoughts, it lives fully in the present moment, it is in the truth.

I need courage, and great independence from certain feelings to begin this fast. It’s 2:26 p.m., the start of the fast is set at 2:38 p.m., because that’s how it is!

Monday August 2, 2004

Failure, failure, I can’t hold on to this fast, I’m going to make another attempt today.

For 5 days now, my last three paintings have particularly evolved in composition. I introduced “anthropomorphic” forms by chance. What a relief for the eye to have a point of attachment, a point of understanding.

This addition of “anthropomorphic” shapes is not new, I have always introduced spheres similar to eyes, multiple curves similar to hands. But here I go further in the staging. There we find lips, bottles, numbers.

I have recently understood that adventure is not internal as certain artists of this century suggest, but adventure is external to oneself, it is above all human.

What I don’t want by introducing such forms is to make comics or TAGs, I either place myself between the two, in poetry.

Tuesday August 3, 2004

Art is just talk. All these artists who think about art, what is said and what is not said, no one knows the truth, no one will ever know it. What’s the point of blabbering on a board? It’s ridiculous. I am happy to share at least one thing with artists: ignorance.

This rage, the consequence of observing a blabla state, pushed me to paint a filthy picture, without thinking, a real rampage. I am convinced that this destruction will be seen by at least one person as superior to a more thoughtful painting, even if in my paintings reflection does not exist. Everything must be art, period. All forms have the right to exist, to be beautiful as well as ugly.

From now on, I no longer search for anything, I live and observe.

Tuesday August 5, 2004

Recently, I tried the acrylic technique, with great disappointment because the effect is very “plastic”, very clean.

It is certain that in my approach, it is the color which guides the form and the future of the painting. What is curious is that the shapes are more flexible, rounder than oil pastel drawing. This is the first draft, I do not despair of progress.

Thursday September 23, 2004

I have known one thing recently: that I am better than certain great Hollywood painters like Ingres, Vermeer and many others. I am authentic, virgin and innocent of all crimes. Like them, I don’t know how to draw, but I try. I will make it. The only valid painter is Rubens.

I don’t want to borrow a technique, a style that is not mine. I want to show things that are useless, uninteresting, meaningless, thoughtless, absurd, but true, REAL, REAL, REAL!

I know that I will never be a great painter, in fact I am not trying to become one, but I will be a real painter. I am lucid.

I have always tried to learn drawing without success. The painting lessons with Catherine Rabinowitch were of no use… too complicated. So I found an easier way to draw on my own. I use the comic strip artist technique. I’m having fun, and I’m succeeding. I have made great strides in representing characters without models, without anything, but in the most spontaneous way possible.

Jrflkjdfsgjn gre rrgqer rgijer gqerjerijdgqeirjgi rejg qerijg rijg qreijg rgjqeirg fijigjr qergij gqerg qoeirjg qoj grqij greq greqirjg roeijr q oijroij gfidjwfgjeoij gqsrgiuqzeio gq egrq e grfdg oqeirjg roeijqg r qerigjqoeirjg qoiZPOEJGT RDGNQERJG Q qpjgqeirjg wfgqepgrqihgqiehr gqoihqierh qer goih q irehg qierhgoqihergq frgqrhg

Tuesday, another Tuesday.

Oh no, it’s not easy to choose real life… Enlighten your soul, find your source of light, it all seems so absurd.

Every morning I have to put on my suit, create an artificial world for artificial people. How can we be destructive of truth? Alone, in the evening, I look for him. I feel, I feel, but I see nothing. Where are you?

I have confidence, I know that sooner or later, I will give up my wetsuit and get naked, completely naked. But what saddens me is that one day I will have to say goodbye to artificial life. Art allows me to show that there is something else. Yes, it exists, but you have to be brave, and I can’t drag you around forever, deal with it!

I have faith in myself, yes, I have faith in myself and in my art. I have to do everything to go up a notch, go higher, much higher. I know I’m on the right track, but I have to leave the line, cross it. OPEN THE DOOR, I found you, you street dog, lame duck. I know you are there!

We spend our time transforming, transforming, transforming. Miró transforms real objects, Picasso transforms transformations. Stop!!!

Create what does not exist, create truth. We are in a world of copy and paste. It’s absurd. Everyone should enjoy life, even the simplest form has the right to exist!

An artist must not only be a manipulator of concepts, he must be a creator in his own right, yet it’s so simple.

Oops, I just experienced and opened a new path in pictorial art. But I am sure that I have not invented anything yet, at least as far as the result is concerned, because my approach, I am sure, is unique.

Monday November 1, 2004

I recently discovered the artists of the COBRA movement, particularly Corneille. Very strange to find yourself in front of your painting. Did he have the same vision as me? I don’t know, but the feeling is strange.

This is very disappointing, I’m not making this up…

Recently I have the impression that my actions are becoming more professional, and that scares me.

Thursday, November 10

Good evening, my dormouse, to drink or not to drink, to live or not to live, to eat without sparing, roundness of tears, greatness of happiness.

For the past few days, I have been focusing on small A4 formats to be more precise. On these formats, I have to be more precise, more rigorous in my gestures. I take advantage of the speed of execution linked to the format to implement my new pictorial technique, resulting from a researcher’s research. For the moment, I’m quite happy. The lines are more flexible, less thought out, more spontaneous.

My colors are very bright, maybe a little too much. During the next series of paintings, I will regularize my palette, to see.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m not playing the “role” of an artist. There, down here, I write to get closer to the vision I have of the artist, a person who thinks only to say thoughtless things. The proof ; although I am not an artist.

From time to time, I try to draw the contours of my universe, but the problem is that I do not live in one universe but in a multitude of universes.

I don’t know why I like painting. Let’s think.

When I paint, I have neither law nor master.
What I do, I do it for myself, but by drawing on human experience, it is therefore also for others.
What I communicate is life, the joy of living. To love life, perhaps one must have suffered it.
What I do is true.
I create, even if it’s not much, I create.
I am not a painter, and I will never become one, because I am a coward to abandon a life as a costume designer.

Unless… the life of an artist is not just about handling the brush. It’s only a means, to be an artist is to be in the truth, life must be an immense painting, you don’t need a paintbrush to be an artist!

I must rise, our life is perhaps so rich, a wealth within reach, and this must not be forgotten. I will start a new fast now. Another screwed up one. Let’s drink a little fennel essence to give us courage.

(I discovered Queneau, just like COBRA, I feel very close to Raymond, he is sometimes curious to read lines that we have already written.)

Kisses

Friday December 10, 2004

Is this life? Oh no, life is worth living. I don’t have the right to have a miserable life, without creation. We have rights and responsibilities in the face of life. Create, yes, create as life has created us. Today the first campaign of my life is born. I am launching the “Campagne Première” movement, a movement which serves no purpose, like life, but which nevertheless advocates creation. My life must dance, dream; my brushes take me towards you, FIRST CAMPAIGN, my struggle, my first campaign!

What’s the point if no one listens to you?

The “Campagne Première” movement – a name composed by the Belgian writer Carole Despontski from the letters M, P, A, G, N, E, C, P, R, M, and I – was launched in the years following the attacks in New York, by Belgian writers, French artists (Grégoire…), poets from all walks of life, joined by Pascal Bourgeois Moine. Everyone wants the advent of a new society, in which an entirely new art must find its place. Rebels against all forms of chaos and all forms of authority, both in society and in art, they readily draw their examples from so-called “primitive” cultures, from the art of children or from traumatized mentally ill people. by the attacks. Their primary concern is to free themselves from the constraints that society imposes, and to achieve a perfectly true, uninfluenced, and original expression.

The “Campagne Première” movement, initiated by Grégoire, advocates pure creation, true life.

When in 2003, I chose to study the “CAMPAGNE PREMIÈRE” movement, I had no idea that it would turn out to be one of the smallest players in the cultural life of the 21st century, nor that he would play a major role throughout my life. I started by writing my thesis, defended in June 2004 at the University of Utrecht.

The study of the “CAMPAGNE PREMIÈRE” movement allowed me to explore a large area where a number of interesting artists evolved, originating from various universes, and who, moreover, were rooted in the past of the New York culture. I am thinking in particular of surrealism and expressionism, or more distantly in time, of prehistoric discoveries, which would constitute a capital source of inspiration for the artists of the movement. In fact, I was interested in certain specific aspects of “Campagne Première”, this movement which appealed to me so much by the diversity of cultural, historical and multidisciplinary perspectives that it opened up.

I had a lot of difficulty finding publications on this movement, there are none. I particularly appreciated the help of Armand Tampicé, professor emeritus at Utrecht University, and I am particularly grateful to him.

The “Campagne Première” museum of modern art in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, helped me bring together the elements to illustrate this site.

I was touched by the support of Corneille and Karel Appel. It goes without saying that I would have been grateful to the artists of “Campagne Première”, to the gallery owners and museum specialists who would have wanted to help me.

Tuesday March 8, 2005

Tuesday March 8, 2005, another Tuesday.

I’m losing my bearings, I don’t know where I’m going. I just created the Doodage movement. This movement advocates true creation.

Doodage is a movement which is part of a society where paid work no longer constitutes a means of fulfillment for the individual.

The followers of the movement make the act of creation the ultimate moment of the work. It is the act that matters, not the result. For them, there is nothing more beautiful than “the creative action of a person who has never created, and who believes in his gesture as being true, whatever the visible or invisible result”. For me, Men artificially restrict themselves in the act of creation. They suffer from the fear of judgment, of comparison, of ridicule. For him, the most entrenched stereotype is certainly that of believing that we live in a society where individuals are constantly “cast”, you have to be the best to exist.

Nowadays, the act of creation is reserved for artists. It is through his work that the artist searches for something, the outcome of which he alone seems to know – he generally does not know it. For the members of the movement, what the artist seeks above all is recognition. “I am the future Picasso”, he believes, but will not say it. He will happily explain his approach but will never admit his ultimate goal: recognition. The artists of the Doodage movement refuse to consider the act of creation as work, in the Pascalian sense. Creation is not the fruit of remunerative work, but of a natural act, and is not reserved for artists alone.

The Doodage movement means that each of us can be an entirely free Man, who must create, not for the search for recognition, but for his pleasure, his fulfillment and that of others, without any other form of trial. It is not conditioned work, but an AUTHENTIC and free natural act that everyone can accomplish, without obligation of results, without casting.

In the conception of the Doodage movement, works cannot be bought because they are worthless. It is the act of creation that matters and only works emanating from work can be purchased. Works resulting from a natural act of creation are exchanged from the creative hand which produced the work, to another creative hand which produced another work. There is therefore no second hand possible.

This emerging movement should comfort us in a society where individuals are increasingly judged by remunerative work.

Monday August 29, 2005

Return from vacation, two paintings.

During these holidays I was able to introduce myself to new techniques: anything with a brush using smears and anything with a flexible knife. I was amazed by the knife technique, seeing a certain number of painters, I could not understand how they managed to produce this or that effect. Now I understand.

The first canvas could bring to mind certain scenes from Brugel, but the whole is not coherent. Each scene seems to have been added one after the other.

The painting cannot be hung because it is too scary.

The second bucolic canvas was created with a knife.

For both canvases the big first was the use of a prepared background. The background colors inspired the shapes.

The philosophy of dooding remains to be put in place, I would like to direct it in a more humorous way. This is my path and I must not turn away from it. Reference to me being Voldemond’s priest of the cloister of Arles