Love 4 Combas

Robert Combas is one of the painters of the year, seen from Montpellier: Soulages gets a museum in Rodez, Viallat a retrospective in the Musée Fabre, and Robert Combas has two exhibitions on public walls, "La mélancolie à ressorts" in the Carré Sainte-Anne, and "Le chemin de croix" with Kijno (dead in 2012) in the Espace Dominique Bagouet. I haven't visited the second yet but I suppose it isn't blindly devotious, or Michel Onfray wouldn't plan to give a conference about it.

Montpellier isn't stupid: Combas is a passionnating artist.

I believe that everyone in the world knows that he is born in Lyon on May 25th (happy belated birthday) 1957, is one of the pioneers of the Figuration libre movement, and confiscated the port of Sète, together with Hervé di Rosa, to the impressive Pierre Soulages. If you don't know anything about the recent history of Arts but are are interested in Montpellier, don't lose your time with the Abstraction lyrique and Cobra, type  on your keyboard Supports-Surfaces and Figuration Libre, read and watch.

It seems that Combas once said that everything has already been done. This statement allows him to create with a wider material than "novators" did, from Duchamp to the contempory market-oriented creators. I'm joking or am jealous of those who have the time and possibility to visit contempory fairs and biennales around the world, to read critics and interviews, and watch documentary films. The work of Robert Combas isn't easier to appreciate, though it is figurative, esthetical, rather joyfull: it is full of references, dense. It seems generous with a profusion of signs, faces, life, but it is generous as a glance on a dream, for someone with no clue(s) and no memory/ies.

The museum of contemporary art of Lyon launched in 2012 an "image battle", inviting people to post images, comments, music, videos related to the works of Combas, and to exchange about it. In an ideal world, they would have identified plenty of his references and proposed hundreds of interpretations. People would have reconstituted, without any universitary/professionnal expert, the life and personnal universe of the artist. I deeply regret it didn't work. This game could have led people to watch well and investigate. There were about 12 answers, all relative to the painting "La succube". It was a good start, one should have added poems and song's lyrics, scenes of movies, mythological notions and freudian thoughts; it was too "literal", and even "word to word". How sad to see a missed occasion - the painting could have been the support of a dialogue between the artist and the viewers, between the viewers, in oneself. Should one blame ignorance, lazyness, shyness, lack of freedom and imagination?

This new exhibition might be another occasion. It was designed for the place, a 19th C. neo-gothic church changed into an art place. The artist played on the contrast between black and white paintings and wallpaper and the colored light from the stained glass windows. The crucified crucifix made of painted painting brushes compose a large installation.

To visit again and again...

A few references...