Between 19, he stopped painting to practice only assemblage with his "lean sculptures", like Duchamp's ready-made sculptures.
#OBJETS BANANIA VENTE SERIES#
In 1964, the artist adopted the clear line inspired by Hergé ( Petit Célibataire un peu nègre et assez joyeux, 1964, MNAM), then introduced objects on the canvas in 1966 with his series of "Combine paintings", evoking those of Robert Rauschenberg (1953–1964) and even more, those contemporary to Martial Raysse ( Confidence, 1965, Fondation Gandur Touareg, pèlerinage avec ressemblances, Lille Métropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, 1966.
Is just a strictly metaphysical sign of the human dwelling. Is it a sign from an artist who lives like an exile? For me, that's no. Thus, in his paintings are found evocative everyday objects, notably of his lived experience in Haiti, and of multiple interpretations at the will of the spectator, complex reading images such as riddles to be deciphered (toothless head, Baron Samedi's white cane, sports shoes and equipment, camping furniture and tents, etc.), despite the exegesis performed by the art critic Anne Tronche in 2003. Télémaque intends to compose his own vocabulary, going beyond a narrative speech with a socio-political aim ( One of 36,000 Marines, 1963, Gandur Foundation), from which he moves away from 1967, to the benefit of an inner poetic and jubilant universe, more hermetic, enriched by the experience of his own psychoanalysis started in 1958 with Georges Devereux, and this time inspired by the works of De Chirico, René Magritte or Marcel Duchamp. Especially with Le Désert, a cane broken into two pieces, cut from a sphere, a derisory stick for an improbable walking." "Ī statement made to art critic Alexia Guggémos in a long interview published by Somogy Editions ( Confidence, published in 2015). This is a real break with the Baroque enumeration that is taking place there. " "In the sixties, I settle down in the stripping, I become part of the Arte povera movement. From 1962 to 1964, he produced one of his most original series, in particular in the form of diptychs, where pieces of anatomy², accompanied by visual metaphors named "fictions" (cross, arrow, weapon, underwear, urn, mask) and comments, sometimes simply written in chalk or pencil, flow on an initially white background ( Le voyage, 1962 Portrait de famille, 1962, Fondation Gandur pour l'Art Etude pour une carte du tendre, 1963 My Darling Clementine, 1963, MNAM, etc.). Since 1962, he took part in the adventure of Narrative Figuration, bringing together artists such as Bernard Rancillac, Eduardo Arroyo, Peter Klasen, Öyvind Fahlström, Jacques Monory, which the critic Gérald Gassiot-Talabot gathered in 1964, at the request of Télémaque and Rancillac, in an exhibition entitled "Mythologies quotidiennes". But it was in the precepts of population art (comic strip, use of the episcope, then in 1966 use of acrylic) that he truly found his very particular way, while defending european creation, more critical of society. Surrealists there, without formally joining the group. In 1961, he came to France and settled in Paris. ( Toussaint Louverture in New York, 1960, Dole Museum). He was disappointed by the segregationist atmosphere in the United States¹. With L'Annonce faite à Marie (Musée des beaux-arts de Dole, FNAC), which recalls his marriage the same year with Maël Pilié, the theme of sexuality, especially present at the beginning of his work, is announced ( Histoire sexuelle, 1960 Ciel de lit n☃, 1962, Musée d'art moderne et d'art contemporain de Nice Femme merveille, 1963,Institut d'art contemporain de Villeurbanne). Hervé Télémaque wants to be reality-based and escape abstraction: even the title refers to his daily life, evoking the boats sirens he heard from his room in Brooklyn Heights. As early as 1959, his painting entitled Sirène ( Musée Sainte-Croix) marked his uniqueness. During his stay in the United States, where he frequents museums, he was simultaneously intellectually nourished by abstract expressionism, then surrealism, as used and reinterpreted by American artists ( De Kooning, Lam, etc.), and in particular by the influence of Arshile Gorky.
In 1957, when François Duvalier came to power, he left Haiti for New York and joined the Art Student's League until 1960, when his teacher, the painter Julian Levi, encouraged his artistic vocation. Following a health problem, he had to give up his hopes of competing in sports.