Max Bucaille

SURREALIST COLLAGE

PREFACE TO LE SCAPHANDRIER DES RÊVES BY JEAN LAUDE

The taste for the marvellous is in man,” remarks P. Eluard, ”and I believe it well: man never ceases to invent tales or images, even in dreams, that satisfy his need to surpass the limits of the possible. Modern marvel would certainly be found in its purest form in science if quantum theory were better known: in any case, its practical results are a long way off; by the time they reach the general public, they have ceased to amaze. Electricity and the telephone are recent developments, but who can still claim a miracle when, at the turn of a switch, their bedroom is brought to light, when Paris can talk to Marseille? Paradoxically, science, the dream field for the absolute exploitation of the possible, has too much credence in us: we know too well that nothing stops it, that nothing will stop it. Perhaps this is why man continues to invent fables and dreams: nothing in his hands, nothing in his pockets, he hears nothing of Einstein or Joliot-Curie, but he does what he wants: fear and confidence. So when, after prize-giving ceremonies, he reads J. Verne in the vacation attics, he chooses a hero and the whole time he follows him, changes into him and can’t leave him without dying himself. So when, on Sundays, having absorbed himself in a treatise on Popular Mechanics, he engages in some tinkering, he has power over matter, and this perhaps astonishes him more than knowing what the possibilities of modern physics are.

WORKS ( COLLAGES ) BY ARTIST MAX BUCAILLE

Max Bucaille, since we’re talking about him here, takes a pair of scissors and glue. He picks up some old illustrated books and, to our delight, dreams wide awake. Let’s not pretend that, in these harsh times, there’s anything better to do than dream: play is also a necessary activity, and without wishing to give it the pre-eminent place it was given by some to resist outrageous mechanization, it must be recognized that, on an affective level, it can qualify the real activities of man struggling with Necessity. Whoever looks at these images, whoever dreams about them, will perhaps be better able to support in reality the objects he finds composed here.

WHAT IS A COLLAGE?

But first we need to define what a collage is. Define its function, or rather how it works. By composing a scene or a painting using elements that are familiar, but whose coming together is unexpected, collage dramatizes these elements, stripping away the layer of relative harmlessness with which they are covered – in other words, “making them confess”. In a way, the collage-maker is a stage director: he takes his furniture and actors where he finds them, he chooses them but does not create them, and with them he stages an enchantment previously unthinkable to him. He is the element that magnetizes a disparate whole and makes it whole. He is only present behind the scenes, but the shattering encounters he provokes are not soon forgotten: they make their way into the consciousness: they sensitize the real. It seems to me that for this reason, Bucaille is moving towards a theatrical or spectacular conception: the experiments he is currently pursuing in the fields of the magic lantern and cinema show this well enough. In addition to adding an extra dimension through projection, he can harmonize emotions and prepare them in the same way as a musician deals with his themes. While an anecdote (a scenario) supports his compositions and enables them to be enhanced. In this respect, the first version of an experiment we tried out together was inadequate: “Les Malheurs d’E” failed to take into account the need for a story that could, for example, be summarized, and appealed more to poetic or lyrical language than to that of action.

The images in this album are bare, isolated: they do not need commentary. They don’t represent, they present. You’ll notice the constancy of certain themes, which I don’t want to deflower, but which are part of their author’s mythology: it’s in this that they have a unity. I sincerely believe that they make Bucaille a very great imagier. Perhaps one day, thanks to him, and also to Raoul Haussmann, whom he admires but does not imitate, collage will become a “genre” in the same way as watercolor or drawing. Why not? It borrows nothing from either: there’s nothing wrong with a technique.

Can you imagine the day when someone would condemn oil painting? Of course, collage is still in its infancy, and Bucaille is a primitive: but imagery can feel a liberating jolt. I think we’ll have to reckon with it from now on. Our century has a chance of having its own Grandville, perhaps even its own Gustave Doré.

Jean LAUDE

Preface to “Le scaphandrier des rêves, GLM 1950