Curtain!
Barbara Soyer & Sophie Toulouse
(p. 6)
“Definitions of
Parade are blossoming everywhere, like the lilac bushes of this tardy spring…”
Thus began the program of
Parade presented by
Apollinaire in May 1917. A century later, nothing has changed. In the image of Cocteau,
Satie, Massine, and Picasso's ballet, this springtime volume of
The Drawer is a laboratory in which the blending of genres prevails. Or a stage, rather. On which each artist plays his or her part. The whole forms a multifaceted object that doesn't shy away from false notes or contradictions. Turned at once to the past and the future, reconciling silence and sound, celebrating life and its end. A colorful, theatrical, quirky, joyous, poetic, polyphonic object…Or a celebration of senses and arts through drawing in all its dimensions (on paper, wood, vinyl, digitally, collage, tapestry…)
Music is present all throughout: in the excerpt of the script of a video by
Camille Llobet that opens the issue; in the responses to the Franco-Brazilian artist Camila Oliveira Fairclough's questionnaire; in the ink series by Pierre Alechinsky; in the hitherto unpublished fan fiction by the young English artist Jennifer Caroline Campbell; in the record covers of Corentin Cannesson's band; in
Aurélien Mole's photo series of Jean-Claude Sergues's collection; in the portfolio dedicated to
Yann Gerstberger's tapestries that murmur with the sounds of nature and birds.
Cinema, painting, and dance aren't sidelined.
Grease,
Las Meninas,
Afternoon of a Faun are pell-mell part of the references.
A desire for spectacle was in the air for some time. A desire for a troupe and collective as well. The approach of the 50th anniversary of May'68?! Without a doubt. The era is one of change, friction, encounter, transversality, invention. A certainty: slogans rain down in this issue, like the lilac bushes of this tardy spring…
“Imagine now” say the members of Catastrophe, an artist group formed in 2015 at the crossroads of music, performance, and literature.
“Use art; make reality; play a fool; be the avant-garde if you want” the artist Ohad Meromi orders from New York.
“It is never over” promises, in red tape, the young artist and scenographer Alice Louradour on the cover.
Which act. Season 2 of
The Drawer, which begins after this grand drawn parade, can begin. Rendez-vous in the future.
