Lot no. 39
Robert Combas (born 1957) Double pack of Americans car -Candle boogie in sexy disco spring machine. Le feu ! 1989 Acrylic on wax cotton canvas signed and dated lower right 118 x 194 cm Provenance: > Sale Contemporary Art, Millon - Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris, 25/10/2009 - lot n°187
> Private collection, Haute-Garonne
This work is listed in the Robert Combas Archives. Its archive number will be communicated to the winning bidder.
Condition report: Framed Our canvas, executed in 1989 while the artist was represented by Yvon Lambert, is part of a topical issue: from 5 February, the Musée de l'Homme in Paris will open an exhibition entitled "Wax, between heritage and reappropriation". It demonstrates the richness of the work of Robert Combas and his ability - beyond his joyful aesthetic - to grasp the subjects of his time.
"Right from the start of his protean oeuvre in the early 1980s, Robert Combas practised the cross-fertilisation of cultures by introducing into his works the Arabic script of the Barbès district where he lived at the time, and by inventing "Arab Pop Art" with its famous false alphabet. From the outset, Robert Combas also indulged in a cross-fertilisation of genres: multiple inspirations intersected in his work, creating a new filiation between the popular arts and painting considered to be an art of the elite: comic strips, cinema, Pop art, television, advertising and more classical painting, sometimes in an "academic" style, were mixed and sublimated by the artist. Robert Combas fills all the gaps. He breaks down the boundaries between arts and cultures. The artist, who delights in reconciling differences, brings together distinct but complementary worlds to create a work of art.
A thousand-year-old mythological tales and fabulous stories form the basis of many of his paintings, in which Combas assumes the juxtaposition of the trivial and the epic. Robert Combas focuses on mythology because it is the substratum of all the world's cultures. The theme of Romulus and Remus, the sons of the she-wolf, can be seen in this work entitled DOUBLE PACK D'AMÉRICAINS VOITURE (1989). For Combas, drawing on mythology is a way of expressing his relationship with the world. When he tackles mythological or epic subjects, the artist is working with the collective memory, a psyche that enables him to express his anxiety and his vigilance in the face of our times. This is the power of archetypes that speak of themes that span the globe and the history of civilisations right down to the present day. Through them, Robert Combas evokes our contemporary society.
Ritual plays an important role in the work of Robert Combas. His paintings on African printed fabrics - fancy prints - unfold a story in which the fabric is less a support for the painting, which could be arbitrary or simply decorative, than a militant spokesperson. His many paintings on fancy prints introduce us to Combas's serial, almost ceremonial approach to painting.
Numerous commemorative loincloths have been printed over the last sixty years to mark political, social, religious and cultural events in sub-Saharan Africa. They often carry political messages. The cheap price, seductive, repetitive graphics and intense colours of these fancy fabrics appealed to Robert Combas, who used them to paint. His message - a political one if ever there was one - is one of love: erotic scenes painted on African printed fabrics form a powerfully renewed chronicle of love.
His slogan: make love, not war! Robert Combas's art of misappropriation is almost an integral part of his work.
Kristell Loquet - Robert Combas Archives
