Gods First

FRANCOIS HALARD

à Alessandro et Caio Twombly

Divine Impulses

by Vincent Huguet

The eye did not suffice, the hand was also needed.

Translation from French by Jeanne-Salomé Rochat

It’s probably not by chance that for this new body of work, Francois Halard chose exclusively ancient and almost entirely archeological subjects – statues, busts, and sculptural fragments. These were photographed with a Polaroid camera then re-framed, blown up, re-worked, and finally smeared in wax – and in some cases covered in words and names drawn with a brush. The photographer has fostered a passion for the Polaroid process; over the years it seems to have become his favorite medium, allowing him to experiment intimately and alchemically.

There is a certain refrain within the medium of photography that highlights extreme control, technical mastery, and decision-making, to which the Polaroid process offers an alternative discourse, foregrounding the presence of chance and that which couldn’t come from a human hand – the acheiropoietic as it was called in the Middle Ages. Acheiropoietic images were believed to have been created by divine forces, an angel or a god, and were thereby greatly revered. The face of Christ has materialized on the Shroud of Turin like a print or revelation – not unlike the Polaroid image, which within a few seconds, appears on the surface of the substrate. To this texture of mystery, reinforced by the choice of colours in the work – ocean floor blue, Levantine desert gold, pale carnal pink, marmorean white – Halard appends a gesture that bears no truly photographic intention within the discourse of control. The image reaches its zenith as it rises to the surface in the same way the drips of paint meet the canvas within action painting.

Hot wax flows, is cooled down and then frozen, superimposed on photographs which become SUB – under in Latin – as one reads on one of the images. The wax is a substrate for new images, yet its use is totally aligned with the ancient conflict between the Dionysian and Apollonian. The first is clearly chasing the second with its liquid assaults. Streaks – or stains – hijack the initial visual reading of the work, or corrupt it. Sometimes they disrupt this beautiful ancient grace of the image, and sometimes they extend it. They are reminiscent of museum visitors standing in before a canvas, attempting to decipher how the artist went about it, aiming to reconnect with the original dynamic of the composition.

A brown trail and suddenly heavy is the head that bears the crown of Minerva, the woman behind the hieratic nature of the matron is revealed. A beading drop under the eye of Praxiteles’ Hermes highlights a tear that was never visible before, transforming the athletic young man into a somewhat melancholic figure.

Are these the tears of a poet? Tears of blood?

Here, a warm pulse seems to have been flowing through sculpted feet for centuries, and there, it’s a joyfully off-white fluid that spreads across Antinous’ torso or Mount Venus. Greek Aphrodite or Roman Venus, their name soberly drawn in white letters, like an invocation, building on what is already suggested by the wax.

H ere, gods and goddesses are fragile. Half-swallowed in the past, a culture ever more remote, and simultaneously brought back to their primal virility, to the impulses that created them thousands of years ago. These forces are perhaps what François Halard seeks to capture – origin points that evade the reaches of his photographic practice alone. As in the tales of sculpted crying or bleeding virgins or in romantic fantasies, we find ourselves dreaming that the works themselves might have secreted these substances and words, revealing what is resting under the surface.