!VAR HAGENDOORN

Jacques Villegle

In the late 1940s Villeglé began tearing down the thick layers of posters that he found on the walls of the streets of Paris. At home in his atelier he framed and attached them to a canvas. He has continued working in more or less the same manner until the present day. From the late 1990s onwards new laws, which prohibit unauthorized billposting, and the rise of standardized billboards behind glass, gradually made Villeglé’s work more difficult to achieve. However, in the meantime he had begun exploring a new line of work, consisting of self-invented alphabets.

At the time when Villeglé began creating his décollages photography was not yet as accepted as a form of art as it is today. Yet it intrigues me that Villeglé never switched to photography. Even though it is less labour intensive to make, a photograph does not have the same depth and material quality as the assemblage of lacerated posters itself. But tearing down the posters poses constraints of its own and may be one reason why Villeglé spent nearly all of his life working in Paris.

The act of tearing down the posters is also an act of appropriation. Once Villeglé has framed a particular cutout it carries his signature. In an interview Villeglé has said that “after the first exhibitions [he] thought people would go outside and take posters from the streets, just as [he] did.” But nobody did. Perhaps it is precisely because the idea is so simple, recognizable and easy to copy that nobody has taken it up. Many artists are producing abstract expressionist paintings, but only Damien Hirst does dead animals on formaldehyde.

It goes without saying that I admire the work of Jacques Villeglé. I love how the areas torn away by countless anonymous hands selectively reveal underlying layers creating a fascinating patchwork of fragmented images, words, letters and colours. His works also show a rich collage of cultural, commercial and political history, revealing an announcement for a protest rally against the background of a fashion advertisement.

When I took up photography again I found myself naturally drawn towards walls. I love the colours and patterns created through the generic workings of decay, sunlight, humidity, fungi and corrosion. At best they look like a readymade Robert Rauschenberg or Gerhard Richter. In Hanoi I was fascinated to see blackboards attached to walls. They were originally intended for community announcements but are now mostly used by people to write down their mobile phone number. In Bologna I was fascinated to find notice boards where students must have continued attaching flyers and adverts layer upon layer for I don’t know how long.

I don't feel the desire to create paintings from photographs, like Gerhard Richter does, to transfer photos to a canvas and create collages like Robert Rauschenberg did or to rip off the posters like Jacques Villeglé does. I actually like the way a photograph can look like an abstract painting or a photo of an abstract painting.

Jacques Villeglé, La Comédie Urbaine, Centre Pompidou (17 September 2008 until 5 January 2009), Parcours exposition (in French).

The physics and geometry of tearing and peeling.