The true Marvellous
Dear friends-collectors, Dear collectors-friends,
Allow me to talk once again about this pareidolia that forms a giant crab on Mars. This symptomatic illusion allow us to broaden out the reasoning to what we decide to believe.
Throughout the years, with a considerable speeding up in the 50s thanks to the UFO phenomenon, and without being necessarily noticed by anyone, the belief in the possibility of an extra-terrestrial life became the most widely shared conviction on Earth and this before all religions and ideologies. As sociologists say, this belief “transcend divides”. Therefore, we can believe in Jehovah or in Allah, and even claim to be an atheist and believe in “the little green men” too. We found much traces of it in the feverish speech of scientists searching for exoplanets, for hypothetical unknown dimensions of our world, for parallel universes.
But also in what is now called paleo-astronautics that consists in revisiting the history of art and civilizations in order to find traces of UFO and extra-terrestrial.
It even became the raison d’être of a new religion –the Raëlism- that opportunely bustled about connecting people of this crowd of new believers between them (Religion comes from religere in Latin that means to connect, to link together)
It reminds me of a little anecdote about Cézanne… In 1900, the art critics unanimously judged his paintings as unfinished, lousy and scandalous. Thirty years later, Cézanne was considered as the major European painter! His paintings did not “become better” in the meantime! It is the way we looked at them that has changed!
All lies in our way we look at things! The paleo-astronaut sees flying saucers in 17th-century frescos or in Quattrocento paintings and this is the same phenomenon when a Quattrocento peasant was catching sight of something strange in the sky and thought it was some witches’ flight.
Does David Vincent, the hero of the famous television program of our childhood “The Invaders” fight “Alien beings from a dying planet” or does he suffer quite simply from severe paranoia?
Knowing that our senses are betraying us, not always, but often, is a good start to acquire the knowledge of anything. Believing shall not consist in forgetting our critical sense in favour of an artificial marvellous trait.
Now, I formerly found the best argument (I do not say the best proof!) against the idea of an extra-terrestrial life in the reading of Salvador Dali’s confidences to Louis Pauwels (see Dali told me)
“I can’t admit pluralities of inhabited worlds. If we reply that the galaxies’ swarming make this hypothesis conceivable, my supreme argument is that what is unconceivable has more chances to be true. On the cosmos scale, only what is fantastic has some chance to be possible. And this fantastic trait would be, just so, that only one world, among thousand and thousand millions of worlds, would have been inhabited.”
Disturbing, isn’t it?
Would the marvellous truth not be the fact that we could be ALONE?
ALL ALONE
Pierre de Mougins
Traduction: Agathe a.edmondmariette@gmail.com
Pareidolia (Part II)
Dear friends-collectors, dear collectors-friends,
It is true that my work on stones distinguish itself from the traditional pareidolia which is the fact to see mainly faces everywhere.
My projection work lacks in faces. But after almost 200 painted stones, I discover that this projection work is full of strange landscapes, fantasies, long-repressed memories, visions!
The naturel outlines of the stone reveals and develops my comprehension of myself. It is my way to fit into the universe, to find pleasure in it and to pass it on…
Pierre de Mougins
Traduction: Agathe a.edmondmariette@gmail.com
Pareidolia
Dear friends-collectors, dear collectors-friends
On the occasion of the discovery by enthusiastic net surfers of photos from Mars that send us Curisosity that represented an enormous crab (well, unappetizing, I have to admit), NASA scientists dampened the passion of amateurs of fantastic news by pronouncing a simple word: “pareidolia”.
As I use this ability to paint my agate stones, it enables me today to tell you about it.
It would actually be an illusion created by our brain that make us recognize known forms where there are none. Our brain permanently structures its environment. And the world as each of us perceive it takes different shapes according to our expectations, our predispositions, our experience, our culture and even our unconscious. Furthermore, the Rorschach test reveals it very well and for a long time.
That is how my research work consists in discovering sometimes a dreamlike and mnemonic universe in stones’ lineaments that enables me to recall my memories or evanescent fantasies.
That’s it!
Well, pareidolia or not, this crab is kinda scary!
Pierre de Mougins
Traduction: Agathe a.edmondmariette@gmail.com
The calm after the run
My dear friends-collectors, dear collector-friends,
I must admit that I'm always a little nervous during the open days .
Man flips suddenly from the life of a hermit in the less easy life of a gallery owner. The shock is brutal and the exercise is breakneck because the rush is always there during these 2 days and you don't want to disappoint anybody - which is not always possible, of course. It is a good opportunity to meet new people, to arouse curiosity and to see loyal collectors again.
Thanks to you, it was again different than expected, exhausting and (almost) always warm and hearty!
See you soon in the studio Pierre de Mougins
open-door day
The annual open-door days took place on the 19th and 20th september 2015 in the artist village Künstlerhof Frohnau".
First confession
My dear friends-collectors, dear collector friends,
during a long time I did not understand anything about stones. Frankly to me their charm did not matter.
I confess it today with astonishment, because they have literally conquered my studio for almost 2 years now! So radical that I had to go with the canvases in a new studio.
Because to paint on the fantastic landscapes which present cut jasper, marble and agate, is an intense pleasure, a hard drug with enchanting enjoyment. It is no small thing to play with the earth forces. As said Roger Caillois: If they have grabbed someone they no longer let go.!
I hope that this blog will entertain
Pareidolia
Dear collector friends, my dear friends-collectors,
The discovery of a giant crab, on the Curiosity images of Mars, (it looks quite unsympathic ) provoced enthusiastic reactions of Internet users, whose ardor have been cooled quickly by NASA scientists with the nomination of a single word :Pareidolia".
Because I use this phenomenon to paint my stones