The drawings of Henri Michaux

Henri Michaux: Visage

Every now and again a particular artist re-emerges as being of vital importance to me and because of my interest in visualising the body, by combining the visualisation of inner and outer perceptual experiences, the frottages and drawings of Henri Michaux have come back into focus. I was reminded of his work by a reviewer of a paper I had submitted about my own drawings, the reviewer pointed out that Michaux had explored a similar territory many years before and that I had not referred to this. Sometimes reviewers pick up things that really make you think again and in this case I must admit I realised I had not really thought through certain aspects of what I was writing about and that the paper I had submitted did indeed need some serious revision. Probably the most serious error I had made though, was that some of the particular issues I should have picked out in the paper were ones I had written about before and I had simply left them out, my mind having a 'been there, written about that' response, forgetting that I am probably the only other person to have read what I was thinking about before, and that without some precise information about how drawing can solve certain problems, the writing didn't really make sense. 

Henri Michaux: Visage

I mentioned Michaux's work in conjunction with Unica Zurn a few months ago, but he is well worth looking at as an artist in his own right. 

Henri Michaux: images

Michaux became famous for taking mescaline but his drawings were never done under the influence of the drug, in fact he said that drawing was impossible whilst under its influence. However the visions he had of the mind working, were strong and they directly influenced his approach to image finding. His idea, of finding images in the process of making a drawing is not new, but his particular take on the idea was that he was finding out about the structure of the brain itself. This has helped myself when working to sometimes just let images become what they need to be, to allow them to emerge and in that process to look for a synergy with my own inner body language, the language of feeling tone, of stomach ache and backache, of inner excitement, of breathing in and out, of feeling fine or feeling down, all perceivable embodied moments, that can be thought of as interoception. I've also now re-written that paper, 'Drawing the embodied mind' and it is available in edition 5 of the magazine PSIAX. 

The Silence of the World: Henri Michaux

The Silence of the world is one of Michaux's hallucinatory representations of faces. A half remembered image perhaps from a book on pre-history, from a police forensic investigation file or a 1950s pulp science fiction comic. It sits between readings, half a face, a single tooth protruding, as in an old battle weary smilodon. There is something about Michaux's images that take me back into the world of the half seen, half dreamed, remembered something that sits on the edge between perception and reverie. His images enter the world of magic via an oblique direction, they find their way into our brains via the root of the fetish, and engage us as awkward strangers do. 

Perhaps above all Michaux's work reminds me that you need to tune yourself into the world of things that are 'other' than yourself, if you are ever as an artist to find those images that surprise you, that come from nowhere but somewhere. If I could tap into the logic of an apple, or think with the brain of a crystal or smell with the nose of a dog, then perhaps I would be able to draw with the eyes of a bacteria. 

Reference

Barker, G. (2021). Drawing the Embodied Mind: A Project Report on Research Into Interoception. PSIAX #5 ESTUDOS E REFLEXÕES SOBRE DESENHO E IMAGEM, 5. pp. 17-24. ISSN 1647-8045.

See also:

Unica Zurn

Drawing the embodied mind (a link via my old university repository for research)

The imprint and the trace

The portrait as witness and control