The painting is composed starting from portraits or elements of portraits of Artists (220 on the whole) according to the principle of the double image: in the faces of Picasso, Mozart, Beethoven, and of many others, I interpreted the play of light and shadow to create various characters and scenes. It was then necessary to structure these elements into logical settings. The three general topics: “Fall of the Rebel Angels,” “Tower of Babel” and “Temptation of St. Anthony” were not premeditated, but evolved in the process of design and realization.

During the four years of preparation, the project comprised SEVEN square panels, from which only the two extremes remained: for practical and financial reasons, I had to convince myself, not without difficulty, to condense the five other panels into a central one.

A great number of portraits in double images, scenes and characters thus disappeared from the final result, serving to densify and enhance the middle of the tableau and to confer a positive aspect to it, as well as to render the overall painting more accessible. The designs and structures were conceived progressively, according to the needs of the subjects drawn: thus the belated appearance of the tower. One will also notice that the extreme edges on the right and on the left can be joined, therefore the image, in the horizontal direction, has neither beginning nor end.

Ric Meric

Original oeuvre created in homage to Salvador Dali in reference to a vision of the Master of Surrealism: in the Thirties, at the time of a voyage in Africa, André Breton sends to Dali a postcard in black and white representing an indigenous village. Holding the card in the wrong way, Dali sees there appearing a "hidden" face that it transcribes and draws. Using again the same principle with the portrait of the Master, and strongly inspired at that time by The Lord of Rings by Tolkien, Ric Meric created this drawing using the paranoia-critical method.

 

Realised in 1980 in a small cabin in south France, with the help of sister Maria Juanita. This picture is now world-wide famous and considered by many people like one of the most interesting drawings of the 20th century.
Four times the same face, keeping the same expression, in an upside-down geometrical world, showing another inside dimension with appearances of Dali and M.C. Escher, hidden pictures and more surprises able to turn your mind upside-down! Using one and only model: the Bartok portrait shown at the end of the video.

The title of the painting is an allusion to a study of Freud on Michel Ange: the psychologist had believed to discover in one of the painting of the Master, a bird involuntarily dissimulated in the folds of one draped, whereas it was quite obvious that it is Freud itself which "had seen" this appearance created by his own unconscious...

At the origin, the painting is inspired by a text of Arthur Koestler (title "la lie de la terre") describing a group of old people sitting on a bench, each one locked up in his interior loneliness. The group is found in the window as well as at the top, in the public garden. The inspiration of the artist then moved towards the Psychology of C.G.JUNG in parallel with research in speculative Alchemy which largely influenced the setting in general scene: the basin in egg form from where the spiral of light spouts out, and various other symbolic aspects which the initiate will be able to read and interpret.

The aesthetic aspect is reinforced by the central column of colors which connects the various appearances of Sigmund Freud. The fashion time mixture at the vestimentary level (medium of XX century and the Middle Ages) was essential of itself, as well as the subtitle "Arts and Antiquities" which appears in transparency on the window.

The preparation of the painting required more than one year, many pre-drawings, the realization took more than eight month.