Emergence of the idea
of the Paradise of Machines
My first sentiment about machines came in 1991 during a trip to the former German Democratic Republic. By what makes a journey interesting, the unexpected, I was captivated by the beauty of a steam locomotive being dismantled. I had the impression of an animal killed in its tracks, always running on its own path, after having crossed its era. At the time I wanted to buy it because I suddenly felt like painting on it red blood from this violent killing scene of a noble power.
I arrived in Graulhet in 2014. There were still a few machines in the factories and industrial wastelands.
I immediately fell in love with Pacman, who had been hanging out in a parking lot for years. I bought it and the salesman looked at me with wide eyes, asking, do you really want it?
Then, as soon as he arrived, finding him quite alone, I tried to find him company.
The Paradise of machines was realized in an urgenty, with no guarantee to find the sufficient quantity of machines necessary for the constitution of a coherent collection.
Everything came in a mess, machines as ideas to express my work.
At first, I knew that I was pursuing the graphic work of Robert Delaunay and the great masters who preceded me through industrial ready-mades that I just had to paint with my sensitivity.
then gradually another meaning emerged. My neighbors quickly guessed, around 2017, that I was building a museum, but it still took me a long time to tell what it really was. I had to go all the way.
The idea of the Paradise of Machines gradually took shape, and I first formulated it in 2019. I wrote a book in 2023, which hasn’t stopped my thinking from deepening further.
a Panthéon
artists have always expressed their feelings about the time they were going through.
In 1838, Joseph Mallord William Turner painted "the last voyage of the Téméraire" where a powerful and majestic ship is towed by a small steam tug; This simply means the replacement of one era by the advent of another, honoring the previous in the most majestic and poignant way.
In this table, we have nothing to do with the technology of the sailboat or that of the steamship. This painting is iconic because its meaning means a transition, a link between two eras, which still speaks to us; the new king always buries his predecessor without denying his heritage. That’s life;
in reality, we live to discover over the course of our existence what life is.
At some point or another, we will have to cover with earth, bury one of our fellow men whom we have loved. We begin to become human only by starting to ask ourselves why.
After mourning, after a more or less long period, the missing person will recover within us in a subjective way deep within ourselves in the irrational domain of emotions in a paradise that is lodged in our heart.
Thus, the Christian myth of the resurrection and Pentecost is inscribed in the very depths of our way of thinking, which can only be reasoned through our language, simply by using a prefix to the verb "couvrir"
The era in which industry was conceived solely through the conjunction of mechanics and energy is over, and the era of modern art that is also concomitant with it. Nowadays, industry is conceived through technology, mechanics, and energy. By its very definition, a machine is more abstract in our eyes, and it always produces more and more and at lower cost objects that are constantly renewed, and I would almost say that contemporary art goes hand in hand.
Nevertheless, there was an obvious lack in modern art of the statuary part of the work of Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Kupka, Fernand Léger and many others who have well captured their industrial era in their graphic work.
This could only be done through the concept of ready-made machines defined by Marcel Duchamp as their contemporary.
This could not be done in their time because these machines were in operation. Designed to last, or even indestructible, they were at work until they were abandoned following deindustrialization, or by technical obsolescence between 1970 and 2000.
thus, the Paradise of Machines definitively closes an era so that we can revive it in its entirety
The overwhelming majority of people visiting Egyptian archaeological sites, Lascaux, the Chauvet Cave, Machu Picchu does not go there to have a thorough knowledge of these lost worlds but to connect with them, and it is exactly the same thing that happens when visiting the paradise of machines.
The Chaos
Graulhet was an industrial capital of leather until a massive deindustrialization at the end of the 20th century. This deindustrialization left many factories abandoned and led to a descent into hell, Chaos, the original void.
When you see such a staircase descending into the void, it is impossible not to think of Howard Carter who discovered the Tutankhamun grave.
It’s almost archeology.
the only difference is that there is no excavation.
Sometimes it really feels like a grotto.
sometimes old stocks are visible
I made magnificent discoveries during these urbex sessions, like this stack of rotten leathers
There is always a sense of doom and gloom in these very well-built buildings and with equipment built to last, when there is still equipment left.
Other machines remained outside
I became passionate about these machines
.
The uninitiated that I am, not knowing what they were for, however, immediately understood that they were created by intelligent people who mastered their business.
The Paradise of Machines
Like the Gods of Olympus who succeeded the obscure Gods of Chaos, the machines have arrived in their civilized Paradise.
Where does the power of the Gods come from? It’s very simple.
Men have always sailed to the stars and knowledge of the celestial vault allowed us to arrive safely.
the word "consider" means neither more nor less than "con" with, and "sidere" stars.
With regard to the humanities, it is therefore important to create a virtual sky in which we place deceased figures so that they can serve as an example for future generations, always forming from examples. If necessary, one does not hesitate to embellish the memory, using transfiguration.
and while we are at it, we also placed virtual figures there so that men can locate themselves under the different facets that live in one way or another in everyone.
a person with Bach, Mozart or Beethoven in their reference cultural frame who is more likely to create music in their lineage whereas a person familiar with Madonna Lady Gaga and the Beach Boys will produce something from another tradition.
Then, how not to see the extremely important character of the gods in the constitution of a people sharing it goes without saying a certain number of ideas within a history written by the rulers.
That is the way the machines entered their dimension of eternity in the Paradise of Machines.
This is their Pantheon, their Olympus, the place where they are immediately placed in the state of deities out of appearance and functioning norms.
They are at their highest level in their hierarchy, in accordance to the Peter principle where one rises to their level of incompetence. In the Paradise of machines, they serve no purpose except to inspire us, to go beyond their mere materiality.
It’s their full power. The smarter you are, the less you work, the more you produce. Machines no longer work. But they produce reflection, dreams, things without which nothing would ever be done, and to which we men must give all our heart.
Memory and imagination are both a negation of time, said Vladimir Nobokov. It is the very definition of eternity.
Inspiration exists, but it must find you at work, said Picasso, and clearly, freedom is not to do nothing, it is to do what one likes. the realization of Machine Heaven was my immense privilege.