Collages

     I did my first collages in 1914, on Rue du Mont-Cenis in Paris.
They were quite different from the papiers collés of the cubists.  All
that remains of those first collages are the small photos that my bro-
ther took of them.  Through Herbin, who lived at the Bateau-Lavoir on
place Ravignan, not far from me, I met Léonce Rosenberg of the Galerie
l'Effort (at 19 Rue de Beaune).  He showed interest in my collages and
spoke vaguely about a contract.  But history destroyed these uncertain
plans.  My collages were static and symmetrical constructions, porticos
of pathetic vegetation, the entrance into the domain of dreams.  They
were made with pieces of paper in flat tints: black, orange, gold, blue.
For all my great interest in cubist paintings, there is no trace of their
influence to be found in my collages.
     In Zurich in 1915 I did a series of abstract or rather concrete
collages-- there was no trace of abstraction in them.  I used printed
paper, printed cloth, paper and cloth of all colors, that chance-- I
tell you, chance is also a dream-- brought my way, and this material
of manifold appearances was arranged in turbulent diagonals that an-
nounced the booming of the great whimsical drum of dadaism.  Where are
those collages now?  The joy in destruction (an explanation would take
me too far afield) let only a few escape.
     It was that same year, 1915, that I met Sophie Taeuber.  The stature
and purity of her works, their amazing and courageous use of rectangles,
greatly influenced me.  It is difficult to make the younger generation
realize the importance of that discovery of the rectangle.  Next I did
impersonal and extremely simple collages.  I did some alone and some in
collaboration with Sophie.  I was possessed by the absolute.  I pasted,
unpasted, recommenced and destroyed, destroyed and recommenced, but the
decomposition, the decay of all human creation led me, in 1930, to tear
up my paper instead of using a paper cutter.  Thus it was in 1930 that
I made the first papiers déchirés, which Jeanne Bucher exhibited for
the first time.  These torn-up papers, these scraps, included some that
pointed a finger into the air, zen papers, papers beyond time and space.
This entire development took place without my realizing it.  The paper-
tearers became legion, and the result of those papers was tachisme.
     The figures of this visible world, which surrounded me and from
time to time forced me to erect monuments to neckties, navels, torsos,
mustaches, and dolls, formed a bond with my poetry and my friends, the
surrealist poets.

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