Emergences/Resurgences

by Henri Michaux, Richard Sieburth (Translator)

One of the key works of the poet and artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) whose original approach intertwines the written word with his visionary paintings and drawings. First published in 1972, this English language translation of Henri Michaux’s celebrated book Émergences- Résurgences has been published on the occasion of the exhibition Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux organized by The Drawing Center in New York. Part essay, part poem―by turns lyric, ekphrastic, didactic, gnomic, and comic―it is also one of Michaux’s most sustained self-portraits.

Genres: Art, Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian poet, writer and painter who wrote in the French language. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism. Michaux travelled widely, tried his hand at several careers, and experimented with drugs, the latter resulting in two of his most intriguing works, Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones.

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henri Michaux, the intrepid sage, did everything within his powers to remain free – on all fronts – while walking this earth. He wrote, drew, painted – all forms of fighting – in order to remain free, but while he fought in many media his primary medium was his own consciousness. That is where it all begins anyway, and as all true sages are supremely Self-centered, within the Self is where Michaux ensconced himself, and from there he spun out various records of his journeys – within his Self, but also within the world – as a tool to remain free, or to get free if he felt himself imprisoned.

The purpose of sages is to be free and by their being to show us how to be free too. Trouble is many so-called sages are not honest, or claim that freedom is a one-step process that once done is done, with no more troubles after that. Which, perhaps, is true in extremely subtle ways, and/or in cases where the freedom seeker is removed from any further vicissitudes of the living world, but I have my doubts… Even the free person is constantly assaulted by fresh obstacles and annoyances and attacks, and so flexible methods are required to combat these, to fend them off, by assimilation or annihilation, and to remain free.

While rather solitary and retiring, from what I can tell, Michaux, being the extreme introspector he was, was well aware of the endless battles required, and these battles manifested as poems, texts, drawings, paintings - reportage from the front lines of spiritual warfare, which for us (can) act as guidelines to achieve and maintain freedom for ourselves. At least those of us who wish to remain thoroughly involved – through reading, writing, painting, thinking - with the world and all its horribly wonderful vicissitudes.

This book is a catalogue from an exhibition of his visual works at The Drawing Center in New York in the year 2000. I did not attend the show, and have in fact never seen a drawing or painting of Michaux’s in person, but the catalogue is profusely illustrated, so it’s a decent stand-in for actual attendance, though there’s no approximating the effect a 3x5 foot scroll of Pollock-like india ink splattery warfare might’ve had on my consciousness if seen face to face.



Many of Michaux’s work in this “style” are reminiscent of Pollock, and were executed around the same time, perhaps a bit later, but they are in no way derivative, or even related. Pollock was a painter who painted with his eye and his body, and maybe a little bit of mind. Michaux was a voyager through consciousness who painted/drew with his mind and his nervous system. However much he succeeded in escaping from the confines of the intellect, the intellect is still where his roots were, and drawings such as this are like manifestations of his intellect’s unconscious root system. An X-ray of how his intellectual awareness permeated his body and expressed itself through his hand.

Accompanying the profusion of images is an elusively autobiographical text written by Michaux in his old age in the early 1970's and was translated into English for the first time for the show and the publication of this book. It is an autobiography, from the inside’s mysterious recesses as it permeates the external world, of his journey through his involvement with visual art. It tells of how he began because of a disgust with the sheer historical weight of language and the impossibility of reaching any raw primitive fundamentals through words (not something I necessarily agree with). It tells, glancingly, of his wife’s horrific death, and its impact on his art. It tells of his experiments/investigations with hallucinogens and their impact on his art. And finally it tells of how his art helped him to maintain his engagement with the forces that enslave, and of how his art helped him even to penetrate beyond the known and to make pre-emptive strikes on anything, disembodied or not, that would try to define and limit him.

Michaux is an example of extreme independence for us all, and through the records of his battles he exhibits a compassion for us as well.

[Fai Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

".. But I realized the danger of this, having so often subsequently found myself empty-handed and shame-faced. At the age of twenty-six, painting suddenly seemed the right thing to sap the very foundations of my universe.
At the same time I wanted to demonstrate the paucity of reality of the concrete world.
In the long run, did this world succeed in imprinting itself all the more deeply? Some progress made, but not spectacular.
I was not, so it would seem, encountering the concrete on “its” terrain.
Even in the faces, one of the realest places for —object easily becoming subject— reality was still missing, slipping away."

[Andy Dávila · Rating 5 out of 5]

he has an incredible affinity to write about his own work, and to write in general. he was truly an interdisciplinary artist(!)

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous book inside and out. Everyone should read Michaux.

[Paola]

- emergenze-risorgenze
- disegni di bambini

jean-dominique rey: henri michaux. un incontro

nota bio-bibliografica sull'autore

lucetta frisa: movimenti di penna