CoBrA (1948—51) was a Copenhagen / Brussels / Amsterdam art collective whose manifest revolved around the liberation from the rigidity of art and life in drab, post-war Europe. Their spontaneous primal iconography and graffiti allowed them to not only regain the pleasure of painting, but also forge a new connection to colour and material. Especially the Dutch artists involved – Corneille, Appel, Lucebert, Constant – looked at the way children respond to the act of creation resulting in easy to comprehend semi-abstract paintings, sculptures and poems. The moronic “my child can paint that” that people still associate with modernist art can be traced back to (deliberately) misinterpreting these artists' objectives.

“Ik schilder als een barbaar van deze barbaarse tijd.”

– Karel Appel

After CoBrA broke up, Appel started treating his canvas not as something that merely props up an image, but as part of the artwork itself. Working in layers of paint and other media, with any tool at hand, he'd build a sculptural object that incorporates the movement of both artist and material. In order to film De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel, he cut a hole in the canvas through which the camera captures the physicality of the action and the emotional involvement of the artist.

 

For this film, and Karel Appel, Componist by photographer Ed van der Elsken (1961), Appel (in collaboration with Frits Weiland) composed tape loops to create a wall of sound complementing the image.

An escape of sorts, in love and lust.

“He puts his cheek to the wall. With a kiss he licks the vertical surface and the greedy plaster sucks in his saliva. Then a shower of kisses.”

– Jean Genet, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1942/43)

Witness the world famous pétomane shot on location at the Moulin Rouge (and amazingly not at Edison's Black Maria), as saved for prosperity by Edison Studios. The large trumpet-like contraption that can be seen on the left, the Edison Kinetophone, also present in The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (William Dickson, 1894/95), recorded the sound on a cylinder, that then could be played back in synch with the picture.

 

The original audio recording that accompanied this film is lost; do check your attic.