Michel Smekens contemporary Artist

Between sacred and magic becomes obvious when we discover the artworks of Michel Smekens. After ten years of training in Fine Arts during which he acquired all the rules of drawing, he developed in four periods, from black to color, an artwork unique to nowhere else by offering this magic of an art letting appear a universe of imagination thanks to the freedom that resides in us.

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By their emotional intensity and content, the artist’s artworks are extraordinary. Strong and intense while remaining gentle, his line and his colors create thaumaturgical* artworks that reveal the beauty that Man can transmit with the mind and depth of the soul (1).

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They invite you on a journey during which the news of the world sprouts in an original way while keeping this universal value that touches us so much. Whether charcoal, pastel or brush, his work reveals all his sensitivity in front of which we can only stop (2).

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Michel Smekens is an attentive observer. He notices all the subtle changes in face and surroundings and in the world with his hypes** and waves. The artist seeks meaning in all that he perceives in the strange harmony of his drawings and paintings. He digs deep without concession to the easy feeling or fashion of the moment. His artworks speak to us of our reality as if they were mirrors or open windows (3).

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We find in his artwork undoubtedly a gesture and a release! (4) As we look at it, we see a swarm or an abundance of ideas that take various and expressive forms. Inspiration and technique are part of this bold artist’s palette. There is noise in his drawing, shouts, indignation, we are caught up in a stream of news, we feel joined in our intimate fights, that the artist illustrates with mastery (5).

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The movement emerges through the thread that, simplifying itself through the artworks, seeks to grasp the right moment, where authenticity is glimpsed through the line. Art is the measure of all that is unfathomable as well as of the incessant cruelty of our world, but it also offers us to discern what is built there up to the optimal to take an active part that is not meaningless. In this lies the post-modern option of this committed artist (6).

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The works invite to dialogue in lightness as in gravity, a nod to the history of our culture, while always remaining deeply human (7). Michel Smekens testifies to a famous magical career - so cruelly sincere and humanly supportive (8).

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We quickly realize that far from being imaginary his characters, with their feelings, their ideas, their expectations, their reactions to situations, are imbued with a deep realism (9).

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The artist develops a refined approach that explores the blurry boundary between perception and experience. It creates a deep involvement with viewers, both emotionally and intellectually (10).

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It is in this that Michel Smekens is a contemporary and humanist expressionist artist whose artworks distill the common origin of human, his suffering and his beauty (11).

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1. Words of Emanuela Catalano, art critic, Italy

2. Words of Michèle Le Coutour, France

3. Words of  Maurice Verreydt, philosopher, Belgium

  * Thaumaturge: a person who claims to perform miracles, defying the laws of nature that flow from the definition of thaumaturge kings

  ** Hypes and waves: up and down

   4. Words of  Mysane, France

   5. Words of Philippe Flament, Belgium

   6. Words of Valentine Druart, philosopher, France

   7. Words of Yves Vanesse, Belgium

   8. Words of Huub Devlieger, Belgium

   9. Words of Yves Frappier, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

   10. Words of Contemporary Art Review, United States of America

   11. Words of Michel Koebel, France

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2022, October

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Femininity, beauty, seduction: facets of the personality with which women determine themselves, their power, their strength. A strong, powerful, self-confident woman will also appear charming and seductive in the eyes of men and other women, not so much for her external beauty but for the confidence and strength she shows. This is what the artist Michel Smekens shows us in the works presented here. In "Rouge seduction" a very attractive woman, in her seductive red dress, the color of passion par excellence, looks the viewer straight in her eyes, with a proud and captivating gaze, flaunting, even in her position, confidence and awareness of her charm. The same confidence that the protagonists of the opera "Le bateau ivre" also demonstrate as they continue on their way, without their smile being scratched by comments that may be unwelcome. On their faces, in their clothes and in their walk we can read the light- heartedness and the desire to be simply themselves, in their beauty, joy and elegance. Finally, in the work "La mystérieuse beauté charnelle" the artist lets us enter the feminine intimacy of a woman who observes herself in her mirror, admires her naked body, dressed only in these very sensual black boots. In her eyes we see just a woman who likes herself, who likes her body, who she is not afraid to show it: she does not feel vulnerable but beautiful and self-confident. Through the choice of bright colors and the pictorial technique, Michel infuses the figures represented with an expressive power and an overwhelming energy: these women communicate with those who observe them, talk to them and transmit all their strength and sensuality to them.

 

Silvia Grassi

Art Curator

Milan, Italy, 2022, September 28

 

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Between sacred and magic

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In this short essay, I will analyze some recent artworks by Michel Smekens, an artist-author who, after solid preparation, took off masterfully, fishing in himself for a poetry full of exciting feelings. An art form, modern, current, but not unconscious of the past then appears. Expressionism is, without a doubt, the sign of this artist-author by his brush stroke. It gives shape to personal feelings and moods which are the most broadly societal, in describing them as in evoking them. From his artworks, he irresistibly calls the public because his Art requires a dialogue with those who feel themselves involved as well as those who believe in looking at his art only superficially. They do not allow the distracted passerby to pursue a path without attention, they forcefully recall him, they irresistibly seek a dialogue, just as the Author seeks a continuous confrontation or comparison with a conscious public and an integral part of Humanity, as Michel feels. It is therefore not easy to pass in front of the artworks of Michel Smekens without stopping or weaving a silent dialogue with the lines and colors through the melody of the poetic force that underlies them; they call on us with force to live in us. Their memory, engraved in our soul, will help us face life and what it holds for us.

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Perhaps it is because the poetry that gave birth to them comes from the precursors of a pulsating soul that wants to communicate everything and share with all humanity, joys and sorrows.

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As we contemplate his artworks, we are relaxed, as if a pranotherapist were laying on us his warm hands. Looking at them, we feel wrapped in a warm human attention that brings back the very essence of life in us. On other occasions, I have defined them as "thaumaturgical", healing, soothing, as directly destined for the care of our soul, of our inner well-being.

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Michel always carefully observed women, those of his family, from whom he borrowed so much for his human growth, those he gradually got to know, for various reasons, until Martine, his sweetheart.

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The artwork «Eternellement femme» testifies to a sum of observations, sensations or moods without excluding even those before his birth, which Michel «felt» lived, observed, sipped from the other half of the human universe, the feminine, for this essential Artist in all situations. Michel’s art led him to paint like the Italian poet Ungaretti, father of «hermeticism», composed his poetry, a completely innovative metric proposal that the poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1928, developed between the Italian poetry of D'annunzio and Pascoli and the magnificent Parnasse French School known for the excellence of its authors. Previously, Michelangelo himself, sovereign among the figurative artists, wrote and said of his favorite artistic mode: «the sculpture is done by the tower», whereas in the Florentine Italian of the sixteenth century «Tower» is a synonym of «to take up in a crisis» (which means having the right gesture and avoiding the unnecessary even if it is difficult). Although the artworks of Michel Smekens are neither sculptures nor three-dimensional, observation is adapted to the artistic mode of this Belgian artist, in which the signs are rarefied, synthesizing in a space which is most often only intuitive, undefined with certainty. As in this case where the only figure stands out, without background or decor.

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Finally, the "sum" offered by the figure who stands out in this work, the only subject to which Michel gives value to every woman of every place and time, past and present, makes it the title called "Eternally". The history of Renaissance art has transmitted this concept to us in two large canvases by the great Venetian colorist Tiziano Vecellio, two female images, one of which is complementary to the other "Sacred Love" and "Profane Love". The synthesis made by Michel Smekens in this work is declared to the public: the woman represented is certainly the sum of two opposites: the embodiment of feminine charm and also of the qualities of a career woman who, under a hairstyle with ruffled bangs, reveals a "multitasking" mental attitude that thinks several things at once, on several levels, in different environments, reconciling her irrepressible femininity with work, maternal love, family care, sensuality, the problems of the daily family household of a family.

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The title of the artwork " Le bateau ivre " seems to derive from the poem, written in 1871 by Arthur Rimbaud, the poet "Maudit" par excellence. The poem's lines deal with a boat that, with no one at the helm, seems "drunk," battered by the raging sea. In the artwork, the male character in the centre, whose shirt is probably soaked with alcohol, has annoyed the two young women who are next to him. In this work we highlight the awareness of the two women present, who, no doubt traumatized, understand, as in a tragic snapshot, the reality that until then they have distorted or, in a more or less conscious way, have pretended not to understand, to have to travel alone in the sea of life because often the help offered by man is untrustworthy.

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The artwork «Le consensus» depicts a couple of dismayed parents, and, immediately next to them, the teenage girl who, maintaining the attitude of an inconsiderate gesture, has silenced the parents. The father, on the right, seems completely overwhelmed or lost. He no longer has any energy or even an idea, he is like stone. The mother’s expression, although shaken, still seems to contain the desire to repair, probably for the umpteenth time, the now problematic dialogue with her daughter. Once again for Michel Smekens the vital energy is contained, although with contrasting, destructive and constructive aspects, in women. They are extremely quick and actively reactive mediators in intergenerational disagreements, precisely because of their ability to analyze and synthesize critical situations.

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In the artwork «La balade à trois» a whole family rides on a tandem bike and the metaphor is very easy to understand. The positions on the bike indicate the role of each person in the family: the physical fatigue of pedaling and the responsibility of driving, and therefore of the family, falls to the father. The mother, in the middle, controls the route, supports the pedaling and «keeps the right path». The girl, in the back, in third position, has hair ruffled by the wind, smiles and remains relaxed, fully confident in the responsibility of the parents she loves and enjoys with little effort the ride, pedaling a minimum to travel the road of life. When intergenerational relationships are relaxed, family life, cycling, takes place quickly, under the safe and controlled direction of adults and adolescents can enjoy their age with serenity and without crisis, with the wind that ruffles their hair and will give them the strength to travel the path of life. Then, living in the family will only be harmony as when everyone in the choir sings to the rhythm of the "Ballad", a composition that has medieval origins.

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For the artwork "En voiture Simone!" which represents a more immediate synthesis for the French, the story of Simone Pinet De Bord Des Forest, born in Royan in 1910, who was a feminist to the letter, graduated at the age of 19 and winner of many car races with male and female teams competing in the same category. At the end of her long and rewarding racing career, in 1962, she could for once weigh the entire course of her career. Behind her rises a loud cry: «En voiture Simone!» sentence that enters impeccably as a phrase in the spoken French language. The artwork that bears this title illustrates a contemporary Simone in the foreground, with a bold red leather jacket and, immediately, we understand the strength of the phrase that Simone sees embodied in all the women of today still and always committed to being able to take, to achieve or hold on to their dreams, projects and feelings in a macho society again and again.

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The artwork «La marche hivernale» depicts a landscape in which the figures can only be seen in the distance. The unique technique, acrylic on paper, using only three colors, white, red and brown, is enough for Michel Smekens to evoke a winter walk, seen as a metaphor of the journey of human life. The two characters stand out, red from the icy cold, on the white of winter which means, in its great simplicity, all the discomfort of life, existentially and materially. To accompany the figures and interrupt the three white, brown and naked trees whose knotty roots symbolize our human roots, our past, elements that help us to overcome the cold winter of life. The difficult walk of the two men emerges from this artwork not as a cry but as a thrill, an emotion, which takes us there with these characters reddened by the cold and exhausted by fatigue. We perceive our difficulties and sufferings as reflected in this exciting artwork whose function is to make us reflect on our own lives.

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Emanuela Catalano

Art critic, professor emeritus of art history​​​

Florence, 2022, July 25

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Analysis of the pictorial work of the artist Michel Smekens

A look back at the career of a post-modern figuration

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Born in 1963 in Ottignies, the Belgian artist Michel Smekens followed a sustained academic apprenticeship in evening classes for several years. Already a personal pictorial language appeared, centered on drawing and questioning the human condition. From the first portraits of solitary man, in charcoal or black pastel, to the flat coloured fluids of groups, through the emergence of colour in the colour charts of Spotted Earth, Michel Smekens' work probes the post-Modern adaptation of Man(1). Drawing, abundant and constantly evolving, is the artist's main medium. The movement emerges through the line which, simplifying over the course of the works, seeks to capture the right moment, where authenticity is glimpsed through the line. Michel Smekens' artistic and existential concerns are common throughout his creation and present us with men and women who have not asked for anything, surely, but they escape endless questioning. There is no apparent objective neutrality, art is the measure of all that is unfathomable as well as of the incessant cruelty of our world, but also, it offers us to discern what is built there to the optimal in order to take an active part in it that is not meaningless. In this lies the post-modern option of this committed artist.

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The spectator in front of Smekens' figurative work can be shaken up in his sensations: he feels attracted and repelled at the same time. A certain irritation may run through him because the work does not bend to the classical and serene canons of Beauty and is devoid of ornament. Something unrepresentable has pierced and traced the contours of a man whose cry, having become interior, gradually subsides. Thus, from black to colour, Smekens expresses to us this overcoming of withdrawal into oneself. The large eyes, devouring with curiosity, now turn outwards as a rich and varied world. Groups appear in the course of the work and Smekens offers a space for reconciliation in these groups: man, beginning his existential quest in Modernity, has spread out into pornography, his body struck and then bruised; this man discovers himself here tinged with innocence. The treatment of the color red itself, in the painter's work, conveys to us the indescribable discomfort. However, the paradox is significant: pain, the great muse, who had dramatized this body by breaking it here seems outdated: the denudation of the body (nudity as well as breakage) comes to an end in this work by the Belgian artist. Unlike Egon Schiele (whose works influence a certain expressiveness in Smekens) who, through the human body, associates sex with death, eros with thanatos, Smekens associates sex with birth: it is a tearing away from the original chaos like that of the newborn emerging from its mother's womb, covered in blood but emerging to life. The body seems to be tamed in this way. And the flesh freed from its objectification leaves a new place for objects. These take on importance as allies of the investment of the world, as a place of displacement and demonstration (the fact of showing oneself). Indeed, it is above all his works representing women that are felt to exude this post-modernity. Each of the female portraits communicates to us, without any ambiguity, a woman who has found her place: the looks are deprived of aggressiveness, the postures are contemporary, the clothes dress the body and are also contemporary, and it is the global questioning that is thus contemporary. By turns relaxed and amiable, inviting, this part of the work depicting the feminine exudes a touch of assumed eroticism, of which it is certain that the path that led to it must be ours: that of a return to the body as a modest friend, a stakeholder in existence, rather than a constraining prison, obscene object or shameful support. Thus the motto that the painter appreciates: "Honi soit qui mal y pense".

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Although he was alone on his planet, the little Prince who tamed the Fox is enriched through the complete work of the Belgian artist Michel Smekens, with a descent that goes to the essential humanist(2).

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(1) According to Cornelia Klinger, modernity can be understood as the emergence of three pillars: Autonomisierung (empowerment), thematischeReinigung (thematic purification) and funktionale Spezialisierung (functional specialization). The process of secularization develops with an increased independence of the artist, a self-referentiality of the work and an indifference to the public to whom it is addressed. This favours the flight of subjectivity, leading, secondly, to the obligation of authenticity, even expressiveness. The artistic genius now seeks to express his self, his intuitions, his depth of soul in a sincere expression. Physically, he distanced himself from bourgeois society by leading a bohemian life, outside the norms. In this way, autonomy and authenticity will create a distance between art, the artist and society. This distance is essential for otherness, the third point of the aesthetic ideology of modernity. Cf. Cornelia Klinger: "Wann war Moderne – wo war Moderne? Überlegungen zur Datierungsproblematik von Moderne im Lichte ihres möglichen Endes", in: Antje Senarchens de Grancy, Heidemarie Uhl (Hg.), Moderne als Konstruktion: Debatten, Diskurse, Positionen um 1900. Wien, Passagen, 2001, S. 19-43. As well as his article "modern/Moderne/Modernismus", in: Historisches Wörterbuch ästhetischer Grundbegriffe. Bd. 4. Karlheinz Barck/Martin Fontius/Dieter Schlenstedt et al. (Hg.), Stuttgart, Metzler Verlag 2002.
(2) A Renaissance movement, characterized by an effort to raise the dignity of the human spirit and enhance it. Although in Smekens, there is no return to Greco-Latin sources. It is this post-modernity that he proposes, without any dogma.

 

Valentine Druart
Philosopher, gallery owner
Paris, France, January 26, 2022
 

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Who is the real animal on this planet? What we humans call animals or man himself? This is the question that the artist Michel Smekens asks himself, but that each of us should ask himself in the face of a constant inhumanity towards animals. With the work presented here, entitled Qui du coq ou de moi? Michel wants to give a testimony of the dignity to which animals would have a right. Philosophy has always tried to find answers to the deepest questions of the human soul. It would be necessary that all, precisely with regard to the theme of animals should know this passage from the Parerga and Paralipomena of the philosopher Schopenhauer: "This total dedication of the present, typical of animals, is the main cause of the pleasure that pets give. They are the present personified and make the value of each hour of peace and tranquility accessible to us, while we, with our thoughts, more often that not go beyond it and let it pass unnoticed. But this property of animals, of being satisfied more than us with pure existence is abused and often so exploited by man's selfishness and cruelty that he no longer leaves them anything, nothing outside of pure existence”. I believe that there can be no better words to describe the message that the artist wants to give us with his work. This work is also an extraordinary representation of the artist's art, who over the course of his career has developed a unique and expressionist contemporary style. Here we can see different painting techniques merge to give life to a work of art with truly powerful impact: the choice of colors and their shades as well as the expressionist trait makes it capable of striking directly at the conscience of those who are observing it. The artist has the ability to make his hand traveled on the canvas guided only by the inspiration and the message he wants to communicate, giving life to works of art that cannot strike the viewer.

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Silvia Grassi

Art Curator​

Milan, Italy, 2021, May 21

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Alive...

Alive. This is the first word that comes to my mind when I think of Michel Smekens' artistic work, which is alive and profoundly human. Man in all his depth, in all his suffering, but also, behind a first look, a first approach, the hope that lies dormant in a better future. There may be an elsewhere.

 

With his black line drawings, modest, simple, refined, Michel Smekens, like a teacher from another time, traces full and thin lines, writing an artistic vocabulary in perpetual evolution. By bringing ink and color, his characters become tribunes, become tribes. They are questioning, even inquisitive, in an expressionist approach. They return to the viewer his own questioning, his own misunderstandings, his own pain about the ills of a society, about the evils of our society.

 

My first encounter with the artworks of Michel Smekens took place, somewhat by chance, in a sunny square in center Alsace, in August 2018. In the heart of Sélestat, the Humanist city dear to Erasmus and Beatus Rhenanus. The artworks presented had their place on the medieval forecourt of the Sainte Foy church, where in the past, the plague-stricken, the banished and the beggars came to seek a little comfort and food. Their imprints, in the works on display, transcended their existences, their memories.

 

In a universe that touches me and that I find close to that of Egon Schiele, Jean Cocteau or Enki Bilal, Michel Smekens brings a sensitivity that is his own and that values the very existence of man.

 

Do we necessarily have to make connections between the work of artists in order to understand them? "Should we live to eat or eat to live?" asked L’ Avare of Molière. A useless and derisory dilemma. Should we feed on culture or wait for culture to feed us? The dilemma is the same.

 

Michel Smekens, through the finesse of his features and the soul of his drawings, touches on celestial and earthly food, he feeds man in a mirror to his own existence.
He has found the philosopher's stone that elevates man through his condition by plunging him back into a daily life that must be humanistic.

 

I am very grateful to Michel Smekens for having asked me to write the preface to his book, which, I have no doubt, will be a great success with those who still believe in a living...

 

Michel Koebel
Press correspondent, cultural journalist DNA and the newspaper L'Alsace
Sélestat, Alsace, France, December 2019

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