 |
A NOT VERY
"CATHOLIC" FRESCO Often regarded as the "leader of the New School of Nice", Patrick Moya asserts an "art of the south, catholic, charged, coloured, figurative and narrative". Demonstration on the walls of a Chapel in the country-side of Nice, French Riviera. By Florence CANARELLI |
| As a man of the South, Patrick
Moya does not refuse the catholic religion, even if he is not really a
believer. In spite of his Spanish father, an anticlerical who try to escape
from the weight of religion, Moya says that he is "marked by the stained
glasses of the nine churches of Troyes", his birthplace. In a general way,
he likes the churches, that he visits readily, as soon as he arrives in
a foreign city, even before the museums. And that 's not new : at
the time of one of his first exhibition in Nice (1984), on the theme of
"creature in paradise, creator in hell", he transforms already the gallery
"into a cathedral of the 13th century", inventing stained glasses on which
he drawed "the mythical life of Moya, like offering to the media". This
is the reason why he appreciates the challenge to receive, in 2003, the
ordering of a fresco about the life of Saint Jean-Baptist, to paint on
the walls of a small chapel in the mountains. Indeed, Clans, a big village
in the country-side of Nice, has just restored its St Jean-Baptist's Chapel.
And it is on an idea of Jean Ferrero, him-self born in Clans, that the
mayor, James Dauphiné, will entrust to Patrick Moya the realization
of these frescos, leaving to him unlimited power...
After a big work of documentation, Moya begins his "one man show" : not only by painting him-self the fresco on the walls, without any help or assistance, as usual. But especially by using him-self as a model, taking photographs of him, naked, in the positions wanted by the subject, using a photograph of his young face for representing the angel and even the scanner of his own cranium to represent "Death"... How does Moya justify to duplicate his own image, naked, on the walls of a catholic chapel ? - "Since always, the artists take a human model to represent Christ : Michelangelo made pose his boy friends. Often also, the models belong to the dissident minority : then, why not to take myself ? At the bottom, I defend the catholic principle of the representation of the human model, I am actually faithful to the tradition !" |
 |
 |
Precursor of Jesus (because announcing the arrival of the Messiah), Saint Jean-Baptist was poor and austere. It is him which "preached in the desert" and had the privilege to baptize Christ on the bank of the Jordan. When the sovereign of Galileo, Hérode Antipas, repudiated his legitimate wife to marry Hérodiade (woman of his brother), Saint Jean reproached them this "scandalous attitude". To be revenged, Hérode put him in jail. While Hérodiade, having never forgiven him this insult either, will require the head of the king, via his daughter, Salome. It is the famous scene of the dance of Salome in front of the king : Jean will be decapitated and his head brought on a plate. An episode of the Bible - the "decapitation of the Precursor" - which Clans celebrates, since many centuries, every 29 August. When beginning his work, Patrick MOYA starts by imagining to tell the story like a "comic strip", as it was the case at the 16th century. Indeed at that time, itinerant Italian artists - like Giovanni Canavesio, Giovanni Baleison and Andrea da Cella for the most famous - crossed the Alps to put their talents at the service of the Faith... While realizing, in a form very close to our current comic strips, superb pedagogical frescos about the life of the saints, in order to edify the populations. Frescos which traditionally, covered walls and ceilings entirely. However, at Clans, the ceiling having been restored, only the walls are intended to be painted. Like he could'nt paint the ceiling, Patrick Moya modifies his project : he decides to paint complete scenes, telling the history of the saint, from the bottom to the door. But also by adding a progression, from Heaven to Hell : from the light blue sky, to the dark red of the hell. On the top of the door, two pigs are spitting out fire while the Moya-Devil is consuming him-self in the diabolicaal flames. |
| Here, Moya changes register
while keeping his marvellous universe. We are far from the usual style
of the "leader of the New School of Nice". Forsaking his small "Moya",
caricature of his self-portrait, and forgetting the game he plays with
the 4 letters of his name, Patrick Moya is devoted to a new exercise :
to tell the dramatic history of Jean-Baptist Saint, on an unusual and difficult
support (walls of a chapel). In that exercise of style, Moya keeps his
personal Universe, Mediterranean, coloured and sensual - cobalt blue skies,
cypresses and umbrella pines, animals preferred (bear, sheep or snake)...
While adding, for the first time in his work, a figurative and realistic
representation of the human body and even the human face : with some tints
of pink of some darker shades placed well, the body of the man appears
in all his harmony. Naturely, it's his own body, because it's the
trademark of Patrick Moya to reproduce and decline his own image. But it's
here more than a simple narcissistic exercice : we are carried in
a marvellous imaginary World. And even if the subject is tragic - the story
finishes by a cutted head - his treatment by Patrick Moya is a version
without any culpability nor blackness : the head of the saint is only a
little bit bloody and even the winged Devil does not have a really bad
look, the flames which surround it evoking more a forest in autumn that
the torments of the Hell.
To leave in our memory only one poetic, harmonious Universe, coloured and green... like the vision of the world which offers to us, in all its work, Patrick Moya. A breath of pure happiness ! |
 |
| MOYA's website : Studiomoya | See MOYA at Clans |