Artist

Charlotte Massip never ceases to amaze us. Her trajectory, from the small format engravings of the very beginning, knows delicious meanders without getting lost.
At the end of her current path, we will find what makes her work specific : the organic mixed with human watchmaking, the human form reinvented from the old and classical masters, in situ among the disasters of our machanical and ornate urbanities. This approach could induce a morbidity of poor quality. But that’s reckoning without the humor – truly surreal- of Charlotte, who transposes our sinister condition in a playful manner. One will find in her recent prints a consummate art ornamental composition, cogs and lace become floral motifs for a subtle decoration where color sings and deflects evil spirits.
It is only to discover, too, her luminous boxes, real aquariums with visions, and her wallpapers, as decorative in the domestic context as they are surprising on the pure aesthetic level.
Artists mixing imaginary narration and visual pleasure are rare today.
It is true that this exercise requires both know- howand talent.
We bet that Charlotte Massip does not miss it !

…Charlotte est une aquarelliste qui grave Jekill doublée d’une graveuse qui aquarelle Hyde. J’exagère. La vérité, c’est qu’elle marie à merveille l’incision et l’effleurement, la caresse et la morsure. Y aurait-il, dans ces mots définition plus délicieuse du génie de séduire?

…Charlotte, elle, me comprendra sûrement. La preuve : elle dissèque comme elle respire, en congédiant toute la monotonie du monde. Ses disséqués, elle les amuse, les tourneboule, les bringuebale, les irise, au gré de ses caprices anatomiques, et quand j’écris « caprices », j’entends aussi une musique. Ses disséqués, elle les réopère, avec des tire-bouchons cette fois, ou des amulettes, ou encore des prothèses baroques, héritées de je ne sais quel carnaval moyenâgeux, du temps où les éclopés dansaient au bras des ingambes.

Marcel Moreau “Mes, drôles, de disséqués” extrait paru dans ARTENSION n°7

…In a joyful and desperate search for her own body, containing a being threatened with too many temptations, painfully tested or shaken with joy according to her life’s hectic circumstances, Charlotte, a worker – therapist of herself – chisels and adorns, shapes or disfigures, scatters or assembles, dissects or brings to life her own ‘remains’, what is present or to come.

These vehement operations do not go without many borrowings and references: the era is greedy of itself, of its ancient and recent culture, and access to all the images and books is open to this avid reader. Michelangelo and Cranach are part of it, and, on closer inspection, there are other perfidious quotations, from various eras, intertwined in a tangle of lace, also worth a careful detour.

The final composition will be like the worrying reconstruction of a jigsaw with finely crafted pieces. The total image – the whole reconstituted body, found again – will only be readable during the vertical arrangement of the frames, like an old predella that would have been maliciously straightened, or a comic strip: here, finally, after many detours, the artist placed facing herself. A temporary self, fortunately, and the process is, for the pleasure of the viewer that we are, never interrupted. More shrewd reflections are to come…

Extract from the text of Georges Rubel
Univers des Arts 1er avril 2018

By Georges Rubel

In terms of plastic or graphic arts, it is not easy to cross the red line of change, of total reversal.  But it can be equally difficult – and quite daring, I would say – to maintain its original manner, to preserve its original expression while radically changing not only the scale of the support, but also its function.

Charlotte Massip was trained in the school of small format, her imagery goldsmithery are no larger than 8 inches.  It is true that the material engraved on copper offers infinite possibilities in terms of skillful carving, interlacing and embroidery, subtle materials, and it is therefore difficult to imagine that these elements of the order of intimate reading can be transposed on large surfaces.

Yet this is the case today.  Charlotte Massip gradually became aware that her images of modest formats engraved on copper and benefiting from all the technical and expressive contributions offered by etching, aquatint, soft varnish and dry point could easily fit in a domestic function, such as the decor of children’s rooms, living rooms, or intimate areas in the home.

The engravings transferred to strips of wall paper and considerably enlarged by means of the usual processes of the poster indeed keep all their graphic and plastic qualities.  This can be judged by consulting the photographs of dwelling places on her website, one wall per room in general, include enlarged details of various prints, completed or in progress, and transformed into frescoes.  The result is stunning, because the enlargement does not harm the special atmosphere of the dreamlike and poetic images of the artist. 

We remember what I used to refer to Charlotte’s vision as aquariums, the luminous boxes where transparent fragments of colored prints were arranged as if in a display case and devoted to decorative hanging.

It is from these boxes that the idea came to Charlotte to bring her very special world to life in a private interior setting, in particular with the decoration of entire sections of walls.

And then will soon follow the decorative wall plates that can already be admired in the project on the site, and which we will obviously link to the practice of other artists from the past, namely, Matisse, Braque and Picasso.

But this is pure Charlotte, of course, and it is no less delicious and enchanting.

The engravings of Charlotte Massip
I saw Charlotte Massip’s prints for the first time in the Ogami Press studio run by Juan Lara. Surprise, admiration, worry, sensuality, beauty. An unshackled imagination bubbles and runs along the acid-bitten lines, sinuous burns of an inner fire that appears in a vertical direction. Ancient echoes, Atlanteans and Caryatids, which once supported the architect of the heavens.
And these bodies that Charlotte Massip offers us show us with indifference and without modesty their anatomy, their organs, their sex, their cartilage, their bones. “Organic receptacles of my moods. “says the artist. Strange beings, in any case, coming from a surrealist and baroque heraldry, an intimate mythology that is also fed by a tradition to which Charlotte gives first and last names: Hans Bellmer, Richt Miller, Rudolf Schlitter, Fred Deux, Domenico Gnoli, Jose Hernandez, André Breton, Georges Bataille, Mikhail Boulgakov. These are the stars of her training that illuminate from afar these bodies that know they are mortal, condemned to decomposition, and that keep the memory of pleasure and pain, impermanence and the absurd, solemnity and grotesque. Bodies with butterfly heads, emaciated skeletons wearing old shoes, passwords of tireless travellers, between life and death, or vagrants of a dream that decomposes, as in a kaleidoscope. Expression of the love of detail in the work of this artist and material revelation, of a strong and determined gesture of the tip of the steel point, the uncertain dialogue between thinking and doing.
And by blinking between these lines and spots, we discover fear, the unusual, chance, the journey, the luxury, the danger, sex, an elegant spell that both attracts and repels us. A universe housed in the realm of fantasy and wonder, an imaginary that crystallizes into a salve et coagula with powerful emotional strength and a refined and poetic reality.
Because inevitably and without escape we understand that, in Charlotte Massip’s prints, there is a deep enigma, a mystery that we will never decipher, an arcane that (as Charlotte finally warns us), has its origin and foundation in the ink and blood of matter, another secret society.

Carlos Garcia-Alix
Madrid, 2014

Scratches in time

She wanted to write about her work, her background, people who have been influential on her work. Charlotte Massip finally entrusted a close friend to tell her story. Together they went back in time, reopened diaries, ran into chisels, steel points, her print-press, literature, and masters that this engraver, who has made Bordeaux her home, has met before.

First she is asked about this new year, starting from its first projects to 2017’s exquisite unknown predictions and resolutions. Drawing will be Charlotte’s first project. This is it: she’s about to grab her pens again! She’s going to glue, she’s even going to paint!

Charlotte has been engraving ever since she studied at the principal graduate printing school in Paris: the Ecole Estienne. At that time, the newly graduated teenager started discovering copper plates, scratches and incisions. Yet Charlotte missed drawing and in 1991 she headed to Claude Lapointe’s class at Les Art Déco in Strasbourg where she watched her friends’ handling of tempera.

Painstakingly, she worked flat-out with her old ball-point pens in hand – the very same ones she used when she was little, a flashback from her childhood. The curly-haired Parisian used to fly the family-owned hot air balloon, she also devoured art books at that time, she dug up anatomical slides at second-hand bookstores, the ‘bouquinistes’ on the banks of the Seine. The ever-moving city of Paris swept the runaway artist along. Holding a map of the Metro, she used to run the streets in which nothing stands still and everything is a source of inspiration. The teenager experimented with both plaster and paint cans. Her first master: Tapiès. This whirlwind of ecstatic discoveries was suddenly blocked by the disapproval of her architect father and she was told to draw! She obeyed.

Some details

Then came a shock: she found her true expression through Fred Deux and Domenico Gnoli.
This was now the time for details; hyper-realism, infinite lattices, filled with “stitches, thread and bits of rope”. Drawing made her focus again, allowing her to breathing anew, a ‘meditative state’.

She sat. In cafés, at theatres, she sketched. “I felt as if I was seeing better, listening better when I had my sketchbook… I felt closer to the actor or the musician while drawing”. Charlotte was 15. She was reading André Breton, Georges Bataille and discovered Hans Bellmer.

After Paris and Strasbourg, the young artist settled in the Balearic islands for several years. She had now made drawing her official job for more than ten years. Barefoot on the deck of an old sailing boat, she kept a tight ship. Majestic palm trees, luxurious hotels and Palma’s gothic church would cover the front side of many a postcard. Even today, when need be, she returns to Majorca’s light and warmth.

Open bodies

The continental ‘come back’ took place in Paris. She met a neighbour whose job was printing. Charlotte engraved and sold her small-format works not far from the Canal St Martin. Then she started work on anatomy: ‘my dissected bodies’, Charlotte continued. Here she exploited André Vesale’s anatomies and autopsies, as well as naked flesh and Fragonard’s powerful artistic experiments. She was also accompanied in that deep exploration by Marcel Moreau’s sensual writings:

“I touch so many things since my skin has been peeled off, that I can even touch the veneer of the appearance, which lasts as long as an illusion. I can crack it, I can bleed it, lynch it, nervously pollute it with my intramuscular, chromatic and other treasures exhumed from orgasm-liquified bodies: a state summarized by Henri Michaux” (‘Connaissance par les gouffres’, ’extract by Marcel Moreau).

Happiness: an honour to be invited for a one-year residence at the La Casa de Velasquez, the Académie de France in Madrid. Charlotte was welcomed here where she met two important printer-artists: Juan Lara and Julio Leon. “They gave me the keys to go further.” Photo-engraving being one of them, those who read the plates and caress them. “To reveal the truth. Intaglio-engraved”. Charlotte tackled large-sized engravings, a series of female martyred saints, baroque beauties. The six-foot tall Saint Agueda, Justa, Ruffina, Inès, Ursula, Lucia and Margarita’s bodies, whose organs, bones, agonies, and entrails devouring monsters come out.

To female sufferings, the artist gave herself up. These revealed, tortured interiors told of the evil, misunderstanding and violence that are necessary, even where desire and beauty were expressed. So motherhood tears one apart, love gnaws and tears one apart. Plates are a sort of therapy, a hands-on therapy. With meticulousness, with the extreme slowness of detail, mentally, the words are posed as the plate is scratched, manipulated, and the acid enters the scene. “My landscape is the human body.” And Charlotte immersed herself in those guts, darknesses, and shadows. .

She recently came to know engraver Philippe Mohlitz in the city of Bordeaux where she now lives. Ink drawings fascinate Charlotte, as do the chiselled lines of the brilliant coppersmith artist. She recalls Jose Hernandez, well-known in Madrid, whose monstrous portrait hangs on her wall.

She also says a colourful new energy has come out. Charlotte wants to draw. She’s torn with fear yet caught by its challenge. She dreams of abstraction and projects herself. Later, in a long time from now, she imagines herself without any table or room grappling with another dimension, that of nature. Will the bodies of men and women always express themselves? Other forces will certainly populate the artist’s landscapes.

For now, Charlotte is getting ready for an important deadline. Funnily enough, it’s beside Fred Deux that we will find her in spring, at the Abbaye de Beaulieu en Rouergue for a tribute to the one who – let’s not forget it! – ‘revealed’ her true calling .

Original text by Anne Cesbron-Fourrier
2017.
Texte paru dans ACTUEL de l’estampe contemporaine n°10

*English translations by Helen Lantsbury

Dans le secret de l’atelier de Charlotte Massip

L’infâme vivisecteur pris à son propre piège

Parfois, la vie me réserve des émotions de trente-six carats, les chandelles n’étant plus de mode. Ah si seulement, quand me vient une telle émotion, je pouvais me la passer au doigt, ne serait-ce pour qu‘en jouisse mes yeux… Après tout, ils ont le droit, eux aussi, à l’extase. Mais une émotion, est-ce que cela se taille, est-ce que cela se cisèle ? Hélas non. Une émotion coule. Elle ne sait rien faire que ça : couler. Et même en poésie, les grands orfèvres ont beau vous changer quelques petites sonorités de rien du tout en parures alexandrines, il ne faut pas s’y tromper: ce ne sont que ruissellements.

Ce jour-là, quand je pénétrai dans l’atelier de Charlotte Massip, c’est d’abord elle que je contemplai, tout en me décomposant, avant fluidification. J’avais devant moi tout l’art d’être une femme.

Adieu Louvre, Prado, Ermitage, Guggenheim, Pinacothèques en pagaille. Pour paraphraser Mallarmé, je me suis dit : « J’ai vu tous les musées et la Charlotte n’est pas triste ». Soudain, son sourire me mit un collier autour du cou. Je n’avais plus qu’à obéir à la laisse. Et c’est ainsi que commença ma tournée de son imaginaire.

Je précise, et bien que dans le cas présent, j’eusse préféré donner la parole à la splendide inexactitude de mon émotion de trente-six carats, je précise donc ceci : Charlotte est une aquarelliste qui grave Jekill doublée d’une graveuse qui aquarelle Hyde. J’exagère. La vérité, c’est qu’elle marie à merveille l’incision et l’effleurement, la caresse et la morsure. Y aurait-il, dans ces mots définition plus délicieuse du génie de séduire ? Je ne crois pas. Mais ce n’est pas tout. Je n’étais pas au bout de ma surprise par elle rendue divine. Elle n’avait gravé, plus coloré, que des disséqués. Or, le disséqué est quelqu’un que je connais très bien. N’ai-je pas moi-même, tout au long de ma vie, pratiqué sur nombre de mes chers semblables cette austère, quoique exquise, discipline ?

Je n’avais d’ailleurs pas attendu qu’ils crevassent pour jouer de mon scalpel psychologique comme de mes prélèvements lyriques. Oui, en fait, et je l’avoue, je fus un infâme vivisecteur, y compris de ma propre nature, ce qui devrait me valoir la clémence de mes juges, le jour venu. De plus, mes expériences s’exerçaient en général sur des espèces d’humanoïdes dont le moins que je puisse penser est que de leur vivant ils avaient voulu ma mort. Où était le mal ?

Charlotte, elle, me comprendra sûrement. La preuve : elle dissèque comme elle respire, en congédiant toute la monotonie du monde. Ses disséqués, elle les amuse, les tourneboule, les bringuebale, les irise, au gré de ses caprices anatomiques, et quand j’écris « caprices », j’entends aussi une musique. Ses disséqués, elle les réopère, avec des tire-bouchons cette fois, ou des amulettes, ou encore des prothèses baroques, héritées de je ne sais quel carnaval moyenâgeux, du temps où les éclopés dansaient au bras des ingambes.

A ce rythme-là, longtemps après la péritonite, qui s’avéra fatale, les entrailles remuent encore, étrangement. La radiographie était mauvaise, et même funeste ; la kaléidoscopie sera bonne, et même prometteuse. Jusqu’aux ventres à tout jamais arides, ils semblent faire un peu de place à des fœtus pelotonnés. C’est pour demain, peut-être, leur grand saut dans l’inconnu.

Quand aux os, je les trouve pathétiques. J’ai envie de compatir à leur solitude de dépiautés longilignes. Au fond, leur histoire est tragique. Pendant des siècles, ces Atlantes et Caryatides du dedans portèrent stoïquement le poids de la chair humaine, gloutonne, salace et périssable. Les voici désœuvrés, médullaires en vain. Mais non, je ne compatirai pas. Au fond, ils ont de la chance. Grâce à Charlotte, ils cliquettent de polychromie romane…

Je m’apprêtais à la quitter lorsqu’elle m’a murmuré : « Je vais vous disséquer, vous voulez bien ? » En cet instant, mon regard dans le sien, j’aurai pu tout signer, et entre autres, si elle me l’avait demandé, la déportation des étoiles, moins une.

Marcel Moreau

CIMAISE memo art n° 268 janvier 2002, page 42

By Georges Rubel

In terms of plastic or graphic arts, it is not easy to cross the red line of change, of total reversal.  But it can be equally difficult – and quite daring, I would say – to maintain its original manner, to preserve its original expression while radically changing not only the scale of the support, but also its function.

Charlotte Massip was trained in the school of small format, her imagery goldsmithery are no larger than 8 inches.  It is true that the material engraved on copper offers infinite possibilities in terms of skillful carving, interlacing and embroidery, subtle materials, and it is therefore difficult to imagine that these elements of the order of intimate reading can be transposed on large surfaces.

Yet this is the case today.  Charlotte Massip gradually became aware that her images of modest formats engraved on copper and benefiting from all the technical and expressive contributions offered by etching, aquatint, soft varnish and dry point could easily fit in a domestic function, such as the decor of children’s rooms, living rooms, or intimate areas in the home.

The engravings transferred to strips of wall paper and considerably enlarged by means of the usual processes of the poster indeed keep all their graphic and plastic qualities.  This can be judged by consulting the photographs of dwelling places on her website, one wall per room in general, include enlarged details of various prints, completed or in progress, and transformed into frescoes.  The result is stunning, because the enlargement does not harm the special atmosphere of the dreamlike and poetic images of the artist. 

We remember what I used to refer to Charlotte’s vision as aquariums, the luminous boxes where transparent fragments of colored prints were arranged as if in a display case and devoted to decorative hanging.

It is from these boxes that the idea came to Charlotte to bring her very special world to life in a private interior setting, in particular with the decoration of entire sections of walls.

And then will soon follow the decorative wall plates that can already be admired in the project on the site, and which we will obviously link to the practice of other artists from the past, namely, Matisse, Braque and Picasso.

But this is pure Charlotte, of course, and it is no less delicious and enchanting.