C R I T I C A N A L Y S I S
The French pamphleteer painter Patrice Servage creates a new contemporary surrealism in international art
Heir to Voltaire and the age of Enlightenment, the pamphleteer painter, Patrice Servage, talks with us about the world and our society, through his canvas.
A painting expected in contemporary art renews Surrealism by bringing modern messages, at the virtual time, in the heart of civilization and societal problems...
Patrice Servage holds the keys to a contemporary modernity, relevant to our times. The acceleration of scientific and industrial progress leads mankind towards a new stage of civilization. The development of digital technologies threw our societies into confusion by opening up new issues at the root of crisis and anguish. An artist had to take painting as a means of cultural communication, to shout, denounce and emphasize with relevance, which concerns us more urgently. This artist would invite us to reflect on the essential, in fields as diverse as social, human or environmental sciences. Patrice Servage, respecting and integrating picture basis, paints what we do not know or do not want to see, or simply that we pretend not to understand ... We can not escape the pamphleteer artist's paintings and what they show to our eyes, when reason and voices are silent ...
Patrice Servage, as Voltaire of the XXI century, handles the brush as the great writer wielded the pen with verve and talent. He highlights the paradoxes of our world, the contradictions in mentalities, the illogicality of individuals and their individual or group behaviours. The artist's style is powerful. Servage’s painting is influenced by the press and communication world. He knows how making an artistic impact through powerful messages and visuals. His figurative and narrative paintings, both theatrical and anecdotal, are real pictures with a societal pamphlet vocation by the combination of sense, image and art. Sometimes his brush seems to be dipped in acid, in order to depict powerful moments, without concessions, like real mirrors of society: charity and poverty, war and peace, love and hatred ... Through his art of painting in a hyper realistic style, Servage opens our eyes to an unambiguously reality. He takes the torch to the master suite which preceded and which assigned to painting the mission to serve society, from classicism to realism in the great periods of history. Today, the painter Servage creates a new surrealism. Through his paintings, he knows how reaching the audience, the general public, with unusual allegories in order to make us understand truths and current realities of our lives. These impressions slipped our attention in plural visuals, multifaceted and complex imagery of movies and television. In the exciting race of news in a globalized world, his creations are like "stop frame" that allow us to take the time for reflection and awareness. In the allegory which denounces the propensity to bad-being of society, his brush will sometimes wield the dish to develop terminologies with more universal messages, as in his painting named "Good Luck!". In Servage’s painting, there is like a mirror of society, who tries to find itself, in which the painter just registers in our mind's wanderings.
The artist’s work is not a country or neighbourhood painting, it is a painting addressed to the whole world ... It is a work that moves in all latitudes, because it expresses or reveals shared feelings for human consciousness. Servage uses the universal language of painting in order to send a rich, evident, and clear message, expanded beyond a simple reading in the first degree. The painter has managed to master the pictorial technique of painting in order to build a perfect aesthetics, in an optimal way, to make it useful for a society that confronts with its lacks and its failures...This painting, whose content facilitates "awareness" of issues, helps to improve human behaviour. That is why Servage’s work is constructive, positive, because it shows human deviances so that we know how finding a remedy. Servage lives his painting as an art immersed in society and a way of expression that belongs to society. His painting does not want to defend a specific cause. His painting wants to talk about our times and tells our times with the language of a painter who wants to move into the art of his century... Servage’s work may change spectators’ vision on their neighbourhoods because it is going to make humanity change deep down in his heart. His painting may change spectators’ consciousness, but also the collective and social consciousness.
As Dali and his messages, Servage, in a fresh life, in a youthful heart, leads in an approach of generosity and love of each other. He paints in front of us his suffering, his dismay to see that war is ruin, that selfishness is still wreaking havoc, that indifference exists, and that planet suffers in many ways. He now acts as a great painter. Servage has understood the role and function that may have painting. After many years of hard work, he masters this art. Now he is facing the society and proposes to make it evolve and improve. Servage, "the French pamphleteer painter”, demonstrates through his work how hyper-realistic and figurative painting can make when becoming the vehicle of intelligence, insight, discernment, inner feelings to express love and good.
Patrice Servage seems to be the first artist in the painting history to bear the "pamphleteer painter" title. He legitimates this title by conveying with the most relevance of our times, this form of societal sensitivity turned out to others, in the tradition of the best minds.
Patrice Servage is a real raw talent, which is essential to the intellectual quality of culture.
Antoine ANTOLINI, April 2010 CRACP (Centre de Recherche en Art Contemporain et Conservation du Patrimoine / Center for Research in Contemporary Art and Heritage Conservation)
Painting exhibition, "Le Peintre Patrice Servage” - April 2010 -
Research and Exhibition Centre - Cannes - Côte d'Azur (France) –
© Text, Antoine Antolini, CRACP / EDMC - Editorial Director - Center for Research in Contemporary Art and Heritage Conservation (CRACP) - 2010. Email: centre.cracp @ yahoo.fr - Tel: (33) 06 10 99 90 98
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