Henri Michaux
Sin título, 1956
(Untitled)
Watercolour on Arches paper, 56 x 75.7 cm
An avid reader in his childhood and an introverted adolescent who showed special interest in Christian mysticism, art,66 language and religion, Henri Michaux (Namur, Belgium, 1899 – Paris, France, 1984) began his career as a writer and poet in the early 1920s in Brussels, after having abandoned his studies of medicine and serving in a merchant marine for over a year. Established in Paris in 1924, he modelled his literary and artistic personality without regard for trends, movements or prevailing practices such as the Surrealist movement led by André Breton. Within that cultural and literary context, he embraced painting, feeling admiration for the works of Paul Klee and Giorgio de Chirico and unending enthusiasm for the poetry and prose of Comte de Lautréamont.
His artistic output chiefly consists of writing, drawings and paintings, for which he employed different mediums and techniques. It stands as an indivisible whole, as indicated by Michaux: "Painting, composing, writing: a complete journey. This is the adventure of being alive". Not in vain, the idea of travel, adventure, movement and displacement – not only physical but in terms of space, time and psyche – is a constant in his work, as evidenced in his travel journals, filled with subjective appreciation, such as Ecuador (1929) and Un barbare en Asie (A Barbarian in Asia, 1933), and the inner, imaginary journey that synthesises his work under the effects of drugs and psychotropics. This is the context of the series of mescaline-influenced drawings that he undertook in the mid-1950s, with their correlating and similarly influenced essays, such as Misérable miracle (Miserable Miracle, 1956) and L’infini turbulent (Infinite Turbulence, 1957). In addition to his exploration through drugs, he was keenly interested in the artistic practices of the mentally disturbed and Eastern painting, based on ideograms and in which he found parallels to his own work on the ritual of execution. Michaux acknowledged that "classic Chinese painters taught me what could be done with just a few brushstrokes". In 1937, his first individual exhibition was held in Paris, and, in 1960, he won the Ainaudi award in the 30th Venice Biennale competition, which largely consisted of informal European art. Considering that independence was one of the main characteristics of his style, it comes as no surprise that he refused to reveal or show himself to the public through photographs or interviews.
From 1956 onwards, the year of creation of Sin título (Untitled), Michaux alternately created and composed (text or image) under the effects of mescaline in order to experiment with the drug’s shock to the senses. This work contains some of the substantial qualities that characterise his mescaline-influenced output during this period. Hence, his range of mediums and techniques, based on watercolour – and at other times making use of techniques such as gouache or India ink, which favour a light touch and quick transfer from the vision to paper –, he expressed his concerns and the aforementioned inner journey. The greater part of his output in a drug-induced state consists of dense drawings, of black points, which Michaux described as human tissue, filaments, ants or pictograms. Nonetheless, this work features three elements shown through dynamic abstraction, as the subject of the experience must act quickly, before the depicted image or reality fades or turns into something else. These forms resemble ideograms or irrational figures represented through the repetition of a single action, which he used to construct rhythms, as if he were dancing. As seen in this work, the three elements emerge from the intangible, spacial void that is now the paper, in reference to the art of spectres and otherworldly phenomena that captured his interest.
During his drug-induced journeys and mental displacement, which were medically controlled and supervised, Michaux interpreted the revealed landscape to the full extent of his senses and through a completely different perception of the rational world: without thickness, scale, materiality or gravity. Hence, it may be said that disorientation, perturbation and disruption are among the sensations that describe Michaux as an author and interpreter of that mental landscape, in his texts as well as his drawings. He considered painting to be an exercise in liberation: "I paint to de-condition myself", he stated. Art allowed him to escape inertia and, in turn, painting became a factor that accelerated his writing. During this process, the blank sheet stands as the space in which drawn signs are perceived as figurative text.
References
Laurie Edson, "Michaux, Displacement, and Postmodernism", L’Esprit 
Créateur, vol. 26, no. 3, 1986, pp. 5–14.
Patrick Feyler, "Henri Michaux: instantanés", in Yves Vadé (dir.), Modernités 10. Poétiques de l’instant, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, Pessac, 1998, pp. 73–87.
Maud Gouttefangeas, "Le drame optique d’Henri Michaux. L’expérience hallucinogène et le music-hall dans Misérable Miracle et L’Infini turbulent", Littérature, no. 157, March 2010, pp. 67–79.
R. Robles Tardío