“OLIVIER ZAPPELLI, HIPPIES, GODDESSES AND GODS”

By Etienne Chatton, Founder of the International Center of Imaginary Realism, Château de Gruyère, Switzerland

Olivi­er Zap­pelli was born in Lausanne on 2 April 1966 at 00:20 am. Aries, ascend­ant Sagit­tari­us: fire of fire, with the bonus of a fire horse in the Chinese zodi­ac. A play­er of extremes, destabil­ised by any bal­ance, he reveals him­self from child­hood curi­ous about everything, con­sumed by desires. On him, the off­spring sees con­ver­ging a pic­ture of ascend­ants where polit­ic­al pas­sion in the male lin­eage mixes with a taste for the arts in the female lin­eage. From an old Pied­montese fam­ily, grand­fath­er Zap­pelli, the social­ist deputy may­or of Intra-Verb­ania, sat in the Roman Sen­ate; after the rise of fas­cism and the com­ing to power of Mus­solini forced him into exile in Switzer­land. On his mother­’s side, the Lom­bards of Neuchâtel are of Cévennes des­cent. The Desert Museum has hon­oured the des­cend­ants of these exiled Prot­est­ants. The neo-clas­sic­al paint­ings of great-aunt Jeanne Lom­bard will be on dis­play along­side those of grand­fath­er Théodore Delachaux and the engrav­ings of great-uncle Aimé Mont­an­don.

In high school, Lat­in sec­tion, the idiom of the ancest­ors puts the school­boy in leth­argy. A pro­tean dunce, he only wants to scribble while the dis­cip­lin­ary board inflicts the worst viol­ence on him. At the age of six­teen, he was nev­er­the­less entrus­ted with a com­ic strip com­mem­or­at­ing the 400th anniversary of Collège St-Michel. The work, which is for­bid­den to be entitled The antics of St Can­isi­us, puts him on pro­ba­tion for a while. His exec­rable grades, how­ever, forced him to leave the ven­er­able insti­tu­tion two years before the bac­ca­laur­eate. Exas­per­ated, his fath­er enrolled him at the Beaux-Arts of Sion, where the dazzling illu­min­a­tion of Min­im­al Art is giv­en in per­man­ent hap­pen­ing, but the beat­nik, opt­ing for tag rather than wall tach­ism, refuses to devote him­self to it body and soul.

Olivi­er Zap­pelli then enrolled at the Max­im­i­li­en de Meur­on school in Neuchâtel. A hip­pie in a fur coat and tree mop, he sucks in the joint with the air of the times. By mil­it­at­ing for Che Guévara in the ecstasy of pier­cing, he acquires notions of com­par­at­ive ana­tomy as the spir­it comes to girls. By copy­ing the friezes of the Parthen­on, he still swal­lows the rudi­ments of aes­thet­ics and the his­tory of art. But in his third year, he decides to boy­cott the mod­el­ling class; a fan­at­ic of con­struct­iv­ism, the mas­ter only dreams of spheres and cubes while Olivi­er only wants to paint. One stormy day, the dean, show­ing his author­ity, throws all his pro­duc­tion on the street. An exchange of blows! Expul­sion! Back in Fri­bourg, the future geni­us decides to pun­ish the impudent des­pot. He con­cocts a recipe for dung alco­hol which he will serve cold in the time of revenge. Self-taught in the tech­niques of paint­ing, mod­el­ling and tutti quanti, and with his know­ledge of ele­ment­ary chem­istry, Olivi­er decides to play Zap II the return. Hav­ing come to pay his respects to the viol­ent head­mas­ter, he sprinkles the hall of hon­our of the school with liquid naus­ea, the smell of which will linger for a long time.

In a chaot­ic search for him­self, Broth­er Olivi­er enters the Cister­cian mon­as­tery of Haut­e­rive. The Abbot, eager to test the obed­i­ence of the pos­tu­lant, asks him to give up paint­ing. Two months to macer­ate out of the shim­mer­ing waters of cre­ation before the artist decides to cross the fence. A mys­tic­al inter­lude that a detect­ive would clas­si­fy as a hit-and-run.

Only tol­er­ated by the offi­cial author­it­ies, who spon­sor the inter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tion, non-art leaves many holes in the cheese of the state per­cent­age. Early on in their careers, the eld­ers are into per­form­ance. Will Olivi­er be sat­is­fied with the vaguely anarch­ist remarks uttered by the revolu­tion­ar­ies in slip­pers, who advoc­ate an art of destruc­tion? As the son of a bour­geois, who has been feed­ing on the ears of a judge fath­er and a press cor­res­pond­ent grand­fath­er renowned for his geo­pol­it­ic­al chron­icles, a Zap­pelli can­not con­fine him­self to pro­gram­ming the void. If Art is ques­tioned from the order of the world, it is first of all from a world of ideas.

For the man who laughs, hor­ror always has a deris­ory side. Humour allows one to bear the tra­gic. The com­ic strip is the ideal medi­um for those who are look­ing for a fig­ur­at­ive way out of the usu­al clichés. The bubbles of the com­ic strip are mani­fes­tos wait­ing for myths. Richard Corben inspires the young­er gen­er­a­tion with his irrit­at­ing her­oes. Just like the Rolling Stones, his art com­bines vul­gar­ity, hatred and sad­ism in a pleas­antly ton­ic poet­ics. For Zap­pelli, the revolu­tion will be hil­ari­ous.

Olivi­er Zap­pel­li’s com­pos­i­tions strike them with the acronym OZ. Dare. A pro­gramme: dar­ing to take risks, mak­ing it a con­stant chal­lenge. Ori­ent­al ideal­ism has rushed into the breach opened by the por­no­graph­ic industry; would it go so far as to draw dirty tricks, images of admin­is­trat­ive pipes and the intro­duc­tion of gad­gets with dubi­ous hygiene? If he has com­mit­ted this sin — noth­ing human is for­eign to him — let the crit­ics see in these sins of youth an encour­age­ment to humil­ity.

In the mean­time, Olivi­er Zap­pelli has joined the post office admin­is­tra­tion. He stamps let­ters and lugs par­cels. By the time he col­lects a few dol­lars, the cicada reopens its wings and flies to Haiti. Anim­ism is the ori­gin­al form of all belief. On All Saints’ Day, the whole island is trans­formed into a gigant­ic seance of spir­itu­al­ism. As a neo­phyte, OZ takes part in count­less voo­doo cere­mon­ies. Too intel­lec­tu­al or not enough aban­don­ment, he will nev­er reach the trance of the inno­cent souls and bod­ies over which the spir­its ride. Besides, this teem­ing life lacks asceti­cism. By chance, a book on India brings him enlight­en­ment. Via the air­port of Port-au-Prince. Imme­di­ate board­ing.

From New Del­hi, armed with rus­tic vir­tues, the adven­turer sets off on the roads of India. Hardened by pleas­ure more than by effort, he tastes the intox­ic­a­tion of solitude and the joy of liv­ing to the fullest. In pur­suit of his own secrets, he immerses him­self in the Ramay­ana. The hun­ger for super­fi­cial mirages is appeased, the dull bore­dom of every­day life returns. Although the sweet prattle, woven in gar­lands around faith, leaves him scep­tic­al, he decides to try the exper­i­ence of mon­ast­ic life. In order to con­quer a highly tan­tric mas­tery, the com­plete rebel, kicked out of school and the army, sub­mits to all the rules.

Bare-ches­ted and bare­foot, the sal­mon dhoti, the glor­i­ous emblem of the itin­er­ant monk, cov­ers the least glor­i­ous part of his ana­tomy. With his beard and hair covered with ashes of cow dung, he begs for his food in the Hindi lan­guage. Still addicted to the need to paint, at the temple of Kajuraho, Hanu­man Mandir, he receives a man­date to rep­res­ent the mon­key god Hanu­man. Com­plete hap­pi­ness: a six-metre long fresco that he com­pleted before reach­ing Bhairotik, Kal Bhairo Mandir, where the monks ordered him to illus­trate an epis­ode of the Mahabharata. The amazed vil­la­gers come to bow before the sac­red images and touch the feet of the ven­er­able sad­hou.

From the out­set, OZ con­fines itself to sym­met­ric­al com­pos­i­tions. As in ori­ent­al music, this clas­sic­al scheme will serve as the har­mon­ic fun­da­ment­al; it is the con­tinu­ous base sup­port­ing the melod­ic dis­course, where the sithar embroid­ers its vari­ations ad infin­itum. Often, his paint­ing con­ceals a dual­ity that takes him from the dark to the light. This ver­tic­al stretch­ing is in accord­ance with the prin­ciple of lib­er­a­tion. From sat­ur­a­tion to clar­ity, the spir­it is released from its gangue of mat­ter. His tech­nique, which sat­ur­ates the col­our, joins the motto of the expres­sion­ist rapins: oil on can­vas is oil on fire. The tones, which he super­im­poses on his can­vas in very thin lay­ers, let a vibrant light pen­et­rate under his glazes.

Neither really child­ish nor really adult, he has kept a torn soul: the inno­cent Peter Pan in per­petu­al struggle against the fero­cious Drac­ula. This fawn-like appet­ite for the bru­tal effi­ciency of the poster requires these con­trasts between har­mony and deli­ri­um. The sub­jects arise spon­tan­eously. He keeps in reserve mul­tiple themes that he neither seeks to ana­lyse nor to cen­sor. He brings them out when a vis­cer­al desire imposes their pro­jec­tion. This urgency of the uncon­struc­ted idea can only be explained at the end of the jour­ney, when innu­mer­able embel­lish­ments have enriched it.

In his canvases, which he exploits in par­al­lel, he man­ages to inter­weave con­tem­por­ary ref­er­ences, mixed with the most rig­or­ous clas­si­cism. Oppos­ing the light and the dark, the immense and the deris­ory, he makes a tiny car­toon cohab­it with a giant in the Sis­tine Chapel. The diversity of these con­tri­bu­tions cre­ates ten­sion; they gen­er­ate intens­ity. Con­test­a­tion becomes a source of poetry. Summoned to explain him­self, OZ jus­ti­fies his fas­cin­a­tion with the great clas­sics: “Michelan­gelo for the power he gives off from his bod­ies, for his bright orange drapes and apple green shad­ows. Dürer who breaks all taboos. He dared, so I can”.

The little gods who yelp in the dark­ness demand less con­ven­tion than truth. By serving dubi­ous masses, OZ only had to mimeo­graph his myth­o­lo­gic­al bor­row­ings. Fool­ish with good feel­ings, Oz could pour out his heart to the point of implo­sion in his chil­dren’s por­traits. Taken host­age by good soci­ety, he would have hon­oured the priest­esses of the temple. As pros­elytes, they would have been able to inspire the anarch­ist with their mor­al­iz­ing vis­ion of the class struggle. So many wretched people have fallen there, who no longer even have the excuse to suf­fer the pres­sure of the reac­tion­ar­ies. Left to deli­ri­um alone, he remains con­scious of the lim­its of the bull­shit that it is good man­ners to over­step.

The por­trait of a woman is like a mar­riage pro­pos­al. Alas, the monks refrain from such requests and if they have the desire to paint, they only hon­our the Blessed Vir­gin. OZ com­pleted his noviti­ate in a mon­as­tery of Hindu mys­tics prac­tising tol­er­ance and love of man­kind. The sac­red prin­ciples of this voca­tion in pur­suit of the divine were to bring him to the sum­mit of lib­er­a­tion. But he renounced all his vows, includ­ing the vows of chastity. If he was able to keep his virile attrib­utes, he came out marked by the exper­i­ence of chastity. Would fatal­ity have caused him to fall back into miso­gyny, which has always been the rut of Chris­ti­an mon­ast­i­cism?

The Clin­ton years dealt the final blow to intol­er­ance. But sexu­al free­dom was tinged with icon­o­clasm. Not all macho men and women are Muslims. They feign respect, but it is to bet­ter prac­tice sys­tem­at­ic gut­ting. Wheth­er lit­er­ary or plastic, their cri­ti­cism stig­mat­ises the intrigues and ambi­tions of the muses of power as much as their shame­less­ness. In this Mecca of polit­ic­al cor­rect­ness that the world of women has remained, a puddled has-been thinks she has the right to demand that a paint­er make the apo­theosis of the sinu­ous blonde? Lucid­ity often makes men cow­ardly; macho for fear of appear­ing com­pla­cent, OZ was nev­er cow­ardly. Thanks to his spon­sors for nev­er for­cing him to spread sweets on the verge of a dia­betes crisis.