Collection J.C.de Castelbajac
The painting Hours and Jewels by Donald Baechler is composed of a white background with colourful dots and an animal incorporating the features of both, a cow and a horse in the foreground. The black and white pattern on the body of the animal reminds more a cow skin whereas the form of the animal’s skull and the details around the animal’s head suggest more the harness of a horse. The cow spots in the painting give the impression of transferring from the body of the cow onto the background of the painting through the incorporation of colourful dots based on the use of primary colours. The animal present in Baechler’s painting Hours and Jewels is reminiscent of French artist Jean Dubuffet’s distorted figures of horses and cows, drawn in a child-like innocence. At the time, Dubuffet researched and took interest in the works created by self-taught creators, marginalised people, often disabled or mentally ill, entrenched in a position of rebellious spirit or impervious to collective norms and values, who create without concern of public criticism or the gaze of others. An art practice which Dubuffet called Art Brut. In the same line of thoughts, Baechler’s innocence and childish style in his paintings reminds of the virtue of a child or of people untouched by artistic culture, in which therefore mimicry, unlike that of intellectuals, has little or no part, so that they draw everything from their own background and not from the clichés of classical art or fashionable art.
In the same style as his artwork Abstract Painting with Spaceship, the work Baechler, a second-generation Pop artist combines abstract painting with figurative elements such as the animal drawn in the middle of the canvas, to create a scenery evocativeof childhood. He often employs patterns associated with children, creating abstract adaptations of elements such as ice-cream cones, flowers, skulls, globes and farm animals through the use of large brushstrokes and bright colours. The painting, acrylic and fabric collage on canvas, is composed of different material to create a memory board, evocative of the innocence of childhood as well as his travels around Asia which are directly incorporated in the paintings through the fabric used. This habit of incorporating material is in a way recalling the works of contemporary artists Mike Kelly and his Memory Ware series which embodies the theme of memory-related concerns by the creation of mosaics with small personal items such asbuttons, beads, costume jewellery, pins, watches, bangles, promotional buttons, and other objects. Baechler’s reference to biographical and art historical elements make his large paintings recognisable on an international level.
