Page 422 - Christian Maas Full Book

sea milieu would come to complement these constructions.

Thanks to the experience transmitted by Louis Cane, these various discoveries fell into place.

Just like, as a child, he used to play with the components of a modest mecano; he would, adult,

create furnishings as if playing with a construction game.

He knew how to make the fossils his own, assemble them, and sculpt them; the playful aspect inherent
to his creation allowing him to rejoin the universe of his childhood. As an adult, he kept preserving him-

self from this world too Cartesian for hi. His only true universe is the one of the first childhood games; he

linked up with his Lost paradise again... The studios where he tirelessly pursues his research works with his
assistants, his accomplices, there is his universe.

Christian Maas possesses the magic power to craft his models until they become the true image

of the representation existing in his imagination; he allows us to find our way through our own uncon-
scious. Given the primacy of the spectacular aspect of his work, both exhibitionistic and voyeuristic
tendencies might be unveiled.

The artwork-object allows for an identity merging relationship between the artist and his crea-

tion, and allows him to find again the bond with his mother. The return to an infantile stage is char-
acteristic of the psychotic, but also the way of the mystic and the genius creator. The artist finds in
nostalgia of the lost paradise far more than a fact : It is a true mean of progress. At the pinnacle of

ancient Greece, Platon saw in the artist’s inspiration a madness, and ecstasy, a delirium: Hubris op-

posing sophrosune. It is a fact that it is characteristic of the artistic genius to be inspired, meaning,
having lost his mind. It is with reason that we talk about the art’s magic, and that we compare the
artist to a wizard of some sort. But beware! The regression occurring in Art must not be taken in

a pejorative meaning. This regression is much more related to an introversion, and orienta-

tion toward the world of images and inner life. Artworks are not simple projections of the art-
ist’s conflicts, conflicts finding their origins into childhood, but are attempts to solve these con-
flicts. This allows us to say that Christian Maas’s work is ahead of the artist himself. It is

a march forward, a becoming in a nascent state, a thrust toward exceeding himself, sublimation. Art lets

Christian assert and surpass himself through his work, which becomes negation of death. And precisely,
a figure towers over his works: the woman, she who gives life.

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