L’exil du cygne, 1989-93

A photograph of a collage by the artist entitled L’exil du cygne (1982-83, GPC-0638), held down at the centre of a larger sheet by several torn fragments of an old master drawing, contains a tilted and squared plexiglas sheet, and a plexiglas oval shape featuring a cut-out, arranged so that the hole coincides with the photographic one of the lake-palette. Inserted in the hole in the oval plexiglas sheet is a white feather, which recalls the one reproduced in the collage.
The latter image reproduces the cut-out figure of sleeping Narcissus – from Echo and Narcissus (ca. 1627) by Nicolas Poussin – inserted on the shores of Lake Nemi, transformed into a palette by way of an oval cut-out. Drawn on the body of water is the profile of a swan and its reflection. A vertical tear, which is corroborated by the image of an antique feather-pen located in the area corresponding to Narcissus' hand and the swan's beak, holds a torn fragment in which the number nine appears: it alludes to the nine Muses and is the symbol of completeness.
The title refers to the final line of the sonnet Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui... (1887) by the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, in which the swan, ideal symbol of the poetic flight, recognizes its exile, that is, its condition as a castaway in a frozen lake, condemned to motionlessness and impotence, to express, in a figurative sense, the insufficiency of the language with respect to the dimension of the absolute.
While the swan drawn on the body of water harkens back to Mallarmé's poem, the feather – the swan's attribute par excellence – alludes to the poet's pen, or, in a broader sense, to the hand of the artist-painter (as does the palette).
The first formulations of the theme of L’Exil du cygne date to a work made in 1982 (GPO-0466) and the print edition with the same title published in early 1984 (GPE-0046). Later more in-depth research into the theme was expressed in four homonymous versions, made between 1984 and 1993 (GPO-0513, GPO-0514, GPO-0610, GPO-0652).