Heavy Gold Bracelets
Michael lives with his images Renaudeau a strong passion. Images of life that surprises with its products for over forty years. Africa and Senegal in particular, (he lived for many years between Dakar and Gorée), and worldwide, according to his stories or his editing work. Amateur African art and folk art, he gathered in his gallery of Dakar, the first exhibition of suwers. Senegal, Crossroads. Guediawaye, a suburb of Dakar, 17 hours. This is when the heavy gold bracelets of the sunset are singing the carmine red and blue disks, where the breeze finally shakes half torpor invades man and beast. The time favorite Gora Mbengue the greatest painter of Senegal "suwers" paintings under glass in Wolof. After bending his prayer mat out of a thousand colors of his studio outdoor Gora drinks his iced tea with mint and soul in peace, purified, settles on his little bench. While his mouth whispering the magic "Bissimilai" (In the grace of God) before any action among the Muslims and promised success, the hand, fast, grabbed a glass plate placed against the fence. "Last night I dreamed of beautiful pictures . . . Young girls with the long neck of reed, to skin and sapodilla taste of ripe mango. Women in shiny trinkets, with heavy gold bracelets and ornaments of amber, nonchalant approach to the rustle of the waves bathed the heady scent of incense . . . . " The pen rested, comes the stage of the color that draws on the pots of bright colors laid on the mat. Gora cares little volumes. It proceeds by large flat areas, like the naive. Sometimes it stops for a moment. He has painted a large crimson robe and looked about where to put this still red with his brush is full. On the fez of the notable perhaps? Several tables will be painted in front, before being mounted on a cardboard recovery with a simple strip of gummed paper red. "I'm Senegalese, so I paint the things of Senegal, from today and yesterday. "This is the best known Babacar Lo with Gora and also the whole generation of Mor Gueye, Mbida, Modou Fall, Serigne Gueye . . . Because the success of Gora has many imitators and around the streets of Dakar to break out these pictures bright colors: here is an unhappy wife who leaves + her house pestle on the head, is a polygamist paradise in the middle of her co-wives, a Koranic school, or a "Borom Saret" by the taxi . . . And Women . . . "Oh! Yes, mostly women, they are so beautiful! "It is the cry from the heart of Gora. It could also be the photographer. Fascinated by the early folk art, Michel Renaudeau worked to systematically photograph and identify all suwers he has seen during his twenty years in Senegal. This research has been a first exhibition in his own studio, followed by a book published by Nathan (Glass Painting from Senegal by Michel Renaudeau, text Michel Strobel, Paris, 1984). Two other exhibitions will follow, one at the French Cultural Center in Dakar, the other at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. In viewing these set Renaudeau that Michel was struck by the resemblance with his own pictures of everyday life in Senegal. Thus was born the idea for this fresh perspective. Here are photos and set the perfect answer, they are like the words of the griot they the magic and wonderful. Regine Renaudeau. . . .
