"He would refer to his father as ce salaud bourgeois (that bourgeois arsehole) and he delighted in telling me the story of being thrown out of school aged eight because he punched the gymnastics teacher who was trying to instil discipline into young boys by turning them into military martinets. Of the professions and attitudes that merited his ire the military, the church, hypocrisy, sham, inauthenticity, politicians, academics and fascists collaborateurs had a special place in his heart."
"The moustache, a tangled mass of straggling unruly black wire obscuring the entire region between his nose and his lower lip, was immediately fascinating to me at my first meeting, on a cold November evening in 1980 at his studio in Rue Alfred de Vigny. That, and his pipe clenched tight between his teeth. Then the wild hair, a bright green sagging sweater, ageing boots and eyes (framed by round glasses)"
Philippe Gaulier entered the narrator's life in Paris at age 24 and taught a radical approach: carry no baggage, no fixed ideas, and embrace knowing nothing. He used provocation, demand, deliberate inappropriateness and humor to unsettle assumptions and expose human ridiculousness. His Spanish mother cooked for him; his relationship with his father was contemptuous and he enjoyed recounting a childhood expulsion for punching a teacher. He despised the military, the church, hypocrisy, sham, inauthenticity, politicians, academics and collaborators. His physical presence—an unruly moustache, a clenched pipe, wild hair, sagging sweater, ageing boots and round glasses—made a lasting impression.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]