statement on the artist


Michel Tournier
of the Academie Goncourt, France
On Arthur Tress

I would like to be able to say that I discovered Arthur Tress. But after further
thought, he could more justifiably claim that he discovered me.

lt all began approximately two years ago, just a short time after the publication
of my book »The Ogre« in the United States. I received a letter from this un-
known person. »Having read your book,« he said, »I think that you will like my
photographs.« Following that came a package of photographs. I was shocked,
dazzled and prodigiously interested.

At first impression and that goes a long way, I was struck by how in a series
of pictures that flows from one inspirational source each image is so completely
different. There is never any repetition and nowhere is there evidence of the
stream drying up. While each photograph, itself a vein, is extinguished, it seems,
by that single picture, the flow of genius is contained in the very next. At the
same time all his works are inhabited by the same spirit, and they all deal with
the same theme. Basically it's always the same but on the surface, the new-
ness is always total and absolute. Each time we begin over again. That is the
rarity of having a »vision«.

What then is this unique theme that we find repeated in totally unexpected forms
from image to image? Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that we will be
able to define this in a definitive and exhaustive fashion. We won't be able to do
it simply because Arthur Tress is a true creator. One imprisons a formula, a re-
cipe, an ideology, an idea only by the gush of creation. Paul Valery: »If the
esthetic could be, a work of art would necessarily disappear when put fac
to face with it the way it does when faced with its own essence«. Therefore
because esthetic cannot be, let's attempt several approaches - five approaches -
to the mystery of Arthur Tress of the 1000 faces.

Oppression. The anguish of being the prisoner of a mass. A web of strings or
ribbons, a funnel, a mask, an envelope made of some sort of plastic material, a
jar of pickles, a garbage can, a sewer hole, an elevator, a water main. The an-
guish of being crushed by a ball, a mechanical horse, etc.

These are classic nightmare themes, but Arthur Tress' art consists in giving them
tremendous credibility by placing them in a totally realistic context. He does not
allow for the enchantment part of the nightmare which normally allows it to be
tolerable.

His images force us to believe what they are relating to us. lt can be added that
he is greatly aided by the environment that the United States puts at his disposal.
One can hardly imagine these images in Europe. But does one ever know for
sure with this devil of a man?

Death. Its cadaverous profile overshadows more than one of these stage pro-
ductions. There is even within Arthur Tress an ascent towards necrophilia: let
him follow it but ascend it! The cadaver is passivity and therefore its obscenity
is formidably seductive.

The Child. Is the privileged witness. Witness: One who sees, who knows,
who remembers. But also: object of proof, undergoing tests, corpus delicti. Of
all the corpus delicti, the body of a child is the most charming. The child is the
privileged object of sadism and necrophilia. But he is also hope, because per-
haps tomorrow, baving become strong, he will take revenge.

Liberation. In more than one work by Arthur Tress, beyond the oppression,
the horizon opens, a gaping door, a staircase flying upwards toward the sky.
This freeing is not accessible to the oppressed. Yet it is there, it haunts him,
it is promised.

Complicity. Photographers generally have a fundamental idea of reality.
Things and people are presented in their naive spontaneity. The »contrivanc«
is a terrible sin that he conceals as best he can, that he denies madly.

Arthur Tress worries about »ethics« as though it was bad luck. He makes fire
from all wood with perfect tranquility of the soul, taking from stores, museums
and theatre props - or simply from his pockets which hold all the accessories
that his pbotography needs, from the stuffed rat to the Tyrolienne pipe as well
as the monstrance, the halbert or the hernia belt. With anyone else a similar off-
handedness would lead to the breaking down of the image. We would laugh or
shrug our shoulders. Here it works. Everything works. Arthur Tress always
unites the conditions of a general complicity. That of the people being photo-
graphed, that of the objects, that of the landscapes, and ours, on top of every-
thing else!

I met Arthur Tress long after I had lived with his pictures. I was a little frightened.
I imagined a rough and boorish man, perhaps even a little dirty, to whom one
must indulge everything for the sake of his genius. Instead I saw arrive a young
man who was frail and timid, worried on every side, concealing a wounded look
behind a theological student's glasses. But inside his photographer's bag was
a medallion with a portrait of Franz Kafka. There without doubt is the most
apparent clue to the Tress mystery.

[Translated from L'Oeil by Evelyne Jesenof]



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