Manuel of introduction in painter's job laqueur decorator

 

 

 

Synopsis and context of the work of Manuel Diez Matilla

 

Revision in Sunday, March 20th, 2011

 

By Christian Diez Axnick

 

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  Without the former order, the order is saying modern and evolved would not move forward, as Gainsbourg would not practically have existed without Dvorak, or Racine without Tirso de Molina or the Cid of Castro. Any Romanic or Gothic truth is master of its implications. The Gitanillos from Jerez are for example the biggest dancers and the biggest dancers whom I have never seen of my life. This highlight, I saw her with Nina.

I was lucky in my life to see and to intend to sing one of the biggest, doubtless the biggest mezzo-soprano of the world, with my father. She is Argentine and sings in the Argentine classic directory so splendidly exceptional. The vocal art pushed to such a level is a question of another order, another dimension. My father already evoked this question in an autobiographical personal text which he left on the fire of the church Santa Catalina arisen in 1957 to Toro. The manuscript is very previous apparently to the concert of the RTVE in the TMP

 A diva of this talent can allow to let escape from sounds and melodies " callejeros ", most callejeros possible. We shall talk again of it in some decades, when the others will vainly try to imitate it.

The serious art is inimitable, its invoice is brought up always incredibly. It is not the murderers and the butchers of today who can venture in these exercises.

Exactly, the art, the truth, the big, is an exercise which distances itself from the common.

Sometimes he throws a glance by far, but always with a height of view or a way of equating and of highlighting all the cheeky humour of the common people.

The own, the bottom of the classic art, is to bring in such or such strength, such or such moment, to show and to restore the perusal, to bring its leg otherwise than by incantations.

 The rigor of a conductor Italian as Campanella, the genius of his decorators, makes of the opera which announces a company of very high scale, a very high claim and a very strong artistic level. Even at the dawn of the XXIth century, the hard-line strength shows itself capable of seducing the public.

Certainly, it is not the most wide-spread question, but the facts are there, the coldest classicism can again have a rigor, ideas force, and to stand out. It is a fact.

A) The signs of a revival.

It would be vain to think that the art is going to stop existing. The official art is powerful for a long time. The big totalitarian ideologies included him, of left as right.

They make live a model or all which is critic is sacrilegious by nature, all which is not in the standards fixed by the market of the art is squalid.

 The art which interests us, and the word art means way of life, is more in margin it is true of the society. It is the one which makes a community of interests, live and also a cultural community. Why cannot the jobs not disappear?

Because they are useful for the blooming of the man and for his dignity.

The genius of most of the religions is to have known how to give a vision, objective or subjective.

A long time, the art was placed in the center of the decisions, in the center of the powers, in correspondent to a fixed company. For example queen Sophie of Greece comes down from Vélasquez. She decides on whom will have a foundation, which modern work will have this, what is good. What is not him. The same thing in France, following the powers in position the central power decides on attributions. This system falls from the inquisition practised by the companies in Burgundy. It is a shape of officialized and legal terror.

The inquisition practised by the companies in Burgundy considering the population in the Middle Ages, reached appreciably the same ratio with regard to the population as what it passed to Tréblinka or in the Baltic States. 200 000 to 500 000 deaths on a population of some million individuals, are as much than one and a half million to three million deaths on a population of several tens of million individuals. It is the same matter in size, in dimension, in quantity of gibbets. It is necessary to understand that one of the old levers which serves the will to terrorize a population, it is the one which consists of this sinister statistical arithmetic. We are sure to reach his target.

 The father of one of my friends, Mr Moreau, a Castillan as me, was dug up living at the last minute in the last seconds on the liberation of Tréblinka by the second classes of the Red Army. Another two or three knocks of shovel and he had died. He returned with the American red cross which arrived 8 months later. He weighed only some kilos then. In the time, we fought with pebbles and sticks against rifles and machine guns.

 From Manuel Diez Matilla, who was a man of a sacred character and a certain tempering, everything falls to pieces. The centers of decision and power are not so important any more.

  My father did not hesitate to attack such or such at the need.

His trial to labor relations board against the director of the museum Cortot lasted 3 years. He was not afraid, and went even farther.

 Here, the artist has a capacity, he imposes his conditions. My father could paint we can say it honestly without going into all the details practically at the level of a Claude Monet, for me who followed him during almost all the career, good beyond, but he asked for the consequent postponed salary.

 Indeed he took it with the VAT and the rest, because let us not forget it, he will have paid the contribution practically 7 years of his life without it returns to craftsmen or to his corporate association.

 In its profession of boss of company, the working strength is then dominant, it is necessary to say it, and much more for him than for the employee, although the small brooks make the big rivers.

 In the same way, when Mozart died, we thought of the time that more nobody would come to revolutionize the sonata. In the death of Mozart, Beethoven revolutionized more of 400 times the sonata instead of 3 or 4. Here the artist imposes upon the public for the first time. But he does not still impose his financial conditions. We always impose him his condition by the strength, at least partially.

Mozart was an immense and big genius, but also partially a disabled person.

 From my father, we can say about the craftsman that he imposes and financial conditions bound to the cost of raw materials, and the service, and the working strength while keeping the capital gain and the royalties virtual, without counting the charm of the novelty, the style and the material comfort.

 And it is normal because a table or a piece of furniture can be resold, speculators can resell the goods, without counting the forgery. But the fixed price is definitive. It is the condition to the contract.

 Let us not forget that Midavaine is the first French entrepreneur to have made Asian decorators come in France.

My father started in any debuts to him, and later or previously, he also worked at an Asian, his salary was its food.

But up to here at the end of the 50s the decorator is salaried, he did not become his own boss yet, do not free to sign contracts or not and to undertake, what is not going to delay.

The counterpart of the question if we consider the freedom of company is the risk incurred at the same time by the boss, but also by the employee, especially when the orders stagnate, or at the height of the crisis as the one who followed 2 oil crises.

The social progress did not follow rather fast, and doubtless one day public authorities will include it instead of sabotaging the most former industries. I think in particular of all which would in reality be made in the small business crafts, the bonuses, the meal vouchers, the mutual insurance companies, the membership for an honest pension scheme.

 The example of my father proves that we can hold about twenty years, the decoration of the lodging house ( Décor du Logis ) was one of his main customers, with Garouste and Jeumont, but with partially charm of the novelty and a very high and continuous quality. And beyond?

Beyond it is more difficult. Furniture hide TV-HIFI-VIDEO of my father is not completely adapted any more to the current market of the laser disc and of the flat screen.

It is necessary to iron by engineering consulting firms, to redo plans of furniture, tables, what I make since a few years already, to take into account the evolution of the computing and the new technologies.

But we do not recompose a park machines so easily. It will be necessary a few years still before the investors re-made surface, before workshops are reborn, before stores reopen again

 My aunt, Maruja, was one of two or three main founders of the radio orchestra Spanish television ( RTVE). It will have worked, being she even very big one violinist, with some some of the biggest musicians of her time. It goes from Narciso Yepes, to the israëlien violinist Seyrig, to the other big pianists and the others very big musicians. It is clear that we are artists' family, and that the most tangible signs of the profession which exercised my father are very difficult to discern, but tangible.

His father, the brother of my big father, that is the uncle of my father or still my big uncle, was a mayor of Toro during the civil war. Opposite to the time in the fact that we shoot people, of whom of the women and children, by tens in his city, he was shot in his turn by the Franco supporters.

 We cannot say that the art can disappear overnight, he is passed on of generations in generations. What is not still passed on exactly in the same way, it is the value work and its human principles.

 I think once more of this big Jewish film-maker who filmed thousands of hours of documentaries in the underground, and who had buried kilometers of dandruff, dug up in the end of the war. France with Bois d’ Arcy kept for a long time originals and Israel copies it movies. He put 5 years starving in Paris. I arrived on one year too late for the interviewer. He had died in the poverty one the year before.

 I think that it is necessary to remain optimistic, and to keep its soul, to take the measure of the human stakes. But we cannot still be optimistic when we see the relative indifference in which he died. It remains significant.

The same matter with this group of painters which had built up itself it seems to me to Auschwitz. Mrs Bouissy had spoken to us about it and had shown us photos, cards. The artists always tried to testify of their condition.

To tell the truth, we see the forerunners of a revival of the small business crafts today. I mean there that little by little the sector bandages its wounds, little by little, activities become again profitable, thus susceptible to restart a day.

But as long as there will be no parity between us, the old world Judeo-Christian as call him certain and the monopolies which exercise multinationals, as long as there will not be more social justice, the traditional sectors will remain blocked and dependent on their capacity of investment and on the absorption capacity of the market.

A change in the way will be needed to proceed of our government, if we want one day to go out of the rut. Except today, the finance is more important than the industry. The financial sector puts its cards on the table.

The syndicate is a solution among the others. But he remains symptomatic to notice that one of the places the least appreciated by the politicians remains the chambers of commerce and small crafts, so we know that the finance supports multinationals.

It is good the worst place for these sirs, at least that one we go only for some inauguration or to glean some distinction.

At any rate, most beware good to throw itself into the scrum.

Let us be serious, the problem of the small crafts cannot limit itself to the political problems. But we cannot compare France under Louis XVI who for example was fascinated by locksmithery and had made with his own hands the lock of the portal of the castle of Arnouville, this portal being in the castle of Thoiry today; we cannot compare leaders implied by the own hands, and bureaucracy ready for everything to speculate on the back of craftsmen.

The welcoming committee cannot be the same, no more than the human principle.

Curiously with Nina, people of the branch of Valois had offered us a kir during an exhibition of painting in Sologne. We had gone with a friend painter, a Corsican there, which wanted to sell them a piece of wood in mahogany. A countess had received us in Mont-près-Chambord. She went down Valois, one of branches left by the Capetians.

Valois always made me a good impression, because I love these people Solognot (the baroness lived for a long time in Sologne before selling and leaving to Bormes-les-Mimosas or she finished her days with my aunt Méré, the whole punctuated by the employment and the work of my mother also).

Valois to return to them there much less conspired against us the Castilians if we compare them with the Louis which followed one another just before the revolution, which they did not stop encouraging Portuguese to attack us, at the historic moment or Castile was very poor and miserable all the same, especially if we refer to the most discriminated popular layers. Regrettably kings of France became allied in Portuguese and waged war to us, letting the French revolution annihilate the people of Vendée a few years later, abandoning the crown. Fortunately we won this war, exactly to Péléagonzalo, in the plain near Toro.

I think it says that this house of Valois can again serve France, even if I am not really very monarchic. You should not be more royalist than king, but it is adorable, polished and hospitable people, opened to all the artists, even to the children that do not miss talent either moreover.

To return to the caciquisme there about which we spoke, because we had approached the subject, I would say that the own of the caciquisme, is the waiting-game. We have the impression that these birds of prey whom are our leaders wait patiently when they perched as high as possible, multiplying the cawings and the sarcasms. But the paralysis became the own of our democracies, which not satisfied to be allowed offend, let the lie and the poisoning of the masses spread.

All the means of poisoning of the masses are good to dull the children from the youngest age, and make sure a media power that have him could say about divine right in its deep inspiration. The examples abound.

The presenter of 8:00 pm, or of his friend let us let us take the case of Claire Chazal, Poivre d’ Arvor. One second they would imagine only in democracy we can dispute their monopoly, their right for the expression.

Nevertheless Claire Chazal claimed several times that the Americans freed Tréblinka before the Russians. I do not know how much money she received for that.

But she also praised a war criminal as Charles Taylor, who proclaimed himself a president of the republic of the Liberia, and who has to envy nothing to Hitler.

 His hired men have even almost murdered me, in Paris. We could continue even for a long time. The list is long, the tortures and the indescribable crimes. It goes of the summary murder, in the mutilations and in people whom we throw alive in pits with snakes.

  Without counting ethnocides of all kinds, of which that of the mandingues. Charles Taylor, it is three ethnocides and three genocides, nothing less.

I worked with Ghislaine Carlessimo and sergeant Garcia, who also have was almost murdered, in particular at the airport. I do not speak here about the South American artist, but about the commercial manager of the ex-company Bidermann.

The lead screed is there. To them the honors and the glory, the money, but we cannot have everything in democracy. That I know they have never implicated a big thief of castles as fire president Mitterrand, or his friend Seydoux. Their conception of the information is over, totally anti-legal.

 The objective of the 4th international, beyond the tendencies, is also a cultural objective.

The labor and communist tradition is marked enough in France. To collect the largest number, the herd, is a mission.

I think of the big national subjects, Compiègne, of Pierrefonds, Villers-Cotterêts, all which cemented, builds in the course of the centuries the thought and the national fate, by way of the cathedrals of Senlis, Amiens, one of the highest of the world.

The class struggle is a historic principle. Constantly, periodically, the imperialism of major powers makes more striking. He aims partially at dismantling the national unity.

Without the economic, military and political support of the superpowers, there is not so for a long time, the Catalans of Samaranch and Maragal would not have obtained the games of Barcelona. They who exterminated half of Europe, crossed off from the map the quasi-totality of the Baltic states with the Nazis. I had written to Samaranch to try to encourage him, but without any illusion.

Major powers, as the United States and the CIS are very aware of it, moreover the United States arm Donosti, the main subsidiary of ETA in Spain. All the weapons are American. It follows what it passed during the civil war, with the American and Italian implications. America arms here one of the main terrorist organizations of the world, as for Al-Qaïda. Moreover Bush were Hitler's main silver cabinets.

This contradiction of the United States on the humanitarian plan is a constant of the American imperialism.

We see him, the impact and the power of the superpowers stemming from Yalta have a power of devastation, and very fast the losers of 39-45 started again of the ground on the winners. Divide and rule.

 It would be vain to place only the future of a profession from the point of view of the geopolitical balance of power, but all let us let us be clear, constantly, presently, which concerned the political power was made and undone at will. We do not live any more in a world endowed with a rational mould, but in a world or nothing more of likes, and even if the politics is a war, she is never acquired to whoever or won beforehand.

Far from me the idea to reject some and not the others, the cause of the peace has to move forward anyway, but it is clear that foreign powers cannot care on our place of our stability, far from it.

 The practical joke is enormous, it reached its paroxysm. Decades of tyranny became little by little our only common story. We can see there only a sheer chance.

The fate of Europe is not a small matter.

II. The cabinetwork and the joinery, the workshop.

a) The apprêtage in joinery.

It is necessary to distinguish 2 types of apprêtages. Primer cabinetmaking, and sometimes joinery, which correspond to the assembly of the wood and the furniture (wood glue, glue agobois) and apprêtages in the white of Spain or Meudon, or still purple, who are the most essential apprêtages in our profession, and who will serve as preparation for the first layer of decorations or as the decorated panels. It is famous Coromandel in lacquer of China and Venice.

Let be one plans to make panels, it is the case mostly. Well then we get ready all the piece of furniture in function. Let be one does not plan to make panels, for example in the case of certain tables or certain furniture, and in that case rarer we get ready another way the set.

Mostly, we make panels, and we can obviously have it in reserve, especially if they are the same, but it is very difficult to prepare them also anyway. The apprêtage is the most important stage which will determine the quality of all the work then.

A bad apprêtage will give a low home-made quality, even though nowadays we cannot disregard the polyester and the other parallel or specific techniques. A very good apprêtage in the whitening for example will give one much more final high quality.

The technique of Coromandel determined the quality of the lacquer of china, the whitening is the same technique more or less. We shall return to the following chapters there. But let us insist at once: the quality of the apprêtage is determining for all the continuation.

When we pounce an apprêtage, we pounce is dry, in finish mostly, just before the lacquer, is wet but in that case exclusively with some cold water, never some warm or tepid water. We sometimes use wooden holds to make hidden recesses.

We never wet too much, but just what is needed. A slightly wet sponge serves to clean and to level the medium, to clear it of impurities stemming from the sanding as one goes along.

Indeed on, we employ of the brown wrapping paper or some emery cloth more used in finish than when we rough-hew. Sanding in the water, the paper is slightly wet, dry sanding it is used dry.

Especially let us repeat it, on the whitening or pounce only with some cold water, ever with some tepid or warm water, by limiting the quantity of water. Never of puddles, it will stress and would create small holes.

Indeed respect the direction of sanding by adapting it to the piece of furniture or to the table, in such direction defined at first. We can cross, but not change direction.

Let us not confuse the apprêtage, that is the white, with the techniques of cabinetwork or joinery, for example when we use rules of blocking, these sorts of youngs was clamping automobile, or the others technique of manufacturing. Here we indeed speak about some glue, which surrounds and coats a whole piece of furniture or a whole table.

b) The assembly and the dismantling of furniture.

According to the occupations and the corporate associations, the assembly and the dismantling is not still the same. To us, it is already necessary to separate the locksmithery, the hinges, saw them, and indeed thinking that all which is metallic is numbered and put in boxes.

Ironworks are a part of the skeleton of a piece of furniture, they already rose and unsettled with the carcass and the piece of furniture. We shall need it again at the end of the manufacturing of the piece of furniture.

 A meadow assembly allows to work holes with a point and to control everything, to prepare the ground before the final assembly which intervenes at the end. Then we unsettle, we classify and we tidy up everything temporarily. It is important to know or will go the holes of hinges, both on the piece of furniture and on the panels, before the apprêtage and the veneer, not to risk not to be able to find them later in certain cases, according to the current works.

It is necessary to plan a place in the workshop for such piece of furniture or such table, by watching to tidy up the parts of joinery in the same corner of the workshop, and by avoiding mixing everything. Rooms must be tidied up well, as well the wooden rooms as the rooms of ironworks tidied up in boxes and numbered.

III. The preparation, the primers, the panels.

c) The white of Spain or Meudon, or purple.

The whitening is considered as one of the best primers in the former. The only ones of techniques more modern as those of the polyester succeeded recently in dethroning him, and still only partially.

His advantage is for example to allow the use of the cellulosic lacquer during all the later stages of manufacturing. Some other lower-quality fillers also allow it, but not the polyester.

Sold in bags, the powder serves to prepare the whitening, used very warmly for the veneer of panels, less warmly for the preparation of primers.

When we prepare the white, we take a steel basin which will go on the fire, rather in the gas, the bottle being connected with the regulator with 3 or 4 feet on the ground.

On this basin we place flat stones, and above steel bowl in which will be made the preparation.

We hang on a brooch for the veneer, the small and average brushes by means of one folded up nail, on the basin, the hairs in the water because the basin is filled with water, and the bowl comes in the water in the center of this one.

According to the preparation, we add pieces of gelatin which come to merge with the powder, we can add a little liquid or patches soaked to liquefy temporarily the preparation. Once the rather homogeneous powder and the glue, we begin to turn with a big stick everything around the bowl to eliminate lumps, by watching to rub well against the walls of the bowl.

All these operations take place over a low heat or means. Even on big fire, but although he arrives he never has to form of bubbles in the preparation and this one never has to boil. In case of boiling we reduce then the fire by acting on the regulation gas. When the obtained substance is homogeneous and cleared completely of lumps, and for it it is necessary to stir regularly by turning, then we make it more or less liquid or thick by adding or not some liquid, and we can get ready the piece of furniture or the hot table. It must be anyway very very warm.

We make the first layer with the brush for hidden recesses, or for the brooch for the outsides. We let it dry a little. When the first layer is enough hard or dries, but wet, we pass in the second layer. Generally 2 or 3 layers are enough according to the popular thickness. We always leave the wood with nude in the place or will go panels, generally on the outsides of the piece of furniture or in the center of the table on the top. These will be later stuck.

It is because of this working stage that we can understand the necessity of the use of soft wood and not wood hard as the oak. It is easier to get ready for the whitening on the battened, the plywood, and naturally on the lime tree and any sorts of soft wood, so that the hot preparation penetrates well into the fibers of the wood. Wood as the poplar or the wild cherry are already a little harder, the oak and the mahogany being the hardest wood, and the mahogany is besides a precious wood.

However, the wild cherry and the poplar are used. But the battened, the plywood, the lime tree or the willow are more current in this profession, with sometimes the wild cherry.

In this professional sector, the battened is rather often used thus, and also the lime tree which is already a luxury item. The stage of the apprêtage constitutes the main reason.

Other wood lacquered without apprêtage and other techniques exist, including with the gilt on wood. But in this case, the wood is prepared before being lacquered.

This stage of the preparation is fundamental; the more the quality of the preparation will be raised, the better the following stages will be realized.

For furniture, we cannot get ready that several times because it is necessary to make inside and bottom of the piece of furniture. Piètements will thus be in the air and the top will base on holds to which we shall have fixed of the carpet, while we shall make the glue for the inside of the bottom. It is necessary every time it is dry so that the piece of furniture can base on holds, and to be able to move forward the glue and the apprêtage.

d) The glue of skin of rabbit.

 She is used with the whitening and is of use to him of binding. We prepare her by letting her wallow 24 hours in a bowl with some water. Then we preserve the water in which the patch of skin of rabbit wallowed to reuse her later in the preparation of the whitening. When the patch is not so hard, but soft any more, we melt her on very soft fire in the bain-marie by watching that there is and is no boiling

 The solution obtained from greyish color is then poured into a plastic bowl rather and we let her cool. She will become as a sort of gelatin marrying the forms of bowl. It is this gelatin a little as some rubber which will be gradually added to the powder of whitening for the preparation of the whitening.

A good glue must not be made obsolete. The retailers sell her in bags, sometimes we find less big quantity that roughly.

IV. Panels

a) The preparation

Panels before being stuck are prepared on tables or wooden panels mostly laminated. We use to make them a lot of water, in particular some paper which becomes sticky as soon as we wet him.

A big sponge serves to wet the panel of plywood with big water, and both faces of the paper. When it is wet enough we display the paper over the wooden panel, and with the sponge, we return the water towards the outsides so as to stretch out the surface of the paper which will serve to make panels. Then on the back of the panel, we fold the paper in a way, of set square. Then we place the adhesive tape or rather the paper which becomes sticky as soon as we plunge it into a bucket of water; in this way we fix the paper on the back while watching over its staying tightened stretched out well.

Then we let dry the panel without letting it too much explain to the sun, because he could crack by drying, because he is going to lose all his water by drying.

Then when the panel is ready this one is always made with the glue, but for the knife. We go to a sense, in curve, then when it is dry have always returns in curve in the other sense. When the thickness is sufficient we let dry.

The quality of panels and primers will be determining for the global quality of the work.