Background
Serge Charchoune was born on August 16, 1888, in Bougourouslan, into the family of a fabric trader.
Сергей Шаршун
Serge Charchoune was born on August 16, 1888, in Bougourouslan, into the family of a fabric trader.
Serge Charchoune studied painting in Moscow and tried, unsuccessfully, to enter the School of Fine Arts.
In 1912, after deserting military service, Serge arrived in Paris and registered at the studio of the cubist painter Henri Le Fauconnier. After the declaration of war in August 1914, he took refuge in Barcelona where he met the boxer-poet Arthur Cravan, the painters Albert Gleizes, Marie Laurencin, Francis Picabia, and Josef Dalmau, who was at the same time antique dealer and passionate by the art of avant-garde. Thanks to Dalmau, Charchoune exposed abstract paintings which he qualified himself as "ornamental."
After the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, he tried to return to Russia, but finally stayed in Paris. On May 26, 1920 he attended the Dada Festival in Salle Gaveau and met Picabia. He attended meetings of the Dadaists in Certa coffee and participated in Dada events including the "trial Barres" organized by André Breton in May 1921. At the Dada show in the Montaigne Gallery, organized by Tristan Tzaraa a month later, Charchoune exhibited drawings inspired by Picabia's "mechanical" works. He also composed a poem illustrated with twelve drawings "Foule immobile" well received by the Dadaists.
In turn, Serge created a Dada group called "Palata Poetov" who met at Café Chameleon. On December 21, 1921, a "Russian dadaist" party was a failure despite the presence of Breton and Louis Aragon. Charchoune did not persist, and in May 1922 he went to Berlin, still in the hope of obtaining a visa for the USSR. He created a magazine "The Transporter Dada." After editing an anthology of German, French and Russian dadaist poetry, he collaborated with various magazines like Merz by Kurt Schwitters and abandoned the movement.
In Berlin, again, Serge exhibited a new series of paintings that he called "ornamental cubism." He met Russian artists disappointed by the revolution, including the dancer Isadora Duncan. Charchoune then renounced to return to the USSR and returned to Paris in 1923. After meeting Amédée Ozenfant, he adopted the purist style. From 1954 his work became more and more abstract and sparse, almost monochrome, inspired by music. Although he would refrain from participating in any other movement, Charchoune would never, until his death, deny his adhesion to Dada.
The Tree
Symphonie Fantastique
Composition
Grossissement
Swedenborg
Composition, cubisme ornemental
Bateau Ivre
Still Life with Pear N°1
The Violin’s Reflection
La Mer Sauvage
Washtable
The Small Black Holes
Beethoven’s Solemn Mass, Quartet
Untitled
Marche funèbre de Beethoven, 3ème étape
Composition
How many Sailors, How many Captains
Nature morte à la pipe
Red Still Life N2
Serge evaded or subverted classic Modernism, he also absorbed and adapted Modernist tropes, turning them into something unique and personal. His ideas prefigured many significant developments in contemporary image-making.
Charchoune was an odd man; his interests and obsessions, like his paintings, were somewhat contradictory. He was a misfit, a private and taciturn outsider who considered himself as much a writer as a painter; he was also deeply interested in music, synaesthesia, Rosicrucianism, and Dada. Despite his reputation as a recluse, he enjoyed the company and conversation of fellow artists and the Russian émigré community in Paris.
Despite perfect manners and sober dress, he was a bit of a crank – a sometime theosophist, vegetarian, free thinker, an ascetic who only bathed in cold water and went everywhere on foot.
