Claudine Aspar

Claudine Aspar doesn't paint, sculpt, or engrave. She cooks...
Sometimes it even occurs that her best preparations transform themselves into farting sonatas or in sealing mortar and this in spite of the fact that her cooking has gotten lighter while the same can not be said for her artwork. NO, NOT AT ALL.... It should be noted that she's getting "OLD" and putting on the "POUNDS", some say she is buxom, others "VULGAR", and others still, say she is both...
I who know her well can tell you that she is not at all VULGAR and hardly chubby...
Her characters are vulgar,I would even go so far as to say to brilliant. He who has never seen «Figue Sèche», «Saucissonne la cochonne», «Rébéca fait caca», cannot understand.
I shall also mention Joseline Bourillon the wife of réré petite Bouche ; the latter being an expert in the confection of the Papeton d'Aubergine and the raising of the wrist certainly has something vulgar about him..
Hearing her life story as told by Crin Crin the old artilleryman, one finds all the tragic and dersiory ingredients of a life as twisted as a vine plant, while the narrator's voice beckons us:
«Where are you going ? What have you made of your sorry mortal's lives»...
But what in fact is vulgarity ?
The dictionary definition tells us:
VULGAR adj (Lat, Vulgaris ; from Vulgus, multitude).
Considering the number of "Bipeds" that swarm about the planet, I can in complete assurance tell you that if Claudine is vulgar then we all are, and me first and foremost.
There are obviously individualswho are more vulgar than others, it suffices to turn on the TV to see vulgarity, not to say the sovereign accomplishment of stupidity, in every image.
The difference in Claudine ASPAR's work, is taht she exacerbates this vulgarity that dwells in each of us in order to extract a grainy poetry marinated in an acid bath, carved with a chisel, scratched with a dry-point needle...
The product is a first cold pressing which contains the best juice, the very substance of these characters crucified on rags.
It is perhaps the same reason for which the work might appear "sketchy to the eyes of those who seek order and cleanliness...
But, are our entrails in order?...
Claudine, heads straight for the "RAW" and answers this question by making this decomposing corpse astonished to observe that:
«I never realized there was so much juice inside me».
It is, as you have perhaps understood, more a sociological work than an esthetic one...
for ultimately, this work disturbs during a period in which the trendy art is devoid of "fatty substances" and where petty-bureaucrat artists use concepts to hide their lack of inspiration, and whose primary aim is to appeal to the mission leaders from the concerned ministries.
Claudine Aspar couldn't care less, she has the liberty of those who have no career plan and who do not seek to appeal whatever the cost and is if to thumb her nose at her detractors she has entitled her latest work «PAS DE PROBLÈMES JE M'EN BAS LES OUILLES».

Daniel Romani, 1999