Art

Maxime Taccardi: The French Connoisseur of Dark & Subversive Art

Published

February 6, 2012

Such formulations of shading, blackness, obscurity and detail on paper have rarely been so disturbing and fascinating to me. I am writing this not to impress or say anything which does not seem fitting. After “discovering” Maxime Taccardi’s art, I initiated several funeral doom and depressive black metal albums and stared at these for a solid 2 hours. I wanted to study each manipulative detail and it’s textures, the metaphorical meanings behind the subversive imagery, and then make an inquisition to herr Taccardi about what I couldn’t find out myself. This is kind of art I lust to make when the time feels right, and if I can fit myself into this niche would love create such ugly drawings like these. I received some select words of 6 of his works, where a decent array of mediums have been preserved in these two dimensional masterpieces. It reads in his photoalbums that ‘crayon’ was used, he’s French, and I assume this to mean pencil crayon but perhaps the eyes deceive.

^^mr. taccardi after someone told him they didn’t like his drawings

“The child who was dreaming he was a tree”, it’s old, i did it in 2006, i wanted to express the tree of knowledge. When you taste the forbidden tree, the futility of existence appears like a straight vision: Death, the silent cry of a deathborn. Like the circle of ouroboros…

Enter here for more, the end is embedded in the beginning…

“The horde” (bats), is the representation of these animals in a vampiric way, they are coming to drink your blood”

“Faith” , i cut my wrist and used my blood for it, It represents the faith, the devotion to mystic forces etc…

“danse Macabre”, it’s the cover of the Drowning The Light album “Catacombs of Blood”, this is just the dance of the shadows of death, like in the mexican beliefs but in a way more brutal.

This is a self portrait, you can see me on the upper right, it’s called “Did you ever contemplate the darkness?” The eye in the midle symbolise some kind of a vortex, a dark divinity, it was done at a time where i was really dark, i had these strange dreams in which i was leaving my body, And i had some strange visions too. My parents are dead (last year for my father and 3 years ago for my mother) and i think i felt their presence, and some others. The kid in this drawing is holding flowers and a skull, it’s the representation of the mourning etc… I wrote a poem in french for this one:
Un deuil trop lourd à porter;
Un voile sombre et opaque en guise de prière avortée.
L’œil vif, inique, celui de l’accusateur;
Comme un venin acide, il a volé ton cœur.
Il te berce au sein d’un caveau putride;
Et joue avec tes sens comme cette immonde catin avec ta bite.
La mort rôde, branlante et décharnée;
Aussi grotesque que ce qui fut autrefois scellé.
Le deuil est tel une lame enfouie en plein cœur…
Rejeton de la haine, reflet de la douleur.
Des lambeaux de chair s’amoncèlent en un curieux puzzle;
Énigme de mon âme, au final on demeure toujours seul.
“Cachinus Auditur Diaboli”
Ma vie aurait dû être un empire,
Au lieu de ça, crasse, ténèbres et tristes soupirs…
So this text is speaking really well of of my state at this time.

“Taken away” is also for the booklet of the Drowning the Light cd, it’s about dark spirits bringing the soul of a guy to the land of the dead.

A collective of his artwork which are most aesthetically pleasing to me… and if you are still hungry: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maxime-Taccardi-Artworks/283623771702331