Pierre Alechinsky: The Test of the Title

Pierre Alechinsky (b. 1927, Brussels) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has ranged through painting, drawing, printing, writing and filmmaking. In 1949 he joined the CoBrA group, that had formed a year earlier in Paris as an alternative to the declining Surrealist tendency in contemporary painting. CoBrA's guideline, encouraging spontaneity through interaction with the controlled and planned—has remained uncontested by Alechinsky.
Constant attention to aspects of language and script, even storytelling, is patently evident in Alechinsky's plastic work. The six etchings in the series, exhibited in the order set by the artist, unfold a sequence that is tempting to be regarded as a narrative (albeit obscure), in which his familiar images and creatures affect and are being affected. On the eve of the series' formal exhibition at Galerie La Hune, Paris, Alechinsky approached 61 artists,  iterary figures and cinematographers, known as "crack-shot titlers," as he put it, asking them: "Please give first names, quotations, descriptive phrases, retentions, ironies, tirades, tributes, poems and slaps to dumb images."