An avid reader with an interest in the idea of a collective unconscious, Banc drew inspiration and specific symbols from the writings of theorists and psychoanalysts like Carl Jung, as well as the alchemists. Later in life, when picking up a book of Gregorian chant, as his daughter Julie tells it, the artist was immediately struck by the feeling that the musical staves gave life to the shapes he was evoking through painting. This discovery spurred an obsession with finding books at antique booksellers in Paris, such as Laurent Coulet and Chamonel, and also at book fairs. Over the course of Banc’s career the artist would intervene and transform the pages of Caldani’s book on Anatomy, Van Dick’s Illustrious Men, a Bible from 1789, and Montfaucon’s Antiquité Expliquée, using these pages as the foundation for his painting practice.

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