À la recherche d'un coup de pinceau perdu -1

The title of this painting is of course a playful reference to the famous series of novels by Proust, “À la recherche de temps perdu”. Here, Lyons was concerned not only with the lost brush stroke but was trying to integrate elements from the seven novels (the first of the eight panels serves as a kind of title page). Lyons committed himself to a careful reading of the whle series, but his efforts were interrupted by his disgust at the attempts by the fiscal authorities in France to overcharge him, in his words, “by devious lies”. As a result, he abandoned further research and inserted a vignette of the tax office in Limoux in the panel representing the fourth novel, “Sodom and Gomorrah” The total of the overcharge is also written there., and Lyons was adamant that this would be the exact price of the painting.