Swann’s only remaining presence on the internet is an entry on the Spanish art and culture blog Uno de los Nuestros (One of Ours), which you will find here. It includes several of his drawings recovered from Tumblr, and the following commentary:
‘Charles Swann presents us with a work seemingly done entirely in a Moleskine sketchbook with coloured pencils and watercolours. In an unconventional style, his illustrations lead us to a disturbing world where sex, eroticism, and maybe also love, intersect in a play of overflowing passions and a degree of fetishism.
Swann enters the world of the senses behind an alter ego in the form of a bird in almost all his work, either as a human character with a mask or as a kind of Egyptian god. His powerful and beautiful women indulge in this erotic game, aware of the power they wield and absolute owners of the pleasure they seek.
The work of Charles Swann contains a note of transgression, a consensual relationship where his protagonists complicitly participate in erotic games that explore hidden passions and desires. It is the constant search in the contradictory and dark human mind, for the most authentic, hidden and remote truths, the most secret and repressed desires. The mixture of coloured pencils and watercolours gives his style a personal character that culminates with a fingerprint on many of his drawings as an original signature.’
It notes that the title of Swann’s deleted Tumblr account was ‘Plus rien ne s’oppose à la nuit’ (Nothing Stands in the Way of the Night), which we have resurrected for this portfolio. The phrase has been used in several other contexts, including an autobiographical novel by Delphine de Rigan, and an art installation by Aurelie Menaldo, which you can see here.