The Eiffel Scissors

Hola, I am Rafael Buñuel, son of legendary surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel. I am a UCLA graduate and artist of sculpture, drawing, play-writing, screen-writing and directing. I have lived in Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles.

All my life I have devoted myself to art and it all stems from a bottomless wellspring of fun.

I have written and registered 50 plays and screenplays starting in the 1960s and continuing today. I owned and ran a theater in New York City in the 1970s where I produced my plays. When I moved to Los Angeles I wrote for the TV show Tattletales, the best job ever. The work was fun, imaginative and only took me one and a half days to complete. After I had written my quota of quiz questions, the remainder of the week was mine to do as I pleased with! Not only that but the pay was fantastic.

I have co-produced a number of films and a musical. Together with Harry Nilsson I wrote the musical Zapata that premiered in 1980.

My drawings, or inkings as I call them, I have done by the thousand over many decades and I have published three books. Inkings, Inkings II, and Inkings III published this year. From select inkings I produced series of etchings that have sold in galleries and art shows around the world.

My assistant created my instagram account that features some of my sculptures and etchings. https://www.instagram.com/rafaelbunuel/

My work was presented last year in a 5 minute interview in the experimental Virtual Brewery Artwalk 2020 https://youtu.be/MrEUgEBnPpA?t=2019.

I continue to make art every day non-stop! My masks and art works adorn the walls of my West Hollywood home.

I am working on publishing a book of my 100+ sculptures. The Mayan Tall Woman shown below is in fact 8' tall and took many months to create. This photo shows the miniature version. I sometimes make different variations of a sculpture. I work in wood, bronze, marble, stone and clay.

Cowman is just one of approximately 20 fantastical animal sculptures I created.

All of my art projects involve using scissors at some point in the process of creating a finished object. I cut out sketches and assemble them to make prototypes. I cut and paste images for my collages. Materials must be cut. One could not work without scissors!

I am proud to present my Eiffel Scissors, a drawing I did in Madrid in the 90s. Out of my hundreds of drawings this is my favorite. The reason it is my favorite is because it’s completely original. No one else has ever depicted the Eiffel Tower as a pair of scissors!

Scissors are generally behind the scenes when it comes to artworks. It is not often scissors get to be the star of the show.

It’s as if my Eiffel Scissors has been waiting all these years for this particular Challenge. Does it make the cut?

For decades approximately once a year I visited Madrid on vacation for several weeks at a time. I love Madrid and I had many friends and relatives there. It was in Madrid that I always felt especially inspired to draw and create.

Most of my inkings were executed in Madrid. I always stayed at Hotel Apartamentos Recoletos near the center of town. They knew me well there. I would get up in the morning, have my breakfast and then go out walking all day. I’d visit museums, bookstores, galleries, stop by a café, peruse magazines, make sketches, visit more art galleries and on and on until it was time to meet up with friends for drinks and dinner and sometimes a show. Afterwards, I’d return to my hotel and continue working on my drawings till around 1am every night.

At the end of every day I’d have maybe 100 sketches and from these I would complete one or two good sketches per day. Everything was drawn in pencil first, then little by little I’d ink it in as my idea grew. My inspiration was drawn (pun intended) not only from all that I took in around me, but also from dreams, conversations, books, magazines, anyhow, anywhere, everywhere…

I am inspired by great cities, their people, their architecture, history, culture and mystique. I’m inspired by beauty and form. I’m inspired by surrealism and humor, words and wit. I’m inspired by animals and nature and color and texture.

You can’t sit down and say to yourself, “Now I’m going to have a really good idea. Yes now I’m going to have a great idea. Right now the perfect idea!” Of course it doesn’t work like that. Ideas spring from immersing yourself in situations that inspire you.

Inspiration + materials + scissors = happiness!