Le 13 avril 2017
19 heures au siège de BORDEAUX-USA, Club franco-américain, Bordeaux
38 Allée d'Orléans, 33000 Bordeaux
Ayant été invité à la suite de mon exposition BORDEAUX-LOS ANGELES à
venir présenter ma peinture devant les adhérents du Club, je me propose
de revenir sur les courants historiques qui l'ont influencée
formellement (la peinture hollandaise du XVII°s et l'hyperréalisme
contemporain) et d'en justifier l'objet : la réalité et/ou le rêve
américain/s.
L'accès à la conférence est réservé aux seuls membres du Club.
______________________________________
Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles (2016)
Texte de la conférence:
*
Texte de la conférence:
*
Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I’m very happy to meet people with whom I share a common interest: America.
And, maybe we have another interest in common, that of painting.
In another life, I was a
philosopher, and an art historian. More exactly I taught philosophy and history
of art.
In my current life, I have become a
painter. But rather than talking about my paintings, I prefer talking about
what surrounds my paintings.
Firstly, I will talk about the main
influences, therefore about the history of art and more specifically about two
periods which are, for me, very important:
Dutch paintings of the 17th century
and contemporary hyperrealism.
At first sight, these two schools of
art have nothing in common. However, I want to show that they are not so far
apart.
Dutch art came back to Earth after centuries
and centuries spent painting the Sky (christian or olympian). It's the effect
of the iconoclasm of Protestantism and also the effect of a kind of specific
way of life which is strictly Dutch.
Contemporary hyperrealism is the child of a new
tradition which was born with Duchamp and his ready-mades, which
continued with the Combine Paintings of Rauschenberg, the Environments
of Kaprow or the objects of Jasper Johns and the Pop Art of Andy Warhol.
A tradition which,
like Dutch paintings, makes a return to "reality“. But we need to redefine
the word "reality“, because it’s another reality. A return to “reality”,
after the long, very abstract and psychological period of Abstract
Expressionism.
Secondly, I will talk a little and quite
quickly about my vision of America. A vision which comes from the books I have
read, the movies I have watched, and the journeys I have made.
This will explain my propensity to paint, not
exclusively but predominantly pictures of America.
Please, excuse my English: text and
pronunciation.
Well. We will start, despite all that, with
Dutch painting.
I. Dutch Art. 17th
century.
17th century Holland
was marked by the Protestants’ refusal of religious paintings which was the
main object of Medieval and Renaissance art.
At that time, the painter was interested in genre
painting, portraits, landscapes and still life. It was
the end of Historical Painting which, apart from in Holland, was and
still the most respected painting genre, within the hierarchy of genres.
1 Genre paintings
Particularly, genre painting praises
domestic virtues embodied by the housewife (here labor and patience Vermer The Lacemaker Louvre 1669) and denounces the vices, embodied by men(here
intemperance Adriaen Van Ostade, Dutch Cabaret, Bruxelles,
Fine Arts Museum 1663).
In this painting by
Emmanuel de Witt (Interior with a Woman at the
Virginals Museum
Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1665
), this
opposition is depicted with a lot of logic. There is a contradiction between
these two domains : that of man and that of woman.
Many of these
paintings are still symbolical. This symbolism is no longer religious but moral
and it is not visible but hidden. Look at the Woman holding a Balance(Vermer, Washington, National Gallery of Art 1664)
. Is she weighing her
pearls? No, she isn’t. On the scales, there is nothing! Look now at the
painting hidden at the bottom, it represents the Final Judgment in which
our sins, or more exactly our soul should be weighed. So, the woman is weighing
the pros and cons in order to make a decision.
What is this woman looking at (Vermeer
A Lady Standing at a Virginal National Gallery, London 1672-1673) ? A man. The painting which represents Cupid gives us the answer.
The concern
we can see on the woman’s face (Vermeer The Love
Letter Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum 1669 1670 ), caused by the letter she is holding in
her hand, is denied by the servant’s smile and even more so by the seascape
hanging on the wall which conveys a peaceful journey.
2. Still life a. Vanities
We can say the same about still life paintings.
These paintings are frequently vanities. This still life by Bosschaert (Vase with Flowers in a Window, Haye,Mauritshuis,
1618 ), for example, shows the beauty of flowers,
but not only that. You can see a flower which has fallen, and a fly on the
window sill. Both symbolize death, so, the vanity of everything including
ephemeral beauty. Moreover, some leaves have been eaten by worms.
The most beautiful fruits rot. (Balthazar
de Ast Basquet of Fruits Staatliche
Museen, Berlin 1632 )
2. Still
life b. Allegories
Another kind of still life is allegories.
Here (Jacques
Linard Five Senses Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts 1638 )
the allegory of The
Five Senses: smell, sight, taste, touch, hearing. We can however note that
vanity is also present in this painting, in the corrupted fig (which is also a
sexual symbol) and in the mirror next to it, in which things pass and don’t
last.
3. Emblems
Other paintings work like proverbs and are
called “emblems”. These emblems include a title, a picture and a
little explanatory text which gives a lesson in morality.
These two
paintings (Jan Steen The Drinkers St Petersburg,
Hermitage Museum 1660 and Nicolas Maes, The Idle Servant Londres,
National Gallery 1655 ) denounce intemperance and laziness
exactly as emblems do. Here, in an exceptional way, there are two women concerned
by these vices.
3. Emblems a. Praise
There are two kinds of
emblems: praise and reprimands.
The praise especially concerns domestic responsibilities and virtues.
Food (Gerrit
Dou Woman Peeling Carrot Staatliches
Museum, Schwerin (uncertain date) ), cleanliness (Pieter Janssens Elinga Room
in a Dutch House Hermitage Museum
Saint-Petersburg 1660-1670 ), child rearing (Pieter de Hooch Mother Lacing Her Bodice beside a Cradle Berlin, Gemäldegalerie 1661-1663), maintenance (Gerrit
Dou Old Woman watering Flowers Kunsthistorisches
Musuem, Vienne 1660-1665), education (Pieter
Janssens Elinga Reading Woman Alte
Pinakothek , Munich (uncertain date)). All these domectic virtues are
feminine.
3. Emblems
b. Reprimands
Reprimands concern
vices and particularly intemperance. Intemperance which seems, logically, to
reach women like men.
4. Daily
Dutch genre painting is the beginning of
something absolutely new in art: the painting of daily life. The
interest lies not in Heaven but on Earth. God, the saints are no longer the
heroes of art, but ordinary people and, more particularly, the housewife.
II. The
lessons of Dutch Painting. 17th century.
1. First lesson a. A
change of benchmarks
What is so fascinating for me as a
philosopher and art historian is firstly this change of benchmarks due to the
iconoclasm of Protestantism. Art comes back to Earth. Everybody is a hero. That
is painting daily life.
There is a
sociological dimension to Dutch art. It paints, in the true sense, the Dutch
way of life. A journalistical dimension, too. It writes a chronical of this
society.
1.First lesson b. Symbolism
Second, symbolism. A
painting is a support and not a goal in itself (this was the tradition from the
Medieval Period until the 19th century) and we have to interpret it to find its
meaning.
Here (Pietro Lorenzetti Birth of the Virgin Sienne, Opera del Duomo
1342 ), people who don’t
know Anne’s story, can’t understand Lorenzetti’s painting. And we can read in
Bailly’s painting (David Bailly Self-Portrait
with Vanitas Symbols Stedelijk
Museum, Leyde 1651 )that life
is ephemeral but extended by the Painting. The painter is going to die, his
portrait will survive.
2.
Second lesson: precision a. “Surnatural” precision
But, what fascinates
me as a painter is something else: precision. There are two kinds of
precision. A supernatural precision, so to speak. That’s the precision
in Van Eyck’s paintings, for example.In this painting (Yan Van Eych Madonna of the Chancellor Rolin Louvre 1435 )
, everything is sharp from the first to the last view. Depth
of field goes from zero to infinite. For our eyes or photograph objective, it’s
not possible.
This is the sign we
have to interpret. What is its meaning ? This means that it’s not a humain eye
which is looking, but God’s eye. And what is the meaning of this observation ?
This means that the Chancellor is not a "donor" represented by the
Virgin in a painting he could have commissioned. That the Chancellor,
therefore, is dead and has been accepted in Paradise. This place is the City of
God and here it's not the human look which is running.
2.
Second lesson: precision b. Natural precision
A natural precision.
That’s the precision you can see in Dutch painting more than in Renaissance
painting or in Classic or Rococo or Romantic paintings of the 17th, 18th and
19th centuries.
It’s because Dutch
painters, as we have already said, paint daily life but even more than simple
daily life: they paint intimacy. Look at Vermeer’s Lacemaker. We
can see what the woman sees: the thread. It is perfectly sharp. It is the only
really sharp thing in the painting. This is because the painter, like the
lace-maker, is haunted by precision which is the only one way capable of
showing what is essential in daily life.
3. The abandonment of precision
Today, precision is not the objective of
painting. Since the Impressionist era, the stroke of the brush has been shown
on the canvas. The aim is not to paint nature, a woman or a man, an action or
whatever you want ; the aim is to show the paint in action. This culminated
with the dripping of Jackson Pollok. A painting is no longer a window open to
the world but “colors and shapes arranged on a canvas”, said Maurice Denis, the
leader of Nabis.
Even the Realists who
like to paint details don’t have the precision of Dutch painters.
It’s that degree of
precision in Dutch painting, close to that of photography, which impressed me.
It’s that precision I seek to regain. Without pretending to equal it, of
course.
II. Hyperrealism. 20th
century
1. From Renaissance to
Impressionism.
During the Medieval period, paintings and
sculptures are only pretexts to present God’s word which is written in the Bible.
They teach the holy word. That’s all. Is there anything more wordly than nuts?
However, nuts are not nuts. The envelope means Christ’s humanity or the World.
The hard shell means the wood of the cross or sin (The Saint Victor Nuts). The fruit is the hidden divinity of Christ or God's Thought. Each
object in the world is a word of God's language.
During the Renaissance period, art
changes meaning. Paintings and statues are pretexts to present the world. Not a
world as an expression of divine words (the Creation) but the world of science
and ordinary perception. According to Alberti, “a painting is a window opened
onto the world”.
I know! I have already
said, when talking about Dutch art, that Renaissance painting was located in
Heaven, not on Earth. It's necessary to be more specific: the aim of
painting is still religious. But formally, painters come back to the
world. With perspective, the objects and characters exist in relation to each
other, following the laws of our world.
There is the Object:
An Annunciation and, in that Annunciation, a column. That is Christ
immediately embodied when Mary said "yes". And there is the Form:
The construction is in line with the laws of perspective, therefore, of our
world.
Everything is said by
the word “Incarnation”: Heaven falls to
Earth, the divine spirit (the dove) falls into a material body. Old Testament
falls into New Testament. The divine world falls into the commun world.
Like Jesus, the
painting has fallen into the world.
The direct result of that vision is this:
the painting should disappear in favour of what is shown.
No traces of brush on the canvas. Only
reality. This painting is more than figurative: it’s representative.
When faced with a painting, we must not see the
paint but what the painting represents.
In 1863 Manet creates a revolution with Olympia
(Musée d’Orsay 1863). Painting becomes a real painting and
not what it was before: a picture.
Although the woman in Olympia falls into
the classical tradition of Venus (like Venus of Urbino by Titian), she’s not Venus.
So what? It’s a painting. Nothing more. The
flat tint* replaces the “modelled” style* present in Renaissance paintings; the
black outline replaces the attenuation innovated by Leonardo
da Vinci. This painting is almost abstract. What is
pictured is not important. What is important is the painting process.
2. From
Impressionnism to Hyperrealism
In the following painting (expressionism,
abstract painting and others), the subject, therefore, is not important. We
said that the only important thing is to put colours and shapes on a canvas. Painting
has withdrawn from the world
3.
Hyperrealism. Origin.
Hyperrealism is not realism. The subject
is not, for Hyperrealism, a return to what is real. Its object is not
what is real, but the photograph of that reality. More specifically, we are in
a period where reality is apprehended through photography. So we believe that
what is in the photograph is real. Hyperrealism is not realism. It retains from
what is real only what it is on the surface: a picture. But that picture
is the new reality of our consumer society.
The sense of the evolution of painting,
since the impressionist revolution, is that : firstly, we saw that painting has
withdrawn itself from the world, and now, the painter withdraw himself from the
painting. This is the meaning, for example, of the Combines Paintings by
Rauschenberg, of Jasper Johns' paintings, of Franck Stella's abstractions, in
which the shape of the canvas (and not the will of the painter) imposes the
shape of the painting. The meaning, too, of Pop Art itself.
Campbell's Soup Can, for example, is a consumer product. What
this? It’s not the object you buy or you have; it’s not a utilitarian object;
it’s not a material object; it’s a picture. That we name a brand. That
is precisely the aim of Hyperrealism. Between our vision and the reality,
consumer society has put a screen (cinema screen, tv screen, photography
screen, computer screen or smartphone screen) on which or through which we see
a distorted realité. A young schoolboy doesn't want shoes but Nikes, doesn't
want a phone but an iPhone. For him, reality is not the material object but the
brand that this object wears. We are all young schoolboys. And Hyperrealism is
the depiction of our new reality, that of the brands. All is brand : clothes,
foods, cars, holidays, politics, sexual or marital partner ... Even the death.
Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and many
other, Dodge City, Deadwood, Tombstone, people and cities which are real in the
new meaning : they are brands.
4.
Hyperrealism. Method.
The method is always the same: beginning with a
photograph on which you have drawn a grid pattern, you replicate, square by
square what you see, without any consideration of the whole. Morlay produced
that painting (SS Rotterdam, in front of
Rotterdam (Private Collection) 1966) from a post card enlarged fifteen
times.
The translation of the photograph onto
canvas is not simply mechanic. The enlarged photograph is not sharp. Painting
is perfectly sharp. In other words, the photograph is not reproduced.
The picture is totally rebuilt.
In the shop windows of Richard Estes or
Don Eddy (Silver Shoes 1974 Collection R. & M. Segal) which are already reflections of our
desires), what is real (the cars in the street) is not
an object to paint, except through its reflexion on the glass of the shop
window. And, because what is painted is not the object but its reflexion, the
painting clearly says that painting is not reality but a picture (in accordance
with the Impressionnist revolution), and even more : it is a picture of picture
in which we can lose up to the meaning of reality. In other words,
Hyperrealism remains an abtract painting.
Is that painting (Richard Estes Broad Street 2003)a
representation of a car ? No, it isn't. The car is nothing more than Don Eddy's
shop window : a reflecting surface. Nor does it care about the buildings, the
only thing wich is important is the reflexion
However, we can observe some variations in the
technique. For example, Chuck Close (Lucas
I Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 1986-87) starts
with a little passport photograph and he considerably enlarges the picture
(here, fifty six times), but with large strokes like an impressionist.
5.
Hyperrealism. Painting of superficiality
Concerning sculpture, hyperrealism
doesn't start from a "model" (a real human). It starts from a
mould; which is a shape, not a material reality.
Plato blamed art because it only reproduces the
sensitive shape and not the intellIgible shape of things. The
bed, reproduced by the painter, can't support a body for the night. It's not a
bed! From the bed, the picture has retained only the sensitive, the visible
shape. This art is made to mislead. Quite the contrary, an artisan copies
the intelligible shape (the idea) of a bed and produces a real bed on which I
can rest without any danger.
This is what is summarized by Joseph Kosuth, a
conceptual artist, when he shows his three chairs (One and three Chairs 1965). One is real (built of wood), another
is a picture (a photograph) and the last is a concept (a definition)
Here (John
De Andrea Linda 1983
), a nude. But not a Venus, not a
female bather, not a sleeping nymph. No, only a sleeping woman.
More exactly the shape of a sleeping woman. The opposite, exactly, of an
allegory. An allegory is an idea translated in a picture. Here, you have a
picture without any idea.
It's not even a desired object, like a
body observed by a voyeur through a keyhole. Because this body not only doesn't
see me, but, moreover it can't see me. As a result there is no mystery.
It's empty. It's dead.
It's like a mannequin on a poster. He can't see
me. That body is not a "nude" but a consumer object.
Like numerous females in Hopper's paintings,
that woman we can see (Hopper Hotel Room Hirschorn
Museum Washington 1926), doesn't see us. What is she looking at ?
It's what you can't see. The result: that woman is mysterious. Everybody is
mysterious for everybody. Albertine, in The Captive, by Marcel Proust,
get out of control when she is sleeping. What are her dreams ? She can see her
jailer, if she wakes up ; he can't see what she dreams.
The difference with De Anrea's nude is that
Hopper's woman can see us. She has an interiority. Her body is not an
enveloppe. She is alive. You know she is looking at something. Something we
can't see. But she is looking at it. This is the mystery.
Chardin's character (The House of Cards Washington,
National Gallery of Art 1737) is absorbed by his activity. You say
that he is concentrated. De Andrea's woman (DeAndrea
Pensive Figure 1990) is not concentrated.
However, she is absorbed. Yes, but absorbed in her shape, like water
in a sponge. Everything is in surface. She is not anything
but a pose. And therefore, like the mannequin, a pure consumer object.
There is something embarrassing in those
sculptural works. They are too "true" and at the same time too
"artificial". Exactly the same embarrassment we feel when faced with
the android of science fiction. Remember Blade Runner! What is the meaning of
this embarrassment ? The android, the statue seem perfectly human bodies, but
we know that this humanity is only on the surface, not in depth. Inside there
is nothing human. What is embarrassing is excatly this : the feeling that
we can delude ourselves.
6. The
lessons of hyperrealism. a. The object
In short :
Impressionism refuses reality and invents the painting.
Hyperrealism doesn't return to the
reality of realism, it shows (after Pop Art) that reality is in our consumer
society : only a picture.
This is, for me, the first lesson of
Hyperrealism. This, from the point of view of the object of that painting.
The meaning of this is, for me, when I
paint, the necessity to touch not the reality of the subject (portrait, genre
scene, landscape) but the picture we have of that subject. Not, for example,
Route 66, but the fantasy of Route 66. Objectively, we don't see the difference
... because Route 66 is a fantasy.
This place is not real, even though Google has
photographied it. It's a mythical place. Route 66 is "The Road". The
"Mother Road". The "main street of the USA", that of the
pioneers going West, of the golden prospectors. The Harley Davidson's road,
that of Easy Rider.
Sunset Boulevard is not only a big avenue of
Los Angeles, like Wilshire Boulevard or Hollywood Boulevard. Borded by
countless advertising panels, Sunset Boulevard is a mythical place
immortalized, amongst others, by Billy Wilder as Mulholland Drive, by David
Lynch.
That is the real Sunset Boulevard. But
it’s not realy Sunset Boulevard ! And this is (Sunset Boulevard 2011) the mythic Sunstet Boulevard
6. The
lessons of Hyperrealism. b. Form
To paint reality, precision is not
absolutely necessary. We have already seen that realist painters go into detail
but not into precision.
However, to paint a picture
of reality, precision is necessary. Because a picture is an elaboration of our
mind. Just as a logical construction, which is elaborated by the mind, can't
accept a lack in the chain of reasoning, a picture made by our mind can't
accept that somethig is missing.
Look at the difference between detail
and precision (Courbet A Young Woman
ReadingNational Gallery of Art Washington 1866-1868 and Van der Weyden Announciation Louvre (around 1434))
I'm not Van der Weyden or Richard Estes.
Precision is for me an aim, because I
want to paint pictures (mythical pictures, memories of places or events)
and not reality. Especially pictures of America.
You will note that in reality we are in
Cuba, but the picture really is American (Sniffing 2016).
III.
What is America?
What is
America? America for a French man who has read American novels, watched
American movies and travelled in America? What picture of America, therefore,
is mine? And I insist, now you know why
, on the word "picture".
It seems that the natural direction in
the US goes from East to West. The pioneers of the Conquest of the West; the
railway, the gold hunters, the migrants of the crisis of the 30s, all of those
who run after the glory of the seventh art. California is the end. In two ways
: the end, in the meaning of "aim" and the end ... of the world
represented by the Pacific Ocean.
1. Los Angeles
So, in spite of the fact that America started
on the East Coast, America became, through the American Dream, the mythical El
Dorado, a western country.
I know, there is New York, the financial
capital, Washington the capital of the USA, Boston, one of the most famous
scientific capitals and many other very important cities. But in our European
mind, frequently, the most important towns are Los Angeles and San Francisco,
two cities on the West Coast.
Numerous movies and novels take place either in
New York or in Los Angeles. This makes those two towns the most famous American
cities. Better, the most known of the American cities, at least visually. But
the fame of L.A. (sea, sex and sun) appears "cooler" than New York’s
reputation.
For me, L.A. is the
American city by excellence. Why?
Naturally, if you read Ellroy, Michael
Connelly and others depicting the Watts riots, the racism of the LAPD, drug
circulation and trafficking in the poor neighborhoods like South Central or the
corruption within the city’s government, when you read Breat Easton Ellis
depicting the L.A. youth drugged, desperate, killing themselves with alcohol,
drugs and sex, when T.C. Boyle shows, in his novel America, the impossible
understanding between different communities or when James Frey depicts, in L.A.
Story, the Angels' city like a place of lost illusions, the picture we have
of that town is not gratifying.
Nevertheless, life
sounds easy in L.A. There is sun all the year, beaches not far from the center
(whether we can speak of a center in L.A.): Santa Monica, Venice beach, Long
Beach. A lot of movie stars have their house in Beverly Hills, Bel Air or on
Mulholland Drive. The movie industry gives a nice idea of the city of Angels.
Finally, in L.A. a multitude of communities stemming from all the regions of
the world live nonetheless together.
Furthermore, with San Francisco, the town is a part of the mythical West.
L.A., at least for the tourist, is a wonderful
city. Everywhere (except, obviously, in the poor neighborhoods) pretty houses
with nice gardens along the canyons. Or endless avenues (Hollywood Blvd, Sunset
Blvd, Wilshire Blvd) edged by all the signs of the Goggie style. Unlike San
Francisco which is based on another cultural principle, more scientific or
intellectual, Los Angeles seems to rely on the shows and money, on the
appearance. Here, in Venice, Muscle Beach (look at my body!), there, the cars
(look at my standard of living!).
Los Angeles is still the theater of numerous
movies, even the main character of many: Chinatown (Polanski), Mulholland
Drive (David Lynch), The Bling Ring or Somewhere (Sophia
Coppola) and others. Those movies sometime show the illusions of Hollywood (The
Day of the Locust, John Schlesinger), the distress of lost glory (Sunset
Boulevard, Billy Wilder), the corruption and the hard life in the streets
of poor neighbourhoods (Dark Blue, Ron Shelton, according James Ellroy's
novel). Whereas some comedies show the lighter side of the stars' way of
living. Recently La la Land.
2. What
do I paint?
What do I paint? Some events which could take
place anywhere but which take on a particular meaning when they take place in
the city of cinema. For example this shooting session on the Venice Front Walk.
A scene which
translates the importance of body image in the mentality of Los Angeles. Here
at Muscle Beach on the Venice Front Walk
The great avenues edged by numerous advertising
panels which, in France, would be considered as visual pollution but which, in
L.A., are part of the pictorial beauty of the town.
These same great avenues congested by cars which, in France, would be
seen as a major inconvenience but which, in L.A., are normal because more than
the people, cars are the real inhabitants of the town.
The cinematographic dimension of Los Angeles is still to be painted.
Here the squale of Jaws in Universal Studio.
Los Angeles is also
characterised by a particular light. It's that light we can capture better in
Venice, along the canals.
And, as is
so often the case, we meet the affirmation of full membership in the Country. I
also have to paint that dimension, for example, with this very american house.
And,
because L.A. is the end of Route 66 ...
Nothing remains except to thank you for
your attention and the interest you have given to that presentation.
It has been a pleasure for me to talk to
you about art history, about a country we all love, about the paintings that
this country has inspired to me.
However, this year
2017, I want to pay tribute to the most famous city of the East Coast and to
dedicate numerous paintings to that city : New York. This is the first example
of that new production (NY#1 W 35th Street (oil on canvas 130x85,5) 2017 ).
And this is the second (NY#2 5th Avenue (oil on canvas 130x85,5) 2017).
Thank you very much, Bordeaux-USA. And thank
you Helen Boulac for your precious assistance.
Bordeaux, 13 avril 2017
