Why did I decide to paint ?
Well, its simple : for the aesthetic pleasure of course,
in my case, ever since the day a professional painter friend of mine
literally triggered painting in me with one short sentence « If
you want to paint, paint ! »That day, I stopped making intelligent
objections to myself, I ceased asking myself questions, I placed a flower
in a vase, I painted it, and I was happy.
Now, in the silence of the studio,
when nothing comes, one has plenty of time to meditate in depth on the
motivation, to attempt to « construct the philosophy of the thing ».
It is then that one situates oneself in ones time, in ones
art. To get back into painting. But its a sad spectacle, it must
be said, when todays motto is « anything goes ! »
As if it were as easy as that. How did we get here, how did we achieve
such decadence ? I can find only one answer : its in
the association between money and pseudo-intellectual snobbery leading
to the death of art, to nihilism, as many writers affirm.
The triumph of « anything goes »
Yves Michaud sums up the situation
well :
"... the judgement which concerns
aesthetic appreciation is identified with a judgement based on criteria
and norms recognised by a specific community, and, potentially, by the
whole of humanity. The triumph of « anything goes » thus marks
the end of aesthetics and even of art, full stop. »
" In a more moderate version,
responsibility for the situation will be assigned to a failure of critical
judgement, which is incapable of discerning adequate criteria (Olivier
Mongin), which lacks the courage required to impose them (Domecq), or
has allowed itself to be marginalised by social change, with its fashion
trends, snobbery and even a kind of terrorism of aesthetic judgement
(Le Bot, Gaillard). The radical version proclaims art to be as dead
as it is void of meaning (Baudrillard)1 ».
Whats more, this is nothing
new, no ephemeral fashion : Malevitch, in order to be original
at any price, bludgeoned us with his sadly famous « white square
on white background » as early as 1918, and went on to vaunt his
nihilism in his writings, in case we hadnt understood2,
offering himself as an example to other painters, in case they were
insensitive to the charms of collective suicide. How is it possible
that such a situation could have lasted so long ?
It must have been that some of the
« great and the good » finally felt the pricks of conscience,
in the face of what was a very lively public reaction, in order for
the French Minister of Culture to have commissioned a major sociological
study « The rejection of contemporary art 3 » .
The first lines of the introduction to this study are particularly heavy
with meaning and clearly show the general climate of opinion :
« It would, perhaps, have been sufficient to have given the reactions
to this enquiry within the art world, so symptomatic are they of the
place at once massive a nd unspoken, omnipresent yet stifled,
- held by the phenomena of rejection of contemporary art experienced
by so many of the professionals responsible for its promotion ».
And there we have it. With that,
everything has been said. It would seem in fact, that the general public
cannot be fooled, that people know perfectly well how to recognise art
great art when they see it. They are obviously determined
not to be excluded from it, and also determined that a pseudo-elite,
in cahoots with commercial interests, shall not cause them to confuse
art with imposture.
My personal approach is to place
myself outside all of that, and in particular to move towards science,
which has always been a source of great attraction to me, in order to
see whether I could find a new way, working seriously in the company
of the serious people which scientists are, finding echoes in all this
of the concerns of the famous art historian Ernst Gombrich, who wrote :
« "The progress of modern
science is so astonishing that I feel almost embarrassed when I hear
my university colleagues discussing genetic codes, when art historians
are discussing the fact that Duchamp sent a urinal to an exhibition.
Just consider the difference in intellectual level for a moment, its
just not true .4 »
More precisely, if we do consider
it for a moment, what is more interesting is the confession Duchamp
made to Hans Richter on this subject when he wrote :
« When I discovered ready-mades,
I hoped I could discourage the carnival of aesthetism. But the neo-dadaists
use ready-mades as a way of discovering some kind of aesthetic value.
I clobbered them over the head with the bottle-holder and the urinal
as a provocation and then they went and admired their aesthetic beauty
5 . »
I cannot accept, either as an artist,
or as a « man in the street », being attacked in this way
by Duchamp, whether its his urinal or the moustache he paints
on the Mona Lisa, because he is desacralising what is sacred to me.
André Lalande, in his « Vocabulaire technique et critique
de la philosophie » uses an example to define sacredness :
« in the most usual , moral, meaning : the sacred character
of the human being. »This meaning also includes the idea of an
absolute, incomparable value 6 . » One could
not say it better. First, it is precisely against this aggression, this
violation of my human person that I am defending myself. For one of
my essential structural elements is precisely an unceasing quest for
beauty, which is for me an absolute, incomparable value, which
motivates my work. As a matter of fact, I am delighted to find myself
in total agreement with the public at large on the matter, as witnessed
by the above-mentionned sociological research. « People »
enjoy beauty. What is surprising, to-day, is that it should go without
saying.
Precisely, I feel that the
proof of Art is that each human being on this earth can identify it
and feel it as such, without having to receive any previous information
on the subject.
Provocation through ugliness is
just as grave for me as some bright spark of a hacker somewhere in the
world planting a computer bug to destroy my work. I consider, in fact,
that the artist has a moral duty to create beauty, rather than to delight
in the vile farce of some wretched « carnival of non-aestheticism »
ŕ la Duchamp.
For far too long now, we have been
in a situation of crisis. Faced with this situation, as a human being
who accepts his share of individual responsibility for the state of
society, I have attempted to construct a painters philosophy,
with the help of science. I espouse the thinking of Carl Jung, who wrote,
in the spirit of the collective unconscious :
« If something is going wrong
in the world, it is because something is going wrong with the individual,
at my personal level. Therefore, if I am wise, I should start by putting
myself in order » .
So, if we place ourselves outside
of the continuous stream of time, we observe, on the one hand Leibniz
asking himself « why does something exist rather than nothing ? »
and on the other hand, Gauguin painting a picture which he entitles
« Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going to ? »,
looking for a reason for existence, as much for man as for the universe.
It would be easy to answer the first
question by saying « Its because God wished it to be so »
and to leave it at that. But can we really ? Our contemporary physicists
have been trying to answer both questions together in an attempt to
produce a grand unified theory. The following is the conclusion reached
by Stephen Hawking in his book « A brief history of time » :
« However, if we do discover
a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle
by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then, we shall all, philosophers,
scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion
of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find
the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason
- for then we would know the mind of God7 .»
Now then
. We might also reply
in all candidness to the fundamental question posed by Leibniz that
if something exists rather than nothing, its because it is intended
for us. Trinh Xuan Thuan, Professor of Astronomy at the University of
Virginia, writes, concerning the universe : « One of
the most surprising findings of modern cosmology is the extremely precise
setting of its initial conditions and physical constants, combining
to produce the conditions whereby an observer appears in our universe.
This finding is known as « the anthropic principle » (from
the Greek anthropos meaning « man »). If the initial
conditions and physical constants had been even slightly different,
our universe would have been void and sterile ; we wouldnt
even have been there to talk about it8 .»
It is always a good thing to ask
oneself questions- philosophically but, as we are in it, this
universe, we feel above all the need for life to advance, so as to be
sure of finding the right answer, at least partially, in action, independently
of any great unified theory, and whats more, a personal answer,
specific to oneself, so as to feel alive. This being the case, we can
only see action, guided by reflection, as the way of advancing, progressing,
in other words, well work ! Work performed in the joy of
feeling ourselves grow through effort in harmony with a certain Order
of Things, which is expressed among other things, by the beauty of our
universe.
What is striking is that, at whatever
scale we approach it, macroscopic or microscopic, this universal law
of beauty seems to admit of no exceptions in nature : the beauty
of the different basic elements of matter, of all living things, of
the whole cosmos, of all the mathematical laws themselves, which regulate
this cosmos with such amazing precision.
Concerning this, Trinh Xuan Than
also writes : « The aesthetic pleasure which a mathematician
finds in doing maths is astonishingly similar to that which an artist
feels when he creates a work of art. It reflects the same exalting feeling
of having, for a brief instant, approached the divine and of having
raised a modest veil of eternal truth9 .»
Precisely, I highly appreciate,
in the mathematicians aesthetic pleasure, his quest for the « necessary
and sufficient », which is also my law of creation,
in order to express just the essence, and all the essence.
Incidentally, we would add that it
would even be possible to extend the principle somewhat to make it express
a moral lesson, that instead of trying to impose some kind of mythical
equality on each other, we would be much better off and happier if we
each tried to obtain just the necessary and to be satisfied with the
sufficient.
Finally, the beauty created by the
hand of primitive man in the caves of Lascaux, is one of the very summits
of the stylised art of drawing. Precisely, man : it is as if Nature,
whatever it did, spontaneously, were incapable of producing ugliness,
whereas only man, with his totally free agency, had the freedom to do
it, as he is at present revelling in his « anything goes ».
For beauty to exist, aesthetic judgement
must exist. So, who does the judging ? Does Nature know itself
to be beautiful, does it make efforts to be so, does it consider beauty
as a categorical imperative, or does it just come naturally, at will ?
In this sense, is the universe self-conscious ? In such a case,
does the universe create consciousness or does consciousness create
the universe ? Or again, is their appearance concomitant ?
In so far as we are ourselves a product of this universe , and
by contemplation of beauty we are led to pronounce an aesthetic judgement,
are we not drawn into a self-referential process, which, Gödel tells
us, by demonstration of his theorem, includes undecidable propositions10
. For scientists, these are very pressing questions. Amit Goswami,
the quantum physicist, quotes G. Spencer Brown who writes :
« We cannot escape the fact that
the world we know is constructed in order (and in such a way as to be
able) to see itself, but in order to do so, evidently it must first
cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other
state which is seen11 .»
and Goswami goes on to say :
« ... the brain- mind is a dual quantum system/measuring
apparatus. As such, it is unique : it is the place where the self-reference
of the entire universe happens. The universe is self-aware through
us. In us the universe cuts itself into two - into subject and object12
. »
This is indeed what I felt, right from
the moment I wanted to paint, in a vague way at first, quite hard to
express : but when you become committed to creation, you feel a
hunger for contemplation both from inside and outside, a kind of call
to receive something which is in fact impossible to define, very solid,
which retreats as you advance its exhausting. You feel
like a child. You are given an enormous lesson in humility, in the face
of creation, and at the same time an invitation to create together,
a sort of invitation to participate in the self-reference of this universe.
This is why, in this climb through the mist, I found it necessary to
« construct my philosophy of things » , my personal entrance
to this cosmos being, for reasons unknown to me, perhaps on account
of a lively curiosity, quantum physics.
So, the importance of quantum physics
in my personal quest as an artist, as I explained in Leonardo13
, the MIT magazine about art and science, is :
« Bells theorem14
shows that quantum mechanics cannot be interpreted in terms of local
deterministic theory; it has been called « the most profound discovery
of science15 » . It proves that any reality can only
be non-local16 , i.e. that we live in a holistic universe,
in which the whole acts on the part and vice-versa . This interconnectedness
is my source of inspiration. »
« There are two reasons I was
attracted to quantum physics. First, I found in it all the metaphors
I needed to « explain » my personal, ontological adventure
in art through painting. I was mostly fascinated by the fact that since
at the microscopic level our observation of matter disturbs the observed
phenomenon, we cannot be sure of what reality is per se. On the other
hand, what strikes us most when we observe our universe, which is made
of that same matter, is its beauty. Consequently, I feel that beauty
means more for us than reality, and that we have more certainties about
beauty than we have about reality. »
« The second reason is the
fact that, to me, quantum physics is both the scientific development
that broke sciences materialistic approach and the bridge between
science and the human mind. This is also the feeling of some scientists :
« The centerpiece of this new paradigm is the recognition that
modern science validates an ancient idea - the idea that consciouness,
not matter, is the ground of all being17 . »
One thing is sure, if our modern
science, despite its formidable power, admits of being incapable of
defining reality, then this reality will appear to us as increasingly
abstract and, as a result, the creative artist, receptive to the universe,
will wish to depict this abstract beauty. It is difficult. I do my best,
that is to say, quite the opposite of « anything goes » .
I hope, in this way, to cooperate in a new Renaissance, like a lost
pilot, in search of the star.