Artist's Statement
PUBLISHED AT THE OCCASION OF THE EXHIBITION
AT TEMPLON GALLERY, 1989.
“LIGHTING THE FUSE” AFTER THE APPROPRIATION
After all, I am stranger, I am different
Because I’m interested in art and in its
Entirety, I have the impression I belong
to a tradition. I paint something experienced.
Willem de Kooning
1. My sculpture as a whole in an autobiographical affirmation, an intimate
three-dimensional diary: the sculpture “Générations” is
a constantly updated
catalogue of my work.
2. My sculpture is not nostalgic, but I am guided by tradition. Each work
is
wrought from the statuary tradition. North America is David Smith. As early
as 1965 I knew it was necessary to understand the obstacles he had had
to
overcome : American Puritanism.
3. The verticality of Giacometti and Barnett Newman, the contrasts of tradition
between Julio Gonzalez and David Smith are one of the explanations of my
work.
4. To live as a foreigner in New York is to discover that huge ocean of
the
Reformation, I realize the exact extent of being French. I cannot be
assimilated.
The “crystal clear” light of New York provides a new vision
of my bronzes
“Grande Nudité”; after the gardens of the Rodin Museum in
Paris they have
gone to Fifht Avenue. This light is a blade which sharpens the roundness
of
the contours. For Matisse it is the light of the Italian primitives, for
me it is
that of a hymn to verticality, to life: an energy, a breath, an art of
living.
Matisse’s remark comes to mind : “People will say I flatter
the Americans, as
it was said that I let my beard grow to please the Russians”.
5. There’s a kind of bliss in no longer being in the pioneering period
of abstract
sculpture. Today I am assuming a heritage which gives me a non-militant
ease: I can switch subjectively from the modeled to the constructed, from
sculpture in the round to assemblage. I am discovering a splendid space
of
liberty.
6. Modeling is the most subjective form of art. The earth made flesh can
be felt
like a body. The baked clay has a moving tenderness. I like communicating
the sensations of a living model in the studio. This presence is the essential
condition for life in my sculptures. No photographic reproduction can replace
it. It’s precisely because I am abstract, not in the usual sense,
that the
presence of the living model as a dialogue is primordial in my work. De
Kooning says that the flesh was the reason oil painting was invented. The
flesh was equally what made us want to model clay and forge metal.
7. I have a passion for feminity and grace: “Lighting the fuse” after
the
appropriation.
8. I like variety but not eclectism, it’s a question of personal
implication in the
work. Derision, morbidity, parody, what a bore! That’s all there
is. So I am
unclassifiable recalcitrant being in an age heading towards an asexual,
uniform world.
9. My sculptures are not object but presences, living bodies. Since 1972,
I
have gradually come to realize that my work can be looked at rhythm from
all angles. This is not a naturalistic or anthropomorphic structure. It’s
an
order of the subconscious linked to the rhythm of my impulsive output.
The
attack is frontal, quick, and aggressive, and is spread around the frame.
I am
therefore restoring the marvelous specificity of the art of sculpture:
an
absolute need of convolution about the work to perceive all its effects.
I am a
sculptor of statues.
10. Very young, I was warned: “Kirili, don’t smile, it’s
not credible in the art
world”. It was in Paris though, where seriousness attempts to crush
everything.
11. Although on one is interested in it anymore, sexuality and art is the
fundamental question at the source of my creation. Our age prefers
commentaries, concepts, sociologism, the immaterial, chastity, even a
romantic death delirium! Anything but incarnation, pleasure. I won’t
be
forgiven for that. Fine !
I escape in our cathedrals, in Rome, India, to salute the great liturgies
which
offer us the greatest art. Discovering the Hindu yoni / lingam sculptures
was
a wonderful thing, an encouragement. Sivaism has taught me that a plinth
is
a female organ which requires a lingam to become God. The feminity and
virility of Sivan sculpture is worshipped by 700 million believers. Here
is a
new chapter for Georges Bataille’s book “ Les larmes d’Eros” – There
is no
Thanatos in my sculpture.
12. The 18th Century is present in my work. My clay pieces are ecstatic,
frivolous. To soothe the body through pleasure is sculpture’s challenge
to
seriousness and boredom. Plaster is provocatively, mischievously white,
thanks to its shivers of color. It is French. I have sculpted what can
on ly be
said in the French language, which is the erotic reference condemned today
by a violently repressive worldwide consensus.
13. My forged aluminum pieces, burnt and coal-blackened are bellowing gothic
explosions. The hammered iron is given a rhythm by sensually embossing
the metal into soft meditative signs, akin sometimes to processions of
mouners (?). Deep down I am neither modern nor contemporary. I sail freely
in time. According to my mood and the need I feel, I meet Sluter, Fragonard,
Carpeaux or Rodin. I feel no biological restraint. Historical mockery and
amnesia belong to civilizations which are breaking away from traditions,
or
rejecting it, which usually ends up in cynicism, in confusion of forms,
in total
darkness. At such a time we are from Beaudelaire’s “Phares” and
we enter a
modern barbarity which takes over in art. Daring to think against it
condemns one to solitude.
14. “Who is afraid of verticality?” is the question raised
as a condition of my
survival. And my answer is in my work and the title of a sculpture by David
Smith : “Bye Bye, Puritan landscape”.
15. As has been ably shown by Robert Rosenblum, a great art stream born
of
aesthetic of the sublime is linked to a northern romantic tradition. The
notions of space, the privileged place, and nature were central in the
heroic
age of Abstract Ecpressionism. Heroic because it was the only period in
American art which can compete with the great Europeans of the 20th
Century. Newman’s title “Vir Heroicus Sublimis” sums
that up well. I’ll never
forget the conflict he had with Panofsky, as Newman defines well the
freedom and integrity of the artist faced with the constant arrogance of
art
historians who are ready to deride a great artist for a false problem of
translation: the serious minds have no idea of the importance of work such
as Newman’s. All that remains true today. I want absolute experience
to be
sublimely incarnate and not, as Newman said : “To me, the sense of
place
has not only a mystery but has that sense of metaphysical fact”.
In fact, I
want to bring the sublime back to the Greeks and Dionysos.
16. I am convinced that it is through the aesthetic and moral values of
the
French tradition that art will be relieved of its yoke of seriousness and
derision. I am for “luxe, calme et volupté”. I will
conclude with the Sade’s
phrase: “ And be sure I am your ever non-humble, non-obedient, nonservant,
in other words your friend”.
June 9, 1989