MuseoMag: MuseoMag 2021_02

MuseoMag 2021_02

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Titel:: MuseoMag

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Titel:: MuseoMag 2021_02

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Titel:: "What is art anyway?": An interview with French artist Claude Viallat, a representative of the nouvelle peinture, about impasses leading to freedom

25 02 ‘ 2021 museomag Let’s start by playing devil’s advocate: Some people who visit the exhibition at the MNHA won’t understand anything about your art and will start screaming that what you create doesn’t differ from the first paintings of a child. Would you like to say anything to them? „Yes, I would like to say that if what I do is not art for them, nobody should try to convince them that it is. What is art anyway? No one has an answer to that question. In pre- vious times, people started to create images of what they saw, using the little means they had. At some point, these reproductions of reality were called ‘art’. When I started to paint, the art scene was dead. People were still seeing art as images, visualised by artists. In a way, the artworld was desperately searching for the last painting. To me, art consists of everything people make. If a child creates something, you should tell them that what it makes is genius. As is the painting of someone who reproduces reality in a perfect way. One is not better than the other. It’s the process of creating that matters most.“ „MY TEMPLATES: JUST FORMS, NOTHING MORE“ The Supports/Surfaces movement became known because of its rebellious character and its criticism of the established order: the artists wouldn’t sign their works, didn’t exhibit in the conventional places, like museums or galleries, and didn’t even use stretched canvas. Isn’t it disappointing for you as an artist that your work is now shown in museums, and officially became art? „Not at all! I am always very pleased if my work is shown in exhibitions. It’s satisfying to see the paintings being exhibited in spaces that do them justice. Seeing them in another context reveals new and unexpected dialo- gues between the works and the space. To me that is marvellous. In the MNHA for example, two of my works are shown on two different walls, separated by a corner and a door. In that setting, it is as if the two works are continuing into each other behind that door, creating one sole work. As if they have always belonged together. The theory behind the Supports/Surfaces movement was created by others, not by me. There is no meaning nor a goal in what I’m doing, or trying to achieve. And there has never been one.“ What about the template you keep using all the time? Doesn’t that have any meaning either? I’ve read that it symbolises the back of a woman. INTERVIEW „People have a lot of imagination. No, it doesn’t refer to a woman’s back. I simply work with what I have at my dispositition. My templates, I have two or three of them, are just forms, nothing more. They could be replaced by any other form, and they always appear different in my work depending on the paint and the fabric I use. These templates don’t have a meaning, but they do have qualities though; they are not geometrical, nor figurative, representative or symbolic, they are just a mimesis.“ „THE PAINTING IS MY ROAD TO FREEDOM“ If your work has no meaning, nor a goal, what is it that you are doing or looking for, while creating? „I paint. And once I’m done, I watch and analyse what happened. Most artists have an idea and impose it to the canvas. I observe what the painting and the fabric reveal to me. The fabrics I use aren’t neutral. Sometimes I use © s. boulloud, 2019

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