The artist and "his work"
The work is a part of something...
The work and the person
The myth of the ethereal artist
The love of gesture and materials
The real life of the artist
The artist and his work...: I'm an artist, what do I say about myself?
The painter's discourse in 2024
Phi, on his painting
----
The work is a part of something...
As I have learned, ‘the work’ is not everything. It is a part of something, or else, without a soul or a story, it is destined for a sad end. That of a material object with no identified author. Just think of all those old paintings that remain nameless, unsigned, doomed to dusty attics or wandering the stalls of antique markets. And unless some businessman or erudite art lover recognises the ‘hand’ of an eminent artist - leading it ipso-facto to some physico-chemical analysis laboratory - it is unlikely that this ‘work’ will be of interest to anyone, apart from Time and its bites. It doesn't take much, does it?
The work and the person
The ‘work’ is inseparable from the person, the individual who created it. This is why the words of painters from past eras are so precious, collected avidly by researchers in archives. Moreover, with hindsight, research is not very particular about the quality of the content: and so much the better, it wants to be objective, so it takes everything! All the words of artists, right down to their infamous scribbles that leave touching traces of their passage on a few letters.
The myth of the ethereal artist
In the minds of many people today, the idea remains that these painters can only have left esteemed testimonies to their work, their state of mind, their aspirations, their deepest fears and their beliefs. Fortunately, they did not limit themselves to constructing an image of themselves for posterity, which is what we all do today in the age of Instagram and Linkedin. No, sometimes and even often, they took pleasure in recounting their daily lives, their daily work, in detailing the harshness of life, the fear of death, the fate of their souls, even their stomachaches and diarrhoea (really, if you haven't already read it, go and immerse yourself in Pontormo's daily diary (1494-1556)!
A love of gesture and materials
Nor did these old painters forget - perhaps to a certain extent - to talk about the technical
aspects and secrets of their workshops; they often did so with a love of precision and detail: talking about their craft, the stages in the production of their paints, the materials used, their cost, how they were transported and the skills involved.
As any historian of bygone eras familiar with the world of archives will know, money, costs, receipts and expenses were at the heart of the preoccupations of the most modest as well as the most famous! Even the Chinese scholar-painters, who were said to spend their days sitting cross-legged meditating on human nature and the movement of water, used to work collectively, putting up promotional posters on their shop-fronts and knocking on the doors of scholars and other merchants to secure commissions (the late James Cahill sheds light on this extremely interesting subject at https://jamescahill.info ). There's no shame in making a living from your art, and it's to the credit of the artist, whoever he may be, to canvass his clientele and hope to make a living from his work.
The real life of the artist
Let's get this straight! If we need to deconstruct a few commonplaces that are still rife, then you should know that the ethereal artist has never existed. He has always needed to eat, take care of himself and sleep. Even if he may have had extraordinary thoughts, even if he displayed himself as an ‘artist’ in the greatest excess and the greatest destitution.
And he often paid close attention to the techniques he used, to the stages of creation, to the materials and their costs, when historiography did not want to dwell too much on what could mar the ideal image of the intellectual painter: craftsmanship, technique. Fortunately, recent research, which emerged in the 2000s, as well as major developments in the sciences of matter, have made it possible to explore these new avenues and return to a more accurate image of the artist.
The artist and his ‘work’: I'm an artist, what do I say?
Because we have to go back to the painter's ‘discourse’ in 2024, to what he said and what he didn't say.
I am an artist: yes. As far back as I can remember, even if I haven't always painted or drawn and I've earned my living in other ways. Phi was there from birth. No hesitation or legitimacy to seek. I also accept that I'm an artist who has to make a living from painting.
After all I've said, I'm also aware that my work alone is of little interest. It is a sensitive medium, it allows others - it even invites them! - to come into contact with what I am. What he sees through the painting, and what I agree to tell him.
The painter's speech in 2024
Times have changed since Pontormo... rest assured, I won't dwell on my digestion or my deep-seated beliefs, and I have no intention of using empty concepts to talk about ‘my art’, or of dressing it up in any kind of political rhetoric, in tune with the times. There are so many empty words, so often substituted for the essential in all forms of writing, and even research, in recent years.
You can judge ‘my art’ and make fun of it. That's only human. They say criticism is constructive! Have fun, you'll be right.
Phi, on his painting...
What can you say about it in concrete terms? It's true, my art seems restrained, without its precise lines, in its faces, in its figures. But it's true. It is. It's totally compressed and dense. It's enclosed. ‘Let go of your brushstroke’, “let the drawing go”, “draw more”, my friends tell me. That's an artist! Well no, because that wouldn't be me, quite simply. I'm just like my painting: I'm a being compressed and held back by my emotions. I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you: it's unlikely that a butterfly will emerge from the chrysalis. The butterfly is already there, take it or leave it.
I like to paint the human and the animal: to approach in two dimensions the emotions that come across in three; the furtive emotions that pass over faces, those that are all in shades, difficult to grasp, in a sort of in-between. Those that are frank and clear-cut. Those that mean something else. The ones that lead to the deepest abysses of thought. The ones that, in the end, need no text or discourse, because they take us back to what's essential: being in relation to the world, and incidentally to others.
I claim to be both an artist and a craftswoman. Art without craft is just an empty shell, because the gesture of the hand, which emerged from the depths of the ages when words were not even constructed, has so many important things to tell us about who we are; here again in our relationship with nature, with what it offers us in terms of wealth and knowledge.
Personally, painting transports me, gives me access to another dimension of the world, in which I am alone. Well, almost... the figures of painting are there. It's a magical place where I capture the essence of beings and things in my own way, where time has no hold because oil gives the illusion of eternity. It's the opposite of the world contained in the portrait of Dorian Gray, in a way, where time is a prisoner, at the mercy of the present; in Phi's pictorial universe, Eternity lies before us.
Comentários