Art in question
« To paint is to start by being silent. And listen. Listen to people, objects, silences, drafts. How to resist time and precariousness other than through the creative act ? Have we invented anything more wonderful than the hand, this shell of flesh, blood and love which collects emotion and which emotion on the canvas in a mind's eye? In the early days of the creation , they were a few to draw in the middle of the night, with one hand trembling on the walls of a cave. To better ward off bloody and miserable fate reserved for them, the free figure of an animal taken from life became for them the embryo of a better life. This fiction laid the foundations for a world devoid of all danger by only still fragile power of the imagination.
A few thousand years later, it is the same men, a handful, who in the Plain of Marathon chose to repel the invader and lived through the hell of death under axes and blades of barbarians. The Acropolis hill, the Parthenon marbles, the circumference of the theater of Epidaurus turned towards the sea, present in their flesh and blood, galvanized their forces. Came the Renaissance. Botticelli stared at the spring without the slightest cloud obscuring the freshness of her composition despite the years. The Caravaggio shaped the day and night on the face of each of its characters. He disappeared, keeping as a secret the perfection of all human form. The man whose hand trembled in the dawn of time had not resigned himself. He continued his path on the path of the imagination and got closer of the dream in the learning of the line and the material. His daring fueled by his vision distinguished the beauty of the light to better associate them in the coat of a work of art , hoisting Western civilization at arm's length. Such a torch, it distributed both worry and happiness and shone on the world. Then came new men. They lined up miles of rails. Came the locomotives. Engines. Then the fog of the locomotives, the noise of the engines. It had to set a standard. It was the straight line. He had to be dressed. He was offered speed.
Mastering the speed , chaining records mobilized all energies. In the silence of laboratories and the labyrinth of experimental research, man reaped the discoveries, unmasked the unknowns and lost his heart. Its vertically oriented telescope opened up the darkness of space to him. The spirit of conquest was activated. No more hearing, touch, smell. Lost the smile and the tears. Dropped the sweat, the sperm and the saliva. A polar cold was preparing to bury the honey of existence. Take a detour became a waste of time . The curve, this oscillation of the line which suggests the shade was stored in the closet. Looking to see was seen as a weakness. Linger, a anomaly. We had to act. And quickly . Following his instinct was seen as childish. To seek the soul of everything, a resignation.
Today, who would dare to take up arms for defend and save the palace of Jacques Coeur in Bourges, the crusaders of the Holy Chapelle, the memory of Arthur Rimbaud? Who would accept risk his life for the gardens of Le Nôtre, the walls of Chambord, the Loire Valley or Lunch on the Grassby Claude Monet? Who would agree to lose all credit to become what it has always been? Who would simply accept being himself in order to exist? And if everything was needed restart ? Start by being silent. To fear. And in the folds of a cold blue night of December, feel. And tremble. »
