Gérard Zlotykamien
BITS OF STRING TO MAKE UP HUMANITY
COURSE
How did you become an artist?
I didn't become an artist; I was born this way. It's not my profession; I don't have a career plan. However, I can't help but create; creation is a kind of obsession. From the age of seven, I automatically painted impossible things. Furthermore, I don't know the exact definition of the word "artist." I simply consider myself a guy who paints, and nothing more. Painting is my language.
Why choose spray paint as a means of expression?
I started with chalk, then an enema bulb, a paint pot, and finally a spray can. When I accidentally discovered this tool in a shop, I was immediately drawn to it because the paint dries instantly and the writing is immediate, like with a pencil, which is very interesting in terms of the material. The problem was the risk of the color fading or changing. I've always worked with elements that could disappear the next day. But the paint in my spray cans doesn't budge. There are yellows I painted outdoors twenty or twenty-five years ago that, despite snow, rain, cold, and wind, have withstood the test of time.
How do you choose the locations and media?
I like dilapidated places, places with a history, a wear and tear. I also used to use fences, which for me are like large, flat canvases that allow for easy movement. Back then, there were hundreds of meters of them. Now I use them less. They're often broken places, sometimes symbolic, like when I go abroad to South Africa or East Germany.
BIRTH OF THE EPHEMERALS
You created your first Éphémères in the street in 1963: could you talk about that moment?
That's true regarding their name, but they had revealed themselves a little earlier in my work, around 1957/1958, through the Empty landscapes. These shadows appeared, in particular, because people said I belonged to the Impressionist or Expressionist movements. I was sixteen or seventeen at the time, and out of vanity, I couldn't stand those labels. Out of pride, I wanted to express my own personality, not someone else's, to assert something of my own identity. I believe that being pretentious is, in fact, claim to something.
Could you elaborate on the choice of the name "Éphémères" (Ephemeral), and the symbolism of these forms in relation to 20th-century history?e century? We think in particular of the shadows of Hiroshima.
I found the definition in the Larousse dictionary. A mayfly is an insect that lives for twenty-four hours, and I think that human beings, even if they live for a century, are very similar to mayflies. When we look at what's happening in the world, we realize that life, whether symbolically snatched away by the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people in a few seconds, or whether it lasts for a hundred years, remains very fragile. Even if the complexity of this question will be addressed more by philosophers or sociologists, we can ask ourselves what our purpose is in time. Even if humankind disappears in fifty thousand years, that will represent nothing compared to the billions of years that have passed. Our little 1.4-kilogram brain can harm half the planet, and yet 1.4 kilograms doesn't weigh much in the universe.
Why choose a minimalist and repetitive form?
You can spend five years debating whether to throw someone out, but a single word is enough to send them away, without needing to add anything else. It's ultimately minimalist. All my work, all my research, is concentrated on the minimum number of words, the minimum number of symbols, that can be understood by everyone without exception. Through their minimalist aspect, my Ephemerals acquire a timeless and universal dimension.
The influence of Hostages by Jean Fautrier, or Shadows by Pierre Pinoncelli: the idea of traces, of the erasure of collective memory.
Actually, I don't look back. When you make a date with someone, you're talking about the future. When I think about a painting, it's for what it will be tomorrow, not for what it could have been yesterday. I'm not a historian. I don't claim to read the future in a cup of coffee, but I base my work on an emotion I feel at a given moment in relation to a specific context. I believe it's better to do things beforehand than afterward. One day, there will be people like you who will want to understand our era, who will think that 2017 was a pivotal year, and they will seek out information.
What is the idea behind your current work?
I'm working on the idea of bits of string: I believe we are made up of a collection of them. How many teachers have you had in your life? How many lectures have you attended? The wealth of knowledge thus generated is like a collection of bits of string that make us irreplaceable by a computer or a robot. No one can imitate you, no one can be who you are, not even the most sophisticated machine. It was Edmond Rostand who said that if he had had different teachers, different parents, or different friends, he would have been someone else. We are made of infinitely small fragments that record our entire existence. If we accumulate them, we realize that this sum is monumental. All the more so if we add to that all the forms of technology that accompany us daily today, like computers or cars…
EVOLUTION OF THE ARTISTIC SCENE
Could you talk about the installation of the Abattoir, during the third Paris Biennale in 1963, which you did in particular in the company of Pierre Pinoncelli?
At the 1963 Biennale, I was asked to paint a wall around a slaughterhouse, inside which, among other things, the work of Eduardo Arroyo, a Spanish painter, was on display. He had depicted four dictators: Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar. The Ministry of the Interior wanted to blow up the place because it wasn't right to show those images. But we're talking about a different era, when Maurice Papon was Minister of the Interior and André Malraux was Minister of Culture. Fifty-six countries participated in that Biennale, including the United States, which presented a superb room with twisted pieces of airplanes. Nevertheless, I believe the renewal of the art scene happened a little earlier with artists like Yves Klein.
On this occasion, you wrote the following text: «"It took thousands of religious doctrines, civilizations with sages, prophets, thinkers, philosophers, and men of goodwill for us to have torture chambers, concentration camps, borders, and chewing-gum men today."». This seems to highlight an absurd dimension of progress.
I'm not qualified to say it's absurd. Everyone is trying to survive in the context of the times they live in. If you're a humanist, if you have respect for humanity, then yes, this progress is absurd. But we live in a society of billions of people where each nation develops its own concept of survival. I think that in a way, the horrors of the Second World War existed before and continue today. Groups of people have been found who were massacred fifteen or twenty thousand years ago, all with their skulls smashed in the same place. The horror persists when, today, a population is left to die of hunger or thirst. In 1139, the Second Lateran Council banned the use of crossbows, which were considered disloyal. Later, it was progressively forbidden to use the air to bomb populations or to employ chemical weapons for the same reasons. This curious development is incomprehensible, especially when the use of anti-personnel mines or flamethrowers is tolerated alongside it.
How has the public's perception evolved?
I was certainly from the first generation, but I didn't publicize it. I let things happen naturally. At first, it was mainly the police who were curious to see me: once, they detained someone for six hours who was simply taking photos of my work! Solzhenitsyn said "There are cracks that, over time, cause caverns to collapse.". I adopted this phrase as my own: while I was being ostracized in the 60s and 70s, I gravitated towards the generation of artists who emerged in the 80s, like Miss. Tic and Jérôme Mesnager. This media attention was extraordinary, but it happened forty years later than in the United States, with artists like Jean Faucheur or Ernest Pignon-Ernest. However, it's important to remember that street artists often faced difficulties and lawsuits, both during that time and afterward.
CHOOSE THE STREET
So why did you choose to paint in the street?
It was difficult to be accepted into galleries. So, I went out onto the street. I believe that we never truly say no; we say yes to something else. I didn't say no to painting, but I turned to a different mode of expression. When possible, I find that a gallery is an ideal exhibition space because it brings its own humanity to organizing an exhibition, notably by taking financial risks.
You were one of the pioneers of Urban Art.
I can't say if I was among the first in the world; I don't know what was happening in Japan or Africa. As for France, you'd have to ask Ernest Pignon-Ernest, who is much more organized than I am! To get back to this move to the street, there are two schools of thought: those who, like Marcel Duchamp, use street art to repurpose it and enter the gallery. I'm probably one of the few who did the opposite, deliberately moving from the gallery to the street. It's also important to realize that while going out into the street today can open doors, back then it tended to close them. But my work has always been the same, indoors and out.
What is your perspective on urban art today?
I think everyone is right: being contemporary is judged according to a time and a need. If we need to listen to Mozart, then he's contemporary, the same goes for Molière. I can't know what will be contemporary tomorrow or in fifty years. It takes thousands of conservatory prizes to make a great soloist, and I think it takes millions of painters to make a great painter. When you have Duchamp or Malevich on the art scene at the same time, you already have to catch up with them! There are extraordinary painters around me, but there are thousands of quality painters today. If you open a catalogue, you see that in a single month there are more than two hundred exhibition openings in Paris—that's enormous! But there's no point in reinventing the wheel; it's pointless, and spending your life doing so would be foolish.
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