PIERRE PINONCELLI
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, January 7, 2016
Mao and Diogenes
In the early 1950s, you were 20 years old and decided to embark on an adventure in America without a predetermined goal. Could you reflect on this period of your life?
Having never attended art school, I didn't have the classical training of an artist. Besides, you can't learn to be an adventurer. But since every path requires roots, I would say mine is linked to childhood. I come from a middle-class background, and my schooling was quite fragmented: I was expelled from about ten different schools because I've always hated authority. While I didn't study much there, my path is still influenced by those years spent with the Marist Fathers, because it was there that I first rebelled against an atmosphere of pervasive surveillance.
What were you looking for when you went to America?
Pure adventure. My parents asked me what I was going to do, since they ran a hosiery factory. I wanted to continue doing nothing, and since I had family in Mexico, I went there. I knew they wouldn't stop me and that I would be welcomed. I admit that this doesn't fit the image of the lone adventurer with nothing but canvas pants and a shirt. Once there, I lived on the large ranches in the north of the country. So, naturally, I went to Chihuahua, Suarez, and El Paso. My family owned equipment stores: lassos, ropes, and saddles. So, to avoid finding myself in the same situation as in France, I immediately left for the United States. I started looking at classified ads, discovering the greyhounds to travel from city to city, obviously what was most sought after were the dishwashers, There was plenty of work for that! I travelled all over the country and did lots of odd jobs, for example I was a swimming instructor but also a crocodile feeder on a farm!
You say you also lived among the Indians? What was the turning point in your journey?
Back in Mexico, I went to visit the Tarahumara people in the Sierra Madre, where Antonin Artaud had lived. I didn't delve into the Indians' beliefs, but I was struck by the extreme poverty of the Tarahumara. I took peyote there (which I nicknamed ucocolt), a Mexican plant consumed by Artaud himself. I wasn't trying to retrace the poet's steps; I simply wanted to see the places he had been. But the story begins in Mexico City, when, upon entering the Museum of Modern Art, I experienced my first major artistic shock through Mexican mural painting, confronted with the works of Siqueiros, Tamayo, and the paintings of the dead. I am fall about painting, and that determined what happened next. Without that encounter, I could have continued traveling and wandering, or taken up writing. I've always written a little, but not books or novels. I was 20, 22 years old, and youth lasts a lifetime; I wasn't thinking about the future. I wasn't thinking about painting, much less making a career out of it; I didn't think that what I was experiencing could ever end.
What struck you most about these paintings in the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City?
I had never seen a painting before; it was the first time in my life I'd ever been inside a museum, whether in Saint-Étienne or Mexico! I was just wandering the streets when I went there; it was pure chance. I was struck by the beauty, the colors, and the raw power of these works, more so than by their political message or their underlying themes, which were less relevant to me. I was also deeply affected by the sense of death that emanated from them. These paintings depicted death. Perhaps people were right to tell me about Mexico. Before that, art didn't even exist for me. It was this initial shock that led me to paint, to buy paints, and then to scribble on my first canvases.
Your subsequent work appears to be highly politically engaged. The performance of the message delivered to Mao (Nice-Beijing Hike, 1970) appears political, that of Diogenes in his barrel as well (Diogenes, the first homeless person? 1994). What were your motivations?
I don't know if they were truly political. Diogenes's performance was more socially oriented. When I went out into the street, I had an affinity for cynicism as a philosophical philosophy. The public surrounded me, and I felt guilty because the homeless could no longer sell their newspapers. Performing this piece as an artist allowed me, in a way, to mock what I was doing: it was just art. Compared to the situation of the homeless who were truly starving, I maintained the idea that art was a rich person's whim, far removed from reality. This idea has always been a recurring theme in my career.
For Mao, my motivation actually stemmed from the actions of Martin Luther King in the United States. I wanted to bring his message of peace to Mao because he represented China, one of the countries most politically opposed to the United States, and which at the time enjoyed great popularity in Western intellectual circles. The message was I have a dream by Martin Luther King, which I had copied. I thought it was beautiful to carry a real message on an epic journey for peace. I saw myself as a crusader bearing a message of peace to a warlord. This trip also allowed me to rediscover the taste for adventure, and doing it by bicycle inevitably took me back to my childhood… From that point on, wasn't the message itself an excuse or a somewhat outdated motivation? So many years later, the idea of having embarked on this journey to defend a cause seems uncertain to me. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then, and Mao and Diogenes are now just one piece of a gigantic patchwork in which I've spent my entire life.
So for you the content of the message was secondary? In that case, what difference do you make between a bike trip, which anyone can do, and an artistic performance?
I never wanted to convince anyone through my actions. I wasn't trying to take a stand against the war, or to prove anything. I wanted to give meaning to the journey I was undertaking and leave with a purpose. I then burned the message I hadn't been able to deliver. I went there without particularly thinking about Art, but to embark on another adventure toward that mythical land that was impossible to enter, and which, incidentally, I never managed to enter either!
So you wouldn't have called that an artistic performance? And in retrospect?
Absolutely not back then! Yet today I consider everything I've done as so many happenings. Taking a bicycle, leaving my wife and children behind, that was something! Even if, for me, this journey wasn't a feat, I figured it must have had some of the characteristics of one, because that's how it was perceived by others. During the trip, I was sent spare tires to every embassy. But it was when my bicycle was stolen in Turkey that the real journey began. Near Ankara, I stopped to exchange my panniers and returned to Cappadocia, towards the Kurdish territories, Lake Van, to start wandering again. It was losing my bicycle that made me lose the feeling of being on a trek. Indeed, even a bicycle was a luxury given the poverty that prevailed in the villages I passed through. I, who thought I was setting off on an adventure with few resources, realized that I was still quite fortunate.
When you decide to go out to perform Diogenes, do you think you are making Art? What intellectual construct governs the performance?
It's not easy knowing you're going to be naked in public. I was covered in white, like the sadhus of the Ganges, and then I went out into the street. I kept going in and out of the barrel. Every now and then, an old woman would bring me a drink, and no one wondered why a barrel was there, or if there was a message. They were captivated by the image of a naked man in a barrel. The police thought it was an advertisement because of the journalists and didn't want to arrest me for it. The truth is, we had to call the cops We ourselves asked them to react because a man was naked in the street on Wednesday, a day for children. Finally, three cars arrived and the police commissioner got down on his hands and knees to speak to me:
- Who are you ?
- I am Diogenes.
- Who is Diogenes?
And so on. Finally, they took me out of the barrel, put a blanket over me, and led me away. People were horrified and would have defended Diogenes against the cops This performance made a lasting impression.
Is it possible to see this as an action to raise awareness about the plight of the homeless?
I had seen an article in The World who explained that the public didn't care about the plight of the homeless. I wanted to do something to draw attention to those who were starving. During my performance, I ran into a police inspector who thought I was crazy. I was jailed, but quickly released. The commissioner came to tell me I was free. He said it was a misunderstanding, that it was very funny to dress up as Diogenes, since he initially thought it was the name of a washing machine. I told him he had treated me like dirt and that I was therefore staying in jail. They had to forcibly remove me: I'm the only prisoner ever thrown out by the police! Later, I mocked this in the booklets by showing myself shouting, "Where's my barrel?!"«
The severed finger
Could you elaborate on other performances that you consider to be the most important?
You know the story of Santa Claus who breaks toys (Santa Claus is a bastard, (1967)? One Christmas Eve in Nice, I came to the foot of the department stores dressed as Father Christmas with a sack full of toys. I started smashing toys in public to demonstrate that Christmas had become a commercial holiday that no longer had anything to do with a blond child born on straw twenty centuries ago between a donkey and an ox. People think of nothing but food, and children only think of toys. At the sight of the broken drums, the bent trumpets, and the smashed trains, the children began to cry. After a moment of stunned silence, the parents went absolutely mad because they had never seen anything like it! Grabbing my robe between my teeth, I cowardly fled into the middle of the cars. Later, the magazine Movement spoke about this performance.
I would also like to return to the one concerning Malraux's coffin in the Pantheon (The Malabars of the Pantheon, (1996). I walked in with Carambar candies in my pockets and found myself facing a coffin draped with a French flag and guarded by two Republican Guards. There, I approached, wearing crepe soles, and threw Carambar candies onto the coffin. It was a kind of reminder, a farewell to childhood. Later, I justified myself by invoking Egyptian mythology and the necessity of filling tombs with food to accompany the deceased on their journey to eternity. Then, the guards surrounded me, lifted me up, and carried me like a palanquin toward the exit. As we moved against the flow of people to save time, I took the opportunity to bless the crowd! I think someone even crossed themselves! Once on the sidewalk, I should have gone back inside. I think they were so stunned by the act that they forgot to arrest me.
Genocides and massacres mark your work, whether it be the Holocaust or Hiroshima (The 40 dead, 1962). Are you fighting against a certain form of indifference or forgetfulness?
In my opinion, Hiroshima doesn't have the elaborate and technical aspects of the Holocaust, since it's "just" a bomb dropped from the sky without seeing the people. There's no systematic execution, no crematorium. I think that by attacking the Jews, the Nazis attacked humanity in general. Therefore, every person has the right to respond to Nazi horror. I have opposed all massacres, whether it be the Armenian genocide in 1915, or more recently in Rwanda and Biafra. Who remembers Biafra? Yet it was a real country. So yes, I want to fight against a feeling of indifference and forgetfulness, which is why I quote this line from Freud, which is not merely a provocation: «"To forget, one must remember."». However, not all of my work is a reminder of the massacres, even though I tend to use the Star of David a lot in my pieces. When I paint the Israeli flag, the star is yellow, not blue. Perhaps this star has become, over time, an artistic deviation, a systematic obsession; I haven't really thought about it. It's such a sensitive subject that people don't dare ask me about it either.
Your work demonstrates a constant relationship with violence, whether it manifests itself through repulsion or, on the contrary, through the destruction of objects (breaking toys or the urinal), or even that of your own body…
Love and rejection involve destruction. «"Destroy," she said.» "To destroy is to nullify a pre-existing form," said Marguerite Duras. "By what right does this form exist? Similarly, the power to destroy is to arrogate to oneself a great power. It should have been pointed out to me that I wasn't destroying myself, which would have had meaning by addressing me through negation. This urge to destroy is a flaw, but it's a violent means of expression. Even in painting, the use of spray paint constitutes the destruction of a certain kind of learning about color. Conversely, I reject any form of violence that leaves the artistic realm to seize hold of reality. But in my performances, as in Colombia, I don't hesitate: blood is an excuse; it's a beautiful color.".
Why this radical approach? Are you aware of the climate of insecurity it creates for the public? By forcing them out of their comfort zone, your performances become both more authentic and more unsettling.
I'm not trying to send any messages. I act on instinct; it's quite natural. When I think about cutting off my finger, I think about the act itself, how it will shock the public. But I don't think about the blood that will flow or the comments that will be made. I've had several accidents, notably with a bull. I wanted to pay homage to Van Gogh, who lived in Saint-Rémy, by offering him my ear. But just as I was about to do it, a bull tore off my right ear. Since then, I've decided never to reveal what I intended to do again, because that bull had nothing to do with Van Gogh or with Art.
Do you think your violent actions could constitute a form of "artistic terrorism" and terrorize the public? Is that the purpose of art for you?
There's an element of extremism in my performances, the kind that comes with imposing violence. I believe my cause is just, but isn't that the very nature of someone who acts in extreme ways? Of course, my actions could be considered a form of terrorism. I impose my vision by force, but without it, nothing would ever get done. Blood is an easy tool; we know that cutting ourselves won't produce turnip juice, and that it will be striking. Similarly, my paintings of childbirth have a repulsive quality and impose my vision. But without all that, I might as well paint sunsets. Everyone paints what they want or what they can. I don't think about the public's reaction, even though I know that if I had seen Santa Claus breaking toys when I was five, I wouldn't have recovered. In that case, I could be accused of using children to impress adults. Regarding the radical nature of artistic gestures, I think Bacon's paintings are so powerful that they can also constitute a form of terrorism, although he didn't need blood to impress people, and for that, he deserves even more credit. Conversely, I don't think much of Van Gogh. If he hadn't been considered mad, I don't think he would be so famous. I believe his legend contributes greatly to his renown. It's a fact that he didn't sell his work during his lifetime.
Why choose performance and painting as means of expression?
Painting began to exist for me in Mexico, but it was upon my return to Europe that it imposed itself upon me as an escape. I discovered performance art later in New York. After attending several happenings I decided to make them myself. It was a more vibrant form of expression that I had just discovered. After that, everything fell into place: The Blue Man At Klein's opening (1967) and my encounter with the avant-garde. Then back in Nice, an action for Biafra, a hold-up, but also my trial in striped pajamas…
You say that these performances brought you a lot of trouble, but also allowed you to live life to the fullest by putting yourself in insecure positions.
Not only insecurity but also genuine suffering: I wasn't quietly painting my little pictures. I was in the streets, in museums. I had to accept not knowing how it might end. It's an art that suited me and reminded me of my childhood when I used to go out at night to pull pranks. When Saint-Étienne was being bombed, I was with some friends at a minor seminary. I refused to eat my bread when everyone else was starving. I was punished and grounded. The people in charge then baked the bread in a large vat and forced me to eat it. I preferred to go on a hunger strike. Another time, we went out as a group to catch trout by hand and we planned to cook them that evening in an abandoned mill. They set fire to the mill. Sometimes we would wander on the rooftops, go into the attics… The Jesuits at the seminary represented strength and power, and I already rejected that system. I think I'm being sincere when I talk about the traumas of childhood. In that respect, they shaped what I would do later: painting, but especially performances, which can be seen as so many returns to childhood through risk-taking.
Let's return to Cali's performance (A finger for Ingrid, 2002). How did you come up with the idea of cutting off your finger to show your support for Ingrid Betancourt?
I was invited to Cali as a well-known performance artist. I didn't want to do the easy performance of someone who spends the rest of the year in Europe painting. I wrote to them asking them to prepare a chopping block, an axe, a jar of formaldehyde, a wolf mask… Only the Festival Director knew what I was going to do, and he played along by having the canvases removed from the wall. But my performance is actually a whole show, of which the finger is only the culmination. At the beginning, I'm dressed in black with white lapels, and I wear a double-sided death mask that gives the impression that I'm looking at the audience even when my back is turned. Then I release a dove into the sky, but it comes back and lands in my hands. When people see me walk toward the chopping block, they still don't know what I'm going to do. I have a cross drawn on my forehead, and the Colombian flag painted on my face. A simple red spotlight illuminates the chopping block. When I wet the edge of the axe, the audience started to react. I then lifted the weapon and struck my finger once, which didn't come off the first time! I struck it a second time, being careful not to cut off my other fingers! From experience, I knew the pain wouldn't come for several seconds because the blow numbed it. The fingertip fell to the ground, I put it in my mouth and vomited: it was gushing blood! Then I went to the wall and tagged the word FARC, which I then sprinkled with my blood. Finally, they brought me the jar of formaldehyde, in which my finger rests and which is still in the museum in Cali.
How did the performance end?
I put on a huge bandage, like in cartoons, and went to put on a wolf mask to howl like a banshee for ten minutes. Finally, I collapsed and was taken to the emergency room. The next day, I was interviewed on the evening news, live with Ingrid Betancourt's mother. Having received threats from the FARC, I had to return home. From Cali, I went back to Bogotá, where I gave many interviews at the airport because several television channels were there. The final image was a bit like the hero taking off at the end of a film, seeing the Andes Mountains disappearing over the horizon through the window.
How did you construct your performance? Why didn't cutting off your finger seem sufficient to you?
I had given a lot of thought to the performance before I left. I had planned the clothes and accessories in advance, but the whole thing still retained an element of improvisation: I didn't know what might happen once the finger was severed. You have to accept the remaining uncertainty. People in general aren't comfortable letting actions unfold that they don't control: you go out into the street, but it's the public that allows the performance to take place, following Duchamp's words, "it is the viewer who makes the painting." The police might intervene, I might be forced to stop, or I might have an accident. I don't just focus on the finger, because the whole thing forms a small play with its own script: there's a climax, but the performance doesn't end there; the finger is just one element among many.
One of the most fascinating aspects of your work lies in the distancing from your own body, which reaches its peak with the performance of cutting, eating, and spitting out your finger as if it were something external to yourself; your subsequent description of it is also very detached. So, what is your relationship to your own body? Is it merely a tool within your artistic practice?
By choosing performance, one decides to transform oneself into an instrument of performance, like a paintbrush for painting. I use my body as an artistic object, but also to challenge power through derision and disguise, as when I dressed as a woman before burning my face on the Duchamp family tomb. But if the body is just another tool, one shouldn't imagine that I find pleasure in self-mutilation. Moreover, I detest the body modification of certain artists like Orlan, who has extra limbs grafted onto her. Sometimes, too, the gesture is a tribute, as the finger is for Robert Mitchum in the film Yakuza and is part of a code of honor. I am aware that I am following in the footsteps of a few rather rare examples, through acts that not everyone does every day.
Can we speak of a desacralization, or even an absolute devaluation of the body? In your work, the body is often a derisory object, which can at best be mocked (with multiple references to secretions: Rodin's leaning man, I think therefore I shit…), if not completely disposed of (with the various examples of mutilation); it seems that for you, the body only acquires value insofar as it is used for a «higher» purpose, such as this code of honor, or a political message.
I don't know if I would use the body with complete derision, but it's true that for many people, the body is sacred: it must not be harmed in the name of respect for the human person. I don't subscribe to this notion of the human person: I have control of my own body as I see fit and use it for artistic and experimental purposes. The physical aspect has always been important to me: I practice Japanese swordsmanship and do gymnastics every morning, and yet I could very well die of a stroke tomorrow. What disturbed me most, on the contrary, were the periods when I no longer knew what to paint: I felt as if I had lost my reason for living. I came out of it, as you've seen, since I commissioned twelve new canvases!
Does this distancing from the body have a religious dimension? One might indeed think that the negation of the body has as its corollary the belief in a certain independence of the mind or soul.
Although I grew up in a Catholic family, belief or lack thereof isn't the deciding factor for me. In my work, it's also important to understand that these multiple mutilations ultimately don't affect my daily life; they haven't cost me anything. Just because you meticulously respect your own body doesn't mean you'll live better or longer!
Another aspect of this body relationship seems to lie in your need to systematically put yourself in danger: in the case of Malraux (Attack against André Malraux, 1969), or in that of the Nice bank robbery (Société Générale bank robbery, (1975), police officers could have intervened and shot you…
Taking risks, especially physical risks, is a true philosophy of life for me. When I left for China at 47, leaving my wife and children behind, it was a considerable risk: but when you decide to leave, you have to leave. However, I abandoned many performance ideas that would have been too dangerous or would have left me with too many lasting effects. The ones I did achieve never caused me any irreparable problems, whether health-related or legal. Nevertheless, I think the risks I took may have seemed too extreme in France, which, in my opinion, explains why the true value of what I accomplished isn't recognized here.
The broken urinal
You have created two performances around Marcel Duchamp's urinal (The Duchamp-Pinoncelli urinal, 1917-1993): what is your relationship to this artist, and more specifically to this work?
The urinal was a bit like my great white whale: I chased it all my life, in every museum in the world, before finally being able to get close to it. Why this work in particular? We tend to forget the provocative charge contained in the very object of the urinal: Duchamp himself declared that he had chosen the most repulsive object in a gesture of defiance, to show everyone that his ready-made It was, in fact, non-art. He would probably be shocked to see the price of his work today. To this obsessive provocation was added a certain sexual dimension: after finally managing to carry out my act at the Nîmes museum, I saw the urinal lying on the floor like a body after sex! To prepare, I spent weeks studying the guards' movements: I had calculated that by spending an entire day there, I would inevitably find a gap of at least thirty seconds to act. After waiting several days, I finally found the right moment, without too many people around: I hit the urinal with a hammer before urinating in it. I had even tested different mineral waters to determine which one made me want to urinate the fastest! I had asked AFP to come, but once there they didn't want to stay. They were afraid of being considered accomplices, because I hadn't warned them that I intended to break it. Many people have asked me why I didn't just urinate: but in that case, a simple wipe with a mop would have been enough to claim that nothing had happened! Finally, I left, getting rid of the hammer, and the police arrived very quickly.
You had the opportunity to warn Marcel Duchamp of what you intended to do…
In New York, a few days after the Blue Man performance, I told him that I would definitely do something with the urinal, with the aim of returning it to its original function. He encouraged me to do so, with a big smile: I had Duchamp's blessing! And yet, a few years later, when the same urinal was exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the presentation of the work made no mention of my contribution – so I wrote to the curator of the exhibition to explain that I would have to repeat my action, since they had patched up my object.
Do you consider yourself now an equal co-author with Marcel Duchamp? If so, would that mean that destruction is for you a paradoxical form of creation?
I explained that there was indeed a kind of parity, that it was a work that now had two authors. On one side, there was Duchamp's original urinal, and on the other, my personal contribution through its destruction. This idea has faded somewhat from my mind, even though I still have a urinal bearing both our signatures! I consider that I have advanced the work, since the urinal had been awaiting my intervention since its creation: the act of urinating was inherent in the original work. There was indeed a contribution, a new work: among all the urinals designed by Duchamp, only one bears my mark! This is what I explained during the trial: even if we consider that there was a criminal act, we must recognize that I made this work a new original, since it bears in its memory the trace of my passage, beyond the repairs that may have been made afterwards.
What you are criticizing in the reasoning of the State and the insurance company is, in fact, that they adopted the logic of the market, which consists of valuing only Duchamp's name at the expense of yours?
Absolutely. Everyone knows Duchamp; however, Duchamp And Pinoncelli, nobody knows him. Yet, my gesture has been cited everywhere and some even present my urinal when they mean to talk about the other one! From this point of view, it seems to me that I am much less recognized in France than in the United States.
Your reasoning could be applied to many other works, not just ready-mades: a museum's fear would be that any attack on a classic work would be legitimized in this way. How would you react to someone attacking one of your works?
I would never have touched another work: the urinal is unique because it corresponded to an idea of provocation, which isn't even found in Duchamp's other works. It's an object that attracted precisely what it was created to do. For other works, it would be pure vandalism. By suggesting "using a Rembrandt as an ironing board," he went further than I did on this point, at least in words. Regarding the damage to my works, that's the argument put forward by some curators to justify their inadvertent defacement; I preferred not to respond to them. As far as I'm concerned, what's certain is that I will never exhibit my own urinal, which is an object of provocation, without sufficient security measures! The museum is at fault in this respect: I should never have been allowed to do that!
Some commentators have suggested that you made this gesture solely to attract publicity: this has led to accusations of parasitism…
One only needs to look at my artistic past to see that this isn't the case. But it's true that this affair is the one that brought me the most publicity: people around me told me that it was because I had handled the money, a work valued at three million euros, that the State intervened, completely unrelated to any artistic considerations. In fact, I had a urinal, bought at La Samaritaine for about a hundred euros, delivered to the Centre Pompidou by a bailiff as compensation: it was exactly the same as the one Duchamp had bought there, and completely in keeping with the spirit of the work!
So you believe that any urinal is as valuable as the artist's? To put it another way: you reject the idea that Duchamp's urinal is more valuable than others, simply because it is "Duchamp's"?
It has more value insofar as it was Duchamp who had the idea of the ready-made No one would have thought of designating such an ordinary object as a work of art before Duchamp. After him, it became completely commonplace to designate any object and thereby claim it as a work of art: but if you're only the second person to do it, the added creative value is nil. It's not like painting: the ready-made It doesn't employ any technique; the idea is paramount and gives the work its value. That's what makes conceptual art revolutionary. Look at Fontana: anyone can tear his canvas, but no one had thought of it before him. That's also what makes the difference for performances: all my performances have been conceptual.
In your own words, the work becomes, through performance, "inseparable from life": your body being the sole source of action, the work seems to become elusive. It is also your own character that gives personality to the characters you create.
Indeed. But if we take this logic to its logical conclusion, we risk falling into ego-driven considerations, where the entire performance hinges solely on my own person; that seems ridiculous in relation to the world. Regarding the characters, I like to think that I've bestowed my powers upon them: they represented me, and in a way, they've detached themselves from their creator, like a ventriloquist with their puppet. The avatars I use for my self-interviews, like Mordecai, also allow me to express my thoughts sharply without them being distorted.
In the text Dying in Cali (2003) You raise the possibility of dying on stage. What are the limits of the body as an instrument?
It was pure provocation. It would be beautiful to stage a happening as a final performance, but it wouldn't be planned, even though I think that in the event of a serious illness, it's just as well to die in a happening. I've always made a point of not crossing certain lines. It seems rather pointless to want to die for Art. But one could also argue that so many people die for nothing that it would be worth dying for something. But then we're getting into pure rhetoric…
What legacy do you think you will have?
Nothing is set in stone yet. For now, things aren't great; many people dislike me and want to ignore my work, as was the case with the urinal. The recent exhibition at the MAMAC in Nice might change things, but that's not the goal. Now that some of my pieces are selling, they're starting to attract more attention, including from my family.
You spoke of the urinal as your "great white whale"; what is your Moby Dick at the moment? In retrospect, what has been the driving force of your journey, its guiding thread?
I don't have any big projects anymore; I'm actually slowing myself down. I quite believe in paintings about childbirth, but then, physically, you have to be able to keep going. I think circumstances have guided my path, providing motivation for each new project as well. What still motivates me is the idea of performance. Auschwitz. People find it quite fantastic to disappear during the act and never return. To vanish as if passing through the looking glass. I think the idea is superb. The canvases used for the performance date back to 2003; they're almost 15 years old, but the idea hasn't aged and people love it.
You often talk about the moment of madness one should have and the return to childhood that justifies it. Your career includes several references to Monte Cristo, Jules Verne, and the Pieds Nickelés comics…
Childhood is very important. When we lose it, we might as well just die; we grow old regardless of age. The capacity for wonder is the foundation of youth.
What was your impression of being put on trial? How was your testimony received? How did you testify?
There were a lot of trials. For the first one in Nîmes, I was held in police custody for forty-eight hours. I was going through an immediate hearing and I acted like an idiot the whole time. With all the lawyers there, I had a terrible audience. The public prosecutor's name was Ponce, so I made the Pontius Pilate joke. I also pretended I didn't know what a prosecutor was, asking the judge what this character in black was who was picking a fight with me when I hadn't done anything to him. People laughed a lot and were expecting a show. The prosecutor accused me of being a disgrace to Art. I replied «"Whose shame are you?"» Having concluded that I was one of the last remaining vestiges of freedom, I applauded myself for a long time. I deliberately put myself in the shoes of a clown, because they are so prevalent in circuses, and by way of substitution, I was transforming the courtroom into a circus. I wasn't severely punished that first time.
What is a question that you were not asked that you wish you had been asked?
That's a tricky question! You've asked me a lot of them. So maybe I'll say: Are you happy with yourself? Have you succeeded in life?
I could have done better but it didn't go badly, I had a fun life, the children are doing well and my health is good.
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