Latest / Gin And Talk / Bernar Venet über Kunst, Skulpturen und ein Lebenswerk

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Bernar Venet über Kunst, Skulpturen und ein Lebenswerk · Gin And Talk

• 0:00
  Speaker 0: This is typical of my attitude.
• 0:02
  Speaker 0: There's so much to create, why should we first copy the artist over past?
• 0:10
  Speaker 0: Second find one day an idea and a style and just exploit it.
• 0:15
  Speaker 0: I think that people who do that they are not artists.
• 0:17
  Speaker 0: They're doing their job you know to twenty thousand and they sell them, everybody is happy because everyone recognizes the artist.
• 0:27
  Speaker 0: I think that in this case you are not an artist or just having a job You know?
• 0:31
  Speaker 0: It surprises people but i do not understand the content of my mathematical diagram.
• 0:37
  Speaker 0: They laugh at it!
• 0:38
  Speaker 0: They say he doesn't even understand what he puts on the canvas.
• 0:42
  Speaker 0: Ridiculous Mr Cézanne who was painting trees flowers and plants.
• 0:48
  Speaker 0: Was there specialist in botanique ?
• 0:50
  Speaker 0: No Mr.
• 0:51
  Speaker 0: Malevich who painted squares, circles and triangles in his painting – did he study geometry?
• 0:57
  Speaker 0: No!
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: His sculptures are astonishing all over the world, but he is far more than just a successful sculptor.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: He's also a painter, filmmaker and photographer, staged music and even turned a car into an actual work of art for Bugatti.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: His artwork is impressive!
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: And the most important milestones exist right now in a large exhibition at the former Berlin Airport Temple Court.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I wanted to know from him how it came about what inspired him... And even in his high age he still behaves so much that he hardly comes to rest.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: This unusual episode is not only because of their guest and the recording location, namely one of Vinnie's workshops but also because she was first recorded in English.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But I hope this isn't a problem for most of you!
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Before we start please... If you like Gin and Talk, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to hear podcasts.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: So don't miss any of the following episodes!
• 2:26
  Speaker 0: Now have fun listening to it.
• 2:30
  Speaker 0: It's nice that all of you are here again.
• 2:40
  Speaker 0: Bernat, thank you so much
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: for inviting us and taking the time to do this conversation in those quite exciting times with your exhibition going on at Berlin.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Gin & Talk!
• 3:12
  Speaker 0: Pleasure.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Let's start with talking about a place where we are right now in Lemieux, you bought this place thirty years ago and then You didn't do anything with it really?
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And at some point of time you decided to use It for your own foundation.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: So what is the story behind this place?
• 3:33
  Speaker 0: Oh look, originally all I needed was a place to put my sculpture.
• 3:39
  Speaker 0: i just wanted to have a piece of land where i just put my sculptures...I wasn't even looking for a house or anything like this but someone told me that the best place in the Côte d'Azur or Provence was Le Muit .
• 3:53
  Speaker 0: I didn't know it was Le Muit ,but he explained to me that Le Mui is very close to an exit from the highway.
• 3:59
  Speaker 0: It was forty five minutes away from the airport of Nice, forty-five minutes away form the airport in Toulon and forty-fifteen minutes way from Saint-Tropez.
• 4:07
  Speaker 0: You know?
• 4:09
  Speaker 0: it's not to be neglected but the main thing also that is really by highway.
• 4:15
  Speaker 0: And so what I did is, I asked one of my brothers to come here and spend a month looking for all the properties around.
• 4:23
  Speaker 0: you know find a piece of land.
• 4:24
  Speaker 0: Nothing much nothing ambitious but he saw that place which where we have now The foundation let's say...and when i discovered it was such a dream.
• 4:37
  Speaker 0: You know the factory with more than a thousand square meters the moulin the mill Place were could live during winter and the land was very nice, so I just got involved.
• 4:49
  Speaker 0: And originally I was putting my sculpture in spending summer vacation.
• 4:54
  Speaker 0: that's all but slowly because i am a maniac you know?
• 4:59
  Speaker 0: I always like to improve of environment around me.
• 5:02
  Speaker 0: Slowly, slowly started to plant trees work on grass make it much nicer until the day that, the Germans again.
• 5:13
  Speaker 0: The National Gallery of Berlin and friends at the National Gallery decided to come visit my Le Muit you know place here because they knew I had a collection in the new year on my work around so bad.
• 5:26
  Speaker 0: there is starting to think oh it's interesting museum are coming too.
• 5:30
  Speaker 0: visit me.
• 5:31
  Speaker 0: no its nice.
• 5:32
  Speaker 0: okay then i keep on improving.
• 5:34
  Speaker 0: one day started thinking about Well, what about making a foundation?
• 5:38
  Speaker 0: Because this... What you see that property in Le Muit is really what I have done with my life.
• 5:46
  Speaker 0: You know it's really fabulous site.
• 5:49
  Speaker 0: first and its' really....I mean..you visit Le Mui & you know everything about me!
• 5:54
  Speaker 0: My taste ,what i like, who are my friends, what they collect...You can't have very good idea And just thought to be ridiculous.
• 6:03
  Speaker 0: but after me if one day die after me, this gets sold by my kids because they have to pay taxes.
• 6:11
  Speaker 0: So I talked with them and said you know what.
• 6:13
  Speaker 0: how about making a foundation?
• 6:15
  Speaker 0: And trying to keep it as is but then will not inherit from me all the Franks still has the mother.
• 6:23
  Speaker 0: well Dan Flavin, the Judd everything we'll stay here.
• 6:26
  Speaker 0: You won't take them in your house or sell them too.
• 6:30
  Speaker 0: buy some Ferraris.
• 6:32
  Speaker 0: They say no problem, this is ideal.
• 6:35
  Speaker 0: This what you did and have to keep it like that.
• 6:37
  Speaker 0: I'm very thankful for them but they understood in fact between us the fact everything remains as we will be able enjoy.
• 6:47
  Speaker 0: so it ends up being a good solution.
• 6:50
  Speaker 0: at end decided make foundation.
• 6:54
  Speaker 0: after i die again its not.
• 6:56
  Speaker 0: tomorrow morning I made this arrangement with Frank Stella where he did the chapel, you know we have those six big reliefs and things were starting to shape up.
• 7:10
  Speaker 0: You don't look like better than better.
• 7:14
  Speaker 0: then I thought okay let's make a foundation that's open officially so.
• 7:17
  Speaker 0: now it's about six seven years ago but we opened the foundation.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So if we looked at your work there are many different things you do painting sculptures of course But also movies music.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: they're countless different formats in your oeuvre.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: What is first, the concept of what you want to express or the format?
• 7:37
  Speaker 0: It's a long story!
• 7:38
  Speaker 0: First there is taste... You know this how it starts.
• 7:42
  Speaker 0: an artist has a taste.
• 7:43
  Speaker 0: he has a tendency to look at some art that he prefers rather than be over.
• 7:48
  Speaker 0: and when I was nineteen years old The exhibition in Temple Hof Is really about An entire retrospective.
• 7:54
  Speaker 0: That start at nineteen.
• 7:57
  Speaker 0: And you see I was for sober things, you know?
• 8:01
  Speaker 0: The work is already black and white.
• 8:04
  Speaker 0: You never saw me doing figurative art except when i was eleven twelve thirteen.
• 8:08
  Speaker 0: but after that... When my brain allowed to think a little bit more sophisticatedly.. ..I started getting into abstraction and into art which was relatively sober serious with the content.
• 8:22
  Speaker 0: so at nineteen I was making black tar paintings paintings that were completely covered with tar.
• 8:30
  Speaker 0: And so this is the beginning, you know?
• 8:32
  Speaker 0: You go in that direction and then develop something... ...and today although my work looks at many different visual propositions it's really a same concept.
• 8:45
  Speaker 0: The concept of my work is auto-referentials.
• 8:48
  Speaker 0: Work always talks about itself.
• 8:51
  Speaker 0: Work is very sober.
• 8:55
  Speaker 0: There are many parameters, you know.
• 8:57
  Speaker 0: When I did at the age of twenty-two that sculpture which is today a little bit known... A book came out about that sculpture.
• 9:06
  Speaker 0: Two hundred pages' books about The Charcoal Pile That You Can See in Temple Hof.
• 9:12
  Speaker 0: covers everything I've been doing after.
• 9:16
  Speaker 0: It's really the beginning of it, you know where... You have a sculpture with parameters that define what is a sculpture are completely different from they were in the past.
• 9:26
  Speaker 0: we don't talk.
• 9:27
  Speaker 0: this is not a sculpture.
• 9:28
  Speaker 0: if a sculpture was supposed to be before This has nothing to do!
• 9:32
  Speaker 0: You have gravity which creates the sculptures and there is no specific shape.
• 9:39
  Speaker 0: That was a concept that never existed before.
• 9:43
  Speaker 0: A sculpture made with charcoal, which is not wood stone marble or metal.
• 9:49
  Speaker 0: you know different material but it's never used.
• 9:52
  Speaker 0: then Then the fact that you can go to a dealer, charcoal dealer borrow some charcoal put it in museum and then when show is finished bring back there.
• 10:04
  Speaker 0: That goes against the concept of fetishism where an artwork made by artist look at it want touch thinking oh my god did I never do this completely outside of my preoccupations.
• 10:19
  Speaker 0: So there are many, many things which are changing what the sculpture is and this is typical of my attitude you know?
• 10:29
  Speaker 0: There's so much to create!
• 10:33
  Speaker 0: First of all, copy the artist over past.
• 10:36
  Speaker 0: Second find one day an idea and a style and just exploit it.
• 10:41
  Speaker 0: I think that people who do that they are not artists They're just doing their job You know?
• 10:45
  Speaker 0: We found our way to make painting And we made two twenty thousand and sell them.
• 10:50
  Speaker 0: Everybody is happy because everybody recognizes the artist.
• 10:53
  Speaker 0: In this case you aren't an artist but my attitude isn't like that Today As you see me at my age working and trying to still come up with new concepts, we've no.
• 11:09
  Speaker 0: Propositions.
• 11:10
  Speaker 0: you have to know that.
• 11:11
  Speaker 0: it's my only goal I hope but one day i'm serious when they are will do something interesting.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: so there is want topic that comes again and again especially in your paintings but its also kind of important for your sculptures as well.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: it some mathematics and science.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: so why is this topic so important too?
• 11:29
  Speaker 0: I have no interest in science and mathematics.
• 11:31
  Speaker 0: I don't know anything about mathematics at school, that was the worst thing.
• 11:34
  Speaker 0: my class.
• 11:35
  Speaker 0: And uh...I think i had a note of two out of twenty when I passed my exams.
• 11:41
  Speaker 0: No!
• 11:41
  Speaker 0: You see?
• 11:42
  Speaker 0: I've been using Mathematics just Intuitively.
• 11:45
  Speaker 0: I came to this point because as I told you before.. I'm doing kind of work which is self-referential.
• 11:53
  Speaker 0: By doing the charcoal, the charcoal was talking about itself.
• 11:56
  Speaker 0: then I made some cardboard pieces that are exhibited also at Temple Hof.
• 12:01
  Speaker 0: and those cardboard pieces they're supposed to be painted by a person who owns it.
• 12:07
  Speaker 0: he's supposed to change their color.
• 12:09
  Speaker 0: so i'm putting a distance like this between the work and myself.
• 12:13
  Speaker 0: And I was calling that industrial painting.
• 12:16
  Speaker 0: Then one day I discovered the work of a minimal artist in New York.
• 12:20
  Speaker 0: I was twenty-four and i saw much more advanced they wear than me, uh...I got a slap on my face and decided to go beyond it really you know?
• 12:30
  Speaker 0: And made some tubes which are also exhibited at Temple Of.
• 12:33
  Speaker 0: Tubes were an industrial product.
• 12:35
  Speaker 0: so you see industrial paintings because it was painted like you paint your car Industrial products.
• 12:41
  Speaker 0: that's the tube.
• 12:42
  Speaker 0: It is what you find in industry as a sculpture.
• 12:48
  Speaker 0: And then one day, because I was supposed to...I'm explaining why.
• 12:53
  Speaker 0: i came to Mathematica here.
• 12:55
  Speaker 0: One day I was invited for an exhibition and didn't have the money make my tubes big enough be noticed in museum exhibitions but decided to make plan of tube or drawing big drawing showing, you know the side view of a dimension seen from above.
• 13:15
  Speaker 0: From an industrial drawings.
• 13:17
  Speaker 0: so I did this and exhibited it in The Museum thinking that if A museum wanted to realize the tube they can't realize it.
• 13:24
  Speaker 0: i will offer It To them.
• 13:25
  Speaker 0: but the main point is That when I saw that plan Of the Tube was perhaps more interesting than the production.
• 13:41
  Speaker 0: I thought that giving information about an object, it's much more interesting then making objects.
• 13:48
  Speaker 0: Everybody is making a product you can touch and look at for example.
• 13:55
  Speaker 0: They were also making drawings but they exhibited the end-product which was the sculpture.
• 14:03
  Speaker 0: So i started to copy some some drawings from books, one of my brothers who is an industrial designer.
• 14:11
  Speaker 0: And I started to copy that thinking it was a new world.
• 14:15
  Speaker 0: by doing that you are not doing figurative art and you're not doing abstraction.
• 14:19
  Speaker 0: You were somewhere else.
• 14:22
  Speaker 0: My only goal again Is go where nobody went.
• 14:25
  Speaker 0: So i'm making paintings like this but very quickly.
• 14:28
  Speaker 0: in one week... ...i made something with chemistry because again if make the portrait someone it's about physics, you know?
• 14:38
  Speaker 0: It is about biology.
• 14:42
  Speaker 0: But if I make... Why not paint the molecule of phenol or something which belongs to a body eventually?
• 14:48
  Speaker 0: You know why not!
• 14:50
  Speaker 0: So with this idea that why not each time i was going beyond.
• 14:54
  Speaker 0: Then one day after making all those about five, six seven eight ten paintings with industrial drawings and chemistry.
• 15:03
  Speaker 0: And stuff like that I thought there is one thing but would be more interesting in more radical it's to make a mathematical diagram.
• 15:13
  Speaker 0: so i went to the shop library where they sell books for students then bought book on mathematics.
• 15:20
  Speaker 0: look at what my god why not paint?
• 15:23
  Speaker 0: You know, of course.
• 15:24
  Speaker 0: It doesn't look like art but that's why it is interesting.
• 15:29
  Speaker 0: and I made my first painting because i wanted to make a big one for the canvas also And I did one, and looked at it.
• 15:44
  Speaker 0: You know you make two or three...you are alone in the world to think like that!
• 15:50
  Speaker 0: It's a very strange situation if you make abstract art as some people already have their own style.
• 15:57
  Speaker 0: No, but you're only person who thinks this is perhaps a possibility because you would have to convince everybody language, you don't have a theory.
• 16:11
  Speaker 0: You've nothing to justify that this can be a work of art but it's an adventure.
• 16:18
  Speaker 0: so I make them and remember going into Paris go in the galleries.
• 16:22
  Speaker 0: gallery Iléa Nasson-Labanne was most advanced gallery in Paris.
• 16:26
  Speaker 0: i went also to Jean L'Arcadre who is very far out as well as a galerist and want show them photos on my paintings.
• 16:34
  Speaker 0: they look like photos from a book of mathematics Bernard, I'm sorry.
• 16:40
  Speaker 0: But why do you show us that?
• 16:41
  Speaker 0: They say these are my
• 16:42
  Speaker 0: paintings.".
• 16:43
  Speaker 0: He said no this is mathematics.
• 16:45
  Speaker 0: see yes but they make them as paintings also.
• 16:49
  Speaker 0: yeah know...they were laughing at me the same way about gallery g which was also the most advanced gallery in nineteen.
• 16:55
  Speaker 0: sixty-three laughed at me when i proposed with charcoal pie.
• 16:59
  Speaker 0: You know we just could not understand.
• 17:01
  Speaker 0: Why did he want to put that in my gallery ?
• 17:02
  Speaker 0: Are you kidding?
• 17:04
  Speaker 0: so anyway But I kept on working in that direction.
• 17:07
  Speaker 0: Fortunately, a movement called Conceptual Art developed like two or three years after and then it just happened to be part of all that my work started being shown everywhere.
• 17:19
  Speaker 0: but you see... It surprises people because they do not understand the content of my mathematical diagram You know?
• 17:26
  Speaker 0: They laugh at me saying he doesn't even understand what he puts on the canvas.
• 17:31
  Speaker 0: Ridiculous!
• 17:32
  Speaker 0: Mr Cézanne who was painting trees and flowers, and plants.
• 17:36
  Speaker 0: Was he a specialist in botanique?
• 17:39
  Speaker 0: No!
• 17:39
  Speaker 0: Mr Malevich, who painted squares circles and triangles in his paintings... Did you study geometry?
• 17:46
  Speaker 0: no And so I could give you twenty examples like that.
• 17:49
  Speaker 0: You know, Courbet, Who painted the huge stones In landscapes?
• 17:53
  Speaker 0: He was involved with mineralogy.
• 17:56
  Speaker 0: People were painting landscapes With waterfalls and skies.
• 18:00
  Speaker 0: you know, they were involved.
• 18:04
  Speaker 0: I mean each time the history of art is made off changes in subject matter and what i've been trying to do is to introduce that.
• 18:15
  Speaker 0: so but you see now the relationship between uh The charcoal pile and all my work, even my sculptures today.
• 18:22
  Speaker 0: And the mathematical diagram is existing!
• 18:25
  Speaker 0: The charcoal pile was talking about itself it as a self-referential.
• 18:29
  Speaker 0: It wasn't called with stupid title...it's not even called untitled ...It was called charcoal pile.
• 18:36
  Speaker 0: So this what you saw.
• 18:38
  Speaker 0: And in the mathematical diagrams we have to know that its most monosemic I mean, it's the image that talks about itself more than anything.
• 18:51
  Speaker 0: At the same time, It is interesting to think.
• 18:54
  Speaker 0: if you think in terms of abstraction... The concept of abstraction and everything which has been created since the beginning or since nineteen ten let us say with Kandinsky-Maliewicz all the others and Deloni so on up today with Jackson Pollock and Eva Klein everybody.
• 19:15
  Speaker 0: If you think about abstraction and look then at a painting of mine which shows the mathematical diagram, well... The fact is that in front of your highest level of abstraction that a painting can present.
• 19:29
  Speaker 0: You see how we have so much ideas what art is?
• 19:35
  Speaker 0: And the artist to extend those concepts.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So was there this one moment like a turning point in your life where you realize that becoming an artist is something.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: You can do for the rest of your life and you also realized it is a concept, work.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: dad would like finance the rest off your life or at least next couple of years?
• 19:59
  Speaker 0: A couple of year its not enough.
• 20:02
  Speaker 0: my ambitions are too big.
• 20:05
  Speaker 0: no no two moments.
• 20:07
  Speaker 0: The day that I thought it could be an artist, for example you want to know.
• 20:16
  Speaker 0: In school I was not the best, just a kid like everybody.
• 20:19
  Speaker 0: And i didn't care about academic studies.
• 20:21
  Speaker 0: you know that was boring me completely because they had lot more pleasure going back to my house and making paintings.
• 20:28
  Speaker 0: uh...I noticed one day but in my school it's always the best for drawing and watercolors etc.
• 20:35
  Speaker 0: It is only way of being considered.
• 20:40
  Speaker 0: Everybody looking at my drawings with admiration And I felt like, hey you know...I have something because otherwise i had nothing meaning.
• 20:50
  Speaker 0: that was a kid very sick.
• 20:52
  Speaker 0: I had asthma and problem with my lungs destroyed, you know completely.
• 20:57
  Speaker 0: Then I was extremely poor and terribly dressed so the girls were not looking at me.
• 21:02
  Speaker 0: they would look again my friends but don't tell them about me.
• 21:05
  Speaker 0: then i wasn't doing sport...I mean nothing!
• 21:07
  Speaker 0: I was totally outside of a real world.
• 21:09
  Speaker 0: all those kids in my age school or village.
• 21:12
  Speaker 0: So there is no way to be different when we appreciate except with painting.
• 21:18
  Speaker 0: And one day The big thing happened because You have to know that In my village, which is not even on the map of France.
• 21:25
  Speaker 0: There's no mayor's office to tell you it really lost.
• 21:28
  Speaker 0: The word art was never pronounced there Never.
• 21:31
  Speaker 0: People were just going to work in a factory To make a living and that was it.
• 21:37
  Speaker 0: And my mother My father My three brothers My cousin My friends Everybody Was either working there Had worked there Or will go Worked there.
• 21:47
  Speaker 0: It was like That.
• 21:48
  Speaker 0: So I was supposed also Going to work there.
• 21:51
  Speaker 0: But something happened one day.
• 21:52
  Speaker 0: I was twelve and my mother, who is a fantastic woman helping me a lot you know encouraging me to do my paintings.
• 22:00
  Speaker 0: she took me to the big village of a big city, not very big but ten thousand people where we could buy some oil paint because... To be an artist you have to paint with oil.
• 22:13
  Speaker 0: So this is what an artist from the area told me one day.
• 22:17
  Speaker 0: so We went there and we bought some paint red yellow green blue white black.
• 22:23
  Speaker 0: And when my mother was paying I go back outside.
• 22:26
  Speaker 0: Because in the window i saw book A book big like this, a small book.
• 22:31
  Speaker 0: And on these books there is little rectangle here with the reproduction of painting.
• 22:36
  Speaker 0: This painting shows woman washing her feet you know in water or something.
• 22:41
  Speaker 0: But at top that image I don't understand.
• 22:45
  Speaker 0: It's written Re Noir.
• 22:48
  Speaker 0: So I cannot understand.
• 22:49
  Speaker 0: I understand sky, clouds the table but Renoir means nothing to me.
• 22:54
  Speaker 0: so...I go and see a man inside.
• 22:56
  Speaker 0: they say excuse me what it's painting?
• 22:59
  Speaker 0: And one means Renoir.
• 23:01
  Speaker 0: This is Renoir, but Renoire has very big artistes.
• 23:04
  Speaker 0: Renoir was an impressionist doesn't mean anything to me.
• 23:08
  Speaker 0: He's famous all over the world, he is in all of museums.
• 23:11
  Speaker 0: his paintings have a very big value.
• 23:15
  Speaker 0: you know.
• 23:15
  Speaker 0: look and it takes a big book like this about Renoir.
• 23:20
  Speaker 0: there are many books about Renoirs.
• 23:21
  Speaker 0: oh my god wait a second.
• 23:24
  Speaker 0: now its possible.
• 23:25
  Speaker 0: be an artist we can make living with.
• 23:28
  Speaker 0: that I never knew.
• 23:30
  Speaker 0: You Can Be Famous.
• 23:32
  Speaker 0: You can have books on you, exhibition solar around the world.
• 23:36
  Speaker 0: sell your work for a lot of money.
• 23:38
  Speaker 0: Hey hey forget it about going to work at the factory right?
• 23:42
  Speaker 0: That day I put all the energy in
• 23:45
  Speaker 0: it.".
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: We already talked earlier that the age of twenty-four years went into New York and moved to U.S.. How did time change?
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: what was the impact of new york as a person?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: ?
• 23:58
  Speaker 0: Changed a lot.
• 24:00
  Speaker 0: I knew that New York was the place, okay?
• 24:01
  Speaker 0: Because iI was very friendly with Armand who was you know living in Nice.
• 24:07
  Speaker 0: also Marcial Reis Also was living in nice.
• 24:10
  Speaker 0: they were The new realist of most famous artists In those days and uh...i Was seeing them all the time.
• 24:15
  Speaker 0: And we're coming With magazines from New york.
• 24:18
  Speaker 0: You Know what's going on About Andy Warhol Rauschenberg Pop art You know and so On.
• 24:25
  Speaker 0: and um..i was dreaming because Nice was the place where there were a few artists, interesting artist more than any other city except Paris of course.
• 24:34
  Speaker 0: But we were like among each other having coffee every day dreaming to be an artist one day.
• 24:40
  Speaker 0: but you know too slow for me okay?
• 24:44
  Speaker 0: So when I said to Armand look...I became very friendly with him always with him almost all the time and they say look I dreamt go to New York i have to find my way.
• 24:54
  Speaker 0: And One Day he offered me peace Saying to me you can sell it if you want to go to New York.
• 25:00
  Speaker 0: So I went there and the difference was that instead of being with my friends from Nice, you know artists but Except for Ben nobody knows who they are anymore I found myself a day after arrived at the exhibition off Andy Warhol's at Leo Castelli With.
• 25:20
  Speaker 0: you know the pillows the clouds You know?
• 25:23
  Speaker 0: And I was very nice looked and I see Rauschenberg, Jasper Jones, Robert Maurice, Donald Judd and you are all... And I'm thinking okay.
• 25:32
  Speaker 0: I am twenty-four but i'm saying it's with those guys that they have to deal with now You know?
• 25:37
  Speaker 0: To compete.
• 25:40
  Speaker 0: That gives a lot of energy because your not fighting at this level Your fighting on the other level and give yourself the means The energy required for doing so.
• 25:51
  Speaker 0: Now then you will be lucky.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: But at some point in time, you took a break from creating art.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: What happened that the time?
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: why did you stop?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Well
• 26:02
  Speaker 0: I tell you what i was working with mathematics and doing very rational kind of art so far.
• 26:11
  Speaker 0: there is a point where... ...I wasn't deciding on which artwork to present.
• 26:18
  Speaker 0: for example if we had show in Chicago it happens like this Okay, the museum invites me for a show.
• 26:26
  Speaker 0: I'm supposed to send one artwork not a painting and what will i do?
• 26:30
  Speaker 0: I call Jacques Ullman who is a scientist at Columbia University And I say to him Jack can you choose a subject that is very important Very determinant it's in all its own discipline suppose in mathematics or In nuclear physics and a book which is very and I don't even want to know what it is, the title or whatever.
• 26:57
  Speaker 0: And I call them as they say okay you take their title page in this content page of his book then make a blow up depending on your space available like one meter, one meter fifty depends... You see that detachment with my work was introducing an attitude way-to-do art which was contrary of chairman expressionist of today or even before where, you know everything is from the stomach.
• 27:27
  Speaker 0: It's an expression of individual.
• 27:29
  Speaker 0: it's Van Gogh who makes his portrait.
• 27:32
  Speaker 0: every day You can talk about a person when they see their painting with me.
• 27:37
  Speaker 0: no idea why I don't know anything and i wanted to go in that direction just so he could take me.
• 27:44
  Speaker 0: So When do we go this far?
• 27:47
  Speaker 0: in putting such a distance between the artwork and yourself, it was logical that I stopped.
• 27:53
  Speaker 0: In fact i had planned to stop four years before already...I had made a program ...and said I'm going do this ,this &that.... And then we'll stop doing art.
• 28:01
  Speaker 0: so anyway.. I stopped because I didn't want too make variation to satisfy myself To satisfy collectors ..to satisfy museum artists.
• 28:13
  Speaker 0: not made for that.
• 28:14
  Speaker 0: An artist is just supposed give new definition about Art.
• 28:17
  Speaker 0: He's not supposed to decorate walls or say, look this is very nice.
• 28:22
  Speaker 0: Even if it's determinant you know?
• 28:24
  Speaker 0: It's a definition that we are suppose give.
• 28:26
  Speaker 0: so I stop.
• 28:28
  Speaker 0: and when i stopped for ever he said If start again don't take me seriously.
• 28:34
  Speaker 0: its impossible because my personality ,my interest My culture brought me do this and this is purely me.
• 28:41
  Speaker 0: Purely Me!
• 28:42
  Speaker 0: I cannot do anything else.
• 28:45
  Speaker 0: So, so don't take me seriously if I start again.
• 28:48
  Speaker 0: But always convince that it's possible to go beyond ideas at least you know?
• 28:54
  Speaker 0: I started to write about what i had done because nobody understood What they have done.
• 29:00
  Speaker 0: You know this guy was making mathematical stuff Exhibiting books without knowing what it is.
• 29:05
  Speaker 0: It's okay...so I started To write About That using semiology linguistic, you know different disciplines to put with words what they had done and by doing that I started to criticize my own work.
• 29:24
  Speaker 0: I started too see the limits of what they have done And it's out to think about.
• 29:29
  Speaker 0: well It was perhaps possible to go beyond that.
• 29:33
  Speaker 0: This is how after six years i start again.
• 29:37
  Speaker 0: Now when were saying If I start again, don't take me seriously.
• 29:43
  Speaker 0: I was very
• 29:43
  Speaker 0: sincere.".
• 29:44
  Speaker 0: The thing is that six years after saying that i wasn't the same person because they had been...I did only read philosophy and semilogy and everything And my mind developed a lot in such way That could reconsider my previous ideas.
• 30:03
  Speaker 0: And this is how I started at the beginning.
• 30:05
  Speaker 0: still using mathematical information, you know that the angles we ask for straight line which are called with number of degrees and so on but then moving every year a new step today.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: When did you start creating those large sculptures?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Was there some moment in time when you said like, I want to do something really big or does size even matter?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: When it comes to sculptures.
• 30:31
  Speaker 0: No the most important thing is to make sculpture which is interesting.
• 30:35
  Speaker 0: Sculpture which are giving a new definition about sculpture.
• 30:38
  Speaker 0: I prefer to make a sculpture big like this but that was unconceived before rather than making a sculpture of what they have done already making it two hundred meters tall definitely.
• 30:51
  Speaker 0: But its true also that if you make a sculpture like this, You don't do it for the market.
• 30:56
  Speaker 0: Everybody wants to buy your sculptural ideas but they want not get into those little markets of people who put coffee table sculptures.
• 31:05
  Speaker 0: So then my work in particular stands very well If its big like this and if is ten meters or if it's two hundred I mean sixty meters.
• 31:17
  Speaker 0: seventy meters soon one hundred and sixty meters long again also It works, it worked because its so abstract and I know how to resolve the proportions.
• 31:28
  Speaker 0: How do deal with space?
• 31:31
  Speaker 0: If you put a sculpture big like this in front of museum doesn't work.
• 31:37
  Speaker 0: if your are infront of Museum You have to consider everything The space that you're allowed And uh... So when Abu Dhabi is asking me To make a sculpture Look at those highways In desert In the desert, I'm sorry.
• 31:54
  Speaker 0: I love desserts also!
• 31:56
  Speaker 0: I found ideas to make a sculpture that was starting on one side there of the highway crossing virtually in Diagonal the Highway and then here coming up.
• 32:07
  Speaker 0: so when you drive... You see it from very far?
• 32:10
  Speaker 0: ...you get into the sculpture, you drive-drive-drive Then you see end of the sculpture.
• 32:14
  Speaker 0: So you see There are concepts like this That can be Realize only at that scale.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: So how does the whole process of creating those sculptures look like?
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: we already talked about?
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: That you need a whole factory to build those large sculptures, but do you start by drawings?
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: or what does the process looks like?
• 32:34
  Speaker 0: No.
• 32:35
  Speaker 0: The first thing is suddenly the brain, you know as an idea last week I was with a friend who told me that he's working on huge projects for Salt Lake City in Utah America and when i showed my friends the final maquette let say not final but very advanced maquettes.
• 32:54
  Speaker 0: You remember we were having coffee And I went inside, took a piece of paper and said look at that.
• 33:00
  Speaker 0: This would be fantastic!
• 33:01
  Speaker 0: Oh my god you know this will be fantastic...I made one and two and three drawings.
• 33:06
  Speaker 0: oh yes horizontal diagonal vertical ...you know this is how it starts.
• 33:10
  Speaker 0: okay then the brain gets more excited.
• 33:14
  Speaker 0: so i make maquettes in metal.
• 33:16
  Speaker 0: So, I came here and we take everything away.
• 33:20
  Speaker 0: And then with a big plywood cut it to do all the things that are visualized.
• 33:27
  Speaker 0: first I make drawings anyway so they have an idea of size when we make maquettes Then i make movies or videos or photos just for myself.
• 33:38
  Speaker 0: there is no project.
• 33:41
  Speaker 0: There is someone who says over now you should come to Utah they want to do something with you and I go there when i look at the space that we have an essay book.
• 33:51
  Speaker 0: You know it will crazy.
• 33:52
  Speaker 0: and then we did, what's so?
• 33:55
  Speaker 0: but most of a time markets markets are making.
• 33:58
  Speaker 0: still i don't make drawings i make directly the market.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: today your artist present all around globe in u.s.. In new zealand paris of Berlin people are able to see your sculptures had important places all
• 34:09
  Speaker 0: around world.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: What does being an international artist whose work will still be visible even in two hundred years mean to you?
• 34:16
  Speaker 0: How about three hundred?
• 34:17
  Speaker 0: no because the city supposed to last know.
• 34:20
  Speaker 0: I tell you honestly, okay Yes.
• 34:23
  Speaker 0: It's a pleasure To know that they have sculptures everywhere but you know what you forget.
• 34:28
  Speaker 0: yeah i completely forgot About That.
• 34:30
  Speaker 0: what i did yesterday i Forgot.
• 34:34
  Speaker 0: it's what i'm going to do next and also next and where?
• 34:41
  Speaker 0: if it's a fabulous new work that I can do, this is the only thing.
• 34:46
  Speaker 0: You will never see me saying oh you know what they did?
• 34:49
  Speaker 0: They did this and this... No!
• 34:54
  Speaker 0: It's done, its' done And i hope but it'll last.
• 34:59
  Speaker 0: When-and I've never seen them again.
• 35:01
  Speaker 0: Nine out of nineteen after twenty sculptures because I don't have a time to travel and just go in say, ah nice you know never there were only niece.
• 35:14
  Speaker 0: I see my sculptures that's all.
• 35:17
  Speaker 0: And even Paris.
• 35:18
  Speaker 0: i don't go and see the one at la défense.
• 35:20
  Speaker 0: so yeah
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Would you say that the way you create your art changed over the last decades?
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Also, do they think about your work?
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: was there some kind of change in your mind or process.
• 35:31
  Speaker 0: Oh I think it's pretty much always the same way except more and more.
• 35:35
  Speaker 0: i can't do twenty things at the same time.
• 35:37
  Speaker 0: You know like...you see..I do the paintings And we don't look at all related visually to the sculptures which are not at all relate with my poetry visually or let's say at the first approach.
• 35:56
  Speaker 0: I do everything at the same time.
• 35:57
  Speaker 0: I do video, music, movies and paintings or sculptures more and more going back looking back thinking oh my god i did this but you know if could that a little bit with experience when they had it.
• 36:13
  Speaker 0: then prove again some artists have one period after we over.
• 36:18
  Speaker 0: don't go back me?
• 36:19
  Speaker 0: no problem Jasper Jones said one day If an artist doesn't do what he wants who is going to?
• 36:25
  Speaker 0: You know, so now I do.
• 36:27
  Speaker 0: if i want to do a work like I did but of course.
• 36:30
  Speaker 0: We'll put the dates up today.
• 36:31
  Speaker 0: But if you want to go work Like I did twenty years ago that there will be a difference Of course ,you Know?
• 36:37
  Speaker 0: I Will like I Did in at A certain point.
• 36:40
  Speaker 0: when you look In The room Downstairs or here no Here There are what they call the indeterminate lines in wood like this.
• 36:49
  Speaker 0: well Twenty Years Later Or Thirty Years later I found a solution To Make Them Better Than That And I made them in steel and they are a lot stronger.
• 36:59
  Speaker 0: These are just being restored, you know?
• 37:01
  Speaker 0: But... but i go back to this idea of the line like this very free and uh-and i do it.
• 37:07
  Speaker 0: so This is what.. In the past perhaps there was more into periods Like this evolving and going from one place To be over but today i can Just Do everything at The same time not Everything but many things.
• 37:21
  Speaker 0: yeah
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: You already told me that you're still trying to finally create something interesting, which of course he already did at least from my point a few.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: But do you have an idea what would be or could it be interesting?
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Is there some thing you see in other artists' work that you consider is
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: interesting?".
• 37:40
  Speaker 0: I don't need today the influence over their artist although i'm sure but its existing because My attitude is if someone did this, there's no way that I'm going to do something like that.
• 37:52
  Speaker 0: There so much to create you know?
• 37:55
  Speaker 0: But it's true unconsciously... You see exhibition and magazines or things… You say oh thats interesting but then go into something else.
• 38:03
  Speaker 0: And unconsciously the thing perhaps three weeks ago was going liberating for a solution in your own work.
• 38:12
  Speaker 0: It's possible!
• 38:13
  Speaker 0: I like to think what some people say that, uh...I have been very fast in doing things which were very new and my work would rather have more influence on the others than me.
• 38:27
  Speaker 0: But it's true also if i was born at the nineteenth century ,i wouldn't do this today.
• 38:32
  Speaker 0: so yes there is a context of art .There are ways to make art today.
• 38:38
  Speaker 0: That is influencing you somehow.
• 38:43
  Speaker 0: But really the goal is to go somewhere else and try.
• 38:47
  Speaker 0: think about art of tomorrow.
• 38:50
  Speaker 0: When I did my first conceptual art piece... Again, nobody was doing that.
• 38:56
  Speaker 0: And then today everybody's using language not mathematics.
• 39:00
  Speaker 0: yes some but nobody is using language.
• 39:04
  Speaker 0: and at that time there were only on Kawara and I who are.
• 39:07
  Speaker 0: we're using language in a very serious way.
• 39:10
  Speaker 0: you had artists would use language making jokes or stuff like that But they do something very rational or very serious.
• 39:19
  Speaker 0: There was no body at all.
• 39:20
  Speaker 0: And then you see like doing a charcoal pile today, how many artists are making piles of anything?
• 39:28
  Speaker 0: Of paper or bricks.
• 39:29
  Speaker 0: Or candies... You know whatever.
• 39:33
  Speaker 0: So it's really bad.
• 39:35
  Speaker 0: that interests me and again as I said to you before if i knew what can do tomorrow will leave right away runaway.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: If you do something radical new today it's much easier for me to make it visible through world and two get the recognition that he serves.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: young artists that are not well known yet but might also be capable of doing something maybe even revolutionary have a much harder time in becoming successful with their work.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Do u think thats fair?
• 40:05
  Speaker 0: It is only way.
• 40:07
  Speaker 0: if i do something which is very radical meaning interesting, very different from what has been done Nobody is going to understand you, so it's difficult.
• 40:16
  Speaker 0: You have to convince and then succeed in a long way.
• 40:21
  Speaker 0: not only progress but develop your work very well But also the language.
• 40:33
  Speaker 0: And normally you have it because, because... You have to be relatively smart too.
• 40:40
  Speaker 0: To do something which is completely different.
• 40:43
  Speaker 0: but yes and at the same time if you do something very interesting It's a lot easier today than in my days.
• 40:50
  Speaker 0: Because look there are so many galleries.
• 40:53
  Speaker 0: There're two hundred galleries in Paris six hundred in New York.
• 40:57
  Speaker 0: But only thing that market has been taking over so much on creativity today that it's disturbing, and sometimes... It could be difficult for some artists to impose themselves very quickly.
• 41:10
  Speaker 0: But knowing that there are some art critics good ones who look at what is really new concepts in the mind of young artistes There're also some galleries Very good galleries looking innovation for new concepts, it's definitely a lot easier today to come out.
• 41:37
  Speaker 0: But again if you do something which is totally radical people are blind and they will never see it.
• 41:45
  Speaker 0: but we'll see one day because this how happens an artist who does very-very-news going have influence on his friends because artists always the first ones What is interesting.
• 41:58
  Speaker 0: So he's going to have an influence somehow when we become a group, you know Not the school but the group of artists thinking like this and then slowly they impose themselves.
• 42:08
  Speaker 0: Yeah I think that's how it works.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Thank You so much for your time in just wonderful conversation.
• 42:13
  Speaker 0: The pleasure But don't forget to click the subscribe button.