img134
TEXTS ON ART : Image number img134.
From page 241 to page 280.
PAGE 241
the secrets of life and
that we remember always
when we
are older and that we
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think of
grandmother.
So you are therefore
the central character
of a film that has
for title ‘’the storyteller of
dream.’’
ex. : 8 Draw the feeling
that you are
experiencing (- with charcoal.)
* Is it a
positive or negative
feeling?
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* The vision that
this feeling is giving you
is it concrete or
abstract?
* What title may agree
with the picture that you
have done?
* If the subject interest
you, you can rework it
in colour.
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* Do you prefer this subject
in black and white or
in colour?
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3.
* Think about the music
* What is the music
you prefer?
* Why do you prefer
this music?
* Imagine that you
are a composer of
great talent.
You sit down at the
piano and the music
that you prefer
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streams from your fingers
like from a source,
effortlessly and you
play and you play
until you
feel like if you
are in a dream.
In your dreams
you get up,
you slowly walk
a few steps.
You are in a
garden, you
sit in the shade
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and you sleep a
little.
* Draw the colours
of this dream.
* Titrate.
* Repeat this topic
with charcoal
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4.
You have a group of
friends and
acquaintances; you
meet to
talk, to play
cards, to eat and
to draw.
One of your companions
appears to integrate
herself with difficulty
into the group.
At moments she
plays on your nerves,
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other times you
fell pity for her, she
always seems to
take life by the
wrong end.
PAGE 244
One day, the painting
professor is absent
and you are asked
replaced him.
You decide to
take the opportunity to
bring this badly adapted
person to draw things,
things that according
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to you could
free her and in sorts
make her feel
better after
letting off steam in her
painting, hoping that after
she will maybe become a
a more agreeable
companion.
ex. : Imagine the paintings
that your companion
can paint
to free herself and
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do them.
* Add titles
(Make at least
one colour painting
and one charcoal
drawing)
• After this paint
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the painting full of serenity
that she will be able
to imagine when
she will feel good
in her skin and
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sociable.
* Titrate.
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5.
To your twenty year old
grandson that is looking
for himself and is in revolt,
asking himself what is
true love,
you want to draw
a pacifying
picture.
* Titrate.
* Do you prefer
colour or
charcoal? Choose.
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6.
* What do you think
of painting?
* It is said that painting
is a language.
PAGE 246
* You have received
a contract, you are
requested to
make three large
panels four feet
by eight feet,
to decorate the
entry hall of a new
cultural center for
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the golden age.
You have all the
help you
need to
execute these large
panels.
You just have
to execute
clear drafts that
your apprentices
will only have to
enlarge to make
large patterns that
they will then copy
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on the wall.
Now, make lines
and clear forms
and well separated
colours one from another
so that we can
easily cut
your pictures in
pieces as
a ‘’puzzle’’ to
copy them on the wall.
The subject that
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was ordered from you
is the following:
''All the arts are
languages. A
panel illustrates the
language of painting.
Another, the
language of
music composition.
Finally the last one
that will be in the middle
represent the language
of life.''
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Note: use gouache
where you
want colour
and if you want,
you can draw
the contour of your forms
in dark so that
they will be well highlighted
for your
apprentices to cut up.
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7.
The architects that
commissioned you are
very satisfied with the
three panels of the
golden age
cultural Center.
So they commission you
for another
contract:
The playroom of
a new children’s garden
in a large
rectangular room.
As we trust
you, they ask you
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for your idea for the
decoration and the
theme to choose
for two large
panels to put
on the back wall;
the side walls are
full of large
windows overlooking
a beautiful park and
the front wall
is back to the lobby
with on each side
of the door,
two large
aquariums.
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PAGE 249
7. A.
A little charcoal exercise:
draw water,
its movement and
its shadows.
7. B.
In gouache:
draw the sea seen
for underwater.
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8.
How do you feel
today?
Express it with a
colour.
Give it a title.
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9.
It is a day
that you are bored.
What do we think about
when we are bored?
Express this with
a charcoal play
of lines.
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10.
The days when we
feels the most
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happy, what
are we thinking about?
And how do
We feel?
Express it
with a bold
picture and
without hesitation!
Titrate.
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11. A.
(M) for Monique.
I am 33 years old.
I imagine
life just like in my
experience and more
than fifty years
for me, is
almost unimaginable.
Life more than
fifty years ago,
is almost the
beginning of the world
no?
I make you,
laugh, you find me
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very childish.
Kidding apart,
paint for me life
as it was
in those years
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that I have not
know and of which
I will not know anything
if you do not
show it to me.
11. B.
So,
when you were
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thirty-three years old,
what were you thinking about?
* Paint how you
felt then.
11. C.
Finally,
when you were a
child, what kind of
little girl
were you?
* Translate into pictures
what you're
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world was at that time.
Happy holidays.
Keep everything.
note your ideas.
keep your tests.
we will look
at them
PAGE 252
next fall.
I love you a lot.
Have a good Summer X X X
Monique
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***** (Bio., page: 1040) (1983)
***** (A writing in a notebook.) (1983)
Quest. Why do you believe
that your art
always develops
outside of all
prevailing currents
of the 60s?
Answer :''I am not able to
follow the philosophy
of others.
The world that
I EXERCISE
is mine.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1045) (1983)
***** (From a letter to a friend.)
''...but to me, no; now, at this stage
of my life, I am really turning away,
‘’like that’’ from the ''family-maya-of-the-world'' to continue,
but this time without hesitation, without remorse and
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8
without regrets especially seen the meaning of life,
of meditation and what we might call ''my work''.
You see, it is at the bottom of my heart, I have
always felt like ... totally ‘’devoted to’’
and I am well aware that this is not
the same for everyone.
It would seem that many people put up with life
and organize their time, their leisure, their desires
and their money ‘’while waiting’’ ... to die.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1064) (1983)
***** (From a letter written to her father.)
''…I fight for my ideas
that God and the idea
that people have of God, ‘’is not
the same thing’’
that the ‘’creative work’’ of Marx
and Marxism, ‘’it is not at all
the same thing’’
5
- And besides, if Marx was still alive
today
he would certainly
not be a ''Marxist'' BECAUSE HE IS
A MATERILIST (1)
(1) in another letter I'll ‘’brief’’ you on this word: MATERIALISIM, because
you lack a ''little'' something in your ‘’education’’ to truly understand what
''materialism'' is...
... but you do not really lack very much; only some brief verbal explanations,
because
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intuitively you ‘’feel’’ the difference that separates it from Marxism;
I was able to realize that many times in our past ‘’conversations’’.
- But Marx is not only a ''creator''
he also is personally committed
with his advice and support in
active politics of his time
And if Marx had been here at
the time of your youth, he would have
PERSONALLY KNOWN
Jimmy Offa and would have written to him
‘’go for it, guy, go for it’’ because
Marx always believed that ''it was
worth it to try''
‘’in the smallest things’’ as
in the largest and that any
questions that come to your mind deserves
that it be said out loud,
even if you are ‘’hated’’ for it
and EVEN IF YOU ARE LAUGH AT
for it.
- But if Marx were alive today
he would add: ESPECIALLY issues
about SMALLER THINGS,
WE SHOULD ALWAYS SAY THEM
6
WITH A VERY LOUD VOICE
EVEN if there is no answer
EVEN if: we do not know why
‘’we think that’’!
because Marx was not a ''chief of
a political party '' but a
''creator'' of thoughts, of philosophy
and of SOCIAL
ECONOMY.
PAGE 255
And all ''creators'' of ‘’all’’
areas ''gain experience
over time'', because
they ‘’only look’’ at society and
everyone around them, ''evolve''
in regard to the past towards the future.
And ‘’all’’ creative-genuine
take care for their works
and COMPLET them
continually throughout their life and hope
that those who follow
will do as much; because ‘’the true creators''
KNOW that
it is with ''ideas'' that they see
7
life, the world, the universe,
the feelings and actions of
humans, that they write
or paint or compose
their ''works''.
Unfortunately as always
‘’those how follow’’ are like
everyone else:
- they prefer love
to the person that
they love.
- the love more their ‘’little girl’’
that the young
woman she really is.
- they prefer the idea
that they make of themselves
or what was their father and
PAGE 256
their mother than
what is in fact the person
which is named
their father or their mother.
- they prefer their
''Creators'' that are only
fallible human beings
like everyone else
to their ''WORKS''
8
EXCEPT that the ‘’true creators’’
knowing that we are all
fallible, trying as best as
they may, rechecking constantly
and re-correcting their
positions
as often as necessary and as
long as they have the chance to live,
EXCEPT: yes, the ‘’true creators’’ try
to ‘’divide themselves in
two’’ and not to divide their
life. Why? Because they
put in their ''works'' that
which appears to them as
being clearly ‘’the best of themselves’’;
to try to
compose a work ''WHICH
SANDS UP'' keeping in
themselves as much as possible, their
uncertainties, their doubts, their
resentments and their useless hatreds,
those that are only
psychological; BECAUSE.
BECAUSE, I repeat it the ‘’true creators’’
are only
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9
‘’ass-holes'' like everyone ells,
that they only know as much as
anyone and that: to ‘’make for oneself
an emotional and personal life
THAT TRULY HOLS TOGETHER, without
lies and without hidden things and without
rejections and without small betrayals
THAT IS NOT A ‘’SLAM-DUNK’’’’.
it is not easy ... and those
that arrive at this, need
a ‘’lot’’ of intelligence,
guts,
understanding, of resistance
and courage ‘’and this
is not quite enough’’...
and IS ALSOW NEEDED;
luck
and MUCH, MUCH
favourable ‘’haphazardness’’!’’
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***** (Bio., page: 1088) (November 21, 1983)
***** (From a text.)
‘’... 1. Me, the drop-out artist
2. I wrote a book (Culture)
3. which is an ESSAY (theoretical)
4. dealing with power, leadership and identity
5. I was an extremely prolific artist. I could not see a single point that
was worth the trouble to put into words on art or a form of discourse
or another except when I was
PAGE 258
telling a joke
A. Art still exists because I am doing it
B. ART is not dying because I had a passion for it and it still does as much for
the youngest that arrive
C. Everything would suggest that to the contrary of studies on the subject,
proletarian art exists because the proletariat is supposed to be contained in
the people and that I exist, I have an aesthetical production that is ''apparently''
out of my century ,
There is no less colonized than me, I understand all the ass-holes of all countries
and they understand me even when we do not know our mutual ‘’languages’’,
and that I am the people were what I speak is neither a language, nor even a
dialect, nor a jargon even, because for me the people, even I do not understand
the meaning of what I say when I speaks, nor what I do when I live, not more by
creating than lounging.
And who would not admit anything as long as it serves to understand anything,
I am not prepared to conclude on the possibility of schizophrenia.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1093) (November 27, 1983)
***** (From a text.)
1
‘’... nov. 27, 83
Ref. Annex to the black notebooks
My text (1)
(1) whether it be in the form of an essay, poetical or theoretical.
... it is about art vs. text (1)
... about the group Tel Quel (for example) that is ‘’only’’ literature (3),
in any sense that the word (2) literature is used.
(1) it is a question here of the concept of ''literature'' in writing versus the
concept of ‘’art’’ in writing: and have the same concept of ''art''
always took exactly in the same sense (i.e.: the concept of art) may its
product be
. a literary text
. a text signed by computer
PAGE 259
. an object of plastic art
. an auditory production, music or other.
----------
nov. 28, 83
(3) ''literature'':
Ref. Picasso in the Objective eye of Malraux.
words, words, recovery attempted after the fact when the ‘’body of the work’’ ¸
is there (there, all warm and forever). It is not the body which first flees the
''love-work'', it is the feelings - the painter, the ideas remain accessible and
outpouring within the ‘’group’’.
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1113) (December 8, 1983)
***** (From a text.)
‘’...b) With no apparent connection to anything, I recently said thoughtfully after
an inner reflection
about dance and sculpture - painting-of-a-message, from the point of view of
questions relating to art and its purpose or ''versus''
art and the art object in the arts without ''objects'' (e.g. music or in between
the two as dance that is its permanent object and as music that ''dissipated''
as waves; but dance is visual as visual art.
And why all this?
Because the artist chooses to ‘’incarnate’’ his representation of nature,
rather than transcending it.''
---------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1182) (January 10, 1984)
***** (From a text.)
‘’...As for me, I ‘’grew up’’ of course, ‘’but’’ my view of the world has
not changed substantially; ''God as my only friend'' or Nature as a school
or science as a passion or art
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as an asceticism ... between these designations, there is ''no great quarrel of ideas’’ .’’
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***** (Bio., page: 1237) (1984)
***** (Letter to a friend and collaborator on a project of art made in the context of
obtaining a certificate in art for Marie-Claire at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
A certificate that she obtained with the notation ''A +''. I transcribed this letter in its
entirety because Monique ''explained'' herself: What she has lived, what she is living,
her worldview, her vision of art. It is an important text considering that it was written
during the period (1983 to 1986) where Monique reconsiders her entire life and
develops a new orientation: The Sacred Art, Secular Sacred Art (The Secular
Sacred Art was elaborated by Monique in response to the ‘’loss of meaning’’
in society in general.) she said: ''Even outside beliefs and Faith people must
identify what is ''Sacred'' for them, what they find is of the utmost importance
to be able to guide themselves, stop being confused, find the true meaning of life.''
1
December 21, 1984
Dear Marie-Claire
Feminism?
Holly Burgess, a friend from the
Women's Inter Art Center
that I mentioned to you, said in the 70s, that
this Thought had been a School for us
that had taught us that we had
been educated to hate our
sister, to see her as a
rival. It mattered little to me
at the time. From my American life, I
mainly brought back the deep feeling
than we were, how ...
do you say that ... ‘’incited’’
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... no, ''CONDITIONED
TO ACT'' ‘’unhappy and in solidarity’’
by the fact of family traditions and the ''environment''
and not of the human condition as such,
and not of our own personality or of
an individual ‘’interior fatality’’ as
Freudianism wanted to convince us.
2
But the ‘’bonds of love’’, which I
began to free myself by parodying
and caricaturing in 1980 my own
life through creation involving
a pile of ‘’proverbs and monologues
by the saint eldest’’ the
central theme was ''love is the last thing
I need from now until the end of
my life'',
because the ‘’links of torments’’ that
going under the name ‘’love’’
carting everything together
and monstrously intricate (1) familiarity
of violence, (2) promiscuity of
silence and (3) the coldness of Puritanism
left me passively
obsessed by the paralysing fear of
being suspected and the disturbing feeling
of being transparent, within the grasp of all claws
and without a secret and personal soul..
3
I do not doubt my potential, but
it always seems to me that at most
my ‘’efforts’’; will they grant me the recognition
of ''talent''... it always seems to me
that the greater my talent, lesser
are my chances to gain some
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personal value for anyone.
This is what has made of me the ‘’right
of primogeniture’’: having been only the ''persona''
of the mother, the Image-Tool of someone
else, I have never discovered
that maybe I could have also had
‘’personal’’ friends and enemies.
The dark humour that I invented
to be able to say... I was going to
say: what was not within my ‘’duties’’
... I have been nothing but a function...
White or black humour, if it relieved me
of the ‘’obligation’’ to be unhappy to
be normal has never helped me
4
to brake the ‘’necessity’’, of loneliness.
I would change the place of solitude;
I would change the official reasons
like all subservient social groups
I have observed over the years.
Women? I do not know.
I've never been able to observe them with
the capacity of my intellect, as the
powerlessness that I
have to see myself, that I have been fighting
unsuccessfully for years.
Humour for me was a bravado that brought me
to ‘’make affection’’
for example a ‘’class characteristic’’
whose solidarity enjoined me
to beware: ''affection?
we never had any at home and
we never missed it'' I had made of it
a weakness of the rich and idle.
The ‘’dramatic and formal’’ results of this art
was very funny, but I measure
today how pathetic it was… the pathetic
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of my own life that these parodies
5
were hiding from me.
The ''working people'' that I always
Fiercely defended against ‘’the need’’ for experience
And manipulation ‘’of intellectual’’,
these people who touched me,
which paid work occupied their whole
lives and preoccupations, that I
believed reduced to SOCIAL AND
POLITIC silence by ‘’necessity’’ and to
SPIRITUAL SILENCE by ignorance;
these dear people also, I have completely
mistaken myself on the meaning of its
personality. ITS SILENCE IS A
CHOICE. Its absence is an appeasement.
It is not a consumer
informed or not, it is philosophically
and metaphysically materialist.
6
I wonder how I could have so many
years continued to find so natural to
devote myself to the other without ever
considering the anonymity of what we
call ''other''. Yet I knew
that ''the average man'' of statistics
does not exist. Yet I knew and
I ‘’devoted’’ myself a lot to
make it clear to my working colleagues
of the International Data Bank
in 1972 that the ''Future Trends''
and the: ‘’if the trend continues’’ of the Club
de Rome had no reality outside the
regulatory mechanisms of nature, and
that the ''human mammal'' is part of
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natural ecology, that the concrete building
are as ''natural'' as the sheaves of wheat,
so poetic today, were
devil herbs of the ''Progress'' of
another time. And when Marshall McLuhan
gave me exactly the ‘’words to say it''
with his ‘’theory of the retro visor’’, I exulted in
recognition.
You can see that I knew and that I could
Many things BUT I
7
have never been able to get out of the moral
misery of powerlessness!
The keyword is: INVISIBILITY
Feeling experienced day and night, year after
years, what ever I do.
It is wile living this unnameable anxiety attack
that threw me into
‘’complete’’ silence18 months that I
started to realize something.
I say, ''complete'' silence because this is
the first time I've lived, ''days and
days'' in ''despair''.
In All the
other acute attacks of silence
that marked my life as the lights
at the corner of the streets that abruptly stopped
me career and success above all, all
emerging success ‘’since I am 14 years old’’ ho! ho!
the beautiful Freudian slip ...it has been 23 years that I'm 14!
And so in all these depressions
I am never alone, I was ‘’kept’’
by hope ...
This time it was unspeakable, I had
No hope
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8
past the panic or rather through everything,
beyond the physical pain from head to foot
that I felt a hysterical fear of ''feeling'',
the only ideas that passed through my mind,
was an inventory of knowledge ...
... I could not help being
surprise despite my fear and my confusion ...
while not one single human being
could do anything for me
because that's as much as I had lost the will
to live, as much I had lost all feeling,
interest and curiosity towards anyone.
I was nothing, the experience was
new: the inevitability of death and
dissolution alone, awoke in me some
interest ... before dying, since
so I consented, the curiosity which occupied me
in such a ''moment'' was to be
Alone and Free before the Absolute just ''to see''!
Yet the acute sense of my total moral solitude
continued to totally panic
my body ...
But it is at this moment of a thousand deaths that I
9
realized the value in my mind,
of the objective existence of intelligence
that I had developed in parallel to
the moral solitude of all my life,
of the indestructibility in me of perception
and appreciation of beauty. Even if
destroyed and exhausted by so many disappointments,
feeling that I was abandoning life, I continued
to experience the Beauty of the
World! !
I was like in a state of shock,
PAGE 266
I lived for weeks in this strange
contradiction, frozen there, a mass of
animal suffering and pain. Nothing was
happening. I tried to transpose the physical
stoicism that I had always had into
psychological stoicism to at least
stop the harm to my pulse of my
uncontrollable bursts of panic. I was especially
afraid of heart failure. Because of
the idea that on top of never having
really managed to ‘’participate in my
10
own life’’, I may even be robbed
of living calmly my own death
revolted me against the nature of
reality.
It is by writing it to you that I realize
that this was happening as much as now…
at the beginning I doubted
especially of reality ... I was struggling
especially not to lose my mind
and only in my ‘’spare time’’,
not to lose the body.
It is after a ‘’certain time’’ that I began
to revolt myself about feeling so physically
overwhelmed than I
felt that I did not even have the assurance to
realized of when I was
dying: ''that'' I was going to die.
I realize now how often
in my childhood I was afraid that I
would be killed ''inadvertently''. It is not that
my mother beat me that bothered me,
11
it is the ‘’dangerous’’ side of these
PAGE 267
games that did so. That's what scared me,
for me and also for you.
I saw no harm in the fact that
mothers beat their children a little,
it was the ''fashion'', it was part of the
ways and customs; it was our way of
life. This demonstrated that we
were genetically stronger than
the other social classes who
are forced to seek treatment for
the slightest scratch. I always
experienced the greatest pride in belonging
to the strongest group of society and the best
adapted to survive. That’s what was
my ‘’official’’ social views
until now.
I was also quite proud
being a woman, by having by
my mother, had the opportunity to prove to myself
that women are as strong as
men. For centuries
12
men had been making a reputation
for themselves in the world by fitting
on street corners. The opportunities
for women to demonstrate their courage,
their strength, their courage and endurance are
not many,
we were not allowed to
fight, not even in ‘’honourable duels’’
but at least the two of us, thanks
to ourselves, we have had the opportunity
to proof that if others
are ‘’wimps’’, that
society claims that women are, that
excludes the two of us! It is
still an advantage,
PAGE 268
other women have so many problems
with this and it shows:
they cannot assert their value
without rejecting the sartorial elegance
and this is only one example
out of a thousand.
13
The elegance and delicacy of your femininity
have always been proverbial, as mine,
even in ‘’working blues’’:
is a question of physical behaviour,
of body language, of assuming oneself.
This while I was often very scared of
''learning' 'that one of us
had been killed ‘’by accident’’, in the
course of a DEMONSTRATION…
As you can see I was not particularly
pre-disposed to become aware of things
at the level where we meet
at last...
When I realized that in the crisis
that I was living, without understanding why,
this ‘’inventory of knowledge’’
which made more and more pass before
my eyes all the ‘’works’’ that humanity
had produced and accumulated
through the ages, though at that moment
I only felt ‘’the Absurd, the Illusion of Reality’’,
14
gradually I was forced,
after several months,
to note that ''the sky was not falling
on my head.''
Let me explain:
What was passing in my head in
PAGE 269
parallel of the ‘’anxiety crisis’’, continued
streaming...
Two categories of knowledge
were taking form. On one hand the Mystique
evolution of humans since
Abraham, who succumbed to a
inspiration to the point of acting on it
although he did not have the multiple
evidence of the organizational effectiveness
of religions and religious ideas
that we have at our disposal
today, going through the
pre-Socratics saga, inventing the infinite
that we do not see to be able to better define
the indefinite that one sees before each step
to get to us, the contemporaries
15
who will ‘’dare’’ premeditate
and organize our own awareness.
On one side there was always streaming in
my head ''documentaries' on this
aspects of our behaviour when we
get into the act of active research without
the guarantee of discovery. And I admired us:
I thought we had ''guts''.
On the other hand, the stream of images
showed me all our art ''objects'',
from ancient times until
our century. In each ''object'' I
saw the ''artist'' (known or anonymous,
conscious or unconscious of his approach). But
in addition to the psychological ''relationship''
that I already knew between
all creators at the level of the ‘’attitude towards
the object of interest’’, of the reaction
PAGE 270
to the Other, even when that other
it oneself, as it is often the case in
the last century; in addition
to ''feeling'' in the result of the
16
accomplished work, ‘’what’’ forced them
all to act; this time, I was
struck by the ''EFFECTIVENESS'' of the
clearly ''artistic'' approach from the point
of view of the
development of science and
history of ideas.
In the mystical evolution
of our species I saw
the approach of ‘’the loving gaze
on the world as a tool of
knowledge’’.
In the presence of art in the
middle of the evolution of the species,
I discovered ''mimicry'' of
the ‘’known’’, as the ''experienced'', as a
tool of knowledge.
17
Do not be surprised of my course
it has always been mine, only
I did not speak about it… except
with people I did not
know ... that is why like
Prevert: ''I say you to everyone
I love, even if I do not know
them''... I hope to be able to sing the
rest of the poem where he says: ''I say
you to all those who love each other, even
PAGE 271
if I do not know them ...''
it was my intention but in the universe
were I drag myself, I personally have rarely
seen people who loved each other ...
once in Mexico ... a comrade
and his father looking at each other
with tenderness of love ... it
impressed a lot...
And all, I have just seen
that without really knowing each other,
we have loved each other since
a long time… ‘’to care’’ ...
18
You see, Art, it has always
‘’worked in my life’’ as a
asceticism, whether it be in the ‘’practise’’
of creating or whether it be in
the ''practice'' of meditation or
reflection on Art.
And still, every day the mystic
‘’documentaries’’, I felt them like a
rejuvenation; they called me back
to myself; they especially
called me back to the real of Reality
and soothed my panic.
But in fact it was not entirely
done in that order. I realize it
in writing it. The mystic documentaries
begun at the
start, I could not stop them,
but at this stage they were indistinguishable
from Art
and they did not calm me at all.
19
It is the images of art that
PAGE 272
at first began to take
more and more space in the
science ‘’documentary’’ as a
first step.
Then all the ''inventories'' of images
and ideas, the tenacity of my feeling
the dazzling Beauty of the
World began to attract my attention.
Do not forget that at that stage,
I was still fully engulfed by
physical pain, a sadness, a
profound and global sadness, the anguish
in front of the loss of meaning and panic
facing the loss of Reality.
I was looking and looking, without stop
to find out what I had;
something like that, so sharp,
20
intense and especially so total, on all
fronts at the same time, had never
happened to me in my life. Let's say I did not
have any documentation of such ...
advents. I was totally
''out of it'', as I told you last week,
for several weeks
I could not even notice that
there was something
‘’Psycho’’ in this ‘’somatic’’ - then,
even though I checked as much as I could.
Until recently, of all the explanations
the one that remained the most plausible is that
everything was perhaps caused by my
medical ignorance that would have made me
''paranoid'' since 18 months before a
acute asthma attack of around 36 hours,
caused by the actually very
PAGE 273
great quantities of dust in which I was living
since a dozen days (symbolism: this dust
came from the work begun by those who
I had sold my ‘’house’’ to, and they were renovating
21
the first floor below, just below my bedroom,
to make for ‘’themselves’’, a store, destroying what I had
constructed earlier, with love, to make for myself
a studio... my studio was going up in dust, I was breathing
its ‘’ashes’’ and was choking ... I was dying
(symbolically the ''worst'' was happening,
what I had always feared the most: I was losing my studio
‘’by accident’’ because I would have never sold this
studio, the first financial success-possession of
my life, had it not been for the economic crisis,
which forced me to sell my house not
‘’to lose everything’’...I think of childhood and
I believe that by saving ''only'' our physical life, we do
not necessarily succeed in surviving the ‘’attack’’...)
It has been only a few days,
with our conversations, and the ''documentation''
that I received from Dr. Michel and that he has confirmed,
I feel that what I had was not a
purely physical disease. And the funny thing
is that it seems enough to free me of
the panic and the discouragement. This
also sufficient to restore my combativeness… and my
writing.
22
It is for this reason that I am writing to you this new
‘’text’’; I feel that this is not the time
for me to dwell on the theme of the
mother, or of the condition of women, or anything,
nothing else except and specially, love, friendship,
PAGE 274
affection, thoughts, etc. ... all that
leads me to only two things… because
I feel I can finally
catch two birds with one stone that are essential for my
life and my survival ... because it seems that
these two things at last want to come together
and be born together.
It has to do with everything that touches the feeling
of Beauty and Art on one part and all
that touches the ''dirty business'' of the PERSONA
on the other part.
So in this ‘’mess of confusion’’ I
began to be amazed to have the ''heart'' to
let myself be dazzled and subjugated by
‘’a question of details’’ such as the
Beauty of the World and the sense of beauty.
23
The Beauty that I perceived seemed to me to be
''good'', of an endless delight even if I had to
think to abandon myself completely to it.
But at that time I was not in the mood to ''throw''
myself into ''Nirvana''; in fact I would
have been incapable of it.
Despite all ''prescribed drugs'', I spent
weeks without being able to sleep more than
4-5 to 10-12 minutes in a row: it was Robert
that ‘’kept’’ me and I wanted this very much,
I do not yet know exactly why.
I was a crazed beast.
In the range of the priority of values,
the Beauty of the World seemed to me ‘’EXTREMELY’’
secondary compared to
the questions of ''life and death'',
questions that I was sure that I was
confronting... and I also think
PAGE 275
today that it was probably
true ...
But I must tell you however that
24
I am considering seriously that these
''three'' questions are perhaps not as
DISTANT as I thought ...
Besides Maslow had his pyramid of
needs, as well as Mc Gregoir,
were left with their arms dangling
squirming before the riddle of
‘’motivation’’ ... everything that lives is
''motivated'' beyond the
questions of good, bad, of habits,
of strength, of resignation, etc. ...
finally, the ''subjects'' of amateurs of mechanics
and systems.
Then gradually, it is the notion of
Beauty itself has distinguished itself from
Art, as much as of Science
and mysticism.
It is at this phase that I
25
noticed that ''the sky was not falling
on my head''... that is to say ...
At that time that was what I called
''loosing consciousness'', to die for
real or not. It seemed to me to be equal.
The doctors might have been able to
treat me but ‘’the interruption of
something’’…would have been psychologically
irreparable for me. I felt it
and thought it that way. I felt that
if this would happen ... I was going to say ''again'',
even if they saved me…’’again’’, I would
choose to commit suicide rather than
...? ? ? to relive ''that''…it is
probably my car accident
at age 25, that interrupted
a brand new psychoanalysis (3 months)
which began to take ''form'',
in which I was ‘’spoken’’ to about
life, people, of the family in
aspects that touched me
26
very little.
I also ‘’re looked’’ at this point of
psychological analysis last weekend
and I have really
reached the conclusion
that not only that it does not ‘’touch’’ but,
let me say it in jest: ''There is nothing
to do for Freudianism and Freudians
and it is too late for that poor devil Freud
also!''
But I felt that I was
getting rid of something
that was leaving (me) an open field
to art.
It was not very articulated
then, of course, but
I think that as
I saw what interested
those interested in ''other''
and seeing that ''I was not missing anything'',
I was finally going to go forward, without regret and
27
without guilt,
without ulterior motives, finally in
PAGE 277
my painting. Quite simply,
shrugging my shoulders saying about
myself ''Happiness to the brainless,
the Kingdom is theirs.''
Then there was the accident, the
cerebral concussion, the amnesia, to
which I had so much trouble adapting,
especially after it was gone.
‘’Having been amnesic’’! ! I thought
that a person could not look anyone
in the face after that.
Besides, if I write so much at this
time rather than drawing,
producing artistically, and that I feel
that I have the devil by the tail with
holy motivation that has finally
come back to me, I feel that writing at
this time is the same thing as if
I was painting. I do not ''feel''
28
myself painting…for the same ...
reason that I write so much these
days ... I would rather sculpt,
that other art, sculpture, that,
like writing: that I could do
‘’even blind’’...
It is because alongside the ''thing''
of amnesia, the same cerebral commotion
had affected my sight.
But I found this ‘’a lot’’
less serious! I simply took my
dispositions.
In case it did not come
back sufficiently: I
started writing again, what I had
abandoned as a teenager for painting,
it is then that I started again to compose
PAGE 278
a little music, took up dancing again,
finally all that can be equivalent
29
in case I could not see well again.
Moreover, it is also why
I started working with
stained glass craftsmen. At first when
I met Robert, he knew: my vision had
greatly improved, technically
my two eyes FOCUSSED
with sufficient ‘’reliability’’ for
me to have risked to learn how to
drive a vehicle; but the
visual concentration caused me still
a lot of migraines when it
lasted a little too long. Moreover, it was
not yet fully reestablished for
small things like a '' pen
stroke'' that is to say, attach a
line with another.
I still would often miss.
So Robert and the studio where I
30
started working glass agreed to help me.
I made my ‘’drawings’’ roughly, with a
broad felt pen and the other would
make it finer for me and ‘’traced’’
the mounting jigs that requires much
more details. In exchange
I brought them my colours, my
composition lines and movement.
Everybody won.
I had to adapt myself to drawing with
closed forms, separable, that could be cut into
forms, as in fashion design that
PAGE 279
I had done when I was younger.
All this is past history, my sight is clearly
better now, I realize this by the fact
that the metal lace that I started
to produce about two
years ago ... just a little while before
than was triggered this important ‘’crisis’’
31
that we are talking about.
As for the ''benefit'' of
patterns and templates
in glass working, you saw yourself
what I did of them. More and
more, we cut the glass ‘’strait forward’’, without
an all ready made ‘’drawing’’ and the ''assembly'' is
done ‘’free hand’’ like any sculpture
that is not ''cast.''
And so there for the eyes and the advent of
the era of multi-media in my life.
But the amnesia, that, it was something else.
All the prejudices and fears of my environment
went to fight and collapse there in-that.
It makes me laugh because I know
it's tortured me for years and
years, and in fact I have not
thought about this for a
couple of years. All the questions
that where put to me in good or in bad,
today leaves me indifferent when I think about it
32
like water on a duck's back.
Maybe I was not so indifferent
18 months ago before my confrontation
... between the Absolute and the Relative ...
PAGE 280
hum! hum! ... yes it was that ...
I have not yet settled completely
on my feet, that is to say:
‘’reorganized’’; but as de facto
I know myself (- Freudian slip I wanted to write
''meaning'') Thus I know myself, clear, located… locatable
in any case, and totally FREE in
regard to these matters that for me have
fully reintegrated what I call
Nature, that is my friend and
my protection, backup.
I am perhaps not ''fully''
reintegrated in Nature ... but in any
case, I know the address.
33
That's what it meant for me when I said
''when the sky falls on our head''
... I found it ''hard'' even when we
survives.
Especially since I have never found
any recollection of the accident itself;
not even the slightest
nightmare: nothing.
The doctors concluded that
probably it was not ‘’neurologically’’
printed in my ‘’memory’’
... in me, yes ... (as a
feeling ...)
I ended up accepting the version of a car
accident, the whole world certainly
did not ‘’league itself’’ to lie to me.
But during the 14 months
of the ‘’critical’’ phase, as long as the faculty
of recollection did not actually restore itself
(it came back bit by bit and suddenly the rest
in one day, a few hours)
I lived my wounds like if ‘’this’’ time,
***** (Next : Image number 1976-015.)
From page 241 to page 280.
PAGE 241
the secrets of life and
that we remember always
when we
are older and that we
***** (Next page)
think of
grandmother.
So you are therefore
the central character
of a film that has
for title ‘’the storyteller of
dream.’’
ex. : 8 Draw the feeling
that you are
experiencing (- with charcoal.)
* Is it a
positive or negative
feeling?
***** (Next page)
* The vision that
this feeling is giving you
is it concrete or
abstract?
* What title may agree
with the picture that you
have done?
* If the subject interest
you, you can rework it
in colour.
PAGE 242
* Do you prefer this subject
in black and white or
in colour?
***** (Next page)
3.
* Think about the music
* What is the music
you prefer?
* Why do you prefer
this music?
* Imagine that you
are a composer of
great talent.
You sit down at the
piano and the music
that you prefer
***** (Next page)
streams from your fingers
like from a source,
effortlessly and you
play and you play
until you
feel like if you
are in a dream.
In your dreams
you get up,
you slowly walk
a few steps.
You are in a
garden, you
sit in the shade
PAGE 243
***** (Next page)
and you sleep a
little.
* Draw the colours
of this dream.
* Titrate.
* Repeat this topic
with charcoal
***** (Next page)
4.
You have a group of
friends and
acquaintances; you
meet to
talk, to play
cards, to eat and
to draw.
One of your companions
appears to integrate
herself with difficulty
into the group.
At moments she
plays on your nerves,
***** (Next page)
other times you
fell pity for her, she
always seems to
take life by the
wrong end.
PAGE 244
One day, the painting
professor is absent
and you are asked
replaced him.
You decide to
take the opportunity to
bring this badly adapted
person to draw things,
things that according
***** (Next page)
to you could
free her and in sorts
make her feel
better after
letting off steam in her
painting, hoping that after
she will maybe become a
a more agreeable
companion.
ex. : Imagine the paintings
that your companion
can paint
to free herself and
***** (Next page)
do them.
* Add titles
(Make at least
one colour painting
and one charcoal
drawing)
• After this paint
PAGE 245
the painting full of serenity
that she will be able
to imagine when
she will feel good
in her skin and
***** (Next page)
sociable.
* Titrate.
***** (Next page)
5.
To your twenty year old
grandson that is looking
for himself and is in revolt,
asking himself what is
true love,
you want to draw
a pacifying
picture.
* Titrate.
* Do you prefer
colour or
charcoal? Choose.
***** (Next page)
6.
* What do you think
of painting?
* It is said that painting
is a language.
PAGE 246
* You have received
a contract, you are
requested to
make three large
panels four feet
by eight feet,
to decorate the
entry hall of a new
cultural center for
***** (Next page)
the golden age.
You have all the
help you
need to
execute these large
panels.
You just have
to execute
clear drafts that
your apprentices
will only have to
enlarge to make
large patterns that
they will then copy
***** (Next page)
on the wall.
Now, make lines
and clear forms
and well separated
colours one from another
so that we can
easily cut
your pictures in
pieces as
a ‘’puzzle’’ to
copy them on the wall.
The subject that
***** (Next)
was ordered from you
is the following:
''All the arts are
languages. A
panel illustrates the
language of painting.
Another, the
language of
music composition.
Finally the last one
that will be in the middle
represent the language
of life.''
***** (Next page)
Note: use gouache
where you
want colour
and if you want,
you can draw
the contour of your forms
in dark so that
they will be well highlighted
for your
apprentices to cut up.
***** (Next page)
PAGE 248
7.
The architects that
commissioned you are
very satisfied with the
three panels of the
golden age
cultural Center.
So they commission you
for another
contract:
The playroom of
a new children’s garden
in a large
rectangular room.
As we trust
you, they ask you
***** (Next page)
for your idea for the
decoration and the
theme to choose
for two large
panels to put
on the back wall;
the side walls are
full of large
windows overlooking
a beautiful park and
the front wall
is back to the lobby
with on each side
of the door,
two large
aquariums.
***** (Next page)
PAGE 249
7. A.
A little charcoal exercise:
draw water,
its movement and
its shadows.
7. B.
In gouache:
draw the sea seen
for underwater.
***** (Next page)
8.
How do you feel
today?
Express it with a
colour.
Give it a title.
***** (Next page)
9.
It is a day
that you are bored.
What do we think about
when we are bored?
Express this with
a charcoal play
of lines.
***** (Next page)
10.
The days when we
feels the most
PAGE 250
happy, what
are we thinking about?
And how do
We feel?
Express it
with a bold
picture and
without hesitation!
Titrate.
***** (Next page)
11. A.
(M) for Monique.
I am 33 years old.
I imagine
life just like in my
experience and more
than fifty years
for me, is
almost unimaginable.
Life more than
fifty years ago,
is almost the
beginning of the world
no?
I make you,
laugh, you find me
***** (Next page)
very childish.
Kidding apart,
paint for me life
as it was
in those years
PAGE 251
that I have not
know and of which
I will not know anything
if you do not
show it to me.
11. B.
So,
when you were
***** (Next page)
thirty-three years old,
what were you thinking about?
* Paint how you
felt then.
11. C.
Finally,
when you were a
child, what kind of
little girl
were you?
* Translate into pictures
what you're
***** (Next page)
world was at that time.
Happy holidays.
Keep everything.
note your ideas.
keep your tests.
we will look
at them
PAGE 252
next fall.
I love you a lot.
Have a good Summer X X X
Monique
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1040) (1983)
***** (A writing in a notebook.) (1983)
Quest. Why do you believe
that your art
always develops
outside of all
prevailing currents
of the 60s?
Answer :''I am not able to
follow the philosophy
of others.
The world that
I EXERCISE
is mine.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1045) (1983)
***** (From a letter to a friend.)
''...but to me, no; now, at this stage
of my life, I am really turning away,
‘’like that’’ from the ''family-maya-of-the-world'' to continue,
but this time without hesitation, without remorse and
PAGE 253
8
without regrets especially seen the meaning of life,
of meditation and what we might call ''my work''.
You see, it is at the bottom of my heart, I have
always felt like ... totally ‘’devoted to’’
and I am well aware that this is not
the same for everyone.
It would seem that many people put up with life
and organize their time, their leisure, their desires
and their money ‘’while waiting’’ ... to die.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1064) (1983)
***** (From a letter written to her father.)
''…I fight for my ideas
that God and the idea
that people have of God, ‘’is not
the same thing’’
that the ‘’creative work’’ of Marx
and Marxism, ‘’it is not at all
the same thing’’
5
- And besides, if Marx was still alive
today
he would certainly
not be a ''Marxist'' BECAUSE HE IS
A MATERILIST (1)
(1) in another letter I'll ‘’brief’’ you on this word: MATERIALISIM, because
you lack a ''little'' something in your ‘’education’’ to truly understand what
''materialism'' is...
... but you do not really lack very much; only some brief verbal explanations,
because
PAGE 254
intuitively you ‘’feel’’ the difference that separates it from Marxism;
I was able to realize that many times in our past ‘’conversations’’.
- But Marx is not only a ''creator''
he also is personally committed
with his advice and support in
active politics of his time
And if Marx had been here at
the time of your youth, he would have
PERSONALLY KNOWN
Jimmy Offa and would have written to him
‘’go for it, guy, go for it’’ because
Marx always believed that ''it was
worth it to try''
‘’in the smallest things’’ as
in the largest and that any
questions that come to your mind deserves
that it be said out loud,
even if you are ‘’hated’’ for it
and EVEN IF YOU ARE LAUGH AT
for it.
- But if Marx were alive today
he would add: ESPECIALLY issues
about SMALLER THINGS,
WE SHOULD ALWAYS SAY THEM
6
WITH A VERY LOUD VOICE
EVEN if there is no answer
EVEN if: we do not know why
‘’we think that’’!
because Marx was not a ''chief of
a political party '' but a
''creator'' of thoughts, of philosophy
and of SOCIAL
ECONOMY.
PAGE 255
And all ''creators'' of ‘’all’’
areas ''gain experience
over time'', because
they ‘’only look’’ at society and
everyone around them, ''evolve''
in regard to the past towards the future.
And ‘’all’’ creative-genuine
take care for their works
and COMPLET them
continually throughout their life and hope
that those who follow
will do as much; because ‘’the true creators''
KNOW that
it is with ''ideas'' that they see
7
life, the world, the universe,
the feelings and actions of
humans, that they write
or paint or compose
their ''works''.
Unfortunately as always
‘’those how follow’’ are like
everyone else:
- they prefer love
to the person that
they love.
- the love more their ‘’little girl’’
that the young
woman she really is.
- they prefer the idea
that they make of themselves
or what was their father and
PAGE 256
their mother than
what is in fact the person
which is named
their father or their mother.
- they prefer their
''Creators'' that are only
fallible human beings
like everyone else
to their ''WORKS''
8
EXCEPT that the ‘’true creators’’
knowing that we are all
fallible, trying as best as
they may, rechecking constantly
and re-correcting their
positions
as often as necessary and as
long as they have the chance to live,
EXCEPT: yes, the ‘’true creators’’ try
to ‘’divide themselves in
two’’ and not to divide their
life. Why? Because they
put in their ''works'' that
which appears to them as
being clearly ‘’the best of themselves’’;
to try to
compose a work ''WHICH
SANDS UP'' keeping in
themselves as much as possible, their
uncertainties, their doubts, their
resentments and their useless hatreds,
those that are only
psychological; BECAUSE.
BECAUSE, I repeat it the ‘’true creators’’
are only
PAGE 257
9
‘’ass-holes'' like everyone ells,
that they only know as much as
anyone and that: to ‘’make for oneself
an emotional and personal life
THAT TRULY HOLS TOGETHER, without
lies and without hidden things and without
rejections and without small betrayals
THAT IS NOT A ‘’SLAM-DUNK’’’’.
it is not easy ... and those
that arrive at this, need
a ‘’lot’’ of intelligence,
guts,
understanding, of resistance
and courage ‘’and this
is not quite enough’’...
and IS ALSOW NEEDED;
luck
and MUCH, MUCH
favourable ‘’haphazardness’’!’’
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1088) (November 21, 1983)
***** (From a text.)
‘’... 1. Me, the drop-out artist
2. I wrote a book (Culture)
3. which is an ESSAY (theoretical)
4. dealing with power, leadership and identity
5. I was an extremely prolific artist. I could not see a single point that
was worth the trouble to put into words on art or a form of discourse
or another except when I was
PAGE 258
telling a joke
A. Art still exists because I am doing it
B. ART is not dying because I had a passion for it and it still does as much for
the youngest that arrive
C. Everything would suggest that to the contrary of studies on the subject,
proletarian art exists because the proletariat is supposed to be contained in
the people and that I exist, I have an aesthetical production that is ''apparently''
out of my century ,
There is no less colonized than me, I understand all the ass-holes of all countries
and they understand me even when we do not know our mutual ‘’languages’’,
and that I am the people were what I speak is neither a language, nor even a
dialect, nor a jargon even, because for me the people, even I do not understand
the meaning of what I say when I speaks, nor what I do when I live, not more by
creating than lounging.
And who would not admit anything as long as it serves to understand anything,
I am not prepared to conclude on the possibility of schizophrenia.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1093) (November 27, 1983)
***** (From a text.)
1
‘’... nov. 27, 83
Ref. Annex to the black notebooks
My text (1)
(1) whether it be in the form of an essay, poetical or theoretical.
... it is about art vs. text (1)
... about the group Tel Quel (for example) that is ‘’only’’ literature (3),
in any sense that the word (2) literature is used.
(1) it is a question here of the concept of ''literature'' in writing versus the
concept of ‘’art’’ in writing: and have the same concept of ''art''
always took exactly in the same sense (i.e.: the concept of art) may its
product be
. a literary text
. a text signed by computer
PAGE 259
. an object of plastic art
. an auditory production, music or other.
----------
nov. 28, 83
(3) ''literature'':
Ref. Picasso in the Objective eye of Malraux.
words, words, recovery attempted after the fact when the ‘’body of the work’’ ¸
is there (there, all warm and forever). It is not the body which first flees the
''love-work'', it is the feelings - the painter, the ideas remain accessible and
outpouring within the ‘’group’’.
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1113) (December 8, 1983)
***** (From a text.)
‘’...b) With no apparent connection to anything, I recently said thoughtfully after
an inner reflection
about dance and sculpture - painting-of-a-message, from the point of view of
questions relating to art and its purpose or ''versus''
art and the art object in the arts without ''objects'' (e.g. music or in between
the two as dance that is its permanent object and as music that ''dissipated''
as waves; but dance is visual as visual art.
And why all this?
Because the artist chooses to ‘’incarnate’’ his representation of nature,
rather than transcending it.''
---------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1182) (January 10, 1984)
***** (From a text.)
‘’...As for me, I ‘’grew up’’ of course, ‘’but’’ my view of the world has
not changed substantially; ''God as my only friend'' or Nature as a school
or science as a passion or art
PAGE 260
as an asceticism ... between these designations, there is ''no great quarrel of ideas’’ .’’
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1237) (1984)
***** (Letter to a friend and collaborator on a project of art made in the context of
obtaining a certificate in art for Marie-Claire at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
A certificate that she obtained with the notation ''A +''. I transcribed this letter in its
entirety because Monique ''explained'' herself: What she has lived, what she is living,
her worldview, her vision of art. It is an important text considering that it was written
during the period (1983 to 1986) where Monique reconsiders her entire life and
develops a new orientation: The Sacred Art, Secular Sacred Art (The Secular
Sacred Art was elaborated by Monique in response to the ‘’loss of meaning’’
in society in general.) she said: ''Even outside beliefs and Faith people must
identify what is ''Sacred'' for them, what they find is of the utmost importance
to be able to guide themselves, stop being confused, find the true meaning of life.''
1
December 21, 1984
Dear Marie-Claire
Feminism?
Holly Burgess, a friend from the
Women's Inter Art Center
that I mentioned to you, said in the 70s, that
this Thought had been a School for us
that had taught us that we had
been educated to hate our
sister, to see her as a
rival. It mattered little to me
at the time. From my American life, I
mainly brought back the deep feeling
than we were, how ...
do you say that ... ‘’incited’’
PAGE 261
... no, ''CONDITIONED
TO ACT'' ‘’unhappy and in solidarity’’
by the fact of family traditions and the ''environment''
and not of the human condition as such,
and not of our own personality or of
an individual ‘’interior fatality’’ as
Freudianism wanted to convince us.
2
But the ‘’bonds of love’’, which I
began to free myself by parodying
and caricaturing in 1980 my own
life through creation involving
a pile of ‘’proverbs and monologues
by the saint eldest’’ the
central theme was ''love is the last thing
I need from now until the end of
my life'',
because the ‘’links of torments’’ that
going under the name ‘’love’’
carting everything together
and monstrously intricate (1) familiarity
of violence, (2) promiscuity of
silence and (3) the coldness of Puritanism
left me passively
obsessed by the paralysing fear of
being suspected and the disturbing feeling
of being transparent, within the grasp of all claws
and without a secret and personal soul..
3
I do not doubt my potential, but
it always seems to me that at most
my ‘’efforts’’; will they grant me the recognition
of ''talent''... it always seems to me
that the greater my talent, lesser
are my chances to gain some
PAGE 262
personal value for anyone.
This is what has made of me the ‘’right
of primogeniture’’: having been only the ''persona''
of the mother, the Image-Tool of someone
else, I have never discovered
that maybe I could have also had
‘’personal’’ friends and enemies.
The dark humour that I invented
to be able to say... I was going to
say: what was not within my ‘’duties’’
... I have been nothing but a function...
White or black humour, if it relieved me
of the ‘’obligation’’ to be unhappy to
be normal has never helped me
4
to brake the ‘’necessity’’, of loneliness.
I would change the place of solitude;
I would change the official reasons
like all subservient social groups
I have observed over the years.
Women? I do not know.
I've never been able to observe them with
the capacity of my intellect, as the
powerlessness that I
have to see myself, that I have been fighting
unsuccessfully for years.
Humour for me was a bravado that brought me
to ‘’make affection’’
for example a ‘’class characteristic’’
whose solidarity enjoined me
to beware: ''affection?
we never had any at home and
we never missed it'' I had made of it
a weakness of the rich and idle.
The ‘’dramatic and formal’’ results of this art
was very funny, but I measure
today how pathetic it was… the pathetic
PAGE 263
of my own life that these parodies
5
were hiding from me.
The ''working people'' that I always
Fiercely defended against ‘’the need’’ for experience
And manipulation ‘’of intellectual’’,
these people who touched me,
which paid work occupied their whole
lives and preoccupations, that I
believed reduced to SOCIAL AND
POLITIC silence by ‘’necessity’’ and to
SPIRITUAL SILENCE by ignorance;
these dear people also, I have completely
mistaken myself on the meaning of its
personality. ITS SILENCE IS A
CHOICE. Its absence is an appeasement.
It is not a consumer
informed or not, it is philosophically
and metaphysically materialist.
6
I wonder how I could have so many
years continued to find so natural to
devote myself to the other without ever
considering the anonymity of what we
call ''other''. Yet I knew
that ''the average man'' of statistics
does not exist. Yet I knew and
I ‘’devoted’’ myself a lot to
make it clear to my working colleagues
of the International Data Bank
in 1972 that the ''Future Trends''
and the: ‘’if the trend continues’’ of the Club
de Rome had no reality outside the
regulatory mechanisms of nature, and
that the ''human mammal'' is part of
PAGE 264
natural ecology, that the concrete building
are as ''natural'' as the sheaves of wheat,
so poetic today, were
devil herbs of the ''Progress'' of
another time. And when Marshall McLuhan
gave me exactly the ‘’words to say it''
with his ‘’theory of the retro visor’’, I exulted in
recognition.
You can see that I knew and that I could
Many things BUT I
7
have never been able to get out of the moral
misery of powerlessness!
The keyword is: INVISIBILITY
Feeling experienced day and night, year after
years, what ever I do.
It is wile living this unnameable anxiety attack
that threw me into
‘’complete’’ silence18 months that I
started to realize something.
I say, ''complete'' silence because this is
the first time I've lived, ''days and
days'' in ''despair''.
In All the
other acute attacks of silence
that marked my life as the lights
at the corner of the streets that abruptly stopped
me career and success above all, all
emerging success ‘’since I am 14 years old’’ ho! ho!
the beautiful Freudian slip ...it has been 23 years that I'm 14!
And so in all these depressions
I am never alone, I was ‘’kept’’
by hope ...
This time it was unspeakable, I had
No hope
PAGE 265
8
past the panic or rather through everything,
beyond the physical pain from head to foot
that I felt a hysterical fear of ''feeling'',
the only ideas that passed through my mind,
was an inventory of knowledge ...
... I could not help being
surprise despite my fear and my confusion ...
while not one single human being
could do anything for me
because that's as much as I had lost the will
to live, as much I had lost all feeling,
interest and curiosity towards anyone.
I was nothing, the experience was
new: the inevitability of death and
dissolution alone, awoke in me some
interest ... before dying, since
so I consented, the curiosity which occupied me
in such a ''moment'' was to be
Alone and Free before the Absolute just ''to see''!
Yet the acute sense of my total moral solitude
continued to totally panic
my body ...
But it is at this moment of a thousand deaths that I
9
realized the value in my mind,
of the objective existence of intelligence
that I had developed in parallel to
the moral solitude of all my life,
of the indestructibility in me of perception
and appreciation of beauty. Even if
destroyed and exhausted by so many disappointments,
feeling that I was abandoning life, I continued
to experience the Beauty of the
World! !
I was like in a state of shock,
PAGE 266
I lived for weeks in this strange
contradiction, frozen there, a mass of
animal suffering and pain. Nothing was
happening. I tried to transpose the physical
stoicism that I had always had into
psychological stoicism to at least
stop the harm to my pulse of my
uncontrollable bursts of panic. I was especially
afraid of heart failure. Because of
the idea that on top of never having
really managed to ‘’participate in my
10
own life’’, I may even be robbed
of living calmly my own death
revolted me against the nature of
reality.
It is by writing it to you that I realize
that this was happening as much as now…
at the beginning I doubted
especially of reality ... I was struggling
especially not to lose my mind
and only in my ‘’spare time’’,
not to lose the body.
It is after a ‘’certain time’’ that I began
to revolt myself about feeling so physically
overwhelmed than I
felt that I did not even have the assurance to
realized of when I was
dying: ''that'' I was going to die.
I realize now how often
in my childhood I was afraid that I
would be killed ''inadvertently''. It is not that
my mother beat me that bothered me,
11
it is the ‘’dangerous’’ side of these
PAGE 267
games that did so. That's what scared me,
for me and also for you.
I saw no harm in the fact that
mothers beat their children a little,
it was the ''fashion'', it was part of the
ways and customs; it was our way of
life. This demonstrated that we
were genetically stronger than
the other social classes who
are forced to seek treatment for
the slightest scratch. I always
experienced the greatest pride in belonging
to the strongest group of society and the best
adapted to survive. That’s what was
my ‘’official’’ social views
until now.
I was also quite proud
being a woman, by having by
my mother, had the opportunity to prove to myself
that women are as strong as
men. For centuries
12
men had been making a reputation
for themselves in the world by fitting
on street corners. The opportunities
for women to demonstrate their courage,
their strength, their courage and endurance are
not many,
we were not allowed to
fight, not even in ‘’honourable duels’’
but at least the two of us, thanks
to ourselves, we have had the opportunity
to proof that if others
are ‘’wimps’’, that
society claims that women are, that
excludes the two of us! It is
still an advantage,
PAGE 268
other women have so many problems
with this and it shows:
they cannot assert their value
without rejecting the sartorial elegance
and this is only one example
out of a thousand.
13
The elegance and delicacy of your femininity
have always been proverbial, as mine,
even in ‘’working blues’’:
is a question of physical behaviour,
of body language, of assuming oneself.
This while I was often very scared of
''learning' 'that one of us
had been killed ‘’by accident’’, in the
course of a DEMONSTRATION…
As you can see I was not particularly
pre-disposed to become aware of things
at the level where we meet
at last...
When I realized that in the crisis
that I was living, without understanding why,
this ‘’inventory of knowledge’’
which made more and more pass before
my eyes all the ‘’works’’ that humanity
had produced and accumulated
through the ages, though at that moment
I only felt ‘’the Absurd, the Illusion of Reality’’,
14
gradually I was forced,
after several months,
to note that ''the sky was not falling
on my head.''
Let me explain:
What was passing in my head in
PAGE 269
parallel of the ‘’anxiety crisis’’, continued
streaming...
Two categories of knowledge
were taking form. On one hand the Mystique
evolution of humans since
Abraham, who succumbed to a
inspiration to the point of acting on it
although he did not have the multiple
evidence of the organizational effectiveness
of religions and religious ideas
that we have at our disposal
today, going through the
pre-Socratics saga, inventing the infinite
that we do not see to be able to better define
the indefinite that one sees before each step
to get to us, the contemporaries
15
who will ‘’dare’’ premeditate
and organize our own awareness.
On one side there was always streaming in
my head ''documentaries' on this
aspects of our behaviour when we
get into the act of active research without
the guarantee of discovery. And I admired us:
I thought we had ''guts''.
On the other hand, the stream of images
showed me all our art ''objects'',
from ancient times until
our century. In each ''object'' I
saw the ''artist'' (known or anonymous,
conscious or unconscious of his approach). But
in addition to the psychological ''relationship''
that I already knew between
all creators at the level of the ‘’attitude towards
the object of interest’’, of the reaction
PAGE 270
to the Other, even when that other
it oneself, as it is often the case in
the last century; in addition
to ''feeling'' in the result of the
16
accomplished work, ‘’what’’ forced them
all to act; this time, I was
struck by the ''EFFECTIVENESS'' of the
clearly ''artistic'' approach from the point
of view of the
development of science and
history of ideas.
In the mystical evolution
of our species I saw
the approach of ‘’the loving gaze
on the world as a tool of
knowledge’’.
In the presence of art in the
middle of the evolution of the species,
I discovered ''mimicry'' of
the ‘’known’’, as the ''experienced'', as a
tool of knowledge.
17
Do not be surprised of my course
it has always been mine, only
I did not speak about it… except
with people I did not
know ... that is why like
Prevert: ''I say you to everyone
I love, even if I do not know
them''... I hope to be able to sing the
rest of the poem where he says: ''I say
you to all those who love each other, even
PAGE 271
if I do not know them ...''
it was my intention but in the universe
were I drag myself, I personally have rarely
seen people who loved each other ...
once in Mexico ... a comrade
and his father looking at each other
with tenderness of love ... it
impressed a lot...
And all, I have just seen
that without really knowing each other,
we have loved each other since
a long time… ‘’to care’’ ...
18
You see, Art, it has always
‘’worked in my life’’ as a
asceticism, whether it be in the ‘’practise’’
of creating or whether it be in
the ''practice'' of meditation or
reflection on Art.
And still, every day the mystic
‘’documentaries’’, I felt them like a
rejuvenation; they called me back
to myself; they especially
called me back to the real of Reality
and soothed my panic.
But in fact it was not entirely
done in that order. I realize it
in writing it. The mystic documentaries
begun at the
start, I could not stop them,
but at this stage they were indistinguishable
from Art
and they did not calm me at all.
19
It is the images of art that
PAGE 272
at first began to take
more and more space in the
science ‘’documentary’’ as a
first step.
Then all the ''inventories'' of images
and ideas, the tenacity of my feeling
the dazzling Beauty of the
World began to attract my attention.
Do not forget that at that stage,
I was still fully engulfed by
physical pain, a sadness, a
profound and global sadness, the anguish
in front of the loss of meaning and panic
facing the loss of Reality.
I was looking and looking, without stop
to find out what I had;
something like that, so sharp,
20
intense and especially so total, on all
fronts at the same time, had never
happened to me in my life. Let's say I did not
have any documentation of such ...
advents. I was totally
''out of it'', as I told you last week,
for several weeks
I could not even notice that
there was something
‘’Psycho’’ in this ‘’somatic’’ - then,
even though I checked as much as I could.
Until recently, of all the explanations
the one that remained the most plausible is that
everything was perhaps caused by my
medical ignorance that would have made me
''paranoid'' since 18 months before a
acute asthma attack of around 36 hours,
caused by the actually very
PAGE 273
great quantities of dust in which I was living
since a dozen days (symbolism: this dust
came from the work begun by those who
I had sold my ‘’house’’ to, and they were renovating
21
the first floor below, just below my bedroom,
to make for ‘’themselves’’, a store, destroying what I had
constructed earlier, with love, to make for myself
a studio... my studio was going up in dust, I was breathing
its ‘’ashes’’ and was choking ... I was dying
(symbolically the ''worst'' was happening,
what I had always feared the most: I was losing my studio
‘’by accident’’ because I would have never sold this
studio, the first financial success-possession of
my life, had it not been for the economic crisis,
which forced me to sell my house not
‘’to lose everything’’...I think of childhood and
I believe that by saving ''only'' our physical life, we do
not necessarily succeed in surviving the ‘’attack’’...)
It has been only a few days,
with our conversations, and the ''documentation''
that I received from Dr. Michel and that he has confirmed,
I feel that what I had was not a
purely physical disease. And the funny thing
is that it seems enough to free me of
the panic and the discouragement. This
also sufficient to restore my combativeness… and my
writing.
22
It is for this reason that I am writing to you this new
‘’text’’; I feel that this is not the time
for me to dwell on the theme of the
mother, or of the condition of women, or anything,
nothing else except and specially, love, friendship,
PAGE 274
affection, thoughts, etc. ... all that
leads me to only two things… because
I feel I can finally
catch two birds with one stone that are essential for my
life and my survival ... because it seems that
these two things at last want to come together
and be born together.
It has to do with everything that touches the feeling
of Beauty and Art on one part and all
that touches the ''dirty business'' of the PERSONA
on the other part.
So in this ‘’mess of confusion’’ I
began to be amazed to have the ''heart'' to
let myself be dazzled and subjugated by
‘’a question of details’’ such as the
Beauty of the World and the sense of beauty.
23
The Beauty that I perceived seemed to me to be
''good'', of an endless delight even if I had to
think to abandon myself completely to it.
But at that time I was not in the mood to ''throw''
myself into ''Nirvana''; in fact I would
have been incapable of it.
Despite all ''prescribed drugs'', I spent
weeks without being able to sleep more than
4-5 to 10-12 minutes in a row: it was Robert
that ‘’kept’’ me and I wanted this very much,
I do not yet know exactly why.
I was a crazed beast.
In the range of the priority of values,
the Beauty of the World seemed to me ‘’EXTREMELY’’
secondary compared to
the questions of ''life and death'',
questions that I was sure that I was
confronting... and I also think
PAGE 275
today that it was probably
true ...
But I must tell you however that
24
I am considering seriously that these
''three'' questions are perhaps not as
DISTANT as I thought ...
Besides Maslow had his pyramid of
needs, as well as Mc Gregoir,
were left with their arms dangling
squirming before the riddle of
‘’motivation’’ ... everything that lives is
''motivated'' beyond the
questions of good, bad, of habits,
of strength, of resignation, etc. ...
finally, the ''subjects'' of amateurs of mechanics
and systems.
Then gradually, it is the notion of
Beauty itself has distinguished itself from
Art, as much as of Science
and mysticism.
It is at this phase that I
25
noticed that ''the sky was not falling
on my head''... that is to say ...
At that time that was what I called
''loosing consciousness'', to die for
real or not. It seemed to me to be equal.
The doctors might have been able to
treat me but ‘’the interruption of
something’’…would have been psychologically
irreparable for me. I felt it
and thought it that way. I felt that
if this would happen ... I was going to say ''again'',
even if they saved me…’’again’’, I would
choose to commit suicide rather than
...? ? ? to relive ''that''…it is
probably my car accident
at age 25, that interrupted
a brand new psychoanalysis (3 months)
which began to take ''form'',
in which I was ‘’spoken’’ to about
life, people, of the family in
aspects that touched me
26
very little.
I also ‘’re looked’’ at this point of
psychological analysis last weekend
and I have really
reached the conclusion
that not only that it does not ‘’touch’’ but,
let me say it in jest: ''There is nothing
to do for Freudianism and Freudians
and it is too late for that poor devil Freud
also!''
But I felt that I was
getting rid of something
that was leaving (me) an open field
to art.
It was not very articulated
then, of course, but
I think that as
I saw what interested
those interested in ''other''
and seeing that ''I was not missing anything'',
I was finally going to go forward, without regret and
27
without guilt,
without ulterior motives, finally in
PAGE 277
my painting. Quite simply,
shrugging my shoulders saying about
myself ''Happiness to the brainless,
the Kingdom is theirs.''
Then there was the accident, the
cerebral concussion, the amnesia, to
which I had so much trouble adapting,
especially after it was gone.
‘’Having been amnesic’’! ! I thought
that a person could not look anyone
in the face after that.
Besides, if I write so much at this
time rather than drawing,
producing artistically, and that I feel
that I have the devil by the tail with
holy motivation that has finally
come back to me, I feel that writing at
this time is the same thing as if
I was painting. I do not ''feel''
28
myself painting…for the same ...
reason that I write so much these
days ... I would rather sculpt,
that other art, sculpture, that,
like writing: that I could do
‘’even blind’’...
It is because alongside the ''thing''
of amnesia, the same cerebral commotion
had affected my sight.
But I found this ‘’a lot’’
less serious! I simply took my
dispositions.
In case it did not come
back sufficiently: I
started writing again, what I had
abandoned as a teenager for painting,
it is then that I started again to compose
PAGE 278
a little music, took up dancing again,
finally all that can be equivalent
29
in case I could not see well again.
Moreover, it is also why
I started working with
stained glass craftsmen. At first when
I met Robert, he knew: my vision had
greatly improved, technically
my two eyes FOCUSSED
with sufficient ‘’reliability’’ for
me to have risked to learn how to
drive a vehicle; but the
visual concentration caused me still
a lot of migraines when it
lasted a little too long. Moreover, it was
not yet fully reestablished for
small things like a '' pen
stroke'' that is to say, attach a
line with another.
I still would often miss.
So Robert and the studio where I
30
started working glass agreed to help me.
I made my ‘’drawings’’ roughly, with a
broad felt pen and the other would
make it finer for me and ‘’traced’’
the mounting jigs that requires much
more details. In exchange
I brought them my colours, my
composition lines and movement.
Everybody won.
I had to adapt myself to drawing with
closed forms, separable, that could be cut into
forms, as in fashion design that
PAGE 279
I had done when I was younger.
All this is past history, my sight is clearly
better now, I realize this by the fact
that the metal lace that I started
to produce about two
years ago ... just a little while before
than was triggered this important ‘’crisis’’
31
that we are talking about.
As for the ''benefit'' of
patterns and templates
in glass working, you saw yourself
what I did of them. More and
more, we cut the glass ‘’strait forward’’, without
an all ready made ‘’drawing’’ and the ''assembly'' is
done ‘’free hand’’ like any sculpture
that is not ''cast.''
And so there for the eyes and the advent of
the era of multi-media in my life.
But the amnesia, that, it was something else.
All the prejudices and fears of my environment
went to fight and collapse there in-that.
It makes me laugh because I know
it's tortured me for years and
years, and in fact I have not
thought about this for a
couple of years. All the questions
that where put to me in good or in bad,
today leaves me indifferent when I think about it
32
like water on a duck's back.
Maybe I was not so indifferent
18 months ago before my confrontation
... between the Absolute and the Relative ...
PAGE 280
hum! hum! ... yes it was that ...
I have not yet settled completely
on my feet, that is to say:
‘’reorganized’’; but as de facto
I know myself (- Freudian slip I wanted to write
''meaning'') Thus I know myself, clear, located… locatable
in any case, and totally FREE in
regard to these matters that for me have
fully reintegrated what I call
Nature, that is my friend and
my protection, backup.
I am perhaps not ''fully''
reintegrated in Nature ... but in any
case, I know the address.
33
That's what it meant for me when I said
''when the sky falls on our head''
... I found it ''hard'' even when we
survives.
Especially since I have never found
any recollection of the accident itself;
not even the slightest
nightmare: nothing.
The doctors concluded that
probably it was not ‘’neurologically’’
printed in my ‘’memory’’
... in me, yes ... (as a
feeling ...)
I ended up accepting the version of a car
accident, the whole world certainly
did not ‘’league itself’’ to lie to me.
But during the 14 months
of the ‘’critical’’ phase, as long as the faculty
of recollection did not actually restore itself
(it came back bit by bit and suddenly the rest
in one day, a few hours)
I lived my wounds like if ‘’this’’ time,
***** (Next : Image number 1976-015.)