1971-060

TEXTS ON ART : Image number 1971-060.
From page 119 to page 160.


PAGE 119

many resources ...
My desire, as in the past, is elaborated with
vehemence and passion. Passions, sudden stops,
foolish hopes,… remain. Will the maturity of the
forties temper this drive? I do not know.
The thirties bring coherence to my
aspirations.
Living is my passion of the hour.
The issue offers enough challenges
to fascinate and seduce my mind, but mainly
enough globality to raise my overall
emotional and psychological forces.

This new land-for-hunting, which I discovered
at age 25, I am exploring it in every direction.

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I reflect on it and develop it to the maximum
of my potential that I feel is increasing gradually
as time goes on.
I have lived most of my
thinking life alone and we can say
(the change is still fairly recent) the most
part of my life.
Speaking to people through art with a feed -
back
often delayed by several years, a
bit like talking to god ... i.e. without
him taking you in his arms to answer,
without ever having the evidence
that he will answer you one day ...
It is a form of language that gives you a
certain control over the expression-transmission,
but that does not guarantee the control
of the expression-communication.
It is at the heart of this dilemma that I
am struggling.
''Bah! One could have used his youth in a less inspiring way!''

PAGE 120

Nevertheless it is at this task that I am using
my blossoming maturity.
Reality is amazing!
They say that we would be creatures of perception.
In any case, it is sometimes startling to see the incredible
non-coincidence between what one feels and
what one is, between what one is and what we project,
between ... and ...

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Perhaps to thrive, we must all
be a bit of a mother to ourselves and
give ourselves birth, shape, structure and life.
For the past five years I am re-putting myself in the world
piece by piece.
I remember 5 years ago, 4 years, when Peter
helped me give my life to painting in every day
reality. I had to answer a million
questions about the details of each canvas
executed since years passed, going up to
the present. I was not always convinced of the usefulness,
or even sometimes of the meaning of this approach.
My first answer? I did not know how to
interpret this interrogation ... I was sometimes afraid that
it meant that Pierre did not like my painting.
Anyway at the beginning I was often getting carried away
at his insistence to the question: '' Look,
everything is there, it is clear, no!'' or ''But,
why do you not believe me when I tell you
that everything is on the canvas; if there is a place where I
never lied, it is in my pictures!''
Then I suddenly realized that an art of creation,
is a whole invented language and as
any other language so that it can be used to
transmit: it must be accompanied by
a translation and definition dictionary ...
This discovery revolutionized my life
as a painter. From a painting hermit, it made of me

PAGE 121

a living painter.

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After,
I laughed at myself and with myself of all
the daubers of history from the most brilliant
to less inspired shouting from all the rooftops that ‘’we
must at least explain ourselves before bellowing that we are
misunderstood in this vale of tears so cold for
the poor sensitive little souls of poets!!!''
Overnight, almost without transition,
I stopped being a complicated and hard to
understand painter. I was constantly amazed that it was sufficient
to explain a painting to someone, even a pure
stranger, and that he could spontaneously continue
on a wavelength that I could understand
very well myself.
But the biggest surprise, perhaps never came to me
by the ''pure strangers''...
At that time, Peter and I gave a lot of
conferences on my painting outside of
my immediate circle of acquaintances.
And then, after a while, myself
and almost all my new acquaintances
became familiar of the language, of the symbolic
and of the meaning of my painting.
It is then that the biggest surprise came.
My oldest friends, those who
where present at the creation of
these paintings, which very often knew enough
of the exterior detail to describe them
and even remember the time and place of
their creation, these old familiar friends had

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become almost the only ones in my surroundings
to have nothing to say about the exact meaning

PAGE 122

of any canvas ...
I was appalled!
This meant that for example Mireille Bédard
could have written my biography of a certain
time, if such a project would have been
limited to narrate and describe a series of events,
of gestures, of actions, of character traits.
Because concerning a certain era, the late
60, early 70, we saw each other EVERY day
and have shared and done a lot of things together.
And yet she would not have had ANYTHING to say
about my paintings that she had seen take shape
before her eyes, it would have been nothing else
than pure conjecture ... This meant that I had NEVER
said anything to her about this part of my life that corresponds
without contest to the greatest portion of
what I was really living then ...
A strange discovery.
Who have I been for all these people with whom?,
next to whom?, among whom I lived during those
years?
I know clearly what everyone was for me,
I know clearly what I felt most
of the time, at least for a huge portion
(compared to the average),
and all this, is my life course,
but I know that I might almost not

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even recognize myself if these same people were
to explain me to myself,
what they sometimes thought of me...
I crossed the world mainly watching.
For a long time talking seamed to me to be a simple
decoration of a distracting use without any particular
relation to the development of true human
relations.
I learned how to manipulate words to distract myself

PAGE 123

like others learn to play golf.
Words and constructions of spoken language
started to fascinate me consciously when I
started to learn Latin. Ideas and the constructions of ideas,
when I ‘’met’’ the philosophers… Thought
and the construction of communication? I do not know,
but it seems it is only when I met with
didactic psychoanalysis, 6 years ago.

Weird, is in it? Must see it to believe it, but
essentially, it’s really true.
Of course, it happened from time to time
for me to feel uncomfortable, like a feeling
of being unable to reach others ... but most of the
time I did not make a direct link with the importance
of the nature of verbal exchanges, and not even
with the feeling of pain and loneliness
that overcame me day and night…thinking about it
I believe it was perhaps more a sense of
abandonment than of solitude, yes, yes, because
I ignored for a very long time the feeling of solitude

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and for cause: I prefer working-creating
rather than living, so whenever I was alone,
I took the opportunity to abandon myself to my passion...
Note that the calculation, although unorthodox, was
not entirely stupid: while ‘’the world’’ was busy at
its favoured hobby that is killing each other, just
beside, I was amusing myself by recreating with pictures,
immortalizing the different flights of these passions as
I perceived them. And they believed that they were able to reach me
a little more by trying to involve me in one of these fights,
in fact, they were only actually adding a scene to this
long soap opera of the human condition as
perceived by a child-of-the century ...
at least that is what I was attempting to believe.
The most astonishing of the whole affair, is that it does

PAGE 124

not seem to be all this hullabaloo which was
the first origin of this pain that I had to carry
inside myself, like if it was normal, until the age
of 25 ...
It increasingly seems to me that before all
this affair, my heart sighed saying to itself: so
there, a misfortune never come alone, finally at
this point, whatever!
And it is precisely this ''point'' whose exact nature
still intrigued me.
Let us take a brake on psychoanalysis!
How exactly and why, that the fact is
that the spoken language did not appear

***** (Next page)

to me to be considered a particularly
critical invention at the level of experience as in
its relation to the development of human relations.
In addition to using it to speculate intellectually,
or for its musical and
dramatic sound value speaking inside shows,
song, theatre and poetry, I would say that
in the frame of my relationships with others,
I mainly used the spoken word in order
to distract or entertain when I felt the need to
communicate with someone in particular, since
I noticed very early the discomfort that
most people feel when confronted with the idea of
sitting together simply to exchange glances
or to watch something.
And perhaps also, from time to time in
a little more selfish way: when they would propose to me to
stay sitting there, watching something that did not interest me,
that I found boring, such as
television programs. Obviously everyone knows
by instincts that it would be unwelcome to find
in a living room, a person watching TV and
another person looking at the first watch TV.

PAGE 125

So in these cases, I talked and it made the
whole thing normally acceptable.

Obviously I attached ‘’relative’’ importance to
what I was saying. It still happens

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to me sometimes when I forget myself and it plays
ugly tricks. For surprisingly, this is not
always the case for the listener ...

So at 25 years old, the overall discovery of the real factors
of thought and the construction of communication.
Of course, we do not rebuild New York in a
day. And of course it is the factors of real thought
and relative thought that attracted me
first!
Then immediately after, its expression: for me,
the construction of communication by pictures,
hey, yes!
And it is only after having made the translation
into spoken language for the benefit of the man
I like (and felt little difficulty
to demand the satisfaction of that need
in a so unequivocal way, unlike most
people who had hitherto formed the circle
of my intimates and unlike myself by the way,
it is only after having done this translation
and after having been able to measure the dazzling
effectiveness on my peers, that
I really thought about starting a re-evaluation
of verbal communications!

I began to realize that I had made a most outrageous

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mistake, I had without a doubt,

PAGE 126

a very long time ago, MADE OF ONE SINGLE CASE,
THE RULE!
At least that's the explanation that I thought I could
give to making a mistake of that size: having
in the past, lived in situations where spoken language
had not the least effectiveness in
allowing two people to communicate,
I had simply deducted or
instead, I had not been required to deduct
that speech had to play an important role
in human communications.
(Having also learned from my teachers probably
I could recognize at the same time as in
education, a value to alternating monologues
between two people - for the pleasure of
observation, it is to be noted that to a rule, there
Was here also an exception; because there is a case
where I had sometimes the feeling that I was speaking for
a specific purpose and directly related to words and to
the sentences I uttered: when I was very
angry. But again, I did not expect any
precise reaction to the ideas directly contained in the words
employed. I rather would have expected, depending on the
circumstances, provoke a reaction to me or to the situation
concerned. And the exceptions
concerning to hearing someone talk to me, it was
when someone expressed to me his grief
well then, immediately I passed from the stage

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of just hearing to go to the stage of listening.
These two exceptions, if we accept the type of explanation
I have proposed for the statement ''of a single case,
a rule'', these two exceptions must probably then
be interpreted in concluding that they are the
only two examples where I personally found
in my youth, a certain effectiveness
of spoken language: when my parents were screaming,

PAGE 127

when my parents were crying - i.e. if they were screaming,
I tried not to listen, if I screamed
I sometimes produced some effect (an effect related or
not to what I was yelling) and when I cried,
they tried not to listen, if they cried,
I listened. So goes the alchemy of
psychological learning!)
Since I have revised my position on the
role and impact of spoken language, I am focusing
on completing my learning of this language.
But let me say that you will have to expect that it will,
for some time show that this
is for me ‘’a second language’’.
So for the moment I attach my attentiveness and concentration
to two points in particular. On one hand losing the habit
to use the spoken word as a simple
means of diversion. Secondly, making a habit of
encouraging dialogue with people. Losing a habit,
ok, conditioned reflexes; it requires much
vigilance. But acquiring a new habit,

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in this case, what especially complicates
things, is that I absolutely do not know how to
proceed! And if you think that
people will give me a hand!
Just think, at my age, for the majority of people,
To blabla in duo is as simple as putting
on socks. And just to say that I have always attach
so much importance to people and that technically
I have so little skill at this moment to foster their
chatting other than squarely questioning them. And
I feel so many things inside of me that I would like to
directly communicate with all the subjectivity
of spontaneous spoken language and that I have so
little success in!
And on top of that since I am aware

PAGE 128

that most people rely on dialogue
to amuse themselves together and understand each other,
hey, well, it also bothers me to remain in silence
and just look at someone!
Often a meeting starts out well for me
then suddenly after a couple of silences
where my partner did not immediately restarted
the conversation, I can't stand being so febrile
and I throw myself into the water and I begin to
tell him all sorts of things and
it relaxes me. I can usually start
thinking about something else or
observe him more freely as soon as I
feel that he took the bait of my distractive

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speech.
So there!
I explained all this very surgically
and with an air of tongue-in-cheek. Literary
writing lack of warmth compared to
painting. For their authors, at least!
Perhaps of course, have I less masterly in this...
In any case, to write such a text, one has to
be motivated, and believe that it can have a useful
purpose…
that's on one side,
on the other side, let us say that the tongue-in-cheek, which was
introduced (in terms of feeling), I do not know very well where along
the road, it probably came to moderate the vulnerability
in which this process puts met...''

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***** (Bio., Page: 746) (April 1978)

***** (From a letter addressed to friends in Jamaica. Monique informs them that
she is moving to Montreal and of the ‘’impact’’ this will have on her art. Note:
This is the original text in English that Monique wrote to her friends.)

...''And for me, I will be
right on the spot to CATCH every single chance that
can be grown for my painting.

For my painting I must say many things are going
on. Let us say that there are two parts in my work.
My painting in itself which can be considered as the main
fast piece and some drawings that I create from time to
time as a series of sketches on the same theme,
Like birds, children, lovers, old people and so on.
This second part is for my pleasure like an exercise
and certainly less important than the first part witch
represent more specifically what I feel, what I see
what I think of life.

***** (Next page)

Here in Montreal, it is too big to know everybody
personally like I do in Jamaica. So too sell your paintings
you really need to go trough a gallery of art.
Those of art gallery's are very Traditionalist and own
by older people who have their own vision of what
is beauty and what is not.

I went to almost all of them and bet what they
told me: they would like to expose my drawings
witch are ''cute'' but not my paintings
witch they boycott because my paintings represent
to well what I think and the way I see the
society and this reveal a critic of
that society that they share.

Let us say that what I paint is what I think and
what you think and what more and more
of the youth think either here than in Jamaica.

…Rasta vib...

PAGE 130

So I have decided to fight my way through them and
even against them if needed.
And other people, young people, people are
age will help me

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Those directors of gallery's said that a painter
as only to know how to draw beauty, that a painter
as not to think and show his own opinions and
positions on life and society.
for me, I believe that cultural liberty is
for everyone and that a fellow does not need
to be a rich doctor, or a minister or a director of
museum to decide what he loves and what he does
not love, what he believes and what he does not believe.
They tell me ''why don’t you switch from painting
to writing; Painting is not a matter of thinking, it
should be only a matter of beauty.'' I answered ''do you
mean that painting must be only decoration, like
nice curtains in a room?''
A few years ago, they were saying the same about
music and look the success of a Bob Marley in Kingston,
In New York, in Paris, in Montreal. What is the
meaning of this success? Bob Marley is not only making
good music, he also sings what he feels, what he thinks.
As for Perry. Even if he does not want it expressly, he sees

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things trough his camera and he feels it and
the final product, his film shows his reflection, his concern.
Every one who is not blind and ‘’deft’’ or half
dead reacts to the life in the generation.
So we won't let it go and we will continue to be
Simply but clearly our self.
And the number of people who understand
the meaning of my painting starts gradually
to increase.

PAGE 131

I send you a few pictures for now.

There is a big theatre here which is in
Quebec, like the Olympia in Paris, that means
that it has a great deal to do with the career of artists
here. His name is ‘’The Partiot’’. This theatre has two
buildings. One is downtown and the newest one witch
is in the North of the country in the mountains Laurentides
is celebrating his tenth anniversary this year.
They organized a festival of art, music, theatre, painting,
this summer starting the twenty fourth of June which is the National
Feast in Quebec. For five years this Patriot in the

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North is presenting painting exhibitions regularly.
But ten years ago, the Patriot downtown
presented his first art exhibition which my paintings.
So they have decided for this celebration of their anniversary
to introduce the first ten days of there
festival by presenting me again and alone to represent
the paintings in this festival.

The Patriot gallery is a good one who is not afraid
to let the people be and think freely, they
have always accepted all of my work.

Meanwhile Radio-Canada has invited me for the
end of may for a radio broadcasting of
half an hour. They want me to talk about my paintings,
Jamaica and the rastaferian movement! ! !...''

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***** (Bio., Page: 751) (May 31, 1978)

***** (The following is the press release (presentation and a writing by Monique)
that was distributed to the media at her exhibition at the Patriot in Ste-Agathe.)

PAGE 132

PRESS RELEASE

May 31, 1978
RE: MONIQUE JARRY’S EXPOSITION
DATE: June 23 to July 8
LOCATION: The Patriot in Ste-Agathe

A press conference organized to
present a season of artistic activities
under the aegis of the Patriot infinitely
better known by the journalistic colony
for its on stage presentations that for
plastic arts.
Monique Jarry; an artist already presented by the
Patriot, ten years ago.
Monique Jarry whose pictorial experience
goes back over 15 years originates concurrently
from social animation and
cultural movements, taking stances on
educational, political and philosophical,
environmental theatrical creations and
of writings that she sign’s: Monique Jarry
‘’Free’’ free-thinker
---------------

***** (This is the text that was given to the reporters and
exposed on one of the walls of the Patriot. You have already
read this text. I have reintroduced it here just to put this
exposition in its historical context. Thank you.)

The typical scenario of plastic art criticism in itself
usually takes place following two very limiting
models. Or they fall all over you with
minutely detailed physical descriptions of
the ‘’product and its making’’ to the point that we
comes to ask ourselves why these
''advertisements'' are not
FRAMED and presented as such to the
reader-consumer. Or a pseudo -
intellectualism coupled with a genuine
hermetism strongly keeps the
public at distance to the point that
the artist comes to realize that
elitism is not an honour but a
prison.
As an artist on what media should I count on to
have a contact between the public and me?

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It is rare that a painter is part of a press conference
in which the journalists met are essentially
journalists in the vast field of arts and entertainment.
I am delighted with this contact because painting
may well be ''among others things'' what art critics say
it is but it is ‘’ALSO’’ a LIVING element of culture
and society. Nobody would for example think of confining politics
in the writings of political scientist by excluding
public information in general. It must be the
same for painting in respect of the vast world of
arts and entertainment.
THERE IS A LOT MORE TO SEE IN PAINTING
that the mere recognition of a language,
of a shape, a movement, of colour, etc. ...
just like song for example, it is not
only rhythm, instrumentation, costumes,
etc.. who have made of a Charlebois, a Pauline
or a Raoul appreciated representatives and loved by
their public ...
just as a prestigious distribution
of great means, etc.. has never been enough
to
make out of a play or a movie,
an assured success ...

Do we know for example that our Quebec singing
is one of the most dynamic singing of
this era, it reflects our every day evolution,
in YOUR articles and interviews, you talk about
these singers, writers and composers, but ...
who testifies about the songs
themselves? And who will remain to testify
in fifty years when fashion will have
consumed and buried them? Painting REMAINS and its power
as a witness increases with time.

Do we realize that when someone cries out ''I
had a terrible FLASH last night while
dreaming'', it is rarely a paragraph of words
written in the space of sleep but a
FLASH IMAGE that at dawn we recount with
words, lack of anything better. ... The painter can transmit his
Flashes and dreams without intermediaries or translation.

Can we always describe in words
what one feels in reading the works of
courageous patriot, feminist, at the birth of
our child, at the one hundred eighty-third day of a
strike, at the advent of a new government

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at the moment of an orgasm particularly enjoyed,
... Painting can sometimes EXPRESS
the inexplicable substance
a feeling or CAPT the fugitive MOMENT
of an intangible reality.
Do we see that the painting may be the ready-to-wear
of expression for everyone? Go therefore and express yourself
by composing with a piano if you haven’t any
pre-requisite technique! ... or if you do not have a
piano ... The tip of a toe in the
smooth and moist sand of a beach, a tree branch
in a blanket of dead leaves in autumn,
a pencil on the wall opposite the telephone,
and mater captures and accept your message.
Painters are specialist transmitters of
messages: they even offer the SHOW to
the public. And this field is our
business, yours and mine.

Monique Jarry
painter
‘’Free’’ Free Thinker

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***** (Bio., Page: 803) (Start 1979)

***** (Written in early 1979)

(Letter written by Monique to a future painting student.)

what do you want to learn?



I will tell you what I WANT
but it is not my business
to want for you
I will say it anyway
And I will USE it

- ‘’Want as a ‘’projection’’ technique

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we will work together to: CONCEPTUALIZE a language
(See: tools
hearing-perceiving: Reserve)

I will talk to you to make you E-MOTIONAL, to make MOTIONAL your inner voice, that's all,
no more
you will have to be honest and determine yourself the quality and the rhythm at which
I will have to bombard you with picture-ideas so that the core of your unconscious explodes and
releases its energy, its vision of the world. You will freely choose to be pushed just a bit,
always a little bit more beyond yourself, to evolve.
You will voluntarily ask to be moved, to be de-stabilize as soon
as you feel that you are recovering your form and balance, because the life you are looking for is
movement. The creator is free and takes his totality in everything and everywhere,

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he cannot ignore that he lives, that he is a (his tool of existence)
human earth mammal; it is by being-participant
the most that he is the most. And ''life'' as defined in a ''scientific''
term if I can say, is movement. If you can not
fight them, join them. Creation occurs when is attained
the co-science of all our perceptions. This action,
adjustment of the focus, of computation, when it transcends
becomes the magma that the artist models. This action
of computing, demands from the human mammal a certain latitude,
a certain freedom of action, some ''time and space'' in terms
of what these concepts mean to us. To stay alive,
not to be warmed up, the work must seize the movement
when it ''moves''. And the only way for the creator to reunite the
conditions (double) necessary for the execution of his will (i.e. the time-space stability
needed to perform AND the immediacy needed to capture its
perception-prey ALIVE) is to marry-be the movement of life.

You can write, take notes, not if you write down what I say
but only if you specify what your thought are as you go along. For my thoughts,
my vision of the world does not help you regarding conceptualizing your own.
Nothing means anything in itself. There are no good and bad causes. There isn’t

PAGE 136

anything that is art in itself or is not in itself. You ‘’artists’’ or you
do not artists, so there.
Note: Howard ***** (one of her students) can draw the general feeling or the particular
object but of what, why, where, under what circumstances.
In what ambiance and WHY?

Each time we must return ‘’new’’ to the studio. As a hunter in the first hour of the first day
of the season (or the last)
You must find it in yourself on what, today, here and now, you could exercise ‘’YOUR WILL
of surpassing yourself’’.
I can only give you bits of wood and show you the river that leads to the sea; it is up to you to
decide how and if you will go to the sea.

***** (Next page)

- When you say that your drawing is finished, you choose it
to be complete ... is it true that it is complete? Is your choice
logical, congruent, free? right? Your choice
must become sharpened, and just as hard as a diamond. In the
meantime you must enlarge your wings, your means to make sure
AT LEAST that it is FREE and not subject to your abilities
(the limitation of your ability): I am stopping because I
do not know how I could say more and no, I am stopping because
I said so.

- I'll watch you work without apparently interfering, it
is to protect the freedom of your ACT of
creating - your freedom-power to act is your precious quality ...
like a new virility that you have to seduce,
attract and not judge, otherwise it will simply
slack. Creating is a faculty...
natural ... everyone approaches it early in his life ... the reception
or the result obtained or ... or ... will determine the self-confidence
of the subject later on ... creating is not a technique
it is a faculty, a method of approach to life,
the apprehension of life.
The fact of watching you work is my intervention
for I see you: see in. I will detect, find,
choose the suggestions that I will give you later,
the strategies that I'll find you to stimulate you
to action, the ''traps'' that I will make for you
to make you ‘’fall into meeting yourself’’.

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***** (Bio., Page: 806) (January 25, 1979)

***** (From a letter to a friend)

...''I'm alone and I am
weighing my life like I often do these
days... I am weighing art, time, friendship,
the customs of human mammals...
without saying anything, inside of me, I may
have never analysed as much these customs… and
I am weighing and I weigh like a passed artist that

***** (Next page)

put his thumb between him and his subject ...
‘’it’’ is weighing inside of me, I am like
a ‘’suspended judgment’’ in front of my own
life, during intermissions ...
Thus are men? Thus are women?
The way they act? Thus I reacted?
Thus is profiled what I am saying???
It is in this way that art affirms itself, conceptualizes itself,
justifies itself, moments by moment
in me ...
The ''world'' makes me weary. At the moment when
I understand it the most, at the moment when
where I'm probably, in all my
life, of all my inhibitions, of all
my affects the most and… freely and…disposed to,
frankly, to embrace it and grasp it
fully... at the moment where it escapes me
the least, its own reality seems to

PAGE 138

offer me only a bit of flesh to feed on
considering the appetite of the kind of winged-bear I am.
As a humans I probably have a bad
character. As a woman, no doubt I have
become unable to no longer require a
certain ethic. As an artist, I believe
that I am little by little
making of myself a human woman leader
by affirming more and more and constituting:
the supremacy of my world to invent
not only over but
as a daily reality.
Reality, its choice and its definition, is
a DECISION.
I am opening up to the world, I want it, I feel it
and I think I can.
And yet the reality chosen and commonly
preferred by the world weary me
I think ...
It probably does not seem to
displease me as such…: come to think of it, it is not
really any of my business what others
choose to do with their lives, right?
But it can still do more than
just not interested me: it can weary me.
It's just a bit of the feeling that emerges from
several of my ''dealings'' with another
since January (though it excluded
of course the old wolves inside of my menagerie
like you and André C. - Moreover
that's why it is to you that I can choose
to talk to)
Is this then to be ''sociable ''? I really
have been trying since early 1979. And I
say to myself that if yes: it is not worth the trouble.
Neither on the human level, nor in regard to the professional
objectives that I set for myself regarding
‘’neighbouring’’ enough with the world
to bring- to, to lodge my message.

PAGE 139

Let's say that I wanted to meet the world
in their own space again
in all moral availability and conscientiously
to assess something like
‘’the educational effectiveness’’ of this approach.
And now, in the course of observation, some analysis
stand out already clearly enough
to give me a glimpse that it would probably be
better to bring people here,
in my studio, in my world, myself and
in my way, i.e. meet them on my

***** (Next page)

turf.
The dialogue, at the level and on the mode
that I privilege will be more likely to
flourish.
So there, that was one of those out of context
reflections that I recently promised you
by phone. Is it intelligible?
I see and I live so many things and people
simultaneously ... and my approach can be
qualify as experimental
and controlled and yet global ...
I can see that I am engaged in
a kind of whole process of experimentation
and observation and analysis all combined
MANDATED by my highest life authority,
that we must realize that this
is the plenipotentiary engagement in the process of DECISION MAKING
and its ENFORCEMENT.

And I sniffed it more and more and I
use and will use it to obtain
the desired and viable reality-situation
NECESSARY.
I have ALL my time and yet my
time is NOT THE unlimited cosmic time.

PAGE 140

Then let us proceed, give birth, take the
means to; all are to be contemplated
for the ‘’coming into existence’’ of this so expected
offshoot...''

----------------------------------------

***** (Bio., Page: 831) (May 2, 1979)

***** (From a letter written to a friend.)

…This a bit where I think I’m at
this week. No more nonsense, finished
the racket, made stop the noise-of -the-
world, I do not hear any more the little
voice of life that speaks somewhere
inside of me
Thus I will go into retreat...
This is the hardest period: I have already put
the noise outside, but the little voice
has not come back yet... it always takes
some time when we frighten it...
... but it will work, it
always comes back... also when we begin to
want to write rather than talk, its
usually a good sign ...
... when it speaks, then creation springs,
sometimes thought of creation, sometimes art creating
creation... you can not choose… what ever it is
creating free’s, soothes, ANSWER,
it answers to the anguish of living, to the soul.
Retreat, to empty, silence the world,
throw out the noise and then wait alone
until the voice answers, it is the

5

only way, of course I know it
but it means: to create so much silence

PAGE 141

(and it happens often, very often
almost always, unfortunately, in extreme
loneliness), to create so much silence
that ALL the questions begin to
surround you, in you, to become
you and when you become so focused in
you and when you become so concentrated
that you become yourself a precise question, then,
only then the voice
begins to answer like a telex
that starts suddenly and begins to operate any
time, suddenly ... if the artist
is on duty at that time, he has
to note, note, note, whatever
comes out of there ... testify.

Right now I'm alone, the questions
only make pressure on me from all sides.
They dance around me like crazy, they are
confused and I do not yet discern any
clearly. They pressure me without
giving me any grasp yet. They oppress me
and I do not yet have a hold ...
this is the worst time. But in this situation, I hope

6

that I will keep in me enough
pressure (enough retreat, concentration,
silence, wisdom) for a stronger
and clear voice to spring up ... I am fed up of
mediocre exaltations, what well-being when
can be born strong, powerful and
just creation, like a successful orgasm ...
I have so often to stop or to
hold back because of other contingencies (social,
materiel, financial, etc ...) that calls me
with emergency ... since so long ...
and most importantly, always be careful
not to ‘’deflate’’ while waiting.

PAGE 142

Will I come through the wear, the constraints
and provocation of time?
Will I become a great artist?
Will I succeed to move forward with, against
and throughout everything, the soul and the talent that I
have built up to now towards the
''justifying'' work (ha! ha!)? ? ?
In the meantime, here, alone ... empty… desert
... The dumb questions of one million, those
to which no global answer exists, are
always the ones that come first, (crap): for
who? for what?

7

crap and re-crap,
for whom, for what? ! ! do
I know! I am not a philosopher,
I'm not god,
I'm just a simple artist!
Finally I must ‘’endure’’ with patience
(again that accursed word, it annoys me these
days)
We must always give the
time for the baby to be born in peace,
those of the mind, like those of
business, right?''

----------------------------------------

***** (Bio., Page: 848) (November 18, 1979)

***** (From a letter to a friend.)

''…Try to understand ... because I am trying very hard to tell you
what I thought and god! I really do not have the ‘’gift of the spoken word''
whatever many may think. This is probably
and very largely why I am a good painter.
This is the only way in which I have the feeling
that I am succeeding in expressing a bit of what I fell. But
to communicate with someone ... it does not help much
to only make pictures. And I know! I know! good god
I know ... I know it now ... and for some
time now ... believe me it is stupid to say but for a long

2

time ... ten years ... flush, it did not occur to me... I worked
day and night thinking that by working, releasing crumb by crumb,
step by step, year after year, to free the gesture, the line, the colour
of any self-censorship, we would find the heart. Thinking that by
seeing, by feeling every little line of the body, every little hollow, small curve
detail after detail, day after day, to take every little wrinkle in the depth of
the eyes of child, of the elderly, of the beautiful, of the ugly, of the fearful,
of the rebellious, of good people, of people in bars, of the strong and the weak,
of the-sure-of-himself as the depraved, retracing in all the heart of the
world ... if I never selfishly spared my effort, if I
could purify myself of any indifference of seeing, if I forced myself
constantly to the efforts of the necessary improvement needed
to free desire from the dammed constraints of technology,
I would perhaps be able to translate a few pieces of the heart of the
world ... I had the vision that wonderful poor heart of the world
often feel very bad in its solitude… as if abandoned
and I wanted to give it a gift, to show it that it was not
alone and that I ''little-one-with-desires-greater-than-her-strength''
I saw and I loved it even though its essence is so difficult
to grasp, even if I cannot explain it as still are trying
the psychologists, sociologists, historiologists, the
systemologists, etc ... all these terrific ''gists'', EVEN if feeling
often overwhelms me so much that it throws me on the ground, feverish,
empty of everything except love.
We always do a lot of projection in the youth
of our life, so I figured that the heart of the world
had a whole army of ‘’gists’’ to understand it
and apparently it does not seem to be enough
to be happy ... so I thought that with my little
means, my little heart, the overdevelopment of my eye ...
my too great sensitivity for the ''range'' of the wide world but never

PAGE 144

too great when you want love, my bits of twine, my bits of
paper, my bits of dream, my bits of colour, I could
maybe give it love ... who knows, the heart-of-world
would maybe feel better if we loved it...
just take you, or me for example: if I am loved and that
I do not know it; it will not help me to feel better. If I love you
even in a still rough stammered ‘’sketch’’, and you
know it: at least you're less alone when you feel alone ... no?
Finally I SAW a lot of things, feeling, I understood
a few of them ... from apprentice I am now a companion,

3

but all this is little in regard of all that we have to perceive,
understand, conceive up to feeling it clearly like the day
to become a master, possess the mastery to paint, to give love.
For me art is a bit all that, this quest towards one's self, to be
able to give oneself birth, existence, arms, mouth and sex and the
power to go towards others. Of course, this is not the approach of all artists.
There are those who cling to the research of feeling.
There are those who defend a visual thesis, aesthetic or
ideological.
Those who want to remake the world.
Those who vomit it.
Those who want to violate it.
Those who want to master it,
Transform it
dictating its fashions, its tastes, its dances, a Good and an Evil
and everything.
Those for whom art is freer, pleasure and consumption.
Those who turn their backs on it to create another world for themselves.

Me ... art is an ascetic to me.
Take it with a grain of salt, it is often the only way
to grasp the idea of things.
After all we are not pure spirits.
‘’nor devils to investigate the past,
neither god to mortgage eternity''
we are nothing else that little hearts of the world.

PAGE 145

In that time I was not easy to relax, believe me,
I did not know that I was nothing but a temporary little heart ... naive!
Nothing dirties me. Not much merit in that. It's just that I am
an addict of life and in all subjective love, I see
in almost everything that encompasses the human condition a kind of
''drama'' infinitely beautiful because of its pathos and ... FRAGILITY.
Even the most battered heart, botched, emptied becomes so pathetic
when we know that even he cannot escape his human condition:
NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, nor no one will die in his place
when the time comes.''

----------------------------------------

***** (Bio., page 867) (February 1, 1980)

***** (Letter started in July 1979 and ended February 1, 1980. Excerpt from a letter to Paul.)

1

''Time is made up of short, of medium and of long
term at the rhythm of the respiration of the one how
apprehends it.
Standing up some embrace stronger their love towards their family,
some to their story and others, their
condition as a human mammal ...
some in tow of
their passions, other overstepping
their love's, inveterate midwives of
perspectives visible only to anyone other than
whose eye is a homing device that falls on
the soul of things and beings ..., the lover,
... the loving gaze on the world
as a tool of knowledge ...
... ... ... ... ... ... .. h ... ... ... ... ... ..

Ho! Hi Paul, you wonder who is
addressing herself to you in this way, as a familiar
interlocutor... perhaps you remember

PAGE 146

the first day of this long holiday,
in the middle of the yard,
Pierrette’s cousin: I am Monique, Jarry-the
peintresse.
‘’Long term’’ painters sometimes have this
habit of journeying inside themselves and state
suddenly in the middle of the silence, forgetting
that the path of their thinking has not always
been audible to the other ... ha! ha! ha! a
little like a radish lost on a butchers
table...''

***** (Another excerpt from the same letter.)

‘’... I think that today is the 1st of February
1980
it was neither a ‘’literary’’ text
nor an ‘’orthodox letter’’
as Carl Gustav Jung would say:
''This is not the story of my life but the
story of the myth of my life''
...often dam-poets-of-my-kind
proceed in this way.

So I eventually decided not to send you
Your letter (because it's still undeniably
YOUR letter) for different reasons.
Firstly this kind of style of language can not find
its place in a discourse with a ‘’following’’
A'' following'' in the mind of a painter can be

20

in a day, a month, a year, 10 years ...
our job is one of such long term, thus the
details of space and calendars do not ever hamper
in any way the continuity of our faithful endeavours.

But who could understand this transcendental freedom

PAGE 147

in this century of instantaneity
and opportunism ...''

----------------------------------------

***** (Bio., Page: 883) (May 22, 1980)

***** (FILE: Texts in the context of a performance that Monique gave at the Women's
Experimental Theatre May 22, 1980. Note: In addition to her performance, the theatre
officials requested the following year, a poster created by her. (See no.: 1981-010, Ref. Album 1.))

INTRO



Before performing, I felt the need
a few days ago to clarify
''just a bit'' some thoughts that
‘’overwhelm’’ me (ha! ha!) thinking of the
event tonight.



1

Art and intimacy
Creating and freedom
anxiety and solitude
(America)
Inhibition and censorship
oppression and self-repression
inertia and desire
fever and envy
anti-intimacy and anti-art
disorder and daring
will and control
duty and self-censorship
thirst and subversion

PAGE 148

despair and freedom
hysteria and resurrection
discomfort and puritanism
irresponsibility and audacity
rebellion and creation
heat and fever
energy and assurance
movement and serenity
liberating liberty

11

will and inhibition
desire and power

I wanted
To choose
selected

the theme of the impact of motherhood
on the individual freedom of the
mother-woman, sentimental freedom,
professional and legal, philosophical
and ideological
the evident place of intervention would
have been the psychological.
The topic was relevant, its emergence
logical and congruent in the
course of my work as an
artist and my approach as an individual.
The choice of this theme, judicious
under the circumstances:

. format it as it is
visual and plastic art, painting,

111

. translate personally since

PAGE 149

it is a question of observation, not primarily
of the work but the approach of
the artist,

. live the ‘’said’’ day in the presence
of the other, ''live'' because it is
a performance,

. select from the available material,
the subject, the angle, the theme that is in
this time, these months, this year,
is for the performing subject, in this case
the painter, in the most actuality
possible, since the intent and the
decision of this ''performance'' of May 22
intervened in the random encounters
and dialogues barely a month before
this festival.

Given the various constraints
of material available in my pictorial research
and the realities of my personal life in
1980, the choice of this theme appears
perfectly judicious.

1V

‘’ Performance,
Presentation,
Testimony
Encounters
Conference
Manifesto
Spectacle
Reading
Show...
...
...
PERFORMANCE!

PAGE 150

What specifically singled out a performance.
A performance may include
all contents without restriction.
A performance may adopt all
forms unrestricted
... ... ... ...
The characteristic of a performance...is
…its… uniqueness... maybe.
Its reality is bound to its very existence ""
Above, toward, against and with its contents

V

and its form, its existence is born of the
actualisation of the intention of being ''performed'' ""
"" A poetry-performance for example is not a
simple interpretation: it is the re-creation of
this poetry in the presence of the other ""
with less intensity, equal,
greater or OTHER than that of which
was born the original work or the original
intention of the work.
A performance is Always unique
never exactly the same even
with the same theme, contents, forms
and techniques from one time to another,
from one public-event to another.
"" A performance is always a
testimony set in the present. ""

So that is, for the moment, the question
Of the ''performance'' as such.

V1

Festival of women
Participation of painters
Art and creation
Festival and creation

PAGE 151

creation and commitment
All creative process is commitment
"" Without commitment creation is
only fabrication!
entertainment or
interior decoration. ""
To create? To be, for a moment, subrogated fully
and completely to our own becoming.
To Be for an instant the matter of what is
expressed, on behalf of what is
seeking to be expressed, to be born.
This act of creating will make an indelible
brand on the being that will consecrate his existence
by his own act, may it be but for a single
moment, consciously
or unconsciously.
"" The act of creation is irreversible. ""

V11

Please refrain, those beings who
fear commitment.
You will feel victimized, raped
this act so liberating for some will
quickly become for others the worst slavery.
What sentence when in addition to having
to hide our feelings, we find ourselves caught
in concealing our works and the meaning
of our works
"" Creation is "" also "" investigation of
the world "" ... , of the other
... And of course...
"" Science is investigation of the
world, analysis is investigation of the world
creation has this in particular to
never definitively conclude
nor adjudicate, nor ... and this is
the trap (ha! ha!), the other side of the coin of
this wonderful freedom that many

PAGE 152

envy : not to keep any
exit door, not to offer any
protection to the one officiating.

V111

No safe and ''foolproof'' retrenchments
nor that of good-sense-at-all-costs,
of clear logic, of C.Q.F.D.,
the this-is-what-we-had-to-demonstrate of a
well structured presentation.
"" Creation can not claim to
demonstrate " any statement that is
a priori "because creation attempts to create ""

So there, for the moment of creation.
For this first invitation to
Arts called ''plastic'', I prefer
''visual'' in this point, in this psychological territory,
in this place of encounter
that has bit by bit become for us the
Woman’s experimental theatre,
I could not come without at least trying to
in my own words that sometimes lack
precision and sometimes says
too much, I could not come without trying to
situate my medium
and its place of intervention.

"" There is for the artist, in art,
so much more than the few objects produced. ""

1X

It often seems to me that the most
direct too and deepest in investigation
and apprehension of all things
is the loving-gaze-on-the-world.
I am not speaking here of the question
of love as I've heard
talk about it and lived since the thirty years
that I have arrived here… I mean
on this planet,
no, no, not that love that makes me rise
each time they talk to me about it:
''Love? It is
the last thing I need
from now to my death! ! ! ''
By The-loving-gaze-on-the-world
as a tool of knowledge I speak of
a practice which deliberately exercised
itself from oneself and by oneself through
and near-what-pleases-him, this approach
which binds and
concerns only the person who practices it, this
focus that is exercised freely
as we may well look at what we
wants and who we want at the moment that we

X

have an eye to see,
what we see then is our vision
and this' "vision of creation and vision of the work
belongs INPRESCRIPTIBLY to the eye that looks at it ""
The work as an object is neither
more nor less than that any other object.
The miracle of a painting
is not in the piece of cardboard
or canvas may it be signed by Leonardo,
by Picasso, me or the store clerk,
but essentially in the approach of
the author that this painting
means in his vision of the world the
approach of the other, ''the Public''
shall we say, the eye in turn visualises the
work and projects a vision for
itself.

PAGE 154

So much for the moment on
The vision, and on the work and its image.

If I could transmit my
love of art it would go so much
faster than trying to explain
anything.

X1

But we are not telepathic!
Difficult to bear as a constraint
is it not?
Finally!
I just want to say how closely
the approach of the artist and his work
are linked.
Good enough for today! Now for
the show.
Should I copy myself
and describe here in the form of
a show all the information gathered
on the theme ''Better a mother absent
and alive than present and dead?'', because
that is what it was 4 weeks ago, it is in
full freedom that I said that I would do it
tonight?
I could have, that would have satisfied
the most elementary logic. Yet
is the subject here logic or is it art?
The show could have been good, that's the worst
but I am here to make a
‘’performance’’ and not a show. God, provided
that I succeed for at least five
minutes!

X11 A

Ha! Especially do not believe that

PAGE 155

I am sweet-talking-you to avoid the ''job''!
No indeed, if I had not made
the ''blunder'' to rush into a full
creation trance as soon as I learned
that I would come here today, this problem
would not have arisen.
For, I swear, that the afternoon that
I thought about this subject, when
I talked about it to Nicole Lecavalier and
Louise Laprade, I was perfectly
sincere and above all I had it perfectly
in mind.
The same evening I begin to write
full full full of ideas,
I thought to myself that I would first put
everything in bulk as it comes,
gradually as I see the projection of each
of my selected paintings during a week and a half.
After I will choose the best flashes
and put together my final script. It was logical,
no?

X11 B

But voila!
As always in creation, it happens,
that we find a lot of things that we did not even
think we were looking for…
and what we were looking for...well.. hey!
we sometimes still seek it on our
deathbed!
A minute of silence for
the creative process and the
pathetic!
After two weeks of serious
work, very seriously, well then, I
took the Festival of Women very seriously!
I stopped and was very worried one
weekend. Worried you understand, it is

PAGE 156

not that I like to dramatize, but there was
only two weeks left and I had the impression
that I had been beside the
''track'' and that I may have to start all over
again but with ‘’discipline’’ this time!
I turned in circles in my head
the entire weekend and Sunday night
I went to bed saying to myself: Fuck!
we'll see Monday morning, washing day, not true.

X111

Once in bed, to calm my
nerves and to exonerate myself a little
(and to say that my neighbours think I exercise
the freest job in the world!)
therefore to exonerate myself, I am taking
a sheet of paper and I am beginning to note
all that I have to do on Monday, the question
is to make sure that it is not
true that I am doing nothing and that I am not
deliberately wasting this precious time
that exceptionally, is lacking
so desperately and that is needed for the impending date
of the performance on May 22.
Ho! I was within inches of giving myself hell,
to call myself two easy-going, even irresponsible -
I who had generated
a stock of rich ideas for the
performance since 2 weeks, at least
three dozen ... but not on the good
theme! ! !
Ho! I accepted the blame, we are
incorrigibility polite, friendly,
submissive, nice, stupid, goddamn it!
EVEN WHEN WE BELIEVE THAT WE ARE FREE!
(on a lack of enthusiasm tone) – luckily ''its touching!''

PAGE 157

X1V

In the long list of things that
I had to do this Monday (hey! It is that I
work hard!... at least I had a
urgent need to convince myself that day!)
I noticed afterwards that at the heart
of this return to the discipline that I was
imposing to myself for the last two weeks
I had preserved myself, without malicious thought
believe me, we have to give ourselves a bit of
pleasure from time to time! I had
spared for myself the most beautiful little ''candy'' of
the week and precisely for
this first-Monday-of-duty-status.
Among other things I had noted on my list:
''- Begin to compile the notes of the
last two weeks to create an
illustrated global document ...''
Without further details.
I put my list of ''duties'' at the head
of my the bed, next to the clock;

XV

I had already wished myself good night and
I opened a book to relax
before falling asleep ... For a
time I kept rereading the same
lines without really being able
to focus myself...
Suddenly, the ''flash''
I sit up... light up a cigarette
... decided to get myself a juice,
there is nothing that is too good ...
... then what, hell? ! ! ! what
did I do wrong? What is this
stupid story of traditional
discipline? ?

PAGE 158

No need to follow other disciplines
other than the one of my real job! And my true
job is to create, it is not FIRST putting together
files, I am not a researcher
or a specialist on dissertation or of
propaganda, or of conferences, or of the history of
art or of demonstrations. Painting

XV1

is not theatre O.K.,
it is in a theatre that I was invited, but as a
painter, nothing else!
To each his job!
Theses emerge from my approach
of course, but we should not inverse
things, I does not illustrate
my thesis, it is they that
illustrates my creation that are
in themselves its own language and its
own speech. Any text that
is added illustrates the picture and not
the contrary; illustrations
can vary to the infinite depending on the
illustrator but the original discourse
that remains in my approach
and in my discourse, is the picture.
So there is reason to get worked up: what
ever I do as a performance on the 22, it will
always be basically the same
as the original discourse which
will be the picture and the pictures
are already selected.

XV11

And thus I am beginning to write
all this, sitting in my bed, in the middle of
the night, in one shot, because the flash
came to me all of a sudden that's what I have
seen here at the theatre since
I started coming here, is psychologically educated
and socially as well
but it is theatre and not
group therapy or
an information conference.
And I suddenly also say to myself,
that for me, a theme like the one
I enounced two weeks ago,
I normally spend one year
studying it, to completely immerse myself
in it before being able to perform in it freely
and create on it. One month,
you are sick to imagine that
your performance, as humble as it is,
may be up to par.
I am currently in the second
phase of my approach,

XV111

what I call: clearing,
the first, is the impulse,
everything that came to my mind
and in my mouth spontaneously this
afternoon on the phone with
Louise and then Nicole.
The motivation of what I saw,
of what I experienced, of what I felt.
My daughter that is thirteen years old with
whom I have been living for years a real
story of Romeo and Juliet, a
great love in secret, reproved by
all, prohibited by her
father where she lived until the week of
Easter, censored, vilified, raped,
until this violent surge of awareness
that my daughter has been living in recent weeks,
this crisis said to be a teenager’s crisis and that resembles both

PAGE 160

so much to a crisis-revolt for love and

X1X

justice.
This girl passionately
loved under the stigma of secrecy
and the expectation that raises awareness
and is engaged hour by hour
and comes to tell me feverish
and trembling "" Mom you were right
to leave! I do not
even understand why, how
you could have hesitated, I do not yet know
the detail of how
it happened but I know now
that whatever you tried
to explain, you were not understood,
you were not even listened to, 13 years
have past and he still dose no knows
why you left, I
am sure, sure, sure, I know it, he believes that I do not want
to have anything to do with him anymore (*****)

***** (It is written in the margin and the back of page X1X in ink of another colour)

(-The creative process is developed in the total and absolute presence of the artist to his subject.
Creative work does not breathe in the lighting of taboos, of puritanism and obsolete values.
Militate is to militate. And create ... it to create.
Militate, sometimes provocative, sometimes denouncing or mediating with ignorance;
to militate educates.
To create: a statement without intervention from an uncompromising critic.
To create: imposing unilaterally your vision of the world, without comment,
creation is a martial art.''
What can we say about creative women evolving in parallel
within a feminist movement that is now

***** (Next : Image number img133.)