1976-015
TEXTS ON ART : Image number 1976-015.
From page 281 to page 320.
PAGE 281
I had finally been beaten to death.
34
Even now, I can not distinguish
being dead and ''being left for dead'':
unconscious ...
As our ‘’external’’ experience
links itself to our ‘’internal’’! ! ! ...
I well see that the crisis that I am crossing
concerns me in my ‘’aspirations’’,
I could say that it was ''due'' to me by my aspirations
themselves,
but
as its ''form'' and its ‘’moment’’
are related to the ''argument'' of the scenario
of my life:
14 months ago, at this moment, I have,
concerning the ‘’general incomprehension’’(but
only after years of reflection), officially
‘’Abandoned’’ my rights and
claims in the pursuit of this
accident ... no money,
nothing, no one will compensate me
for my ‘’life and my blood’’!
I think I was so right!
35
Today if I would be dying of hunger
in Viger Square: I do not regret anything.
I will never touch this kind
of money and I will never ‘’plead’’
in this despicable way where when someone
has caused me an ''accident'' and that he recognizes
it will seek to ''negotiate'' with me,
via third parties, for a few dollars
more or less! !
Can you imagine! These third parties were making
PAGE 282
me crazy, especially my own
lawyers; I have changed three
times and they were all of ‘’the same
levels’’ whatever their age or
their culture.
What I experienced in pain
and in panic during this ''crisis'',
until I began to struggle,
to ''defend'' myself...
36
this is perhaps the face of what I
lived for 14 months, ten
years ago... and the meaning of my ''do
you think that it will eventually end?''
It is in ''adversity that we recognize
our true friend ...''
When I returned to Montreal in 1978
you saw the ''home coming'' I got from my family!
I was so much in need of ''links of
recollection''...
They treated me like a dog!
as if nothing had happened!
except for Sylvie that finally said something
‘’about it’’, last Christmas when
I called her: she reproached me
Of being missing from the ‘’circulation’’
from 73 to 78 and to have come back
only now. And she told me clearly
that they did not want people coming
only when they want ...
37
Nothing and nobody could have hastened
and help my mental balance as much
as your current ''return'' in my
PAGE 283
life.
Link of remembrance and realism, if
it was!
And what I am living ''emotionally'' as
for your: ''Acceptance'' of Art.
I feel so ''accepted'' by you and
recognized for myself and not by my
clothes or my case number or my
social insurance number ... or ‘’tolerated
as a contingency’’ like my
daughter... yes, that's how I
feel with her... I do not know if it
is based, I feel so ignorant before the
needs of an 18 year old girl of today,
I can not refer to myself at the same age!
18 in those days, it's as if we were
40 years old ... responsibilities, responsibilities ...
38
but her...? I feel guilty about being ‘’tired
of all that’’, of her as like the others,
that is to say of all these people that I
can never know what to think of!
I would like to fly away
I would like to fly away as I was singing
last year, before the big quarrel
that erupted in me.
I'll finish describing to you the ''steps''
that arrived in my thoughts because
I believe that ‘’some’’ thing,
in the emergent of the phase, the order, their
nature, I do not know ... but I think
that ''certain things'' are very important
from a theoretical point of view ... I want to
say ... about the MEANING of Art ... What
is the use of Art... what exactly is it
for us humans mammals?
What do we do when we do
PAGE 284
art (I have been asking myself that question
for so many years) and what is its
usefulness in our survival as a species.
39
You understand?
But first I want to tell you ... it
always seems to me for the last four, five days,
that my ‘’true’’ participation in your ‘’project’’,
it is all that I am writing.
Here, in this text, ''what I wanted it
to talk about'', is the ''shock'' of Man ( if it be
man or woman, I mean this
mammal, the one who makes art), of the
‘’Shock’’ of Man before Beauty, ...
it may be something that is part of a
discourse in ethnology, because it
may be a fundamental aspect of our
biology, even if nobody (to my knowledge)
has spoken of it ...
-The ‘’Miracle’’ of
our encounter, from a theoretical standpoint,
for me, I also see the evidence
... at least the elements of argumentation about
the relationship between Man and his Art, Man,
the-fragile-beast, the-believe-in-god-animal, of love,
40
the beast with two ears
the animal-of-mystic, the beast-of-games
which says useless things on anything
on one side
and on the other hand listens to his tales
by understanding things, all sorts of things.
PAGE 285
This ‘’bud that thrives in a supportive environment’’
Bud of stone and silence
that suddenly comes alive
and babbles on all sides
because one of his many ‘’tender preferences’’
has just entered incognito in his
perceptual field.
That for a smile goes from day to night.
The animal that fails tests.
Whose I.Q. varies with his moods.
In heaven as in hell, we spit fire
and intelligence.
In limbo, in the ‘’so, so’’, medium-cool,
inexorably, we have become idiots.
Beauty stimulates us ... Why?
(I am falling from sleep, see you soon Mary!)
-------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1264) (1984)
***** (From a letter.)
''…Creating links and practicing Art,
to express and having an approach towards ''communication'',
has always seemed to me to be ‘’drives of
the same order’’.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1291) (1984)
***** (From a letter to her friend Marie-Claire.)
March 12, 1985
Ste-Adèle
The Laurentians.
PAGE 286
Dear Marie-Claire,
I have not read our work end-to -
end, but I am looking at it, I think of it and I think
of ''our careers.''
I carefully read each of Barbara Page’s
‘’notes’ on our work; throughout
all of our ‘’project’’…
Not with the ''curiosity'' from the beginning,
but in a serious effort to UNDERSTAND
what these notes ''were trying to tell us.''
It seemed to me that we can identify
two broad categories of reflections.
On one hand, this woman ‘’warmly’’ gives us
every encouragement in the world.
All she could find to reassure our doubts
and everything that we can hope to have the confidence
in oneself needed to convince us that we are
not wasting our time, that it is Worth it to
continue.
On the other side, and it may be ''now''
the most important:
2
‘’in her annotations’’, Barbara was warning us
it seems, that there would be OBSTACLES.
At first are enthusiasm perhaps
hid from us ‘’what’’ that meant.
Today, these ‘’prophecies’’ (as the why of
the articles in Parachute that she
asked us to read) acquire a MEANING
that I'm beginning to understand.
PAGE 287
I am starting to ''read between the lines'':
I noticed a simple list of existing pitfalls
that perhaps all artists
face... and that we need to know how to overcome
and go beyond to really be able to get on the Art stage
and in ''a living environment where
we can truly live, progress and
feel surrounded by what we love
and of people that understand us
and also love Beauty and… the Absolute.''
I see it now because after having
intuitively felt them, I RECOGNISE these
‘’pitfalls’’... and I see very well that they are there
around us.
3
She said: ‘’A unique work of research
and creation
and also very remarkable’’.
She added enigmatically:
''Would you be able
to continue
together?''
At first, you remember, I did not understand
why she said that.
''Together'': she takes this theme righting further on
where you say:
‘’Only Art has given us a vocabulary to
break down ‘’barriers’’.’’- Barbara adds here:
. plus your friendship
. in a coordinated effort
and in UNITY!
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ....
... ... ... ...? ?...........
PAGE 288
4
Yes, I think I can understand this
impact of friendship: let us say, that I understand
indeed the ''support'' that sisterhood has
brought us and CAN bring us.
Let's say that I understand VERY WELL
that we needed ‘’a lot’’ of support,
(like the German filmmakers would
also much needed to continue ...).
‘’Continue together’’
CONTINUE – this was in fact
the keyword for this note by Barbara Page.
CONTINUE – the basic condition of
our success ...
It sounds simple when we say like that.
Yet today it seems to me that I
understand why Barbara Page was worried,
Page, a few weeks ago, when
everything seemed to be '' going
smoothly.''
5
Perhaps it is the voice not only of
Intuition,
but also of EXPERIENCE
that had pushed our Barbara to
''warn us'' of the existence of certain pitfalls
along the course that we
wished to undertake...
Life, Marie Claire ...
not Life, no, the little everyday life of
PAGE 289
everyday, the humdrum of things,
the : ''that's life!'' so dear to non-artist.
So life, its charms, its spells and
its pitfalls. The life that seeks and will always seek
to ''occupy'' and keep everyone
very ‘’far’’ from the…’’Studio’’…willing to use
‘’all’’ the means ‘’APPEARANCES’’, even that
of a studio...
Life and its net of energy eaters
that stirs all passions, which profits from the
sensitivity of the artist to ''hold''
him in ‘’vain’’ disputes, quarrels, etc. ...
all these little passions (unions, alcohol and drugs)
6
that encourages sterile conversations that ''inflame'',
struggles with formless ''institutions'' established
‘’by’’ and ‘’for’’ all other persons other than those
that ‘’feel the need and desire to belong and to dedicate’’
themselves to art ...prisons among others, etc. ...
daily life and all the little passions
without major consequences, which hold
the artist and makes him WAST all his
personal power of imagination, of will,
of courage and creativity ... and even all his
energy - not only physical and nervous
but ALSO, intellectual and spiritual.
How, in such circumstances, can an artist
CONTINIUE?
Even if she does not have 5 or 6 children to wash and soothe,
Even if she has job security,
Even if she has all the friendship and sisterhood necessary,
Even if she has all the desirable encouragement.
PAGE 290
7
No, talent, Faith, desire,
alone: ‘’is not enough’’.
It requires clear awareness,
Marie-Cadi,
We must not go from ‘’sculpture to
sail-surfing, WITHOUT REALISING
IT.
we must not unwittingly pass from
‘’Art’’ to ‘’art’’.
It is also true for me, believe me.
We must not confuse unnecessary ''psychological
Simmering’’ and the effort to overcome.
When we are working in the ''Studio'': we
FEEL the difference.
Otherwise ... it eludes us; and all that
we notice from time to time, is that
we feel ... as ''less alive''…like ‘’more
8
confused’’.
Ho! Marie-Claire, I worry allot
about the chances of this future ‘’career as
an artist’’ that I see very well the interests
and the value (I have many years of
experience to ''judge'', you know ...), yes
this professional space we have outlined
together and has begun to ‘’implement'' itself
and ''produce'' something
possible and artistically valid
sort of speaking, does exist.
‘’Do not doubt of it’’
Marie-Claire, I EXHORT YOU,
PAGE 291
if you really want to ‘’do something
with your life’’ ...you should not
‘’squander’’ your energies to the left and
right, in personality conflicts (like with your
new teacher.) or anything that
instead of giving you ideas and ‘’clarify’’ you:
exhausts and dilutes your conscience and ''confuses you''.
9
* Marie-Claire ... you know I have the right
to write you all this ...
It was you who gave me the right;
in our work, you wrote this:
''- I am looking for friends ... what
dose TAMING mean?
- it is something too often neglected, it means
‘’CREATING LINKS’’,
if you tame me, we will need
‘’ONE ANOTHER’’.
... yes, it's you who chose to write this passage
in our work ...
Yes we will need one another,
Now ... WHERE? - IN ART!
Do you not see it?
Our ''work'' is ... like left in the air...
10
I know, that it ‘’is not’’ FINISHED
EXSAUSTED
LIMITED
PAGE 292
No, it's there, it is waiting for two artists,
it is only waiting on ‘’its authors‘’ to
continue its road, its work and become
professional.
it is waiting for only one thing: whether its
authors WANT OR NOT ''to have a career''...
Working and living
while toiling for this or that, studying to
keep fit, at least, ''perfecting'' oneself
while WAITING to be grown up enough
to really live ...
I think of the song: ''I wanted to
be an artist!''
I think of my father that always said: ''It
11
does not cost much to dream ...''
these people are ‘’not’’ us.
We, we ‘’can’’.
Wright now.
Not ''being artists,''
no: that we already ‘’have’’ been.
''What we can?''- DO NOT STOP being artists.
Ho! Marie-Claire, do you understand what I am
‘’trying’’ to tell you?
I cannot find better words ...
Having personal complexes or having
''social class'' complexes, can STOP
a person from being an artist, professionally.
PAGE 293
This we have seen, discovered and understood
12
together, is this not so?
But ‘’all’’ that, under a ''pretext'' or
another, for a ‘’reason’’ or for another,
STOPS the ''work'' and the ''creation'' FROM OCCURRING,
prevents the person from being a
artist.
EVERYTHING.
‘’This’’ can take all kinds of shapes, these pitfalls
that can ‘’prevent us from CONTINUING.
’’studying’’ art also can prevent
a person from being an artist ...
It is through our ''sensitivity'' that we can
discover art ...
It is with our ''head'' that we choose ... art,
just like the rest in life ...
An artist career? It is directed, it is organised,
13
it is GOVERNED with ‘’our head and
are choice’’ ...
we must choose ...
like as for children: being the one that has
eight or to be another kind of woman.
It is the same for art: there are at least two ways
and we must choose… the right one :''the one you really want.''
PAGE 294
--- Marie-Claire Larocque, sculptor, where are you?
''We urgently asked Marie-Claire Larocque, sculptor,
at the STUDIO.''
Your friend,
Monique
A
Note: I do not know if this is important or
not ...
In any case, here: ‘’among other’’ things,
I met Michael, yesterday.
We had a long ‘two way’’ open heart
discussion.''
Not a simple ‘’psychological’’ discussion,
no, a very serious
and intellectually realistic discussion on
life, the contradictory impulses of
the mind, orientation and its
access paths, and what is: accomplishment,
the ''reality check'' what!
the difference between self and others,
between the essential and the accessory of life,
the ''unique'' and the ''optional''...
etc..
A VERY important meeting and talk
...even, I would say like Robert, moreover,
‘’a conversation of a very rare elevation’’
‘’that we do not often encounter in
our life, whether may it be with a doctor,
a teacher, a friend, or anyone else.’’
PAGE 295
B
... perhaps it has also contributed
to the fact that I am not WAYTING
to see ''the course of events'' ‘’to see’’…
but on the contrary, this morning,
I wanted to voluntarily go ‘’IN FRONT’’ of
things by writing you all this.
It is not directly about you and me that
we have discussed, neither of our friendship ...
but of life and Life,
and art and Art, among other things.
Of ‘’solid reality’’ and of ‘’possible reality’’…
You see a little?
I had mentioned to him in passing my fears as for
the future of ‘’our’’ work and a slight… easing ...
But just this morning, I said to myself: why
be ''fatalistic'' ? Why unnecessarily ‘’risk’’ that our
''success'' transforms itself without our knowledge into another
simple: ''False Start''? And since, that for once, I have noticed this
not AFTER, but DURING?
So in my way, ''as I can'': I am moving
to defend the Accomplished Art, and put ‘’all the possible chances
that I can on the side of our success ‘’
WHICH I BELIEVE IN.
xxx bye, Monique
***** (over leaf of B)
--- By the way: Michael agreed and found positive
my attitude and my activities in my company
in recent weeks.
HOWEVER, he ''insisted''- that for
my ‘’durable’’ return to Balance and
inner serenity, that I not ‘’give up
PAGE 296
or neglects my novel UNDER
ANY CONSIDERATIONS’’
I am ‘’telling you’’ this detail to
show you that there is not just me,
or a Barbara or professional artists,
who believe in the importance
to continue ''for real'' the
‘’creative’’ approach...
even from the strict point of view of welfare
and health: Michel
place this let us say ’’HIGH’’! ! !
M.
And why should I hide my ''experience'' from you?
Here is what I observed, whether it be myself or others
artists (in any field) we work…alone…, and we
think a lot, but we cannot do it that much in the long run ...
Ex: Even Claude Bertrand, we can say what we want about his tastes
or his ideas, but one ‘’fact’’ remains: since they are working
together, these two writers very different from each other;
Michel Morin and Claude Bertrand have ‘’published’’ to my knowledge
at least three books, separately and together.
You see Marie-Claire Larocque, sculptor ‘’alone’’:
will probably not be able to ''hold on'', whatever may be her
will and her talent. This creator ''business'' is difficult to
define ''year long'' when working alone. For everyone.
Not just for you or for me: for all artists.
It is normal: how could you understand ‘’what’’
we will discover, BEFORE having discovered it? That is why
Barbara spoke of ''sisterhood'': artists must encourage each other and (1)
help each other so that Art can REALLY
occur, especially in the long term.
(1) in the life of every day, alone:
art tends to appear ...
very ''abstract''... no?
PAGE 297
M.
SEE YOU VERY SOON I HOPE,
Monique
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1313) (January 23, 1985)
***** (From a letter to her mother.)
‘’...With the legendary Jansenism and Puritanism
of Quebecers, what else would you expect?
Even when they claim that they are ‘’atheists’’, the idea
itself of Art gives them nervous tics: they
no longer believe in God, but still fear
the judgment of St-Pierre, and still wonder
what, in art, could be a ''sin'' or
not! ! ! !
For more ''security'', for the last thirty years
they stick to Abstract Art''! ha! ha! ha!
It reminds me of my ‘’beginnings’’ on Boyer street,
we really laugh a lot! ! ! - With my friends,
speaking of the ''good people'' who spend
their lives painting ''Abstract'', I invented
a nickname to describe them: the art ''of -
people-who-sleep-in-pyjamas''! !
It may be simple, but when you are
young and giggly as I was with my
friends! ! This expression made us laugh so
PAGE 298
8
often! We even imagine that they had
maybe kept their pyjamas (and maybe
a chastity-belt?) under their own clothes,
on opening evening! ! ! ...
As it was so good to be
so light hearted and being ''Artists'', while
our parents were tortured and made themselves
literally sick because of their intellectual and
interior confusion concerning the new
values, and everything, and everything ... or what the Pope
Jean-Paul calls so ‘’kindly’’ inviting us to
Understand you: ''... those who have lived
the SOCIAL revolution ...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1314 (January 23, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the previous letter to her mother.)
‘’...Well, to come back on and finish with
‘’my painting’’: it is also obvious that a work
so OPENLY filled with nature, with men and
naked women walking freely, of animals,
of fish, of birds and flowers of a thousand
colours, can only be hard to ‘’swallow’’
for Quebec art critics that were all
10
raised by the ‘’black robes’’ and very regimented
in parishes and electoral districts
where the crucifix was ''pointing'' towards who you
had to vote for! !
Resistance to change, despite Vatican 11,
despite their ‘’QUIET’’ Revolution! ! !
PAGE 299
We called this ''mentalities'', the evolution of
mentalities... it seems that it is the
same everywhere: i.e. ''IT IS VERY LONG!''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1321) (January 25, 1985)
***** (From a letter to her sister Marie-France.)
''... I must give myself birth as an artist,
I am ''too old'' to wait any longer ...
...
It is in contradiction and division that I
must conquer the publishers, the galleries, the
art critics... I've never had the strength to do it… but
I neither have the strength to remain an
''underground'' artist…the ''boxes'' of paintings and texts
that are rotting in my basement ... are starting to make
me ‘’ashamed’’ ...if even my own mother,
as my father a long time ago, and the Art critics (''those
sympathetic failures''...) do not want to see my painting...
if my mother says that she only sees ''pain and madness,''
if my father says that he only sees ''stupidity and waste of time'',
if the art critics saw only ‘’drugs and pornography’’,
as they claim ...
‘’I’’, I know that all this is false. That this painting
is a world of dreams, of magic, of nature and that
it contains all of Acadia, Elisa's, of
New Brunswick; that of the Parish of Lafayette in
Louisiana where I once went, that of ‘’Huntsick’’
and ‘’of the early beginnings’’ on Boyer Street where I lived with my
3
young mother of 23 - 24 to 25 - and 26 years old, which, as an Ophelia
was beautiful and lonesome of '' her country'', that she recounted to me
constantly in a much more ''alive'' and wonderful way
than the insipid tales of Aunt Lucille!... do not tell any
PAGE 300
one: it is in confidence ... but: sometimes she even spoke
to me in... ENGLISH ... Of course not teaching me
English! But only to ''recount'' the characters in a more alive way ... (but
I also kept the… English ...)''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1334) (January 25, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from her letter to her sister Marie-France.)
‘’... Today? ...
I think I gained the ‘’respect’’...
... without which I could not measure the significance,
the value and the Reality of Art.
22
The respect of Art.
Believe me, the world is very deaf, closed.
The world might even die
without Art at all,
but,
IT DOES NOT KNOW IT ...
We must begin again ...
I must retake art in hand
I know now that it is ''important''.
But I'm not really less fragile
and sensitive than in my youth ...
The world in which I MUST move and find
the courage ''to produce'' and defend the
‘’VOICE’’ of my work, is no less ''dry''
desert than before ...
PAGE 301
the warmth and the encouragement of your
friendship, and your love of Beauty…
23
would help me…and help Art as much as before
to be born, to find form and reason for
living.
The surroundings of an artist counts a lot
in his work, I know.
What you sometimes call, ''not knowing''
I call availability, intelligence
and the sensitivity to feel the richness of
the world, to know that it is not easy to ''choose''
because we have the intuitive awareness that
the possibilities are ''multiple'' that there
is not just white and black,
good and bad choices,
but all the ''multitude'' of the colour
range ... of all the feelings,
sensations, emotions ... perceived ...
... perceivable ...
This universe, for an artist, is not called
‘’not to know’’, it's called: THE HOUSE
OF FREEDOM ... the AIR ...
24
You see some of the friends that I can
make for ''the inner world of art,
of sensitivity, of colour and motion'',
whether intellectual or not,
themselves, artists or not,
...
do you see
It happens rather rarely for me to meet
PAGE 302
people who know ‘’at the same time’’,
like me, the ''space'' of Quebec
AND the ''space'' of the moors and wind
of a small island ... like Lamèque…
and of the sea ...
...
you see?
...
art is largely a matter of ''LANGUAGE''
...we must ''Practice'' also, sometimes,
not to lose our native language ...''
Monique
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1357) (February 14, 1985)
***** (From a text / letter.)
‘’...And then the economic issues, they are the
''mini-bricks'' of the world; we have seen,
we see and we will see more...
not in the ''serious'' category, no ?...?...
I mean, we have resources (documentation) on it,
no? Many cords on our
imagination bow? ... This is our speciality since the
world began, no?
‘’Incitation’’, I think this was often
8
our Achilles heel ...
Well, to each one's own idea!
It is always the ''thing'' of the Club of Rome, which
returns between the press and me!
But the old ''thing'' of Breton and Fernand Léger
in the preface to the Third Manifesto of Surrealism
PAGE 303
with is pure slanders on proletarian art!
Why ... pieces of this damned
bad faith, it seems sometimes...
to realize itself ... by the back door,
always by the same economic
back door!
We always ''get caught'' at the exit!
It's not as if it was written on our forehead,
I think ...
We have our ''art'', that is not the problem!
We always get ''trapped'' in one or another
stage of DISTRIBUTION! ! !
When it is not in the economic stuff
that we get hung up ... it is in ‘’the words
9
that say it''... or when we are called
‘’plumed’’-Huron or folklos ...this is the
new insult : ''native'' and there we go again!
Ha! Bichette! It's not very funny some days ...
...
...
...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1360) (February 14, 1985)
February 14, 1985
7th TEXT
you say to yourselves that without doubt that I am
an artist.
you think I am very ''original''
you may remember my
PAGE 304
orange Mongolian sheep fur coat,
shaded with black,
here is what my life is:
LETTER OF P. P. ***** (Architect on one of our projects.)
ON COPYRIGHTS.
''... your mural being built on the walls of the building,
I can sign them myself and the same also goes for the
Calcicoat Company which received the subcontracts for the
interior walls: for I am the
mastermind behind the whole project, I the architect''
I do not think it is funny
for other artists, lonely, each one inside of himself,
like me, ''lonely in the crowd,
more than in the forest.'' (1)
(1) Claude Dubois, composer.
2
... when I hear in the Media
about the building of a congress palace
in a metropolis that ...
substantially has not successfully gone
exactly according to plans and specifications
as expected ...
They ''say'' that the artists could
perhaps without ‘’too much trouble’’ cut
with a chainsaw a part of the Carved work…
rather than to enlarge the hole
provided for the doors ...
No subcontractor, at the end
of this twentieth century, would know how
to enlarge the necessary space for
a work of Art ...
PAGE 305
With no violence, no smudging, I
believe that with an axe I could do it…
3
and the ''underworld'' as they say?
Even they?
The media however shows, many
walls blown to pieces for vengeance
whose cost is less
higher in Visibility than that of a
Work of Art ...
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1442) (March 15, 1985)
***** (From a text.)
‘’…My painting’’...is totemic
at most. It talks about everything in life, yes,
but shows: the marvellous of things.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1447) (May 19, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
''...Let us take an example:
if a particular experience, without perhaps
really changed my vision-the-world, changes
what I think of it, the hierarchy
I make of it, etc. ...
This will make me feel ‘’otherwise ...newly’’.
This will make me ‘’situate’’ myself differently regarding
PAGE 306
certain things.
Gradually it will invest my writings.
This will tend to change my relationship with people (and
not break them, unless I foolishly insist
that we stay in the same ‘’relationship’’ without considering that
I may have destroyed myself this relationship
by modifying myself and by putting myself back in reality…
yes?)
This may mark a radical caesura in
the theme that I could treat in
painting ... I've seen this phenomenon take place
with painters without understanding the ''why''.
Even in a painter that I have known personally
15 to 20 years ago: Jordi Bonnet… all (The Press)
thought or of a sudden conversion (past), or of a
future vision (his illness), etc. ... as for me, I see all
painting as abstract and concrete at the same time, I
began to wonder what had happened, where and
when, and what had finally decided him to express this
‘’part’’ of the universal imagery: by ‘’this’’ aesthetic
(it's true that he was from Spain and he had lost his arm); to
the exclusion of the normal forms of his expression: the themes?
Nothing ‘’proves’’ any change in the themes in my eyes.’’
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1449) (March 19, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the same letter to Michael.)
‘’...So, to do as all artists, that is to say: ''fire of
all wood'' as the means and the material to create,
reflection, invention, discovery, etc. ...''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 307
(Bio., page: 1451) (March 19, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the same letter to Michael.)
...''I even personally knew (the 4 or 5
last important discussions of his life), around 1967
I think, Henri Charpentier, founder of the Fine Arts of
Montreal (Quebec) in 1927, a friend of
Modigliani, master of Soutine...: early
of in his career, when he was my age (in 1967)
he had worked with Eiffel (the tower) in the
first aeronautical laboratory in France.
...
all this feedback, ''learning-in-return''
also leads me to ... ‘’gives me back’’ I should
say, a very valuable judgment today that
Henri Charpentier, in a
particular contexts, that I remember and I understand
better at 37 years old (a message from his
hospital bed that he had transmitted to me by François Paris
- from Art-tec and the Art Gallery Paris): ‘’etc…tell her that I
am so sorry to… etc.… whatever, this woman has
a message, she has a strength!’’...
I must confess that
anyway, at that age, I could not
recognize myself in the expression ''this woman''
8
... I knew the vision-of-woman of this old man
I thought he was delirious and had been mistaken
on my name, and that he was talking about the
painting of someone else ... a
''woman'', it was something related to age
and older than me.
Yet he had clearly explained to me Pablo
Casals and his difficulty of recognizing music
in rock, and everything. ... and everything ...
PAGE 308
I see and understand better today
not only ''what Charpentier meant''...
but also ''why'' that he had to say
and explain these things.
Perhaps it is maturity that made me
recently appreciate greatly the TV interview
with Moravia.
Do you understand the process of harmonization in
''the mess'' that was still
two months ago this whole area of my experience?
It seems to me that the way that this sector
is going now: ‘’fluently’’, I can…forget and,
no, rather: stop thinking about it in peace
and use it as needed without any back
thought ... except perhaps for the idea that I
have had for some time, that I should perhaps
write and tell about all these painters that
I knew ''outside'' the official channels ... there
are many ... Rene Richard, Vincelette, Giunta,
Siquièros Jorge Flores d Siquièros, the President and Vice-President
- I forget their names, not our encounter,
I must have it in my ''records'' and even a
little drawing I think – of the Association of Artists
9
behind the Iron Curtain – I should find the correct names,
I have pictures of them somewhere - J. James of Jamaica
- I have pictures of his ‘’sculpture’’; he is especially
known in Europe for his ''painting'', etc. ...
Another example of ''places of torments'' that are
easily solving themselves by themselves:
the whole cultural and religious affair...
since I am ‘’defending’’ my jewellery
collection, I do not ‘’need’’ to ‘’defend’’ it individually,
continuously, all those who
PAGE 309
have taught and inspired them to me anymore ...
You see how ‘’it works’’? At least,
that is what I seem to be observing? ? ? ? ...
So I would rather, if the above seems to you,
logical, humane, correctly ‘’thought and lived’’
... I would rather work my mind myself
to invent-discover ''problematic’s''
that ‘’interest me’’ with ideas and questions
that belong to me ... that are pertinent TODAY (not yesterday) to my
imagination about ...''the recollections'' as to say, that
I noted last week… memories
originating from the ‘’altered states’’ of health, that I
have known ...
For example: submit an hypothesis and develop 3 - 4
precise questions on the function of perception
called ''psychedelic''; it is an aspect of perception
(on the visual side) on which I have a lot of documentation
and experiences. And here is that ''a'' VISUAL aspect of my
delirium due to fever (Malaria: in the plane), an
10
aspect that I remember (the ''value'' of my recollection is
well worth the memories of those who have absorbed
psychotropic drugs, right? ... i.e. ''relative''…and yet
‘’several’’ have not been bothered to develop and publish
from these ''non-verifiable recollections''
lots of data on perception that continue to
influence the conception of the world that artists and
doctors still broadcast...)
therefore a visual aspect that I remember: questions
my intellect, my memory, my ‘’associativity’’, my imagination ...
I would rather begin to ''talk'' of
what has been and still remains, a time of
''confusion''… in this way ... let us say: USFULL.
PAGE 310
Rather than in a chronologically or symptomatically
‘’normal and traditional’’ way…just to
think of it, that's it, I feel ‘’nauseated’’…
and yet I know that one must speak,
at least ‘’BEING ABLE’’ to talk about everything.
Firstly because ''time does not fix anything'': it
does not want to completely nicely and
politely suppress itself, like I would of wished...
Second, because the last past experiences
(3 to 4 months) seem to give a glimpse a ‘’mean’’
rather easy (compared to what I presumed-feared)
...let us say... to use, waste, trivialize ‘’that’’
witch bothers or frightens me.
I feel that where time and reason
only obtain the ''worsening’’ of the importance
of ‘’the littlest detail’’ art, curiosity and creativity ...
clear the path like a roller
compressor ...
I would feel like, being at this point, although I
11
do not know what are your reactions and opinions
on everything that I am elaborating and affirming
on for the last ten pages ...
I feel like ''joking''
in a language I know and that
allows me to:
''it's the stupidity of these Westerners,
confided the Holliman to his neighbour, to abscond ten
years to open the third eye and to go back into the traffic of
the maya, without even a thought on how to learn
to close it!...''
‘’But what do they think that they see better, answered
the companion, in seeing only the upside down, rather than
seeing the upright?''...
Smiles.''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 311
(Bio., page: 1495) (April 9, 1985)
***** (From a letter written to her daughter, Cybèle.)
‘’...Indeed, let's be realistic, for the little that
you know about it, you know, you too
that: my ‘’painting’’ has nothing to do with ‘’plastically
and aesthetically’’ with the ‘’official’’ painting
that the ''other people'' of
my age do ... you see ...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1508) (April 13, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’... To Michael
That is what I have to say to Cybèle ''in this circumstance.''
You reproach me of taking my time?
''All my life'', ''everyone'' has always accused me of taking my time. So?
Your comments do not take me ''exactly'' by surprise.
I am not running to become the most perfect.
I just want to always make sure that I'm doing my part as best I can.
I'm slow, yes.
Some say a: ''looser''
others that I am livings ''under'' of myself
others I'm hiding something from myself
others... all have words and have reasons to condemn imperfections,
errors, and especially so many many reasons to be ''in a hurry'' and
‘’idolize’’ ‘’the rush’’.
I'd rather not ''polluted'' dialogues USELESSLY. To talk less, but
at say things that at least ‘’say as much as possible of what I feel.''
In effect, my way may not be a ‘’guarantee of more clarity’’.
PAGE 312
For that I do not see any recipe. But at least, by
***** (Next page).
‘’re-meeting myself’’, (my words, my statements, writings or drawings),
I can recognize that it is myself who had been experiencing this for a person,
or that, in such circumstances, ''in such an understanding.''
What does it do?
It means that I do not always understand nor life, nor my life, but what it
does is that I RECOGNISE beings and situations and my own feelings
towards them and it helps me, if not to understand the others better,
but at least to ''feel'' them ‘’personally’’.
Presence.’’
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1513) (April 15, 1985)
***** (From a letter to her daughter, Cybèle.)
''... for this time! (sigh!) - I must
''avenge myself'' a bit just to console myself for not
being the ''master-of-world-who-would-
always-be-able-to-fix-things-to-my-taste'', right? ! ! ! Not
to be able to paint life to ones taste like a
painting! ! ! what a disappointment all the same for
an artist, you have to admit, no?''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1520) (April 15, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...At the same time as, the emerging ‘’inevitability of the being’’ is
obscured: Minerva, the arts, sciences and Literature ... Especially
sciences suffer in this period where research is banned.
I'll buy a nice horse.
And I will pass through desert roads, cities and towns.
PAGE 313
And I will say that Visible is Beauty. Visible to the physical eyes
of the body and not of imagination. And I will say that Life exists:
in a ''free state'': everywhere.
To avoid that there be no mistake about the meaning of my ''image.''
I will say: ''I am She-who-has-no-usefulness''. Non, I will say it softly,
very softly while continuing my promenade.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1521) (April 15, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the same letter to Michael.)
...''For me, bringing back the facts and cultural modes of communication to
the interpretation which may make it a family affair, a women affair, or a
matter of feeling, or a case of error, of good and evil , of honesty, of fear
or self-assertiveness, etc. ... ‘’Jansenism and scrupulosity : this is how it
sounds in my mind.
They say otherwise: Freudian interpretation of existential phenomenology, i.e.
as I told you one day about my perception on the subject of Freud personal
character (1): Romanticism and reduction of the universe to its family and
loving dimensions. The approach of charm and scrupulous torment.
my perception Prior to when I confronted them with that of Michael and
culture. Since then, ''Moses'' monotheism ‘’Totem and Taboo’’ strike me
‘’all’’ differently. And Freud? ... maybe ... one of the great artists of our
century: great writing and great thought. I thought that he had brought us
Jansenism but instead I see someone that from the middle of Jansenism
managed to come to us, in the field of reality in a very honourable
‘’measure’’ for a writer .''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1530) (April 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
PAGE 314
‘’... 2- Let us return to subject 2 of this approach in 1973. Since a couple of years,
I wondered about the uniqueness of the conception that I have of art. Nothing more
normal at this age in a normal approach of a young artist.
‘’But’’ since the last year (1972) a particular factor had appeared ''suddenly'' and
troubled me very much ....
***** (Next page).
All the other painters that I knew, young and old, in addition to seeking their way
as I, had a lot of time and effort to ‘’spend’’ on the technical aspect of the realization
of their pictures. What I mean is that, all things considered ''the others'' had to
WORK HARD technically to EXECUTE their drawings and paintings, where
(difficulty for difficulty, technical factor for technical factor), I realized ''in general''
in a first draft, everything I was planning to do ...
I have never, what is called ''poorly drawn'', or ‘’made dirty colours’, etc. ...
as if I had not had to ''learn'' that stage at which the others seemed to be ''all''
subject to.
It was enough for me to carefully ‘’silence the world’’ in me, to well construct
and see my design and / or my subject ... and then to RE-produce it on the canvas.
Final.
I'd come to believe that all I did was to ''copy''... so that perhaps I had no real
talent in painting ...that it might be better to abandon it to those who are
‘’struggling for Art'' etc. ... ha! ha! ha!
Do not worry, I do not have ‘’this problem’’ any more: I KNOW it's me who
built the images that I painted.
I know ''how'' I avoided this phase-of-awkwardness where many flounder along
time. And I know how to teach it, and through appropriate teaching: everyone can
do it. Note: past 30 - 35 years old learning is more difficult for this ''method''.
The ideal age is between 14 and 17 years old. Under 12 years old the method
is clearly ineffective. All the pedagogical observations as to the ''causes'' of the
subdivision of age groups allows me to understand the workings and reasons
enough to explain and discuss them. The number of individuals and groups to
whom I have taught by my method is quite large and varied enough for me to
have understood it.''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 315
(Bio., page: 1537) (April 20, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...Man would love his prison more than anything in the world, say many ...
and supposes that at the
best, loving your neighbour as yourself, means: to hasten to chain him up also ...
Yet, The Prisoner of Chillon? ...
I do not think Byron was like other men ... all agitated themselves around the
marvels of creation, but little, very little drink from it ...
Byron was an artist ... and the Knight Harold ... no, we can not find in society,
the existential view that yet meet invariably in all artists, of all time, and all continents ...
even in this old bastard Henry Miller ... even Updike ... all and all. They are there.
We need their contact to deepen the planetary tools of our art; in doing so we
learn to understand them and knowing them, we love them ... this love fills us
obviously, because it is so totally full in each of them ...
Then the rest of the world leaves us, along a street, leaning against the bottom
or top side of a wall, chilled, looking at our brothers pass by, concerned with
their own things, of a so light density that it required but just a glance to see
through them and see ... only the trees around their small parks of work and home ...
And the procession of small-sins-without-consequences invaded the city…
we must learn quickly to turn away in time, because these infinite scruples
where struggle the beings whose domestication truncates inevitably the ''self'',
make us sad ... the bitterness of
human limitations must not spill into our eyes and blind us before our canvas
and the blank white sheet awaiting a word from us ... a word ... a human word.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1547) (April 25)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
''... Anyway: I know myself and IF
PAGE 316
I have ‘’already’’ speculated about the ins and outs of the behaviour of ''my family'',
THUS, I know that I had by necessity arrived at a value-judgment
and of consequences on ‘’myself and them’’ that must have governed my actions
AND my feelings later on...
...
otherwise? - Nothing that is ''painted'' in ‘’my cellar’’ would be there. These
paintings prove, from what I know about myself that: I have acted freely.
Otherwise, they would not be there to testify about me.
I would not have acted ‘’without knowing’’, on one hand, and I would not,
neither have written nor painted: without freedom, on the other hand.
This behaviour, wrongly or rightly: represents me well ... my ideas on the
hierarchy of priorities as well as the conception that I have of ‘’expression
and authenticity’’.
Not knowing is one thing.
To spread it deliberately and inconsiderately destroys the voice of the
expressing more than the environment that could be reached.
Truth is a convention between entities for the purposes of communication,
a function of language.
Sincerity concerns the speaker himself in his relationship with existence.
To act in function of what is AND what we are as such in the event that
any modification to what is or what we are, should always put us in a
position of ''discovery'' and not of ''regret''...
you see a little ...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1552) (April 25, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the letter to Michael.)
‘’...Sometimes, as is the case for most of the friends of Minerva, the coincidence
of point-of-view, thus of Vision is constantly broken by the will of the Storyteller
of science as well as of art ...
In the latter case,
PAGE 317
this sometimes insecure ''several'', but as they say ‘’they are not alone’’,
they are many to deny ''the facts''... until they adapt! ... and end up as just
by considering them as ''their'' Story!
However as for the Storyteller-of-new-falsehoods, whether of Art or of Science:
the fact has nothing that is ‘’too’’ insecuring because it resulted from a consented
effort and even sought ...
... although, of course, again ... we do not always find what we seek, but what
we find ... and the water diviner myself can sometimes be frightened to see
spring black oil, rather that the transparent water of life, there where he had
indicated to dig ...
Finally you see a bit how the system of perception ‘’works’’ in its self-consciousness
as we cling to it at this point in our History, and in the words of my little story .
So there.
In the ''stock'' in which we swim under the idea that they are the parameters of
my-life-the life-of-Monique ...
we must know that for every ''point'' : a multitude of ‘’possible’’ can
ORGANIZE each of them in ''tales of an intelligible line''...
Yes, I was probably ‘’reconnected’’.
Yes, according to a line of very ‘’likely’’ possibles’ in light of several
cultural and historical aspects, etc. ...
Yet the result of such a ''so beautiful'' surgery can not feel psychologically
‘’fitted’’ because it excludes many of the necessary possible choices, past
and present and to come so that can be organized harmoniously ‘’all’’
the points ... from the perspective of an artist.
Besides
''where'' I seem to be connected ‘’with the Storeys of other’’ seems to
me ....''déjà-vu''...
Impression of having been re-connected on a path that ... I had
‘’already’’ rejected, long ago.
And that I am ... now...rejecting ...again.
Have I ‘’shown’’ my story?''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 318
(Bio., page: 1593) (May 10, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’…Note that I have...love, can we say, for those who steal paintings for
themselves (not to ''resell them'': not for money),… they always make me smile ...
I say to myself: this is the true ''amateur''...
that is the person for whom
we paint for in fact, we the painters ...
Am I right?
It always seems that in these cases our paintings are in the best possible
hands, that is to say, in the hands of someone who must really love them,
to whom they are ''useful'', that needed them. Someone who will take
better care of them than anyone else. Someone who ''without knowing it'':
houses and preserves the heritage
with passion ... for the whole of the community.
Of course, it is because I never thought one ‘’could’’ buy a work of art:
at the most one pays to be the person who conserves it for a time and
''carries it'' for others in the continuous ‘’procession’’ witch is the life of Man...
I do not think that art can ''belong'' to somebody in particular.
This is not curiosity,
It's nature.
These things belong to all and probably are… From all.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1638) (May 16, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...As I often joke with Robert: ''but would you be imagining that you know
what you think, my word!'' (Robert understands my existential humour.
That makes at least one!)
How can you talk to yourself with simplicity if you do not know who you are.
PAGE 319
And how do you know who you are if you ‘’see yourself’’ so rarely over-the-day,
that we ‘’can not’’ even RECOGNISE ourselves when we meet ourselves at random!
Artists could perhaps without much harm to ‘’pure research’’ as they say,
make a sketch or two, from time to time to SHOW the ‘’current’’ portrait
of human being, right?
A sufficient quantity of ''portrait'' appears to me necessary in a society so
that an individual can be able to recognise himself. It's not asking too much,
I assume, ''without losing the gains'' as all fear so much,
which ''always'' means in art: WITHOUT returning to Expressionism.
Me, what I am asking for, is not the ''-isms'': it is the ‘’Expression’’.
Not only the ‘’human voice’’, has no age per say ... but, for myself, I come
to ask myself if one could not die altogether in the event of a too-advanced-deficiency
of Expression ... whatever our personality, our status, our IQ, our material condition
and everything ...
It is a question-that-can-be-asked anyway. Yes, very ‘’askable’’.
Love, love, there will always be something left of it!
Yeah?
Where exactly, and what exactly.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1642) (May 16, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...You see, Michel ...
Nature was my refuge when I was young.
In its sounds, its lights, its colours, its movements ... so much Love and Beauty.
As in the legend of Romulus and Remus, the she-wolf ... maybe.
Even if this gave me a language, tastes, a look that the social world called:
artist ... maybe you can understand why
for me, all that remained rather love-of-nature rather than a profession.
PAGE 320
Perhaps that this ‘’personal’’ relationship to nature still showed in my adolescence;
and perhaps this is why ''many'' hold so much, having thus nicknamed me Ti-Loup,
to continue using this nickname up till today when the intimacy of the ‘’private’’
flows between us.
By the way ... I think that this weekend something important happened to me
concerning that.
At least, that's what I think.
Marie-Claire has decided to cancel her art classes for six months. First she is
going to Greece in a couple of weeks to walk on the ''real earth'' as she says
of the Peloponnesus and of... Antique Arcadia. This is a private expedition of
four weeks that she has organised with another girl who has ''pertinent experience''
in traveling-on-foot ...yes ‘’on foot’’ they will go…she had not yet heard about
my story where I go on a beautiful horse ... no.
I learn this today as you when it was something dreamed-made-organized.
That, it is only the state of mind.
The purpose of this six month sabbatical without any study in any Art class,
imagine, it is because she has ‘’too many personal things inside of her’’, she
says, that she must express before continuing her ‘’technical’’ apprenticeship
(she is always saying that she lacks technique and that she needs to know all
that before doing Art… she knows that I have no great tendency to buy that
idea, but she still continues to ‘’market it’’ to me)
Marie-Claire ‘’whatever it could be’’, ''takes time'' to sculpt ON HER
OWN ACCOUT!
Oops, I mean ... to say what she has to say for herself and not… to do
Art to serve Art, ''as'' Art likes very much to be served, as her academic
studies of the last three years had convinced her unshakably ...
Me, what do I have to say about that…
It's that, of course, her own way does not have to be like mine; and of course,
in principle, she is the only one really positioned to know what she wants to do ...
but
all the same!
When I hear her talk of learning of knowledge and of art ... I often have the
impression of a real slavery. Can not help but inwardly screaming ... and even
growling a bit before her
***** (Next : Image number img135.)
From page 281 to page 320.
PAGE 281
I had finally been beaten to death.
34
Even now, I can not distinguish
being dead and ''being left for dead'':
unconscious ...
As our ‘’external’’ experience
links itself to our ‘’internal’’! ! ! ...
I well see that the crisis that I am crossing
concerns me in my ‘’aspirations’’,
I could say that it was ''due'' to me by my aspirations
themselves,
but
as its ''form'' and its ‘’moment’’
are related to the ''argument'' of the scenario
of my life:
14 months ago, at this moment, I have,
concerning the ‘’general incomprehension’’(but
only after years of reflection), officially
‘’Abandoned’’ my rights and
claims in the pursuit of this
accident ... no money,
nothing, no one will compensate me
for my ‘’life and my blood’’!
I think I was so right!
35
Today if I would be dying of hunger
in Viger Square: I do not regret anything.
I will never touch this kind
of money and I will never ‘’plead’’
in this despicable way where when someone
has caused me an ''accident'' and that he recognizes
it will seek to ''negotiate'' with me,
via third parties, for a few dollars
more or less! !
Can you imagine! These third parties were making
PAGE 282
me crazy, especially my own
lawyers; I have changed three
times and they were all of ‘’the same
levels’’ whatever their age or
their culture.
What I experienced in pain
and in panic during this ''crisis'',
until I began to struggle,
to ''defend'' myself...
36
this is perhaps the face of what I
lived for 14 months, ten
years ago... and the meaning of my ''do
you think that it will eventually end?''
It is in ''adversity that we recognize
our true friend ...''
When I returned to Montreal in 1978
you saw the ''home coming'' I got from my family!
I was so much in need of ''links of
recollection''...
They treated me like a dog!
as if nothing had happened!
except for Sylvie that finally said something
‘’about it’’, last Christmas when
I called her: she reproached me
Of being missing from the ‘’circulation’’
from 73 to 78 and to have come back
only now. And she told me clearly
that they did not want people coming
only when they want ...
37
Nothing and nobody could have hastened
and help my mental balance as much
as your current ''return'' in my
PAGE 283
life.
Link of remembrance and realism, if
it was!
And what I am living ''emotionally'' as
for your: ''Acceptance'' of Art.
I feel so ''accepted'' by you and
recognized for myself and not by my
clothes or my case number or my
social insurance number ... or ‘’tolerated
as a contingency’’ like my
daughter... yes, that's how I
feel with her... I do not know if it
is based, I feel so ignorant before the
needs of an 18 year old girl of today,
I can not refer to myself at the same age!
18 in those days, it's as if we were
40 years old ... responsibilities, responsibilities ...
38
but her...? I feel guilty about being ‘’tired
of all that’’, of her as like the others,
that is to say of all these people that I
can never know what to think of!
I would like to fly away
I would like to fly away as I was singing
last year, before the big quarrel
that erupted in me.
I'll finish describing to you the ''steps''
that arrived in my thoughts because
I believe that ‘’some’’ thing,
in the emergent of the phase, the order, their
nature, I do not know ... but I think
that ''certain things'' are very important
from a theoretical point of view ... I want to
say ... about the MEANING of Art ... What
is the use of Art... what exactly is it
for us humans mammals?
What do we do when we do
PAGE 284
art (I have been asking myself that question
for so many years) and what is its
usefulness in our survival as a species.
39
You understand?
But first I want to tell you ... it
always seems to me for the last four, five days,
that my ‘’true’’ participation in your ‘’project’’,
it is all that I am writing.
Here, in this text, ''what I wanted it
to talk about'', is the ''shock'' of Man ( if it be
man or woman, I mean this
mammal, the one who makes art), of the
‘’Shock’’ of Man before Beauty, ...
it may be something that is part of a
discourse in ethnology, because it
may be a fundamental aspect of our
biology, even if nobody (to my knowledge)
has spoken of it ...
-The ‘’Miracle’’ of
our encounter, from a theoretical standpoint,
for me, I also see the evidence
... at least the elements of argumentation about
the relationship between Man and his Art, Man,
the-fragile-beast, the-believe-in-god-animal, of love,
40
the beast with two ears
the animal-of-mystic, the beast-of-games
which says useless things on anything
on one side
and on the other hand listens to his tales
by understanding things, all sorts of things.
PAGE 285
This ‘’bud that thrives in a supportive environment’’
Bud of stone and silence
that suddenly comes alive
and babbles on all sides
because one of his many ‘’tender preferences’’
has just entered incognito in his
perceptual field.
That for a smile goes from day to night.
The animal that fails tests.
Whose I.Q. varies with his moods.
In heaven as in hell, we spit fire
and intelligence.
In limbo, in the ‘’so, so’’, medium-cool,
inexorably, we have become idiots.
Beauty stimulates us ... Why?
(I am falling from sleep, see you soon Mary!)
-------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1264) (1984)
***** (From a letter.)
''…Creating links and practicing Art,
to express and having an approach towards ''communication'',
has always seemed to me to be ‘’drives of
the same order’’.''
----------------------------------------
***** (Bio., page: 1291) (1984)
***** (From a letter to her friend Marie-Claire.)
March 12, 1985
Ste-Adèle
The Laurentians.
PAGE 286
Dear Marie-Claire,
I have not read our work end-to -
end, but I am looking at it, I think of it and I think
of ''our careers.''
I carefully read each of Barbara Page’s
‘’notes’ on our work; throughout
all of our ‘’project’’…
Not with the ''curiosity'' from the beginning,
but in a serious effort to UNDERSTAND
what these notes ''were trying to tell us.''
It seemed to me that we can identify
two broad categories of reflections.
On one hand, this woman ‘’warmly’’ gives us
every encouragement in the world.
All she could find to reassure our doubts
and everything that we can hope to have the confidence
in oneself needed to convince us that we are
not wasting our time, that it is Worth it to
continue.
On the other side, and it may be ''now''
the most important:
2
‘’in her annotations’’, Barbara was warning us
it seems, that there would be OBSTACLES.
At first are enthusiasm perhaps
hid from us ‘’what’’ that meant.
Today, these ‘’prophecies’’ (as the why of
the articles in Parachute that she
asked us to read) acquire a MEANING
that I'm beginning to understand.
PAGE 287
I am starting to ''read between the lines'':
I noticed a simple list of existing pitfalls
that perhaps all artists
face... and that we need to know how to overcome
and go beyond to really be able to get on the Art stage
and in ''a living environment where
we can truly live, progress and
feel surrounded by what we love
and of people that understand us
and also love Beauty and… the Absolute.''
I see it now because after having
intuitively felt them, I RECOGNISE these
‘’pitfalls’’... and I see very well that they are there
around us.
3
She said: ‘’A unique work of research
and creation
and also very remarkable’’.
She added enigmatically:
''Would you be able
to continue
together?''
At first, you remember, I did not understand
why she said that.
''Together'': she takes this theme righting further on
where you say:
‘’Only Art has given us a vocabulary to
break down ‘’barriers’’.’’- Barbara adds here:
. plus your friendship
. in a coordinated effort
and in UNITY!
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ....
... ... ... ...? ?...........
PAGE 288
4
Yes, I think I can understand this
impact of friendship: let us say, that I understand
indeed the ''support'' that sisterhood has
brought us and CAN bring us.
Let's say that I understand VERY WELL
that we needed ‘’a lot’’ of support,
(like the German filmmakers would
also much needed to continue ...).
‘’Continue together’’
CONTINUE – this was in fact
the keyword for this note by Barbara Page.
CONTINUE – the basic condition of
our success ...
It sounds simple when we say like that.
Yet today it seems to me that I
understand why Barbara Page was worried,
Page, a few weeks ago, when
everything seemed to be '' going
smoothly.''
5
Perhaps it is the voice not only of
Intuition,
but also of EXPERIENCE
that had pushed our Barbara to
''warn us'' of the existence of certain pitfalls
along the course that we
wished to undertake...
Life, Marie Claire ...
not Life, no, the little everyday life of
PAGE 289
everyday, the humdrum of things,
the : ''that's life!'' so dear to non-artist.
So life, its charms, its spells and
its pitfalls. The life that seeks and will always seek
to ''occupy'' and keep everyone
very ‘’far’’ from the…’’Studio’’…willing to use
‘’all’’ the means ‘’APPEARANCES’’, even that
of a studio...
Life and its net of energy eaters
that stirs all passions, which profits from the
sensitivity of the artist to ''hold''
him in ‘’vain’’ disputes, quarrels, etc. ...
all these little passions (unions, alcohol and drugs)
6
that encourages sterile conversations that ''inflame'',
struggles with formless ''institutions'' established
‘’by’’ and ‘’for’’ all other persons other than those
that ‘’feel the need and desire to belong and to dedicate’’
themselves to art ...prisons among others, etc. ...
daily life and all the little passions
without major consequences, which hold
the artist and makes him WAST all his
personal power of imagination, of will,
of courage and creativity ... and even all his
energy - not only physical and nervous
but ALSO, intellectual and spiritual.
How, in such circumstances, can an artist
CONTINIUE?
Even if she does not have 5 or 6 children to wash and soothe,
Even if she has job security,
Even if she has all the friendship and sisterhood necessary,
Even if she has all the desirable encouragement.
PAGE 290
7
No, talent, Faith, desire,
alone: ‘’is not enough’’.
It requires clear awareness,
Marie-Cadi,
We must not go from ‘’sculpture to
sail-surfing, WITHOUT REALISING
IT.
we must not unwittingly pass from
‘’Art’’ to ‘’art’’.
It is also true for me, believe me.
We must not confuse unnecessary ''psychological
Simmering’’ and the effort to overcome.
When we are working in the ''Studio'': we
FEEL the difference.
Otherwise ... it eludes us; and all that
we notice from time to time, is that
we feel ... as ''less alive''…like ‘’more
8
confused’’.
Ho! Marie-Claire, I worry allot
about the chances of this future ‘’career as
an artist’’ that I see very well the interests
and the value (I have many years of
experience to ''judge'', you know ...), yes
this professional space we have outlined
together and has begun to ‘’implement'' itself
and ''produce'' something
possible and artistically valid
sort of speaking, does exist.
‘’Do not doubt of it’’
Marie-Claire, I EXHORT YOU,
PAGE 291
if you really want to ‘’do something
with your life’’ ...you should not
‘’squander’’ your energies to the left and
right, in personality conflicts (like with your
new teacher.) or anything that
instead of giving you ideas and ‘’clarify’’ you:
exhausts and dilutes your conscience and ''confuses you''.
9
* Marie-Claire ... you know I have the right
to write you all this ...
It was you who gave me the right;
in our work, you wrote this:
''- I am looking for friends ... what
dose TAMING mean?
- it is something too often neglected, it means
‘’CREATING LINKS’’,
if you tame me, we will need
‘’ONE ANOTHER’’.
... yes, it's you who chose to write this passage
in our work ...
Yes we will need one another,
Now ... WHERE? - IN ART!
Do you not see it?
Our ''work'' is ... like left in the air...
10
I know, that it ‘’is not’’ FINISHED
EXSAUSTED
LIMITED
PAGE 292
No, it's there, it is waiting for two artists,
it is only waiting on ‘’its authors‘’ to
continue its road, its work and become
professional.
it is waiting for only one thing: whether its
authors WANT OR NOT ''to have a career''...
Working and living
while toiling for this or that, studying to
keep fit, at least, ''perfecting'' oneself
while WAITING to be grown up enough
to really live ...
I think of the song: ''I wanted to
be an artist!''
I think of my father that always said: ''It
11
does not cost much to dream ...''
these people are ‘’not’’ us.
We, we ‘’can’’.
Wright now.
Not ''being artists,''
no: that we already ‘’have’’ been.
''What we can?''- DO NOT STOP being artists.
Ho! Marie-Claire, do you understand what I am
‘’trying’’ to tell you?
I cannot find better words ...
Having personal complexes or having
''social class'' complexes, can STOP
a person from being an artist, professionally.
PAGE 293
This we have seen, discovered and understood
12
together, is this not so?
But ‘’all’’ that, under a ''pretext'' or
another, for a ‘’reason’’ or for another,
STOPS the ''work'' and the ''creation'' FROM OCCURRING,
prevents the person from being a
artist.
EVERYTHING.
‘’This’’ can take all kinds of shapes, these pitfalls
that can ‘’prevent us from CONTINUING.
’’studying’’ art also can prevent
a person from being an artist ...
It is through our ''sensitivity'' that we can
discover art ...
It is with our ''head'' that we choose ... art,
just like the rest in life ...
An artist career? It is directed, it is organised,
13
it is GOVERNED with ‘’our head and
are choice’’ ...
we must choose ...
like as for children: being the one that has
eight or to be another kind of woman.
It is the same for art: there are at least two ways
and we must choose… the right one :''the one you really want.''
PAGE 294
--- Marie-Claire Larocque, sculptor, where are you?
''We urgently asked Marie-Claire Larocque, sculptor,
at the STUDIO.''
Your friend,
Monique
A
Note: I do not know if this is important or
not ...
In any case, here: ‘’among other’’ things,
I met Michael, yesterday.
We had a long ‘two way’’ open heart
discussion.''
Not a simple ‘’psychological’’ discussion,
no, a very serious
and intellectually realistic discussion on
life, the contradictory impulses of
the mind, orientation and its
access paths, and what is: accomplishment,
the ''reality check'' what!
the difference between self and others,
between the essential and the accessory of life,
the ''unique'' and the ''optional''...
etc..
A VERY important meeting and talk
...even, I would say like Robert, moreover,
‘’a conversation of a very rare elevation’’
‘’that we do not often encounter in
our life, whether may it be with a doctor,
a teacher, a friend, or anyone else.’’
PAGE 295
B
... perhaps it has also contributed
to the fact that I am not WAYTING
to see ''the course of events'' ‘’to see’’…
but on the contrary, this morning,
I wanted to voluntarily go ‘’IN FRONT’’ of
things by writing you all this.
It is not directly about you and me that
we have discussed, neither of our friendship ...
but of life and Life,
and art and Art, among other things.
Of ‘’solid reality’’ and of ‘’possible reality’’…
You see a little?
I had mentioned to him in passing my fears as for
the future of ‘’our’’ work and a slight… easing ...
But just this morning, I said to myself: why
be ''fatalistic'' ? Why unnecessarily ‘’risk’’ that our
''success'' transforms itself without our knowledge into another
simple: ''False Start''? And since, that for once, I have noticed this
not AFTER, but DURING?
So in my way, ''as I can'': I am moving
to defend the Accomplished Art, and put ‘’all the possible chances
that I can on the side of our success ‘’
WHICH I BELIEVE IN.
xxx bye, Monique
***** (over leaf of B)
--- By the way: Michael agreed and found positive
my attitude and my activities in my company
in recent weeks.
HOWEVER, he ''insisted''- that for
my ‘’durable’’ return to Balance and
inner serenity, that I not ‘’give up
PAGE 296
or neglects my novel UNDER
ANY CONSIDERATIONS’’
I am ‘’telling you’’ this detail to
show you that there is not just me,
or a Barbara or professional artists,
who believe in the importance
to continue ''for real'' the
‘’creative’’ approach...
even from the strict point of view of welfare
and health: Michel
place this let us say ’’HIGH’’! ! !
M.
And why should I hide my ''experience'' from you?
Here is what I observed, whether it be myself or others
artists (in any field) we work…alone…, and we
think a lot, but we cannot do it that much in the long run ...
Ex: Even Claude Bertrand, we can say what we want about his tastes
or his ideas, but one ‘’fact’’ remains: since they are working
together, these two writers very different from each other;
Michel Morin and Claude Bertrand have ‘’published’’ to my knowledge
at least three books, separately and together.
You see Marie-Claire Larocque, sculptor ‘’alone’’:
will probably not be able to ''hold on'', whatever may be her
will and her talent. This creator ''business'' is difficult to
define ''year long'' when working alone. For everyone.
Not just for you or for me: for all artists.
It is normal: how could you understand ‘’what’’
we will discover, BEFORE having discovered it? That is why
Barbara spoke of ''sisterhood'': artists must encourage each other and (1)
help each other so that Art can REALLY
occur, especially in the long term.
(1) in the life of every day, alone:
art tends to appear ...
very ''abstract''... no?
PAGE 297
M.
SEE YOU VERY SOON I HOPE,
Monique
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1313) (January 23, 1985)
***** (From a letter to her mother.)
‘’...With the legendary Jansenism and Puritanism
of Quebecers, what else would you expect?
Even when they claim that they are ‘’atheists’’, the idea
itself of Art gives them nervous tics: they
no longer believe in God, but still fear
the judgment of St-Pierre, and still wonder
what, in art, could be a ''sin'' or
not! ! ! !
For more ''security'', for the last thirty years
they stick to Abstract Art''! ha! ha! ha!
It reminds me of my ‘’beginnings’’ on Boyer street,
we really laugh a lot! ! ! - With my friends,
speaking of the ''good people'' who spend
their lives painting ''Abstract'', I invented
a nickname to describe them: the art ''of -
people-who-sleep-in-pyjamas''! !
It may be simple, but when you are
young and giggly as I was with my
friends! ! This expression made us laugh so
PAGE 298
8
often! We even imagine that they had
maybe kept their pyjamas (and maybe
a chastity-belt?) under their own clothes,
on opening evening! ! ! ...
As it was so good to be
so light hearted and being ''Artists'', while
our parents were tortured and made themselves
literally sick because of their intellectual and
interior confusion concerning the new
values, and everything, and everything ... or what the Pope
Jean-Paul calls so ‘’kindly’’ inviting us to
Understand you: ''... those who have lived
the SOCIAL revolution ...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1314 (January 23, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the previous letter to her mother.)
‘’...Well, to come back on and finish with
‘’my painting’’: it is also obvious that a work
so OPENLY filled with nature, with men and
naked women walking freely, of animals,
of fish, of birds and flowers of a thousand
colours, can only be hard to ‘’swallow’’
for Quebec art critics that were all
10
raised by the ‘’black robes’’ and very regimented
in parishes and electoral districts
where the crucifix was ''pointing'' towards who you
had to vote for! !
Resistance to change, despite Vatican 11,
despite their ‘’QUIET’’ Revolution! ! !
PAGE 299
We called this ''mentalities'', the evolution of
mentalities... it seems that it is the
same everywhere: i.e. ''IT IS VERY LONG!''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1321) (January 25, 1985)
***** (From a letter to her sister Marie-France.)
''... I must give myself birth as an artist,
I am ''too old'' to wait any longer ...
...
It is in contradiction and division that I
must conquer the publishers, the galleries, the
art critics... I've never had the strength to do it… but
I neither have the strength to remain an
''underground'' artist…the ''boxes'' of paintings and texts
that are rotting in my basement ... are starting to make
me ‘’ashamed’’ ...if even my own mother,
as my father a long time ago, and the Art critics (''those
sympathetic failures''...) do not want to see my painting...
if my mother says that she only sees ''pain and madness,''
if my father says that he only sees ''stupidity and waste of time'',
if the art critics saw only ‘’drugs and pornography’’,
as they claim ...
‘’I’’, I know that all this is false. That this painting
is a world of dreams, of magic, of nature and that
it contains all of Acadia, Elisa's, of
New Brunswick; that of the Parish of Lafayette in
Louisiana where I once went, that of ‘’Huntsick’’
and ‘’of the early beginnings’’ on Boyer Street where I lived with my
3
young mother of 23 - 24 to 25 - and 26 years old, which, as an Ophelia
was beautiful and lonesome of '' her country'', that she recounted to me
constantly in a much more ''alive'' and wonderful way
than the insipid tales of Aunt Lucille!... do not tell any
PAGE 300
one: it is in confidence ... but: sometimes she even spoke
to me in... ENGLISH ... Of course not teaching me
English! But only to ''recount'' the characters in a more alive way ... (but
I also kept the… English ...)''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1334) (January 25, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from her letter to her sister Marie-France.)
‘’... Today? ...
I think I gained the ‘’respect’’...
... without which I could not measure the significance,
the value and the Reality of Art.
22
The respect of Art.
Believe me, the world is very deaf, closed.
The world might even die
without Art at all,
but,
IT DOES NOT KNOW IT ...
We must begin again ...
I must retake art in hand
I know now that it is ''important''.
But I'm not really less fragile
and sensitive than in my youth ...
The world in which I MUST move and find
the courage ''to produce'' and defend the
‘’VOICE’’ of my work, is no less ''dry''
desert than before ...
PAGE 301
the warmth and the encouragement of your
friendship, and your love of Beauty…
23
would help me…and help Art as much as before
to be born, to find form and reason for
living.
The surroundings of an artist counts a lot
in his work, I know.
What you sometimes call, ''not knowing''
I call availability, intelligence
and the sensitivity to feel the richness of
the world, to know that it is not easy to ''choose''
because we have the intuitive awareness that
the possibilities are ''multiple'' that there
is not just white and black,
good and bad choices,
but all the ''multitude'' of the colour
range ... of all the feelings,
sensations, emotions ... perceived ...
... perceivable ...
This universe, for an artist, is not called
‘’not to know’’, it's called: THE HOUSE
OF FREEDOM ... the AIR ...
24
You see some of the friends that I can
make for ''the inner world of art,
of sensitivity, of colour and motion'',
whether intellectual or not,
themselves, artists or not,
...
do you see
It happens rather rarely for me to meet
PAGE 302
people who know ‘’at the same time’’,
like me, the ''space'' of Quebec
AND the ''space'' of the moors and wind
of a small island ... like Lamèque…
and of the sea ...
...
you see?
...
art is largely a matter of ''LANGUAGE''
...we must ''Practice'' also, sometimes,
not to lose our native language ...''
Monique
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1357) (February 14, 1985)
***** (From a text / letter.)
‘’...And then the economic issues, they are the
''mini-bricks'' of the world; we have seen,
we see and we will see more...
not in the ''serious'' category, no ?...?...
I mean, we have resources (documentation) on it,
no? Many cords on our
imagination bow? ... This is our speciality since the
world began, no?
‘’Incitation’’, I think this was often
8
our Achilles heel ...
Well, to each one's own idea!
It is always the ''thing'' of the Club of Rome, which
returns between the press and me!
But the old ''thing'' of Breton and Fernand Léger
in the preface to the Third Manifesto of Surrealism
PAGE 303
with is pure slanders on proletarian art!
Why ... pieces of this damned
bad faith, it seems sometimes...
to realize itself ... by the back door,
always by the same economic
back door!
We always ''get caught'' at the exit!
It's not as if it was written on our forehead,
I think ...
We have our ''art'', that is not the problem!
We always get ''trapped'' in one or another
stage of DISTRIBUTION! ! !
When it is not in the economic stuff
that we get hung up ... it is in ‘’the words
9
that say it''... or when we are called
‘’plumed’’-Huron or folklos ...this is the
new insult : ''native'' and there we go again!
Ha! Bichette! It's not very funny some days ...
...
...
...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1360) (February 14, 1985)
February 14, 1985
7th TEXT
you say to yourselves that without doubt that I am
an artist.
you think I am very ''original''
you may remember my
PAGE 304
orange Mongolian sheep fur coat,
shaded with black,
here is what my life is:
LETTER OF P. P. ***** (Architect on one of our projects.)
ON COPYRIGHTS.
''... your mural being built on the walls of the building,
I can sign them myself and the same also goes for the
Calcicoat Company which received the subcontracts for the
interior walls: for I am the
mastermind behind the whole project, I the architect''
I do not think it is funny
for other artists, lonely, each one inside of himself,
like me, ''lonely in the crowd,
more than in the forest.'' (1)
(1) Claude Dubois, composer.
2
... when I hear in the Media
about the building of a congress palace
in a metropolis that ...
substantially has not successfully gone
exactly according to plans and specifications
as expected ...
They ''say'' that the artists could
perhaps without ‘’too much trouble’’ cut
with a chainsaw a part of the Carved work…
rather than to enlarge the hole
provided for the doors ...
No subcontractor, at the end
of this twentieth century, would know how
to enlarge the necessary space for
a work of Art ...
PAGE 305
With no violence, no smudging, I
believe that with an axe I could do it…
3
and the ''underworld'' as they say?
Even they?
The media however shows, many
walls blown to pieces for vengeance
whose cost is less
higher in Visibility than that of a
Work of Art ...
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1442) (March 15, 1985)
***** (From a text.)
‘’…My painting’’...is totemic
at most. It talks about everything in life, yes,
but shows: the marvellous of things.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1447) (May 19, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
''...Let us take an example:
if a particular experience, without perhaps
really changed my vision-the-world, changes
what I think of it, the hierarchy
I make of it, etc. ...
This will make me feel ‘’otherwise ...newly’’.
This will make me ‘’situate’’ myself differently regarding
PAGE 306
certain things.
Gradually it will invest my writings.
This will tend to change my relationship with people (and
not break them, unless I foolishly insist
that we stay in the same ‘’relationship’’ without considering that
I may have destroyed myself this relationship
by modifying myself and by putting myself back in reality…
yes?)
This may mark a radical caesura in
the theme that I could treat in
painting ... I've seen this phenomenon take place
with painters without understanding the ''why''.
Even in a painter that I have known personally
15 to 20 years ago: Jordi Bonnet… all (The Press)
thought or of a sudden conversion (past), or of a
future vision (his illness), etc. ... as for me, I see all
painting as abstract and concrete at the same time, I
began to wonder what had happened, where and
when, and what had finally decided him to express this
‘’part’’ of the universal imagery: by ‘’this’’ aesthetic
(it's true that he was from Spain and he had lost his arm); to
the exclusion of the normal forms of his expression: the themes?
Nothing ‘’proves’’ any change in the themes in my eyes.’’
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1449) (March 19, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the same letter to Michael.)
‘’...So, to do as all artists, that is to say: ''fire of
all wood'' as the means and the material to create,
reflection, invention, discovery, etc. ...''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 307
(Bio., page: 1451) (March 19, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the same letter to Michael.)
...''I even personally knew (the 4 or 5
last important discussions of his life), around 1967
I think, Henri Charpentier, founder of the Fine Arts of
Montreal (Quebec) in 1927, a friend of
Modigliani, master of Soutine...: early
of in his career, when he was my age (in 1967)
he had worked with Eiffel (the tower) in the
first aeronautical laboratory in France.
...
all this feedback, ''learning-in-return''
also leads me to ... ‘’gives me back’’ I should
say, a very valuable judgment today that
Henri Charpentier, in a
particular contexts, that I remember and I understand
better at 37 years old (a message from his
hospital bed that he had transmitted to me by François Paris
- from Art-tec and the Art Gallery Paris): ‘’etc…tell her that I
am so sorry to… etc.… whatever, this woman has
a message, she has a strength!’’...
I must confess that
anyway, at that age, I could not
recognize myself in the expression ''this woman''
8
... I knew the vision-of-woman of this old man
I thought he was delirious and had been mistaken
on my name, and that he was talking about the
painting of someone else ... a
''woman'', it was something related to age
and older than me.
Yet he had clearly explained to me Pablo
Casals and his difficulty of recognizing music
in rock, and everything. ... and everything ...
PAGE 308
I see and understand better today
not only ''what Charpentier meant''...
but also ''why'' that he had to say
and explain these things.
Perhaps it is maturity that made me
recently appreciate greatly the TV interview
with Moravia.
Do you understand the process of harmonization in
''the mess'' that was still
two months ago this whole area of my experience?
It seems to me that the way that this sector
is going now: ‘’fluently’’, I can…forget and,
no, rather: stop thinking about it in peace
and use it as needed without any back
thought ... except perhaps for the idea that I
have had for some time, that I should perhaps
write and tell about all these painters that
I knew ''outside'' the official channels ... there
are many ... Rene Richard, Vincelette, Giunta,
Siquièros Jorge Flores d Siquièros, the President and Vice-President
- I forget their names, not our encounter,
I must have it in my ''records'' and even a
little drawing I think – of the Association of Artists
9
behind the Iron Curtain – I should find the correct names,
I have pictures of them somewhere - J. James of Jamaica
- I have pictures of his ‘’sculpture’’; he is especially
known in Europe for his ''painting'', etc. ...
Another example of ''places of torments'' that are
easily solving themselves by themselves:
the whole cultural and religious affair...
since I am ‘’defending’’ my jewellery
collection, I do not ‘’need’’ to ‘’defend’’ it individually,
continuously, all those who
PAGE 309
have taught and inspired them to me anymore ...
You see how ‘’it works’’? At least,
that is what I seem to be observing? ? ? ? ...
So I would rather, if the above seems to you,
logical, humane, correctly ‘’thought and lived’’
... I would rather work my mind myself
to invent-discover ''problematic’s''
that ‘’interest me’’ with ideas and questions
that belong to me ... that are pertinent TODAY (not yesterday) to my
imagination about ...''the recollections'' as to say, that
I noted last week… memories
originating from the ‘’altered states’’ of health, that I
have known ...
For example: submit an hypothesis and develop 3 - 4
precise questions on the function of perception
called ''psychedelic''; it is an aspect of perception
(on the visual side) on which I have a lot of documentation
and experiences. And here is that ''a'' VISUAL aspect of my
delirium due to fever (Malaria: in the plane), an
10
aspect that I remember (the ''value'' of my recollection is
well worth the memories of those who have absorbed
psychotropic drugs, right? ... i.e. ''relative''…and yet
‘’several’’ have not been bothered to develop and publish
from these ''non-verifiable recollections''
lots of data on perception that continue to
influence the conception of the world that artists and
doctors still broadcast...)
therefore a visual aspect that I remember: questions
my intellect, my memory, my ‘’associativity’’, my imagination ...
I would rather begin to ''talk'' of
what has been and still remains, a time of
''confusion''… in this way ... let us say: USFULL.
PAGE 310
Rather than in a chronologically or symptomatically
‘’normal and traditional’’ way…just to
think of it, that's it, I feel ‘’nauseated’’…
and yet I know that one must speak,
at least ‘’BEING ABLE’’ to talk about everything.
Firstly because ''time does not fix anything'': it
does not want to completely nicely and
politely suppress itself, like I would of wished...
Second, because the last past experiences
(3 to 4 months) seem to give a glimpse a ‘’mean’’
rather easy (compared to what I presumed-feared)
...let us say... to use, waste, trivialize ‘’that’’
witch bothers or frightens me.
I feel that where time and reason
only obtain the ''worsening’’ of the importance
of ‘’the littlest detail’’ art, curiosity and creativity ...
clear the path like a roller
compressor ...
I would feel like, being at this point, although I
11
do not know what are your reactions and opinions
on everything that I am elaborating and affirming
on for the last ten pages ...
I feel like ''joking''
in a language I know and that
allows me to:
''it's the stupidity of these Westerners,
confided the Holliman to his neighbour, to abscond ten
years to open the third eye and to go back into the traffic of
the maya, without even a thought on how to learn
to close it!...''
‘’But what do they think that they see better, answered
the companion, in seeing only the upside down, rather than
seeing the upright?''...
Smiles.''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 311
(Bio., page: 1495) (April 9, 1985)
***** (From a letter written to her daughter, Cybèle.)
‘’...Indeed, let's be realistic, for the little that
you know about it, you know, you too
that: my ‘’painting’’ has nothing to do with ‘’plastically
and aesthetically’’ with the ‘’official’’ painting
that the ''other people'' of
my age do ... you see ...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1508) (April 13, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’... To Michael
That is what I have to say to Cybèle ''in this circumstance.''
You reproach me of taking my time?
''All my life'', ''everyone'' has always accused me of taking my time. So?
Your comments do not take me ''exactly'' by surprise.
I am not running to become the most perfect.
I just want to always make sure that I'm doing my part as best I can.
I'm slow, yes.
Some say a: ''looser''
others that I am livings ''under'' of myself
others I'm hiding something from myself
others... all have words and have reasons to condemn imperfections,
errors, and especially so many many reasons to be ''in a hurry'' and
‘’idolize’’ ‘’the rush’’.
I'd rather not ''polluted'' dialogues USELESSLY. To talk less, but
at say things that at least ‘’say as much as possible of what I feel.''
In effect, my way may not be a ‘’guarantee of more clarity’’.
PAGE 312
For that I do not see any recipe. But at least, by
***** (Next page).
‘’re-meeting myself’’, (my words, my statements, writings or drawings),
I can recognize that it is myself who had been experiencing this for a person,
or that, in such circumstances, ''in such an understanding.''
What does it do?
It means that I do not always understand nor life, nor my life, but what it
does is that I RECOGNISE beings and situations and my own feelings
towards them and it helps me, if not to understand the others better,
but at least to ''feel'' them ‘’personally’’.
Presence.’’
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1513) (April 15, 1985)
***** (From a letter to her daughter, Cybèle.)
''... for this time! (sigh!) - I must
''avenge myself'' a bit just to console myself for not
being the ''master-of-world-who-would-
always-be-able-to-fix-things-to-my-taste'', right? ! ! ! Not
to be able to paint life to ones taste like a
painting! ! ! what a disappointment all the same for
an artist, you have to admit, no?''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1520) (April 15, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...At the same time as, the emerging ‘’inevitability of the being’’ is
obscured: Minerva, the arts, sciences and Literature ... Especially
sciences suffer in this period where research is banned.
I'll buy a nice horse.
And I will pass through desert roads, cities and towns.
PAGE 313
And I will say that Visible is Beauty. Visible to the physical eyes
of the body and not of imagination. And I will say that Life exists:
in a ''free state'': everywhere.
To avoid that there be no mistake about the meaning of my ''image.''
I will say: ''I am She-who-has-no-usefulness''. Non, I will say it softly,
very softly while continuing my promenade.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1521) (April 15, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the same letter to Michael.)
...''For me, bringing back the facts and cultural modes of communication to
the interpretation which may make it a family affair, a women affair, or a
matter of feeling, or a case of error, of good and evil , of honesty, of fear
or self-assertiveness, etc. ... ‘’Jansenism and scrupulosity : this is how it
sounds in my mind.
They say otherwise: Freudian interpretation of existential phenomenology, i.e.
as I told you one day about my perception on the subject of Freud personal
character (1): Romanticism and reduction of the universe to its family and
loving dimensions. The approach of charm and scrupulous torment.
my perception Prior to when I confronted them with that of Michael and
culture. Since then, ''Moses'' monotheism ‘’Totem and Taboo’’ strike me
‘’all’’ differently. And Freud? ... maybe ... one of the great artists of our
century: great writing and great thought. I thought that he had brought us
Jansenism but instead I see someone that from the middle of Jansenism
managed to come to us, in the field of reality in a very honourable
‘’measure’’ for a writer .''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1530) (April 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
PAGE 314
‘’... 2- Let us return to subject 2 of this approach in 1973. Since a couple of years,
I wondered about the uniqueness of the conception that I have of art. Nothing more
normal at this age in a normal approach of a young artist.
‘’But’’ since the last year (1972) a particular factor had appeared ''suddenly'' and
troubled me very much ....
***** (Next page).
All the other painters that I knew, young and old, in addition to seeking their way
as I, had a lot of time and effort to ‘’spend’’ on the technical aspect of the realization
of their pictures. What I mean is that, all things considered ''the others'' had to
WORK HARD technically to EXECUTE their drawings and paintings, where
(difficulty for difficulty, technical factor for technical factor), I realized ''in general''
in a first draft, everything I was planning to do ...
I have never, what is called ''poorly drawn'', or ‘’made dirty colours’, etc. ...
as if I had not had to ''learn'' that stage at which the others seemed to be ''all''
subject to.
It was enough for me to carefully ‘’silence the world’’ in me, to well construct
and see my design and / or my subject ... and then to RE-produce it on the canvas.
Final.
I'd come to believe that all I did was to ''copy''... so that perhaps I had no real
talent in painting ...that it might be better to abandon it to those who are
‘’struggling for Art'' etc. ... ha! ha! ha!
Do not worry, I do not have ‘’this problem’’ any more: I KNOW it's me who
built the images that I painted.
I know ''how'' I avoided this phase-of-awkwardness where many flounder along
time. And I know how to teach it, and through appropriate teaching: everyone can
do it. Note: past 30 - 35 years old learning is more difficult for this ''method''.
The ideal age is between 14 and 17 years old. Under 12 years old the method
is clearly ineffective. All the pedagogical observations as to the ''causes'' of the
subdivision of age groups allows me to understand the workings and reasons
enough to explain and discuss them. The number of individuals and groups to
whom I have taught by my method is quite large and varied enough for me to
have understood it.''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 315
(Bio., page: 1537) (April 20, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...Man would love his prison more than anything in the world, say many ...
and supposes that at the
best, loving your neighbour as yourself, means: to hasten to chain him up also ...
Yet, The Prisoner of Chillon? ...
I do not think Byron was like other men ... all agitated themselves around the
marvels of creation, but little, very little drink from it ...
Byron was an artist ... and the Knight Harold ... no, we can not find in society,
the existential view that yet meet invariably in all artists, of all time, and all continents ...
even in this old bastard Henry Miller ... even Updike ... all and all. They are there.
We need their contact to deepen the planetary tools of our art; in doing so we
learn to understand them and knowing them, we love them ... this love fills us
obviously, because it is so totally full in each of them ...
Then the rest of the world leaves us, along a street, leaning against the bottom
or top side of a wall, chilled, looking at our brothers pass by, concerned with
their own things, of a so light density that it required but just a glance to see
through them and see ... only the trees around their small parks of work and home ...
And the procession of small-sins-without-consequences invaded the city…
we must learn quickly to turn away in time, because these infinite scruples
where struggle the beings whose domestication truncates inevitably the ''self'',
make us sad ... the bitterness of
human limitations must not spill into our eyes and blind us before our canvas
and the blank white sheet awaiting a word from us ... a word ... a human word.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1547) (April 25)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
''... Anyway: I know myself and IF
PAGE 316
I have ‘’already’’ speculated about the ins and outs of the behaviour of ''my family'',
THUS, I know that I had by necessity arrived at a value-judgment
and of consequences on ‘’myself and them’’ that must have governed my actions
AND my feelings later on...
...
otherwise? - Nothing that is ''painted'' in ‘’my cellar’’ would be there. These
paintings prove, from what I know about myself that: I have acted freely.
Otherwise, they would not be there to testify about me.
I would not have acted ‘’without knowing’’, on one hand, and I would not,
neither have written nor painted: without freedom, on the other hand.
This behaviour, wrongly or rightly: represents me well ... my ideas on the
hierarchy of priorities as well as the conception that I have of ‘’expression
and authenticity’’.
Not knowing is one thing.
To spread it deliberately and inconsiderately destroys the voice of the
expressing more than the environment that could be reached.
Truth is a convention between entities for the purposes of communication,
a function of language.
Sincerity concerns the speaker himself in his relationship with existence.
To act in function of what is AND what we are as such in the event that
any modification to what is or what we are, should always put us in a
position of ''discovery'' and not of ''regret''...
you see a little ...''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1552) (April 25, 1985)
***** (Another excerpt from the letter to Michael.)
‘’...Sometimes, as is the case for most of the friends of Minerva, the coincidence
of point-of-view, thus of Vision is constantly broken by the will of the Storyteller
of science as well as of art ...
In the latter case,
PAGE 317
this sometimes insecure ''several'', but as they say ‘’they are not alone’’,
they are many to deny ''the facts''... until they adapt! ... and end up as just
by considering them as ''their'' Story!
However as for the Storyteller-of-new-falsehoods, whether of Art or of Science:
the fact has nothing that is ‘’too’’ insecuring because it resulted from a consented
effort and even sought ...
... although, of course, again ... we do not always find what we seek, but what
we find ... and the water diviner myself can sometimes be frightened to see
spring black oil, rather that the transparent water of life, there where he had
indicated to dig ...
Finally you see a bit how the system of perception ‘’works’’ in its self-consciousness
as we cling to it at this point in our History, and in the words of my little story .
So there.
In the ''stock'' in which we swim under the idea that they are the parameters of
my-life-the life-of-Monique ...
we must know that for every ''point'' : a multitude of ‘’possible’’ can
ORGANIZE each of them in ''tales of an intelligible line''...
Yes, I was probably ‘’reconnected’’.
Yes, according to a line of very ‘’likely’’ possibles’ in light of several
cultural and historical aspects, etc. ...
Yet the result of such a ''so beautiful'' surgery can not feel psychologically
‘’fitted’’ because it excludes many of the necessary possible choices, past
and present and to come so that can be organized harmoniously ‘’all’’
the points ... from the perspective of an artist.
Besides
''where'' I seem to be connected ‘’with the Storeys of other’’ seems to
me ....''déjà-vu''...
Impression of having been re-connected on a path that ... I had
‘’already’’ rejected, long ago.
And that I am ... now...rejecting ...again.
Have I ‘’shown’’ my story?''
----------------------------------------
PAGE 318
(Bio., page: 1593) (May 10, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’…Note that I have...love, can we say, for those who steal paintings for
themselves (not to ''resell them'': not for money),… they always make me smile ...
I say to myself: this is the true ''amateur''...
that is the person for whom
we paint for in fact, we the painters ...
Am I right?
It always seems that in these cases our paintings are in the best possible
hands, that is to say, in the hands of someone who must really love them,
to whom they are ''useful'', that needed them. Someone who will take
better care of them than anyone else. Someone who ''without knowing it'':
houses and preserves the heritage
with passion ... for the whole of the community.
Of course, it is because I never thought one ‘’could’’ buy a work of art:
at the most one pays to be the person who conserves it for a time and
''carries it'' for others in the continuous ‘’procession’’ witch is the life of Man...
I do not think that art can ''belong'' to somebody in particular.
This is not curiosity,
It's nature.
These things belong to all and probably are… From all.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1638) (May 16, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...As I often joke with Robert: ''but would you be imagining that you know
what you think, my word!'' (Robert understands my existential humour.
That makes at least one!)
How can you talk to yourself with simplicity if you do not know who you are.
PAGE 319
And how do you know who you are if you ‘’see yourself’’ so rarely over-the-day,
that we ‘’can not’’ even RECOGNISE ourselves when we meet ourselves at random!
Artists could perhaps without much harm to ‘’pure research’’ as they say,
make a sketch or two, from time to time to SHOW the ‘’current’’ portrait
of human being, right?
A sufficient quantity of ''portrait'' appears to me necessary in a society so
that an individual can be able to recognise himself. It's not asking too much,
I assume, ''without losing the gains'' as all fear so much,
which ''always'' means in art: WITHOUT returning to Expressionism.
Me, what I am asking for, is not the ''-isms'': it is the ‘’Expression’’.
Not only the ‘’human voice’’, has no age per say ... but, for myself, I come
to ask myself if one could not die altogether in the event of a too-advanced-deficiency
of Expression ... whatever our personality, our status, our IQ, our material condition
and everything ...
It is a question-that-can-be-asked anyway. Yes, very ‘’askable’’.
Love, love, there will always be something left of it!
Yeah?
Where exactly, and what exactly.''
----------------------------------------
(Bio., page: 1642) (May 16, 1985)
***** (From a letter to Michael.)
‘’...You see, Michel ...
Nature was my refuge when I was young.
In its sounds, its lights, its colours, its movements ... so much Love and Beauty.
As in the legend of Romulus and Remus, the she-wolf ... maybe.
Even if this gave me a language, tastes, a look that the social world called:
artist ... maybe you can understand why
for me, all that remained rather love-of-nature rather than a profession.
PAGE 320
Perhaps that this ‘’personal’’ relationship to nature still showed in my adolescence;
and perhaps this is why ''many'' hold so much, having thus nicknamed me Ti-Loup,
to continue using this nickname up till today when the intimacy of the ‘’private’’
flows between us.
By the way ... I think that this weekend something important happened to me
concerning that.
At least, that's what I think.
Marie-Claire has decided to cancel her art classes for six months. First she is
going to Greece in a couple of weeks to walk on the ''real earth'' as she says
of the Peloponnesus and of... Antique Arcadia. This is a private expedition of
four weeks that she has organised with another girl who has ''pertinent experience''
in traveling-on-foot ...yes ‘’on foot’’ they will go…she had not yet heard about
my story where I go on a beautiful horse ... no.
I learn this today as you when it was something dreamed-made-organized.
That, it is only the state of mind.
The purpose of this six month sabbatical without any study in any Art class,
imagine, it is because she has ‘’too many personal things inside of her’’, she
says, that she must express before continuing her ‘’technical’’ apprenticeship
(she is always saying that she lacks technique and that she needs to know all
that before doing Art… she knows that I have no great tendency to buy that
idea, but she still continues to ‘’market it’’ to me)
Marie-Claire ‘’whatever it could be’’, ''takes time'' to sculpt ON HER
OWN ACCOUT!
Oops, I mean ... to say what she has to say for herself and not… to do
Art to serve Art, ''as'' Art likes very much to be served, as her academic
studies of the last three years had convinced her unshakably ...
Me, what do I have to say about that…
It's that, of course, her own way does not have to be like mine; and of course,
in principle, she is the only one really positioned to know what she wants to do ...
but
all the same!
When I hear her talk of learning of knowledge and of art ... I often have the
impression of a real slavery. Can not help but inwardly screaming ... and even
growling a bit before her
***** (Next : Image number img135.)