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Gérard Durozoi art historian, philosopher |
His choice of non-representation was nevertheless made early on. It can be said that his career shows a certain number of solutions enabling him, in the end of the day, to challenge and undermine anthropomorphism, but it's still noteworthy that the only thing he conceded to anthropomorphism was the half-body casting made in 1961, when he was still a student. In the 1960s, invariably hasty attempts, giving rise to just a small number of works, were made with the classic materials of modern sculpture--bronze, painted wood (it was in the mid-1960s that he started to see the need for colour to be at one with all manner of volume), and metal sheets. In 1967, he mixed some of these materials to produce a few small mobiles--a cobbled-together tribute to Calder--occasionally helped in their movements by electric motors. He then came up with simple volumes, fractured cubes that could be taken to pieces (as if, this time, movement was to be initiated not within the work itself, by the mechanical connections linking the various parts together, but through the prior intervention of the person installing and manipulating the forms--which, perforce, culminates in a movement that is as if blocked or set), and designed a labyrinth made of metal sheets, presented with hemispheres affixed to the walls. Late 1967 was significant because it showed a shift from the horizontal presentation plane (be it floor, surface or ground outside) to the possibility of hanging works vertically. This switch would be a productive one for some time. Jean Noël then realized that interventions that could be conceived on and in space are actually much more open than is traditionally admitted by sculptors (and sculpture enthusiasts). Far from sticking to the official distinction made between sculpted volume and bas-relief, he started to blur their features and stand aloof from an, in a way, invariably pre-ordained and implicit definition of sculpture as a vertical inscription in space, or at the very least as a volume (also including a volume with as many holes in it as you like, and even when it is wider than it is high) set on a plane. From here there was a kind of slightly paradoxical generalization of the presentation space: the paradox resided in the fact that sculpture, which is reckoned to be a three-dimensional art, is forever--including in its modernist versions--dealing lopsidedly with the three dimensions as factors producing tensions and forms. It favours verticality or, at best, the relation between vertical and horizontal, in such a way that the space in which it acts is amputated, if not strictly speaking depth-wise (because it certainly presents a material depth which tallies with our everyday space of perception), then at least in terms of depth that really does generate dynamics. As a result, there is a "generalization" of its space when, in becoming detached from a wall, the worked form tends to shatter any relation with a horizontal acting as its support and surface. Through its way of proceeding in perceptive space, it asserts the materialization of an obviously local space, but one that has become indifferent to any location of a "ground". Shedding implicit verticality was too complex an operation to be accomplished right away. Proof of this lies in the Ovoïdes which appeared in 1968. These heat-moulded, coloured plexiglas shells had a form which retained a main reading line that ran from top to bottom. With the result that their presentation might have confirmed their apparent independence in relation to the floor, but the flat edge surrounding them reproduced an incongruous pedestal-like effect. It is evident that they are placed on the wall and that they don't in any way seem to loom out from it, or form any kind of excrescence. Nor did the Overexpansibles which followed them up until 1972, repeating a horizontal module, manage to put an end to the heterogeneity of the work and its surface. The issue of developing works that can be regarded no longer as interventions or modifications in space, but rather interventions or activations of space itself, still need to be dealt with. What, on the other hand, was established was the importance of the shadow created on the wall by the shape, at the same time as the possible interplay of light reflecting on the material. Retrospective commentary probably runs the risk of discovering achievements, in the earlier phases of the work, whose productivity is subsequently proven, whereas all that was involved, in the day to day reality of the praxis, was tentative approaches and tests carried out in a rather groping manner, the lesson of which would only be explained very slowly. The fact nevertheless remains that, as seen from today's standpoint, the ten years that commenced in late 1968 appeared to show certain concerns in Jean Noël's work which, by way of the apparent diversity of his activities, merged to some extent in a challenge focusing on the many ways in which more or less defined forms and colours can cause upheavals and disturbances, as well as positive markings of a space that is not exclusively the space of aesthetically-inclined perception, but which rather comes across like the space in which we act, move about and live in a very everyday way. This space may be partly taken up--in particular by series of inflated vinyl pouches, welded together. What is significant here is the possibility of using these pouches in different ways--either arranged like a caterpillar whose ends are affixed to the ceiling, or laid on the floor in a straight or wavy line, or piled up, and inflated to a greater or lesser degree. It is as much their appearance as their presentation that is altered in each show, as if it were a matter of experiencing the reception capacities of the space for a transformable object, or, vice versa, the capacities for modifying the object on the basis of the space where it must momentarily be shown; and as if it were also a matter of experimenting with a maximum of inter-relations possible between an unstable form and the display spaces. In 1969, these pouches were followed by simple volume-less modules, either stitched or fixed together with plastic screws, set on the floor--needless to add, they can be likened to the Floor Pieces produced by Carl Andre from 1966 on, which Jean Noël did not, however, know about at that time--to the point where such a proposition seemed to sidestep any line of thinking about the overall space, by focusing on the plane. But then came cotton cloths, either in stitched strips forming a large quadrangular format with alternating colour and void, or in solid, monochrome surfaces, whereby the plane, which was distorted by the tensions caused by the hanging, really did upset the space, because they could be arranged diagonally in a room, defining distinct places in it and acting as a fragile partition separating an inside from an outside, and a here from an over there, in a single volume. The exhibition volume was thus fragmented by an arrangement whose simplicity was matched only by its effectiveness. It was the totality of the space earmarked for walking about in that revealed hitherto unnoticed properties, in its ability to split itself up, and halt or hamper certain gestures. In tandem, when these works were shown behind glass in an architectural space that let in the daylight, they reactivated what might be the role of this latter in the experienced space: they intercepted or filtered it, but they could just as much glorify it by the interplay of their colour. From 1971 on, Jean Noël seemed to temporarily abandon such arrangements and devices in order to devise a series of actions, get involved in short films and photography, and drift towards body art. In these activities, however, there was still an approach to the balance of bodies and to the distortions that a surface or a predefined volume (especially a carnal one) may undergo. This is certainly what happened, for example, when Jean Noël asked four people to unfold a huge piece of stitched cloth and fold it back up again. There was probably nothing terribly outstanding about this exercise; its advantage, in fact, was that it gave the onlooker's consciousness access to the reality of his own gesturality--otherwise put, the reality of the inclusion of his own body and his own movements in space. And, with its unspectacular aspect, this exercise may also have reminded the onlooker of household chores as commonplace as folding newly washed and ironed sheets. Similarly, the photographs (subsequently printed on cloth) of a naked body partly covered with inscriptions gave the skin a slightly novel definition; it is no longer just what separates organic space from surrounding space, it can become a surface to be read--and for the model himself who thus acts quite differently than in his mirror--the experience of a disconcerting sense of being outside yourself. In the exercises where he makes himself up, as shown by large photographs, Jean Noël would experience on his own personal behalf this capacity to turn your own body into an object, relate the facial volume to an almost pictorial surface, and de-personalize what is initially the thing that is the most unusual and odd. These experiences--and experiments--, which seem to hail from whims and restless questing, did possibly help the artist to check whether such practices, which were so very much attuned to the mood of the 1970s, were definitely too rooted in the real--in other words, they obviously lacked any metaphorical dimension and any sublimation, to merit being more permanently carried on. Nevertheless, they were carried out--even if it seems very hard to specify what was retained in the subsequent work. We might tentatively think that this passage through the utopia of a more or less complete confusion between art and a slightly transformed everdayness was necessary for a sculpture conceived as totally independent to then be asserted. The year 1979 saw the appearance of Arcs and Mers/Seas. In these works certain materials were preferred--and for some of them this preference would be on a once-and-for-all basis: painted wood, steel rods, glass, stretched cloths--as were certain contrasts: transparency and opaqueness, stability and imbalance, forms that were strictly defined, and elements that were as if left unfinished. The stretched cloths on steel rods played on the resistances peculiar to each materials; the Seas (large works, taking up a virtual volume of 4 x 2 x 2 metres) were made with particularly vibratory rods--you just had to brush against them for them to vibrate for a long time, disseminating both movement and sound. The Matisse blue partly colouring them was probably a tribute, but there was also a tribute paid in the subtle adjustment of their elements, which increased the angles of vision at the same time as it relished the play on void and solid, curves and angles, rigour and abandonment. The use of the allusive title--in which the problem of the relations between nature and culture was brought all the more to the fore because certain materials were obviously of industrial origin--was extended in the Garden exhibition held in 1983: the pieces shown were called Lune jaune/Yellow Moon, Motif floral/Flower Pattern no.1 and Zéphyr. Their technical description was less evocative: "paint on laminated wood and nylon", "acrylic on corrugated polyester, steel", "paint on wood, paper, nylon, steel, copper". But in the text he signed for the occasion, Jean Noël showed a lyricism that was not devoid of aggressiveness: "For me, what matters above all is creating events that transmit energy, because energy is all that matters... and also working out of sheer pleasure, looking for the perfume of things, ready to evaporate, the essence... and then trying to avoid eclipsing the Real under the hysterical productivity discourse and the hijacking of resources and energies in megalomaniacal projects to develop this planet as a human zoo". It is hardly surprising that commentators of the day emphasized the floral allusions, and the evocation of a possible "paradise", be it lost or to be regained. They were themselves ensnared by the descriptive cues of the pieces shown--tree-trunks, leaves, branches, round moon shape etc..--which almost barred a more formal perception of these sculptures. But this latter is probably better suited to describe the unusualness of the approach. The "plants" were actually handled with artificial materials, and the colouring of the pieces was only very partially "realist": there was certainly green, yellow and ochre, and other possible references to the colour range that indicates, without any possibility of misunderstanding, that we are dealing with the features of a landscape, but their arrangements and their impact were calculated on the basis of the relations entertained by the various elements between themselves, the elements making up each piece solely to form an image complying with a deep-seated concern for verisimilitude. In addition, Jean Noël only uses a limited number of forms, which are variously combined from one piece to the next, and invariably assembled with slender metal rods whose evocative power is due to their function and their position, but not to the way they look. In such a way that its "evocation" results first and foremost from a kind of combination, where you sense that it might well show its productivity independently of any motif. His sculpture is actually "minimalist", but in the specific sense where, for him, it involves not exploring the possible declensions of "primary" or strictly geometric structures, but rather reducing the motif to the minimum by guaranteeing its recognition. This is when he is probably most akin to an artist such as Richard Tuttle, with the slight difference that he grants more importance and value than this latter to the suggestions of his materials and to the spacing between the parts of each sculpture. He prefers the airy and ventilated, the dynamic distance and a linkage defined by the suppleness of a flexible rod and by the weight of what is attached thereto, to the compactness and serriedness of the elements. Instead of a rigorous programming, he exercises an empirical adjustment, a kind of noble DIY based on the requirements of his resins, wood and iron. Far from being static and fixed, the sculptures always seem ready to quiver and tremble; they suggest fragile, fleeting arrangements. The "hydrodynamic" forms are especially symptomatic, devised as they are to be put on the floor, even though their contact with it is very slight: they are like the blueprints of aquatic motions, grasping the uncertain split-second that separates ebb and flow by deducing them from one another. Although their form seems simple--a finely honed spindle or blade--, all you have to is approach them from several viewpoints to realize their complex subtleness, made up of reversed curves and the discreet alterations of a convexity. With Jean Noël, the apparent simplicity is a trap; it disguises a host of partial connections, which are all the more effectual because, at first glance, they elude: the surface of a piece of wood is slightly undulating, and not flat, the paint covering it shows unevennesses, the distribution of a colour turns out not be all that systematic, a cut-out is not as symmetrical as you first thought, the way a surface clings to the wall calls for variable distances and spaces, etc... To be content with generally pinpointing the way the forms are articulated is tantamount to doing without a series of pleasures bound up with the gradual discovery of these "details", whose accumulation ensures the presence of each piece, whose very title, together with the summary it proposes, is nothing other than an additional decoy. Were there need for proof thereof, suffice it to imagine the different meaning that each and every work may take on when you alter their presentation, for example by putting on the floor something that called to mind a "tree", or affixing a hydrodynamic form to the wall. The piece thus altered not only retains all its coherence, but also acquires a different effectiveness--what seemed identifiable as tree-trunk and branches turns out to be the support for a suspended form, and the "wave" turns into a "cloud", or into the quivering of pure space. This is a rather rare polyvalence in contemporary sculpture, which confirms that the combinatory work is more concerned with the links between elements than with their possible empirical significance. In the late 1980s, forms finally gave up evoking anything remotely nameable. In a very logical way, titles became mere descriptions of the component parts of sculpture. This was sometimes done with a very special kind of wit--as with Rosa, rosae, rosam (1989), which rigorously designates the declension of three indisputably pink forms coming from one and the same surface. But usually it was done in a neutral way: Avatars, Sui generis, Triangles, Bancal jaune et rose, Isométrie, Up'n down (jaune bleu). All that was spelt out was colours, processes, forms, balances and their opposites, in other words, the things that every sculpture is very precisely made of. Materials were less numerous: disappearance of wood and metal rods, almost exclusive use of coloured resins, various types of plastic and light hardware items (needles, screws). From this point on, the sculptures came across as articulations of coloured planes in space, relieved of any kind of motif. They thus achieved their most general definition, at the same time as their most marked singularity (which owed its obviousness to anything but materials, even if these were not the commonest), to the point where it was possible to dispute the term "sculptures", so disconcerting did their features seem--had the expression not already been monopolized by Don Judd, it would be tempting to regard them as "specific objects", but we shouldn't pursue the idea because Jean Noël's production was more removed than ever from the rigour of historical minimalism. In these recent works, Jean Noël confirms the impossibility of public statuary. It isn't solely because statuary has lost something of its necessity, on account of the dislocation of great narratives, be they religious or political, which might structure the social body by erasing its cracks. It's also, if not even more so, because sculpture set in the public place is the victim of its function and its possible uses. Its public ranges across the board, because it is randomly sampled--on the basis of mood and a quite fleeting availability--in an anonymous throng. So it doesn't address a subjectivity any more, but rather an average "one", stripped of distinctive features, discovering it, wandering about, like a more or less noteworthy marking of the urban space. It may be noted that this anonymity, in some sense, rebounds on public sculpture itself and on its conception, culminating in interchangeable productions, whose authors one might often be excused for muddling up (1)... But this is possibly not the most serious thing. What seems most harmful is that what results above all is that, far from being able to activate space in any specific way, such works don't owe their own reality to their site, or to the way they are placed in an urban system--they are thus dependent on a previously formed space, within which their effectiveness is not to be found. Because Jean Noël has chosen to activate space (which simply means that he intends to fully assume his responsibility as a sculptor), and introduce qualities which are absent from it, as long as his works don't reveal them, his recent pieces are committed to intervening in interior volumes. Which has nothing to do with the intimacy and dimensions of his works, but refers, rather, to the need, first and foremost, to define the space which has to be rendered perceptible. The fact is that their deployment and their articulations are probably due to their inner demands, and to what in some way is claimed by the first surface and the first cut-out adopted, with its outline and its colour. They are thus all compliant with what Sui generis formulated in 1991. The piece in question shows how a form develops in space which only obeys what is sketched by the first generative lines--they present the gradual expansion of a kind of double wave, which gradually runs out of steam and ends up in tiny extremities, curving in the opposite direction. But this sculpture is one of the rare ones which, by way of its compact volume, seems to drive away the space around it to find its own site. Most of Jean Noël's recent sculptures, on the other hand, are open forms, which work their way into space by defining locations, as well as possible shifts, displacements and permutations--works which in no way invade the space, but which, to the contrary, assert a kind of transitory character, and probably single out virtual planes and volumes, but which are also ways of giving to the space itself a sort of life and flesh. All the more so, too, because they suggest the possibility of their extensions in space--if only by the way in which the outlines are not straightforwardly or clearly cut out, but are, on the contrary, slightly "runny", giving glimpses of the depth of the material and its colour. As a result, each sculpture has a metonymic range--it unfurls its effects beyond its material boundaries. Lack of differentiation thus gives rise to unusual occupations, as if it were being condensed or coagulated, by a specific motion, in order to offer ordinarily imperceptible tensions and energy lines. So sculpting is just using your materials to give the space in which they will be incorporated a chance to reveal their potential. Ahead of all form there is the formless, and the artist's work consists simply in making the shift from the latter to the former. The person who accompanies his itinerary with the requisite attentiveness gains therefrom a whole lot more than mere pleasure--another way of situating yourself in what is undifferentiated, a new way of grasping this latter so as to sense in it that things, places and spaces as they are ordinarily admitted are merely awaiting our wish to be transformed and offer us versions that are more accommodating of desire. Translated by Simon Pleasance <spleasance@aol.com> ------------- Notes 1. As is shown, after the fact, by the two outdoor sculptures produced by Jean Noël in 1967; whatever their qualities might be, Trimodulaire orangé and Hémicycle orangé do not convey a powerful singularity in relation to many other propositions of the time. Which can also be laid at the door of the artist's young age... 2. Which, it should be said in passing, encompasses "historical" minimal artworks (Judd, Andre, LeWitt, etc.). |
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