Color. Absolute. Aubertin Klein Manzoni Art. A universe of relations 1963/2013

Transcription

1 Color. Absolute. Aubertin Klein Manzoni Art. A universe of relations 1963/2013

2 FLAMINIO GUALDONI Color. Absolute. Aubertin Klein Manzoni 6 (en/it/fr) BERNARD AUBERTIN African impressions 36 (en/fr) Art. A universe of relations 1963/ (de/it)

3 Color. Absolute. Aubertin Klein Manzoni FLAMINIO GUALDONI 6

4 Issue No. 3 of Heinz Mack and Otto Piene s Zero publishes texts including: Sketch of the Pictorial Situation of Red in a Spatial Concept by Bernard Aubertin. The explicitly stated origin of the expression spatial concept is an homage rendered by the artist to Yves Klein. «The goal of monochrome confirms the powerlessness of lines, forms, colors, compositions, and so on, in order to reveal the pictorial Essence, painting s only quality. Psychological references are abandoned. They only play an intermediary role», writes Aubertin, who specifies that «pictorial essence is shown in the very work of the artist, where its sensuality is revealed. [ ] The viewer of a monochrome painting feels permeated with color. He feels violently penetrated with color. [ ] Color s destiny is completely carried out in monochrome painting. The fascinating fullness of color is only tangible in monochrome. Without its intermediary function, color can finally exist. By its brilliant presence in space, it performs its magic». Aubertin started using monochrome based on Klein s example, showing that between Milan, Paris and Düsseldorf that they expressed the paradigm of the artistic revival in 1957, forging the definitive barrier between every possible form of informalism. Klein s monochrome, which stretches uniformly and perfectly fixed onto a smooth media, or as in the case of Collette s Allendy s exposition in 1957, onto objects, is not a physical affirmation, but rather the identification of a sort of metaphysical transcendence of color, a search for the undefinable, as he wrote on the subject of Delacroix. The perfection of «this immaterialism that will make us find a real love for the material, as opposed to quantitivism or the mummifying materialism that enslaves us to the material and transforms it into a tyrant». In Klein s work, as we will see later with Aubertin, this will be a principle of fundamental reality which leads nicely to Pierre Restany, by making him the founder of New Realism, «forty degrees above zero dada, without any complex of aggressiveness, without a characteristic 7

5 controversial desire, without any other itch for justification than our realism. And it works, positively. If he can manage to return to the real once again, man can identify it with his own transcendence (emotion, feeling and finally poetry) once more». As we well know, Piero Manzoni s creation of achromy succeeded Klein s assumptions, but it is clearly different from the original as far as conceptual development. Even though when referring to the domain of images, he proclaims that «we cannot allow a manifestation of intense color as a means», the consequence may be the absorption of a highly gradient symbolic chromatic substance and blue, or at least gold with Klein possessing an autonomous identity capable of giving meaning, and even though white is wholly achromatic, it is the only possible choice. Klein very much highlights a sort of immaterial purity in the oriental aroma of the void, just like our void is attracted by a raw and dispossessed materiology of the painting of the structure of a presence (a modifying presence written in his manifest against this style) objectivized as a thing among things. «Do not paint states Manzoni, [for] it may be regarded conventionally by the viewer as such, yet you will find yourself alone in the painting, reduced to your primary and indifferent essence, your unqualified, pure physical presence». Painting can be simultaneously an object, strictly speaking, and an indeterminate, very abstract object of thought having a specific absolute: the meaning that refers to nothing else but itself. Of course, neither Klein nor Manzoni invented monochrome, nor Aubertin, who is split between a ferocious and feverish use of red and of fire, and who cannot be considered as the master of either expressive choices. Its history is long, going from Kazimir Malevich to Alexandre Rodtchenko, from Wladyslaw Trzemiñski to Katarzyna Kobro, from Mark Rothko to Ad Rienhardt. Every time, monochrome is called upon to articulate an essence, yet every time, the intention is different, in the infinite gradients going from all to nothing, from lyrical giddiness 8

6 to desolate physical ostentation. Klein, Manzoni and Aubertin are lucid representatives of this new incomparable departure and of this conceptual distillation of the idea of the work s color and being, creating a pure, clear, brazen modifying presence at the core of the experience of viewing art. They work mainly in the absence of intellectual discipline and the arrogant methodological economy which would then be conceptual minimalism, because their interior intellectual investigation is always nourished by a vein of inventive freedom and introverted poetry, besides that of a vision which will lead Juan-Eduardo Cirlot to mention Manzoni as a new idealism ; start over, yes, but never terms of reducing and always nourished by an expansive feeling of fullness. After this very first and very quick movement, in the context of the late 50s, monochrome is, for some, a technical condition, and for others, a vague designation. Yet this absolute was no longer reached by anyone. It is indeed an instant of foundation. 9

7 PIERO MANZONI Achrome Nuvola fibre artificielle 74x 74x 24cm

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9 YVES KLEIN Victoire de Samothrace pigment IKB et résine synthétique/moule plâtre 50x 26x 36cm

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11 BERNARD AUBERTIN Clous n.1002 clous sur bois 29x 40cm

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13 Colore. Assoluto. Aubertin Klein Manzoni FLAMINIO GUALDONI 16

14 Lo storico numero 3 di Zero, la pubblicazione di Heinz Mack e Otto Piene, pubblica tra gli altri testi l Esquisse de la situation picturale du rouge dans un concept spatial di Bernard Aubertin. La derivazione dell espressione concetto spaziale è esplicita, e dichiarato è l omaggio che l artista rende a Yves Klein. «Il fine dell utilizzo della monocromia è quello di conferire alla superficie un Essenza pittorica. La monocromia afferma l impotenza delle linee, delle forme, i colori, le composizioni... di essere in grado di rivelare l Essenza pittorica dell opera, unica qualità dell opera stessa. I riferimenti di carattere psicologico sono completamente abbandonati. Non giocano che un ruolo di intermediazione», scrive Aubertin, il quale specifica: «L essenza pittorica. Essa si manifesta nell essenza stessa dell artista in cui si esprime tutta la sua sensualità. [ ] Lo spettatore si sente impregnato di colore, desidera violentemente penetrare nel colore. Il fine ultimo del colore trova la propria totale realizzazione nella pittura monocroma. La totalità affascinante del colore non è tangibile che attraverso la monocromia. Privato del suo ruolo di intermediario, il colore esiste infine. Attraverso la sua presenza radiante nello spazio, impone tutta la sua magia». Aubertin giunge alla monocromia sulla scorta dell esempio di Klein, che le mostre tra Milano e Parigi e Düsseldorf hanno reso nel 1957 il paradigma del nuovo artistico, scavando la faglia definitiva nei confronti di ogni informalismo possibile. Il monocromo di Klein, che si stenda uniforme e perfettamente non gestuale sul supporto piano oppure, com è nella mostra di quel 1957 da Colette Allendy, su supporti oggettuali, non è affermazione fisica ma identificazione di una sorta di trascendenza metafisica del colore, alla ricerca dell indefinissable di cui scriveva l amato Delacroix. La sua è dunque affermazione «di quell immaterialismo che ci farà ritrovare un autentico amore per la materia in opposizione al quantismo, a quel materialismo mummificante che ci rende schiavi 17

15 della materia stessa trasformandola in un tiranno». In Klein opera dunque, come sarà poi in Aubertin, un principio di realtà fondamentale, che è quanto ben intuisce Pierre Restany facendone il caposcuola del Nouveau Realisme, «a quaranta gradi al di sopra di zero dada, senza complesso di aggressività, senza intento polemico, senza altro prurito di giustificazione che il nostro realismo. E ciò funziona positivamente. L uomo, se apparentemente reintegrato al reale, lo identifica con la propria trascendenza che è emozione, sentimento e finalmente poesia, ancora». La concezione dell achrome da parte di Piero Manzoni è, ci è ben noto, successiva alle postulazioni di Klein, ma se ne differenzia all origine in modo netto sul piano dell elaborazione concettuale. Se in Zona di immagini egli proclama che «non possiamo ammettere alcuna manifestazione di colore inteso come mezzo», la conseguenza che ne trae non è, né può essere, l assunzione di una sostanza cromatica ad altissimo gradiente simbolico è il blu, altrimenti l oro, in Klein dotata di un identità autonoma capace di produrre senso, bensì che il bianco, in quanto totalità e insieme acromia, sia l unica scelta possibile. Tanto Klein punta a una sorta di purezza immateriale, nell aroma orientale del vuoto, altrettanto il nostro è attratto da una cruda e snudata materiologia del quadro, dalla configurazione di una presenza (di presenza modificante, si legge nel manifesto Contro lo stile) che si oggettiva, come una cosa tra le cose. «Non fare il quadro», intuisce Manzoni, può essere fare un quadro che venga letto convenzionalmente dallo spettatore come tale, ma in cui si ritrovi solo, ridotta alla sua essenza prima e indifferente, la sua pura non qualificata presenza fisica. Il quadro può essere così allo stesso tempo un oggetto in senso proprio e un indeterminato, astrattissimo oggetto del pensiero, dotato d una specifica assolutezza: il cui senso non rimandi ad altro che a se stesso. Nessuno dei due, né Klein né Manzoni, è l inventore del monocromo, beninteso. 18

16 Né Aubertin, teso tra pratica feroce e febbrile del rosso e del fuoco, può essere considerato il dominus dell una e/o dell altra scelta espressiva. La vicenda è lunga, conduce da Kazimir Malevich ad Aleksandr Rodchenko, da Wladyslaw Strzemiñski a Katarzyna Kobro, da Mark Rothko a Ad Reinhardt. Ogni volta la monocromia è chiamata a pronunciare un essenza, ma ogni volta l intento è diverso, nelle gradazioni infinite che vanno dal tutto al niente, dalla vertigine lirica all ostensione fisica desolata. Klein, Manzoni, Aubertin sono semmai esponenti lucidi di quell azzeramento febbrile e di quella distillazione concettuale dell idea di colore, e dell essere dell opera, che ne fa una pura, nitida, flagrante presenza modificante in seno all esperienza del vedere, del vivere l esperienza artistica. Soprattutto essi agiscono in assenza del rigorismo intellettuale e dell arrogante economia metodologica che sarà poi di minimalismo e concettuale, dal momento che in loro lo scrutinio intellettuale si alimenta sempre di una vena di libertà inventiva e di introversa poeticità, oltre che di una visione sarà Juan- Eduardo Cirlot a dire per Manzoni di un nuevo idealismo azzerante sì, ma mai in chiave di riduzione, di less, e sempre nutrita d un senso radiante di totalità. Dopo quel primissimo e brevissimo momento, lo scorcio finale del decennio Cinquanta, anche la monocromia si fa genere, per qualcuno modalità tecnica, per qualcun altro vague da cavalcare a diverso titolo. Ma quell assoluto non viene più raggiunto da alcuno. È, davvero, un momento di fondazione. 19

17 PIERO MANZONI Achrome ouate à carreaux 30x 40cm ca

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19 YVES KLEIN La Terre bleue pigment IKB et résine sur plâtre 35x 30x 28cm ca

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21 BERNARD AUBERTIN Clous n. 201 clous sur bois 60x 50cm

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23 Couleur. Absolu. Aubertin Klein Manzoni FLAMINIO GUALDONI 26

24 L historique numéro 3 de «Zero», la publication de Heinz Mack et Otto Piene publie, entre autres textes : l Esquisse de la situation picturale du rouge dans un concept spatial de Bernard Aubertin. La dérivation de l expression «concept spécial», explicitement déclarée est l hommage rendu par l artiste à Yves Klein. «Le but de la monochromie est d impregner la surface peinte d une Essence picturale. La monochromie confirme l impuissance des lignes, formes, couleurs, compositions, etc à reveler l Essence picturale, seule qualité du tableau. Les références psychologiques sont abandonnées. Elles ne jouent qu un rôle d intermédiaire» écrit Aubertin qui précise: «L essence picturale. Elle se manifeste dans la facture même de l artiste où se fait jour sa sensualite. [ ] Le spectateur d un tableau monochrome se sent impregné de couleur, il desire violemment pénétrer dans la couleur. [ ] Le destin de la couleur se réalise totalement dans la peinture monochrome. La plénitude fascinante de la couleur n est tangible qu en monochromie. Privée de sa fonction d intermédiaire, la couleur existe enfin. Par sa présence rayonnante dans l espace, elle impose sa magie». Aubertin arrive à la monochromie sur la base de l exemple de Klein montrant par les expositions de Milan, Paris et Düsseldorf qu ils ont exprimé le paradigme du renouveau artistique en 1957, creusant la faille définitive par rapport à chaque informalisme possible. Le monochrome de Klein qui s étend de façon uniforme et parfaitement fixe sur un support lisse ou, comme lors de l exposition de 1957 chez Collette Allendy sur des supports d objets, n est pas une affirmation physique mais l identification d une sorte de transcendance métaphysique de la couleur, une recherche de l «indéfinissable» dont écrivait son bien aimé Delacroix. C est donc l affirmation «de cet immatérialisme qui nous fera retrouver un véritable amour de la matière en opposition au quantitativisme, au matérialisme momifiant qui nous rend esclave de cette matière et la transforme en 27

25 un tyran». Cela sera dans l œuvre de Klein, et plus tard dans l oeuvre d Aubertin aussi, un principe de réalité fondamentale dont Pierre Restany se rend bien compte en en faisant le fondateur du Nouveau Réalisme, «à quarante degrés au-dessus du zéro dada, sans complexe d agressivité, sans volonté polemique caracterisée, sans autre prurit de justification que notre réalisme. Et ça travaille, positivement. L homme, s il parvient à se réintegrer au réel, l identifie à sa propre transcendance, qui est émotion, sentiment et finalement poésie, encore. La conception de l achrome par Piero Manzoni est, nous le savons bien, successive aux postulats de Klein mais dès son origine elle diffère clairement sur le plan de l élaboration conceptuelle. Si dans Zona di immagini il proclame que «nous ne pouvons admettre aucune manifestation de couleur intense comme un moyen», la conséquence qu il en tire ne peut pas être l assomption d une substance chromatique d un très fort gradient symbolique - le bleu, ou bien l or chez Klein - avec une identité autonome capable de signification, mais que le blanc en tant que totalité et à la fois achromie, est le seul choix possible. Si Klein vise une sorte de pureté immatérielle, dans l arôme oriental du vide, le Nôtre est attiré par une matériologie crue et dépouillée du tableau par la configuration d une présence (de «présence modificatrice», lit-on dans le manifeste Contro lo stile) qui se fait objet, telle une chose parmi les choses. «Ne pas faire de peinture» déclare Manzoni, peut être une peinture lue de façon conventionnelle par le spectateur tel qu il est, mais dans lequel on retrouve seulement, réduit à son essence première et indifférente, sa présence physique pure non qualifiée. Le tableau peut être ainsi en même temps un objet au sens propre et un objet de la pensée indéterminé, très abstrait, doté d un absolu spécifique: son sens ne renvoie à rien d autre qu à lui-même. 28

26 Bien sûr, aucun des deux, ni Klein ni Manzoni, est l «inventeur» du monochrome. Ni Aubertin, partagé entre l utilisation féroce et fébrile du rouge et du feu ne peut être considéré le dominus de l un ou l autres des choix expressifs. L histoire est longue et va de Kazimir Malevich à Alexandre Rodtchanko, de Wladyslaw Strzemiñski à Katarzyna Kobro, de Mark Rothko à Ad Reinhardt. Chaque fois, la monochromie est appellée à prononcer une essence mais chaque fois l intention est différente, dans les gradations infinies allant du tout au rien, du vertige lyrique à l ostension physique désolée. Klein, Manzoni, Aubertin sont des représentants lucides de ce zérotage febrile et de cette distillation conceptuelle de l idée de couleur, et de l être de l œuvre, qui en fait une pure, claire, flagrante «présence modifiante» au sein de l expérience de voir, de vivre l expérience artistique. Ils opèrent principalement en l absence du rigorisme intellectuel et de l arrogante économie méthodologique qui deviendra minimalisme et art conceptuel, car leur soudage intellectuel se nourrit toujours d une veine de liberté inventive et d une poésie introvertie, outre que d une vision - ce qui amènera Juan-Eduardo Cirlot à dire de Manzoni qu il s agit de «un nuevo idealismo», tout à fait reduissant à zéro, mais jamais en termes de less et toujours nourrie d un sentiment rayonnant de plénitude. Après ce tout premier et très bref moment, les dernières années Ð50, même la monochromie devient un genre, pour quelqu un une modalité technique, pour quelqu un d autre une vague à surfer pour des raisons différentes. Mais cet absolu, personne ne l a plus atteint. C est, vraiment, un moment de fondation. 29

27 PIERO MANZONI Fiato d artista ballon, bois 18x18cm

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29 YVES KLEIN Table bleue verre, plexiglass, piètement en métal et pigment IKB 35x 124x 100cm

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31 BERNARD AUBERTIN Clous n. 731 clous sur bois 50x 50cm

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33 36 Bernard Aubertin: African impressions 1983

34 I first met Yves Klein in My wife and I were having lunch at Wadja, a small Hungarian restaurant in rue de la Grande Chaumiére in Montparnasse. Yves was another of the regular customers and the three of us often happened to find ourselves seated at the same table. Klein observed me very carefully and seemed to enjoy talking with me. One day he asked me if I painted. I told him that I did, but that I wasn t very satisfied with the work that I was doing; I told him that I d applied to the State School of Decoratíon and Advertising and been accepted, but that the only thing that really interested me was the creation of truly personal works of art. I said that I was very skeptical of everything they were teaching me there and that I refused to let them subject me to all the deformations of what they called professional formation. After I had explained all of these things to Yves, he invited me to come to his studio in rue Campagne Première to see the monochromes he was doing. He opened the door dressed for judo, and showed me his works. It was a tiny little studio and the things I saw there were all rectangular paintings, one of which was entirely white, another entirely yellow, others were all black, green, red, or blue. Hung up on the wall one next to another, the paintings presented themselves to the eye of a spectator as a kind of decorative polychrome exercise, and this was something that Klein realized and it gave him only a certain limited degree of satisfaction. You could also see the graining of the pigments on the surface of each of these monochrome paintings in blue, red, green, and so forth, since Klein painted with a roller rather that a brush and always applied several different layers of the same color. When I saw these paintings, they immediately brought up very strong feelings in me and I asked Yves any number of questions about them; and he was always extremely courteous in the replies that he gave. He also tried to give me further backing for the theories behind his work by showing me several catalogs. One of them was the catalog that the Galerie Denise Renée which was then in rue de la 37

35 38 Boétie had published for a show on the Polish avant-garde of the l920s, and it had an introduction by Jenab Cassou as well as a few reproductions of the work of artists like Henryk Berlewi (the inventor of mécanofacture in 1922) and Wladislav Streminski (who had created unism ). Another catalog that was dedicated to the Russian avant-garde of the years around the October Revolution in 1917 was my first introduction to the works of Rodchenko, Tatlin, Gabo, Pevsner, and Malevitch. It s clear, of course, that Malevitch s black square on a black background, and, above all, the unist works of Streminski, represented, and still represent, a real anticipation of the monochromes of the I960s. That was something that I could t help bringing to Yves attention, and he suddenly became very very angry. As far as he was concerned, both Malevitch and Streminski were formalists and idealists and had always felt some sort of a need to stick a square into everything. According to Klein, these artists had always remained in the area of psychology, or even of sociology, and everything they did was finally directed to no more than the integration of the work of art into architecture. Real art, said Klein, is philosophy. In this respect, I was almost forgetting to say that Klein was very much involved with Zen philosophy because he had just been admitted to the 4th Dan of the Kodokan Judo School of Tokio. When He d been in Japan, he d also had the chance to see a match between two wrestlers who d previously had their bodies covered with paint. The ring consisted of a large square canvas on the floor and that s where the match took place. At the end, the surface was covered with the imprints of all of the vigorous, holds, throws, and cruel body vices that the two wrestlers had gone through; every trace of paint was a visualization of their combat. It s easy to conclude that Klein assimilated all of that quite thoroughly. Klein always seemed to me to be an extremely reflexive and a very concrete kind of person. He was very very precise when he wrote about going

36 beyond all the problems of art. I m completely ignorant of Zen philosophy, on the other hand; I m more instinctive than he was and less given to reflection. During this first visit that I made Klein s studio, he also showed me a small collection of monochrome works (nothing more than a series of pages printed in various colors) that had been published in Barcellona by Franco De Sarabia s publishing house, and he also told me that he d had private showings of his monochrome paintings in London. And it s not to be forgotten that Klein had accepted a job as a judo instructor in Spain for Franco s army, and that he d also received a decoration from the Order of the Knights of Malta. Everyone can make his own conclusion about the political significance of that kind of curriculum vitae! A few weeks later, Klein invited me to his first one-man show at Colette Allendy s gallery, and that show made it clear to me that Klein had decided to free his monochrome paintings of the decorativnes that I ve already mentioned; all of the things he showed were monochromes in an ultramarine blue. And later I was always invited to the shows that he had in the little avant-garde gallery that was run by Iris Clert in rue des Beaux- Arts. As for me, I subsequently went through several terrible weeks in which I mercilessly criticized all of the work I had been doing, and I finally decided one day that I too would be a monochrome artist. I immediately appropriated the color red. But the need I felt was different from Klein s and I wanted to make monochromes that had a structure. With the use of variously shaped palette-knives and my hands as well, I spread out my colors in regular elements of impasto that went from one side of the canvas to the other. I m interested in energy as a source of heat and not at all in the kind of lowering of tension that s an inherent part of Klein s monochromes in blue. What fascinates me about Klein is his lyricism. I m likewise without any interest in the technological conquest of space. Yuri Gagarin doesn t excite me at all, and I much prefer the spectacle of an erupting volcano! 39

37 40 If you really take a good look at what was happening in art in the I960s, it s immediately clear that there were very few European artists who really felt that painting had to be reduced to a tabula rasa. Klein, certainly, was sick and tired of the way Maurice Denis had defined a painting as «above all an assemblage of forms and colors» and this definition still makes its presence felt in the so-called modern, audacious, and innovational works turned out by abstract landscape artists, tachistes, abstract expressionists, materic artists, and the various practitioners of art brut but he wasn t by any means the only person to nourish such a feeling. What brought the Zero Group into existence was a commonly shared desire to capture painting with the body, to make a definitive break with the entirety of the ancient idea of pictorial composition, to create a new current of artistic thought capable of liquidating the still triumphant School of Paris, and finally, and above all, to establish the Orient as an exemplary, objective, and scientific value that was absolutely indispensable for the regeneration of the West. I did my own first monochrome paintings in red in 1958, and I thought that was only right to go and tell Yves what I was doing. So he came to pay me a visit and declared his enthusiasm for my work and went on to say that he wanted to form a movements of monochrome artists «We have already had the Impressionists, and now we re going to have the Monochromists». At the end of his visit, Yves asked me to write a text that he could print in the third issue of the Zero magazine, which was published in Düsseldorf, where Klein had already shown his work in the previous year a the Schmela Gallery. The magazine was published, and they brought out my text, and there was also a photo of one of my red monochrome paintings. In may of 1961, I invented my first fire painting, and I asked Yves to come and look at this new departure in my work: it was a big sheet of aluminum full of holes that I made with the homotétiste system that I d already employed in 1960 for my nail paintings, and every hole had a match in it.

38 As Yves was standing in front of it and he seemed to be quite interested in it all I selected one of the matches by chance and lit it, and the flame spread out very rapidly and lit all the others: first of all there was the elevation of a kind of wall of flames, then there was the stage where they were all aglow and still incandescent, and finally it became a desolate forest of petrified matches. Yves was speechless. And since I thought that he had been very favorably impressed with the work, I suggested 41

39 42 that I do it all again and began to tell him how it took me really very little time to replace all the matches, but instead of being happy with the work he became quite furious and literally ordered me and the word is by no mean too strong to follow him to his studio since he too had begun to work with fire a couple of weeks previously. But the only things I saw there were a few pieces of paper painted blue and more or less singed and blacked here and there; this time, there wasn t anything at all extraordinary in the work that Klein was doing! And the comparison revealed the extent to which my own fire paintings were something truly alive: a wall of flame that moves, and crackles, and burns, absolute light and heat, and then the forest of still glowing matches, and finally the calcified bits of wood, the dirtied floor, the sheet of aluminum where the fire took place impregnated with black soot, an inventory of concrete phenomena, an aspect of a reality that enters into dialog with that other reality that belongs to the spectator. Otto Piene a German artist who was one of the founders of the Zero Group along with Heinz Mack and Günther Uecher has also worked with fire. And worked with fire is exactly the right way to put it. And this is what Piene s things are like: he d hang up a white canvas parallel to the ceiling of his studio, then he d hold up a lit candle to it to draw a perfect circle of black soot. Or he d use the same system to blacken a canvas that he had previously painted red; he always had one or more circles in his works, as well, sometimes, as grilles of black dots. In terms of esthetic effects, I ve always preferred Piene s fire works to the ones by Klein, but I don t think of either of these artists as being interesting in terms of establishing a dominion on the elements of nature. We only have to remember that they declared an intention of appropriating fire, earth, air and water, and we shouldn t forget that the philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote The Psychoanalysis of Fire at the beginning of the I960s. If I have to explain why Klein and Restany never invited me to belong to their group of Nouveaux Réalistes, I have to think of it simply as a

40 question of jealousy. My invention of fire after my work monochrome reds had turned me into a logical and coherent artist, just like every other truly creative artist, no matter whether he s painter, musician, or writer: I had discovered the one and only rule, the one and only law of art. From the time of my fire paintings (or paintings on fire ), the content of my work revealed itself to be perfectly coherent and it has to be admitted completely amazing, even genial. A svmbiotic current passed from the reds to the fire and from the fire to the reds. Something that might have existed only at the level of mediocre painting in monochrome reds revealed itself instead to have become a discourse and a part of the constant and continuous development of a truly creative personality. Klein could only see me as a dangerous rival, which is what rivals always are. And socially speaking, Yves Klein, our Knight of Malta, was a very powerful person. He was very free and easy about denigrating my work, and not only, naturally, with Restany, but also with all sorts of other people, including critics and art dealers. He d completely forgotten the teachings of Zen Buddhism as far as he himself was concerned, and therefore as far as everybody else was concerned as well. And now, after twenty years of work, I know that I m a completely marginal artist with respect to the Nouveaux Réalistes and the Zero Group. My temperament is instinctive, emotional, and intuitive, I m almost completely uncultured at any scholastic kind of level, and there s only one activity that I ve ever been able to get involved with: research. The instincts, emotions, and intuitions that are characteristic of me are all primitive virtues, in the literal sense of the term, and all of them are sources of energy for me. Anyone who knows me personally finds it quite natural to ask, «How could Bernard the Red, the Pyromaniac, the Savage, ever get into culture the way ordinary civilized people do?». Psychologically speaking, there s simply no denying that I don t at all function the way most people do. And there aren t any special pretensions in this statement; it s simply a question of being 43