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“Artworks are picnic sites”
François Morellet in Conversation with Gerda Ridler |
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Gerda Ridler:
François, you are one of the foremost representatives of Geometrical Abstraction and one of its main practitioners since the early 1950s. Where do you personally see your position within Concrete Art?
François Morellet:
Before I tell you where I see my position in Concrete Art, I would like to mention the position that Concrete Art occupies in the countries that are interested in Western art. First place goes to Switzerland, Germany, the Benelux countries, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, followed by those countries where it has been heard of, such as Italy and the Scandinavian countries, and finally those countries in which the vast majority of art lovers has yet to hear anything about it. France is part of that third group.
I think that people in Switzerland and Germany regard me as a kind of outsider in the Concrete Art scene. Some of my works, such as “La géométrie dans les spasmes”, “cul con non nul”, “RECREATIONS” and “Après reflexion”, have actually more to do with Dada than Max Bill. In point of fact I’m no great fan of serious, didactic art. The picture that people have of me in Zurich must differ a lot from that in Rio de Janeiro.
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Gerda Ridler:
The subtitle to the exhibition is: “An Introspective”. What can we expect from this introspection? In 2004, Timm Ulrichs made an introspective, autobiographical film entitled “Durchsicht durchs Ich” [Checking through the Self] in which a tiny camera made its way through his digestive tract. Will you also give us similar intimate insights at your introspective?
François Morellet:
I used the noun “introspective” for much more frivolous reasons than you suspect. Firstly because this word only exists in French as an adjective and unlike “retrospective” it does not make one think of an exhibition. So this is not going to be some exhibition that presents my work in a historical or recapitulatory way. No, this is simply an exhibition by me about me, that has been realized with the team at Museum Ritter. It will not reveal any profound, intimate messages that would be unseemly in a public place. Sadly, I simply remain an incorrigibly frivolous old man.
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Gerda Ridler:
You are often referred to as an important representative of Concrete Art. And yet you are anything but an orthodox proponent of this direction. Your œuvre has nothing austere or puristic about it, but is steeped rather in humour and irony. You are a master of wit and allusion. Your works are characterized by a mixture of geometrical rigour and “joie de vivre”. Your viewers always have a smile on their lips when they look at your works. With regard to Concrete Art, you have said that Richard Paul Lohse was a serious representative, while you on the other hand … ?
François Morellet:
Yes, I am an orthodox non-believer, a blasphemer against all persuasions! Or, to put it less pompously, I avoid transcendence and seriousness. It seems to me that humour, irony, derision and frivolity are the necessary spice to make squares, systems and all the rest of it digestible.
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Gerda Ridler:
Apart from this humorous note, your work distinguishes itself by economy, efficacy and a tendency to simplify things. Freely after the maxim: the greatest possible output through the smallest possible input.
François Morellet:
Yes, that’s right, I am proud when one of my systems can be “concretized” with a minimum of effort, and extremely happy when the resulting work is not too big, not too heavy, and … not too expensive (as regard manufacture, of course).
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Gerda Ridler:
While you are a highly acclaimed artist abroad, especially here in Germany, one gets the impression that the French are only just starting to get interested in your œuvre. Why is that?
François Morellet:
Obviously I have asked myself the very same question. To my mind, the lack of interest among the French relates to the whole of constructive, systematic and above all concrete art. Which is all the more astonishing because a certain predilection for constructive rigour seems to have been “very French” up until the 19th century. Jean Fouquet, Georges de La Tour, Nicolas Poussin, Philippe de Champaigne, Ingres – to name a few – were not the forerunners of Romanticism, Expressionism, Impressionism, Surrealism or other such kinds of mysticism. Their grandchildren in the 20th century were people more like Mondrian, van Doesburg, Vordemberge-Gildewart, Bill or Lohse, who are all underrated in France.
It is up to our brainy art historians to find out why…
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Gerda Ridler:
“Artworks are picnic sites where one eats what one has brought along.” Could you wrap up by briefly explaining that quotation?
François Morellet:
Since 1970/71, after I noticed that “it is the enlightened art lover who gives meaning to the works” – irrespective of what the author might have written or said, and often in contradiction to the interpretations of other commentators – I came to the conclusion (after lots of diversions which time and space prohibit me from going into now) that “… the visual arts must allow the viewers to find what they want in it, which is to say what they bring with them. Artworks are picnic sites, Spanish taverns where one eats what one has brought along…”.
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version française