Disappearance

huile sur toile, 100×100 cm

A painting is a surface for meditation. It seems to me that, unlike the mandala, which supports and channels meditation through abstraction toward unity (the mental clarity of pure presence beyond desire, the Nothingness of all things, all meanings), the painting invites meditation through the concretization of diversity (the forest being a paradigm) toward the experience of a purely sensory, ineffable unity where presence and absence merge, releasing desire.

A painting is to be looked at, felt, listened to, touched, tasted. René Daumal, a devoted reader of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, wrote in Counter-Heaven: Non is my name, non non the name, non non the non. That is the mandala. For the painting, one would have to say: Yes is the ear, yes yes the ear, yes yes the yes.

The forest will outlive us.

Forêt

huile sur toile, 89×116 cm

Five against one is not a fair match. But the fox is clever.

 
The Dance of the Bats

huile sur toile, 100×100 cm

With the ongoing shift in our understanding of nature, prompted by the imminent threat of its sterilization and the growing awareness of the accelerated disappearance of many species, the symbolism traditionally attached to various animals in different cultures is gradually dissolving. Goya’s nightmare bats now protect us from the invasion of mosquitoes and other insects. On the lake in my village, as dusk falls, you can witness the bats leading the dance…

Being-in-the-world

huile sur toile 80×80 cm

How can we view “nature” without reducing it to something in front of us, an object ultimately at the subject’s disposal? How can we paint a landscape without making it the inert reference of a representation (whether it be impressionist, expressionist, or any other style)? I asked myself this question during my previous painting: on the banks of the Volp. To paint the landscape while being immersed in it, and not from the exteriority of a subject facing its object… With this painting, the question becomes: how to paint the living? To paint the living without reducing it to a mere “being,” a thing… Take, for example, a dove. Existential philosophy considers that only humans are beings-in-the-world. Alone in the midst of entities that supposedly do not have a world of their own. But if no living being is separable from the whole of life that composes what we still, for lack of a better term, call nature, then can’t we think that every living being is being-in-the-world ? This may be where respect begins.

Le penseur

huile sur toile, 100×100 cm

In the chilly night of the Western Sahara, descending from the people of the “free men” (Amazigh), for whom the word “border” holds no meaning, this thinker, now a guide for tourists from Europe and beyond seeking desert emotions, surrenders to the contemplation of the fire after serving mint tea to his clients. We are far from Rodin’s heroic (perhaps somewhat constipated?) thinker… But maybe it’s time to move beyond heroes, even in thought? Thought is a poor man’s revenge, said Jacques Rigaux, aiming at the head with the boxing gloves of Arthur Cravan… And what if thinking were nothing but an assent, not to power, but to the incalculable beauty of fire? Heraclitus, for ever.

Portrait de l’artiste au féminin

huile sur toile, 100x100cm

As much as I understand the interest in gender studies from America, since they allow us to identify figures of domination through socio-cultural systems and codes, I am impervious to gender (and Queer) theories and the identity tensions they promote. Am I “cisgender,” L, G, B, T, I, or + (if you like)? It’s not the identity that matters to me but the respect for the person. I am a woman and a man, like everyone. Jung had some insights, I believe, on this topic…

Les saltimbanques

huile sur toile, 100×100 cm

I saw the invisible man in Madrid, a stone’s throw from the Prado, the other on video in London. They met in this painting, to the rhythm of a Bach suite. At the confluence of the real and the imaginary, the figurative space opens. Like an entertainer, the artist works with fascination. A successful painting, for me, captures the gaze by confronting it with the improbable presence, irreducible to the simple play of cause and effect. Surface and depth, color has the power to generate form at the boundary between the self and the world, where humans share the constitutive enigma of desire. Winnicott knew something about this… A small piece for the entertainers?

The little girl and the stone

huile sur toile, 90×116 cm Prix2500€ + envoi

The earth does not belong to us, we borrow it from our children…

The Rave massacre

huile sur toile, 130×96 cm

When victims become executioners and vice versa.

Death of Darrell Standing

huile sur toile 146×115 cm Prix4000€ + envoi

Darrell Standing has always been a provocateur. An artist’s heightened sensitivity, a passionate friend of painters, and the character of a Jack London novel. Darrell Standing was a lone wolf. On the eve of his death, the ultimate provocation and message from beyond, he sent me a selfie accompanied by these words: the red button is over, the blue button is the end. Signed Darrell Standing. A final smile flickers on his lips: what a trick he played on me!… It took me a month of haunting to be able to see. He wanted a history painting: here it is. I did what I could. The term historia was what, for Alberti, in the Renaissance, ensured the unity of the painting. Historia only became history as a “collection of events from a life” around the 12th century, if I’m not mistaken. Then the academy made it the narrative of exemplary events that great painting had to depict. Yet Chardin had turned it around with his Ray… A history painting therefore at the request of the late Darrell Standing, my friend. I played on two inverse perspectives and summoned some of the characters who gave all his appearances in my life (he was like that, appearing and disappearing immediately) the material of his novel. This painting was as exhausting to make as it was beneficial. I dedicate it to Pierre Labille.

Appeard

huile sur toile, 30×24 cm Coll. de l’artiste

I painted this little painting almost two years ago. I could have called it “The Glimpsed.” It was at the turn of one of those forest paths that lead nowhere. The autumn light was cool and gentle in the Hautes Côtes de Nuits. True apparitions never cease to appear. Not ceasing, that’s the mystery. Ultimately, we try to touch time with brushes. Sometimes it works, sometimes not… I present this small painting today because it still appears to me.

Anne Elligers

huile sur toile, 100×50 cm Coll. particulière

During the national holiday, the Norwegian people make a point of parading in traditional national costume. Anne Elligers, my partner’s mother, is never absent. Offering for her birthday, to someone you love and respect, their portrait, carries various risks. Angering a mother-in-law is hardly advisable… Behind Anne Elligers, the Norwegian mountains are purple, and the singular format of this portrait gives the character an iconic stature that pleases me. It is suitable for the solemnity of the celebration. The landscape takes up a fragment of a romantic Norwegian landscape painted by the Norwegian painter Johan Fredrik Eckersberg in the 19th century. The question of the eyes led to a tough negotiation with her daughter. In the absence of the model (as it was a surprise), I sought the gaze under her dictation. The gift was accepted, so I can publish it.

The sleeper

huile sur toile, 120×90 cm, coll. particulière Prix3000€ + envoi

Shh!… She’s sleeping. I was looking for a light, I found a sleeping woman. Picasso, I believe, teaches us to see shapes. For light, which is not impressionistic, neither sensation nor objective data, light, that is, the one that opens vision, you have to go see Vallotton, Chardin, De la Tour, Leonardo obviously… And then you try, you do your best.

The goal of the century

huile sur toile, 115 x 90 cm Prix3000€ + envoi

I hope it’s not the only one… The entire duration of the realization of this painting was a difficult moment for me. Funny how life follows the paths of our imagination (and vice versa)… There is certainly a cry here. A passionate cry, fundamentally joyful but also terrifying and sad. The ball game gave rise to human sacrifices in pre-Columbian civilizations. We have undoubtedly inherited something from this. Both an immemorial depth and cruelty, and a perpetual, ecstatic emergence. That bearded devil bursts forth, against the backdrop of this bar which, like all bars, becomes vectors of emotions in the night. Hooper knew it well.

The haircut

huile sur toile, 60×50 cm Coll. particulière

The columns will wait… Like a grandee of Spain, I defer to the judgment of a daisy.

Paris – New Orleans

huile sur toile, 90x115cm Prix3000€ + envoi

On Saint-André des Arts Street in Paris three or four years ago, they played in the gray autumn freshness, the quintessential street music: New Orleans. They lit up the sidewalk. This painting could have been called “The old musicians” since they also play to supplement their very meager retirement. But New Orleans jazz takes all of that into its swing. It’s this swing that I wanted to paint. Did I succeed? In any case, I played with primary colors, like Mondrian and his mechanical “boogie woogie”. Do you hear it, this painting?

The filmmaker, portrait of Jean Samouillan

huile sur toile, 115×90, Coll. Particulière

Commissioning is a perilous exercise since it requires pleasing the client while continuing one’s path as a painter. The portrait, obviously, raises the question of resemblance. A word that has been feared since photography existed. Hyper-realism, which trails behind the photo, generally makes dead paintings. Resemblance without life is nothing. I hope I have captured it. Pépita, the dog, looks at us with one eye, a look that the photo of the painting cannot capture.

The pink panties

huile sur toile, 115×90 cm Prix3500€ + envoi

Here, obviously, I was looking for an inner space. This implied a composition and a light. Six light sources model this space. The complexity of the composition involves both perspective illusion, the play of lines whose movements are authorized, and the dynamics of colors. The red armchair came in right away, like the blue vest. The pink panties, in the center of the painting and its title, give the spiritual intention. Whether the spirit is in the panties, that’s never certain but it’s a risk to take to see the intimacy. The staircase spirals up to the library that one can guess at the top. The universal is not excluded.

Ce fameux magicien 

huile sur toile, 100 x 100 cm. Prix2500€ + envoi

ecce homo

I am asked what the one meter by one meter oil on canvas titled “This Famous Magician” means. 

“This Famous Magician” was born from a conversation overheard between two young people, one of whom, impressed by a pair of “collector” sports shoes sold for 6000 euros, claimed that he would buy them if he had the money, assuring that he would obviously wear them very carefully.

read more…

Anik and Gilbert

huile sur toile, 115×90 cm. Coll. particulière

When my parents discovered this painting, they burst out laughing, saying that I was giving them a first-class burial! It’s true that their exchange of glances, here, as if out of this world in this limitless space, was what I had to manage to paint. I had them pose, I took photos in the courtyard of a sheepfold in the Corbières but the beauty of the stone and the song of the cicadas were not my aim. It was a love story at stake. Contingencies fade away.

the clandestine party

huile sur toile, 80 x 116 cm.  Coll. particulière

Defying questionable and contested sanitary bans during the covid pandemic, the screening of an excellent film by Jean Samouillan recounting the journey of goats to pasture and the self-organization of a community of shepherds, was an occasion of rare elegance.
The mountain paths allowed for escape in case of assault by the constabulary. The light was pink, and we ate the goat meat with young wine. In my opinion, this deserved being painted. It is now with a Qi Gong master. 

The Pointe Saint-Eustache

huile sur toile, 100×150 cm Prix4000€ + envoi

This is one of my finest paintings. One winter day, I passed by the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris in the Halles district. Behind the church is a small door that opens into a sizable room where an association, presumably Catholic, distributes hot coffee to the homeless, as they say. There’s a small barred window on the side that struggles to light up the room, even with a halo. I looked through the window and saw that. The characters came on their own, and their story is far from over.

The coronation

huile sur toile, 100 x 80 cm.  Prix2000€ + envoi

For a coronation, this is the coronation! Masked by the authority of the Elysée. The Elysée in Paris, not the Greek one, because here the dead do not rest. They are required to answer on television. They talk, they talk through the mouths of experts who make the dead speak. Everyone is afraid. The painting hanging on the wall behind the two figures is called Paris. It’s a pigeon flower. I sold it at the Babel gallery exhibition. The two figures form a couple in life as in fairy tales. The pandemic tale that masks them is likely to give them the blues. Yet there is air and sunshine outside. Fortunately, a scarab has entered, which, as everyone knows, is an Egyptian symbol. I painted this with a good speed that affirms the strokes and brings out the forms.

The déjeuner sur l’herbe

huile sur toile, 100×150 cm, coll. particulière Prix3500€ + envoi

My admiration for Manet’s work is undeniable. Like him, I believe that one of the major dimensions of painting is revealed to us by Velasquez. We know Manet’s taste for a certain provocation. In this game, I humbly pay homage to him with this luncheon on the grass where it is the men who are naked and a woman who looks. Hence the subtitle. Painting the light and the reflections of the river was a great pleasure. The photo of the painting is poor; the color is veiled on the right. I will redo it, I promise.

I painted this canvas in memory of those moments of exhaustion and pleasure we experienced, my nephew whom I had hired, a former student who became a friend who came to help us, and I, when we were building another floor on my house in the middle of August under a scorching sun. Around noon, when the heat became unbearable, burning, dirty, and sweaty, we would throw ourselves naked into the cool water of the Volp, the stream dominated by my house. The light was so beautiful that I took a photo to mark the scene. Two years later, this painting was born. A rather imposing format allows easy entry into the undergrowth. I painted under the trees, coming to life with the tip of the brush or the bristle of the brush. I was in it. I found the scene again with its warm freshness of shaded water, its quiet voluptuousness of being naked, its conviviality of Eden. And I added my partner’s gaze through the sudden pictorial incarnation of her legs. Did she take the photo? No. Yet she watches.

We’ll see tomorrow

huile sur toile, 100 x 100 cm. Prix2500€ + envoi

This painting comes from the central gaze, that of the adolescent. A gaze mixed with mistrust, reproach, and expectation. This gaze struck me through a photo report published by the Catholic newspaper La Croix. This purple and yellow have the color of the gaze, which is rare. The grenade may have also entered through a pun, but it poses a colorful question that makes it possible for everything not to be set in stone.

The confined

huile sur toile, 70 x 50 cm. 

auto-portrait 

Self-portrait is a genre in its own right. Because if painting can mystify, that’s where it happens. Who is the painter? The one posing or the one painting? The question arises on a winter day when the weather isn’t conducive to going out. The light dramatizes a kind of boredom. The portable windmill is the accessory of all adventurers since Dulcinea existed. In the background, there’s a part of the painting “La Pointe Saint-Eustache,” this room that welcomes homeless people who don’t even have a home to lock themselves in.

Paris 

huile sur toile, 100 x 100 cm. Coll. particulière

à Carlos Pradal 

I was crossing the garden of the Palais Royal in Paris when a flock of pigeons fought over a leftover sandwich abandoned in one of those park garbage cans with a metal corolla stretched over a transparent plastic bag to prevent terrorist attacks. Something like a flower of gray-blue pigeons. The carefully raked ground reflected the light: little or no shadow but birds, each for themselves, to get their share of the cake. Few colors, all in value. Which is quite Parisian, to use a phrase from Vian. In the lower right, on the ground, you can see a billiard chalk. One of those blue chalks used to prepare cue tips. A more scrutinizing glance sees a hint of red and a hint of yellow at the bottom of the trash can: it could well be billiard balls. That’s why this painting greets my late friend, the painter Carlos Pradal. He worked in series. He painted a series of pigeons and another of billiard players. And this little blue chalk, as he taught me, balances the painting.

Baigneuse

huile sur toile, 100 x 100 cm. Prix2500€ + envoi

I believe in beauty. It may seem old-fashioned since Art has left beauty to Fashion, but I don’t care. Beauty is glory, shining for no reason. I painted a woman bathing in the sea. This beautiful woman that I see in beauty. But I see her double: one part drawn by the sun, one part painted by the diffraction of the sea. The first required the brush closest to the line, the second required the brush, wide enough, to enter the current. The light is all in bursts. The nude woman is an academic theme. But the academics do not have the monopoly of the legendary fair sex! And besides, it’s been a long time since the academy ceased to exist…

Lolita

huile sur toile, 100 x 80 cm, coll. particulière Prix2000€ + envoi

aperçue 

I saw her on the Toulouse-Paris TGV. I later learned that her outfit was that of the “Lolitas” from manga. Moreover, when she was exhibited in Paris, young Japanese people stopped to take her picture. To render the plasticized and conditioned atmosphere of the train, it was necessary to follow the design to the letter by working with fine touches and flat areas. In the reflection of the window, you can guess her Nabokov observing her. Let’s remember that the Russian writer, contrary to the too frequent misconception, never praised this condition.

La randonneuse 

huile sur toile, 60 x 50 cm. Coll. particulière

au-dessus de Vielha

Une randonnée en montagne m’a donné deux tableaux. Celui-ci et “Parmi les pierres”, un nu de plus grand format. Le challenge, c’était la roche et le plaisir manifeste de la randonneuse.

La philosophe

huile sur toile, 80x100cm Prix2000€ + envoi

I experienced it as a pictorial meditation. Everything is there: the order of the foliage colors, the movement of the rails invaded by vegetation, the splinters of hard and sharp stone, the kind used for houses and graves. The past sinking, the future casting a diffuse light without precisely guiding the present, the philosopher is in suspension. She looks at the moment, like an arrow planted in the ground. Everything is swirling color around her. A joy of laying strokes one over the other to see if rocks appear or leaves or grass… and a midnight-blue flame and a cascade of gold, stretched out with the brush.

Cogito

huile sur toile, 50 x 60 cm. Coll. particulière

Who am I? This cow spoke to me. She asked me who she was to speak to me. I tried to make her a drawing, but it turned into a painting. As always, I wonder how I could paint like that with a light brush, in no time at all. The technique is quite impressionistic, but the light is stopped by the animal. A cow is solid, it’s a big, heavy body, but I had to find her gaze. Try to paint the gaze of a cow, you’ll see. You shouldn’t like steaks for this! Because the beast is alive. And the flies annoy her!…  

Suzanne and Justine

huile sur toile, 60 x 92 cm. Coll. particulière

A memory. It required a somewhat impressionistic approach. Few brushstrokes, but with nostalgia helping, it came like that. I gave it to their mother.

We will all go to heaven

huile sur toile, 100 x 100 cm, coll. particulière Prix2500€ + envoi

les cousins

David Hockney knew how to paint the pool and that almost metallic color of the water. The little cousins frolicking there create a large flower of foam and shards. I hope this painting is noisy.

The steppe wolf 

huile sur toile, 30 x 24 cm. Coll. particulière

Pierre Labille, admirateur de Martial Raysse 

Pierre Labille, an admirer of Martial Raysse Pierre Labille is the childhood friend who organized my first meeting with Martial Raysse. In 2014, a retrospective of this great painter was held at Beaubourg, and I was struck by a monumental painting entitled “The Two Poets.” We see a fragment of this painting in the background. Fascinated, the idea crossed my mind to make a film with Martial Raysse in front of this painting. Two years later, thanks to Pierre, I met him at an exhibition of his drawings, and I bluntly presented him with the idea. I knew he didn’t like being filmed much, but to everyone’s surprise, he agreed. The director of Beaubourg gave me access to the painting kept in the reserves and granted me its use for an entire day in a room lit by daylight. That’s where I shot a 45-minute film that still delights me, as Martial is present in the image and possesses a valuable authority on his work and painting in general: “Martial Raysse in front of the Two Poets.” Later, Pierre gave me two small blank canvases and suggested I paint one for him. That’s this painting. We see Pierre and Martial on the “set” of the shoot, in front of “The Two Poets”… When I showed it to Martial, he exclaimed, “Ah, the steppe wolf!” Hence its title.

Morning

huile sur toile, 30 x 30 cm. Coll. particulière

19°C, feels like 26°C. As its name suggests, it’s a morning. There was sunshine drying the dew, and a naked man in my room. I sketched him. Everything is in the morning light. It had to fit into a very small square format. That’s done.

La Parisienne 

huile sur toile, 70 x 50 cm. Coll. particulière

c’est la faute à Voltaire

Comme une apparition. Une silhouette diaphane que son manteau trop grand et pesant retient de s’envoler. Une pose de paparazzi et un contraste risqué entre la matérialité de la rue et l’évanescence du visage, la couleur massive des choses et les transparences de la chair, incitent à ressentir la nudité du corps.

Au dessus des Gollardes

huile sur toile, 80 x 100 cm. Coll. particulière

feu Henry-Frédéric Roch, co-propriétaire de la Romanée-Conti, créateur du Domaine Prieuré-Roch.

Faire le portrait d’un ami défunt n’est pas facile. Surtout quand son souvenir trop jeune n’a pas encore trouvé sa place parmi nos pénates. Une pâleur de mort rôdait dans ce tableau. Je l’ai retouché trois ans après. La vie a repris le dessus. C’est elle qui alimente notre souvenir.