Pierre Marie Brisson Process and Materiality as Tableau-Vivant
Pierre Marie Brisson Process and Materiality as Tableau-Vivant
Franklin Bowles Galleries San Francisco / New York
Pierre Marie Brisson Process and Materiality as Tableau-Vivant
If this world is a poem it is not because we see the meaning of it at first but on the strength of its chance occurrences and paradoxes. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The physicality of the works by Pierre Marie Brisson is an immediate revelation: an archeology of gestures and marks rich in association yet vibrant in its own terms. The drips and spatters of pigment inhabit a world of cutouts and traces, folds and edges, figural elements and dream worlds, becoming a modern tableau-vivant—a living picture—engaging the viewer in a moment of infinite possibility of the transcendent nature of painting. It was Wassily Kandinsky who described an empty canvas as a living wonder, and the legacy of post-war abstraction was that process and materiality could exist as both subject and method. Modern pictures were no longer derived from the natural world but mediated that world through a series of pictorial strategies that privileged open investigation over Renaissance perspectival certainty. To approach art in this way reveals something of the illusiveness of representation while simultaneously evoking the beauty inherent in the pursuit. There is a life to line and color distinctly known unto itself—Kandinsky wrote about 2
such things in his treatise, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911)—and this truth becomes the refuge of the artist. Pierre Marie moved to Paris from the environs of Orléans in 1979. To my mind this connects him with Cézanne and his arrival in Paris from Aix-en-Provence in 1861. To arrive in Paris was a statement of intention; to arrive at an auspicious time was for both artists a fortunate circumstance of chance. 1861 was not 1979, yet the rumblings of change in the world intensified the debates about the future of art at both moments. Paris provided its own lessons but the die was cast by the happenstance events of time and place. Cézanne famously mused “with an apple I will astonish Paris.” The pleasure of the still-life mirrored the experience of the studio. Individual touches of paint standing in for the vast history of art that secured his place within it through exploratory mark. The beauty of Cézanne resides in his triumphant return to his
beloved Monte Sainte-Victoire and the quiet solitude of nature that served as his greatest inspiration.
the company of Brisson is to feel a lightness of being that derives from the exactitude of his practice.
Pierre Marie Brisson would experience Paris in his own time. He inherited the inquiries of CĂŠzanne and the debates of Matisse and Picasso that positioned color against form until declaring an exhilarating victory for both. You can see elements of their conversations in the work of Brisson, but the lessons are deepened and transformed by his own experience.
The paradox of Brisson is what I can best describe as a fleeting monumentality. The presence of color— particularly the blues—are in themselves a tour de force. The choice of hue ranges from deeply-saturated midnight to shades of azure, cornflower, and Aegean blue tempered with white. Blue represents the sacred realm. The historic conditions of its production were maintained by the painters and chemists trusted with its preparations; only the most skilled artists performed its application.
We know something of this world between the student clashes of the 1960s and the fall of the wall in 1989. The formative years of the artist coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the election of Margaret Thatcher, China embracing the American model of free-market economy and the Iranian ousting of the Shah in the name of a new Islamic Republic. Abstraction, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Performance Art evolved in response to contemporary concerns. The transmission of ideas in an increasingly portable and interconnected global art scene brought a new urgency to these pressing investigations in the 1970s. Many argued that painting was finished. Pierre Marie Brisson refused such possibilities.The seductiveness of his materials suggests the allure of painting and a nobleness of profession. Brisson is a painter who breaths such truths into his work. In them I see myriad moments of chance and discovery illuminating a reverence for the past and an immense joyfulness in the present. There is a sense of meditation that reverberates through to the soul. To be in
La dame blanche (detail)
Belle dt bleue I (detail)
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In the late-nineteenth century ready-made paints were sold at the pharmacist’s counter and fueled the business of proprietary recipes utilizing the latest technological advances. Pierre Marie uses an acrylic paint with high-performance pigmentation corresponding to his own specifications. His canvases are like eyes to the soul, and in them color evokes a sense of being. Matisse knew something of the pleasure of blue paint. Yves Klein did too. To paint with blue is to become one with the past while resonating in perfect harmony with the present. This state frees the other elements of the composition to conform to these conditions. Silhouettes, repetitions, and dislocations suggest an independent energy— a trace of the artist through a suggestion of his movements, placements, shifts and turns on the surface of the work—that become both a performance and a profoundly beautiful requiem. Look closely at Les Hirondelles I (2016) and you will find a quiet magic of birds in magisterial flight. Against a background of floral wallpaper reminiscent of turn-of-the century arts and crafts, Brisson applies a collage of painted sheets of Arches paper. A broad brush is used to coat each sheet with a generous treatment of matte white finish that reveals the texture of bristles and the pressure of the hand. The sheets are cut and folded and affixed to the surface forming an atmospheric ground of raw edges and a large well-turned star. I am reminded of the American artist Cy Twombly who brought Abstract Expressionism to Rome and declared that “white paint is my marble.” There is a resounding classicism in 4
Les Hirondelles I (detail)
the Brisson conveyed through the “marble work” of these interlocking sheets against which the birds soar and dive. Brisson has done something remarkable here. I am transported to Matisse’s studio on Boulevard Montparnasse in the summer of 1946 where he adorned the walls with paper cutouts of birds and sea life held tentatively in place with pins. The story is that the first bird was cut from a thin sheet of correspondence paper and used to cover an imperfection in the plaster. He began to add other cut-outs to keep the original sparrow from abject loneliness. Pierre Marie reenacts something of this event by “drawing with scissors” in his own cutouts—freeing each form with the wonder of Michelangelo chipping into a stone block by unlocking the form from the
material around it. Inner and outer contours within the collage suggest the velocity of a fluttering wing, and the saturation of blue the incursion into a spiritual domain. The beauty of Brisson’s work comes from the manner in which he mediates this space. His work unravels the mystery of art through a careful reflection on familiar motifs. Matisse is recognized through his palm fronds and dancers, Degas by his ballerinas, the masters of Ancient Greece in a trio of athletes and the feminine graces. Each motif is transformed through process and materiality into a living picture. Jasper Johns accomplished something similar in his use of the American flag; immediate recognition of something known freed the viewer to experience the making of art more directly. And that in turn, allowed the viewer to figure out more readily what exactly the artist was accomplishing through his choices.
Salutations distinguées (detail)
Exercice Matissien (detail)
The turning in of a picture’s edges, sgraffito revealing layers beneath the surface, drips, contradictory brushwork, an elision of space, and signature bursts of paint upward at the lower edge make compelling interventions. To command such a range of painterly language and gesture requires a meditative devotion to art and this is Pierre Marie’s gift. I invite you to contemplate the recent works with a curiosity and attention to detail that reflects your own pleasure in looking at and thinking about art. May you find something here—a small element of surprise or wonder— that makes your heart sing. Jennifer M. Katanic, PhD. Candidate City University of New York
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(facing page) Le Jardin extraordinaire I 2016 mixed media on canvas 200 x 200 cm 78 x 78 in
Pierre Marie Brisson’s exhibition, After Matisse, in Collégiale St Pierre le Puellier, in Orléans, France, March/April 2016 © Gilles Bastianelli
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(facing page) Jour de pleine lune 2015 mixed media on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in
(far left) Bucolique III 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in Bucolique XXVII 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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Extrait I 2015 mixed media on canvas 130 x 97 cm 51 x 38 in
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Ulve I 2016 mixed media on canvas 80 x 80 cm 31 x 31 in
Ulve II 2016 mixed media on canvas 80 x 80 cm 31 x 31 in
Ulve III 2016 mixed media on canvas 80 x 80 cm 31 x 31 in
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(facing page) Astres 2014 mixed media on canvas 200 x 200 cm 78 x 78 in Plage I 2015 mixed media on canvas 200 x 200 cm 78 x 78 in
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Les 3 Ombres blanches 2015 mixed media on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in
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Belle et bleue I 2016 mixed media on canvas 73 x 60 28 x 23
Belle et bleue II 2016 mixed media on canvas 73 x 60 28 x 23
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(facing page) I love you 2016 mixed media on canvas 130 x 162 cm 51 x 63 in
(left) Fashion I 2015 mixed media on canvas 73 x 60 cm 28 x 23 in
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Bucolique V 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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Bucolique VIII 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
(above)
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La DĂŠclaration 2016 mixed media on canvas 50 x 50 cm 20 x 20 in
Bucolique X 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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(facing page) It’s time to go 2015 mixed media on canvas 97 x 130 cm 38 x 51 in
1 Le Rouge 2015 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in
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2 Window 2016 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in 3 Jour de Mistral 2016 mixed media on canvas 114 x 146 cm 44 x 57 in 4 Et cetera I 2016 mixed media on canvas 130 x 162 cm 51 x 63 in
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(facing page) Danseuse de Degas I 2015 mixed media on canvas 114 x 146 cm 44 x 57 in
1 Bucolique XVIII 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
2 Bucolique XXV 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
3 Bucolique XXIV 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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(facing page) Dans tous les sens 2016 mixed media on canvas 130 x 195 cm 51 x 76 in
(right) Les Madrilènes (diptych) 2014 mixed media on canvas 130 x 110 cm 51 x 43 in
(far right) Fantomette IV 2014 mixed media on canvas 80 x 80 cm 31 x 31 in
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“Like Matisse, Brisson sees colour as a tool for revealing a hidden world rather than a representation of an objective vision.” Gilles Bastianelli, Art Critic (facing page) Les Hirondelles I 2016 mixed media on canvas 130 x 162 cm 51 x 63 in Pierre Marie Brisson’s exhibition, After Matisse, in Collégiale St Pierre le Puellier, in Orléans, France, March/April 2016 © Gilles Bastianelli
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Bucolique I, II, IV, IX 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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Bucolique XI 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
Bucolique XII 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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Les Hirdondelles II 2016 mixed media on canvas 100 x 81 cm 39 x 32 in
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(left)
( above)
Mouvement N°3 2015 mixed media on canvas 73 x 60 cm 28 x 23 in
Bucolique XXVI 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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(facing page) Les Espagnoles 2014 mixed media on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in
1 Exercice Matissien 2015 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in 1
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2 Abondance 2016 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in 3 PassionnĂŠment 2016 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in 4 Fleur Brissonienne 2015 mixed media on canvas 100 x 100 cm 39 x 39 in
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(facing page) Temps suspendu 2016 mixed media on canvas 200 x 200 cm 78 x 78 in
(right) Pièces rapportÊes 2015 mixed media on canvas 80 x 80 cm 31 x 31 in
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Salutations distinguĂŠes 2016 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in
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Nu noir I 2016 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in
1 Jardin Japonais 2016 mixed media on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in 2 Le Jardin extraordinaire III 2016 mixed media on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in 1
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3 Bleu sur blanc 2016 mixed media on canvas 100 x 100 cm 39 x 39 in 4 Passion II 2016 mixed media on canvas 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in
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Discussion 2015 mixed media on canvas 120 x 120 cm 47 x 47 in
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Bucolique XIV 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
Bucolique XVI 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
Bucolique XVII 2016 mixed media on paper 40 x 30 cm 16 x 12 in
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La vie en rouge 2015 mixed media on canvas 97 x 130 cm 38 x 51 in
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La dame blanche 2016 mixed media on canvas 97 x 130 cm 38 x 51 in
INDEX Mixed media on canvas
SPRING 2017 project managers:
Stacey Bellis Ken Amorino photography: catalog design:
Susan Tsuchiya Front cover: It’s time to go (detail) Inside front cover: I love you (detail) Title page: Belle et bleue II (detail) Inside back cover: Bucolique XVIII (detail) Back cover: Temps suspendu
32 Abondance 12 Astres 15 Belle et bleue I 15 Belle et bleue II 37 Bleu sur blanc 24 Dans tous les sens 22 Danseuse de Degas I 38 Discussion 20 Et cetera I 32 Exercice Matissien 10 Extrait I 25 Fantomette IV 16 Fashion I 32 Fleur Brissonienne 17 I love you 21 It’s time to go 37 Jardin Japonais 20 Jour de Mistral 9 Jour de pleine lune 40 La dame blanche 19 La Déclaration 40 La vie en rouge 7 Le Jardin extraordinaire I 37 Le Jardin extraordinaire III 26 Les Hirondelles I 30 Les Hirdondelles II 14 Les 3 Ombres blanches 25 Les Madrilènes (diptych) 33 Les Espagnoles 20 Le Rouge 31 Mouvement N°3 36 Nu noir I
37 Passion II 32 Passionnément 35 Pièces rapportées 13 Plage I 36 Salutations distinguées 34 Temps suspendu 11 Ulve I 11 Ulve II 11 Ulve III 20 Window Mixed media on paper 28 28 8 28 18 18 28 19 29 29 39 39 39 23 23 23 31 8
Bucolique I Bucolique II Bucolique III Bucolique IV Bucolique V Bucolique VIII Bucolique IX Bucolique X Bucolique XI Bucolique XII Bucolique XIV Bucolique XVI Bucolique XVII Bucolique XVIII Bucolique XXIV Bucolique XXV Bucolique XXVI Bucolique XXVII
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