To Paint is to Love Again
Curated by Louise Sartor
9 rue des Cascades, Paris
09.04.26 — 27.05.26
Genevieve Asse, Sadie Benning, (after) Rosa Bonheur, Whitney Claflin, Anne-Lise Coste (Uruk), Jean Dubuffet, Jean Hugo, Ulala Imai, Françoise Lapeyre, Li Shan, Naoki Sutter-Shudo
There's something almost irritating, for anyone who has done extensive art studies, about listening to Henry Miller boast about his ineptitude in painting, and about the envy his painter friends show him. "Painters seem intrigued by the little tricks I use to get around difficulties. Sometimes some of them tell me: 'I wish I had the courage to do that!' As if it took courage for me! When I explain that it's out of pure ignorance that I made my houses that way, the usual response is: 'That doesn't matter. You had fun. And besides, it still makes a painting, doesn't it?'" (1)
Having fun is important. I also clearly see that my own paintings become worthless when I'm no longer having fun, if the work becomes a chore instead of a happy and devoted concentration, a childlike absorption in the task.
"How many times have I tried to copy or imitate a child's work! (...) Sometimes someone would come down on me during one of my painting fits, exclaiming: 'What cheerful colors you have! What freedom! You must be having so much fun!' But it's only the joy of a man-child. I've never seen a child at work express that kind of joy. Children are far too captivated and absorbed in what they're doing to be aware of any peripheral emotion. Whatever a child does, whether their work expresses fear, horror, or anguish, the effect it has on the viewer is always the same: joy. A child's work never fails to provoke us, to appeal to us, because it is always honest and sincere, always permeated and imbued with that quasi-magical assurance that comes from a direct and spontaneous approach to objects." (1)
...
Li Shan is also self-taught and also set painting aside for about thirty years, but his painting is only "naive" from a contemporary Western perspective. Painting still lifes and landscapes in China in the 1970s was anything but naive, or was dangerously so. Under the Cultural Revolution, these themes were considered bourgeois art and threatened to purge Li Shan and his group Wuming (No Name Painting Association), who met in secret to paint outdoors. (4) It's no longer clear whether his paintings are in an Impressionist, shanshui, academic, or avant-garde style, or if the question even matters. No genre or style is inherently subversive anymore; it can be—or not—depending on the context and the intention with which the artist works.
...
"To paint is to begin loving again, and to love is to live intensely. But what kind of love, what kind of life can one hope to find in a void cluttered with every imaginable instrument, every possible profiteer, the latest comfort, all useless luxuries? To live and love and express that through painting implies that one is also a true believer. But then one needs something to worship." (1)
In an era where hatred is gaining so much ground, continuing to paint requires a certain form of faith, and painting with love is a stance. The choice of object matters little and belongs to each individual. The terms faith and religion are corrupted by dogmas and it is valid to reject them.
But the existence of the feeling predates their invention and survives them, it gave birth to the first manifestations of what we call "art" and is perhaps more relevant than ever.
"Faced with a world founded on brutal materialism where everything is evaluated in terms of material well-being and where religion, having lost much ground, is no longer the great dispenser of spiritual values, [...] I believe that today more than ever the artist has this para-religious mission to fulfill: to keep lit the flame of an inner vision of which the work of art seems to be the most faithful translation for the layperson." (9)
"Art is the ultimate spiritual transcendence, the sublimation of instincts, the overcoming of real, carnal, material contingencies. On a lower level, it is a human activity that harms no one." (10)
Louise Sartor
