Abstract figures and composition

(reorganised notes on abstract painting, 1986-2016)

traduit du français par Susan Pickford

1.           The multiple sources available to abstract painting that have been discovered since antiquity have been narrowed down over the course of time. They include geometry, symbolism, rhythm, the vivacity of calligraphy, the science of colours, chiaroscuro, mathematical combination, and musical composition, to name but a few.

2.           Geometrical shapes remain eternally valid. Every civilisation has made use of them. When produced in impressive size and quality of material, from pyramids, columns, and steles to domes, rose and stained glass windows, friezes, jade bi, and ceramic dishes, their power is incomparable. But since they are limited in number, the requirement for innovation meant working with their inner surface, filling it with irregularity, movement, unpredictability, combining it with other forms, interrupting it, breaking it, bringing pressure to bear on it without disfiguring it, to protect its power.

3.           Easel paintings can never rival the dimension or the impact of a work in situ. What is beyond them are the enveloping nature of the architectural setting, the sensation of the body in space, and the associated symbolism. Weight, airiness, the predominance of horizontal or vertical lines, the presence of overhanging cupolas and vaults, separation by rows of columns or juxtaposition in adjoining bays are all effects that tempt abstract painting, which can merely simulate them in two dimensions.

4.           Rhythm is a temporal geometry found in architectural features, natural and geometric ornamentation, friezes of leaves and animals and theories of characters. It can also take hold of abstract figures that are completely invented. Repetition means selecting and mediating rhythm; it needs space. Though it feels restricted in easel paintings, it can create impact on its own scale. The advent of digital imagery and its display over time are liable to usher in a new era.

5.           Some laws are common to abstract and figurative art. When the major circular windows of Romanesque architecture are placed tangentially to the edge of a frame or frieze – and too bad if they are partly covered by a cornice when seen from below – they press on the frame to an extent that makes them more powerful than when they seem to float free and untethered. Similarly, saints standing directly on the frame are a more imposing presence than those depicted floating in mid-air. More broadly, resources are there in points of inflection, changes of direction, and when unequal pressures in opposite directions meet.

6.           Many discoveries in figurative painting originate in abstraction and can be taken up in abstract painting, including the relationship between shapes, the interplay of colours, lighting effects, and the shimmer of oil paint.

7.           One burning question remains: do these performances have an equivalent impact once stripped of their connection with human emotions? When our gaze is lost in contemplating a detail of clothing, we are still under the sway of the human emotions on the face close by, and the two sensations fill each other out and imbue each other with magic. The simultaneity of abstract and figurative emotions is irreplaceable. That is why increasing the role of abstraction in sculpture and figurative painting still has perspectives to offer. The question is, can the impact of pure artistic emotions be personalised? Are they as gratifying as those triggered by music?

8.           Music teaches us that diversity requires the highest degree of complexity and a peerless finesse of imagination. It is necessary to focus on detail. As in figurative art, detail is an opportunity for form.

9.           It reveals the benefits of a combinatory process and how to approach it. The aim is not to develop a grammar equivalent to musical keys or well-tempered scales, or to clarify modes, since differences mean that the two sensory realms cannot merge. The aim is to seek inspiration in principles of proven efficacy.

10.       Music combines discrete units of almost equal value; composition is ruled by discontinuity, which allows music to be encoded in written form and means the production phase, design and interpretation, can be carried out by two separate individuals. (In comparison, the even more discontinuous nature of architecture makes it possible to collaborate even in design, with the building stage requiring all sorts of skills that are far removed from the author's skill set).

11.        Painting plays with unequal surfaces, outlines that can be sharp or blurred, and blends of colour. Any one shade's influence can only be infinitesimal. The creation is fundamentally continuous in terms of surface and wavelength, and hence forms one single unit from beginning to end.

12.       Harmony and key, which are forms of geometry, have an equivalent in the harmony of colours and the opposition of warm and cold tones. Here again, continuity implies a very different form of pressure. The power of yellow is comparable to a major scale. It can be frank, gradual, distilled, and used in the most varied of blends; it works from a distance, depends on the surface area and how it is placed.

13.       Studying the complex data of abstraction allows for both diversity and individuality. When the choice involves a large number of elements, they cannot help but shape individual preferences that steer judgement and decision-making. This is also true of figurative art.

14.       Abstract painting does not begin with constraints in the same way as figurative art, which implies one intrinsic criterion for assessment: the coherence of the human form, its anatomy, and the artist's handling of the signs that communicate emotions. Yet such criteria do exist, bound up with biology and how the brain works. Over and above the general laws of abstraction that have long been felt and applied, new criteria shaping how complexity is implemented have yet to be discovered.

15.       Precision, like detail, is often decried, yet it is a factor of individualisation that equates to precision of choice. It cannot be mistaken for sophistication or redundancy, since it evaluates and establishes relationships of mass, density, and degree of dissonance as much as monotony and ennui.

16.       There is a reason why abstract painting is not as developed as music: composers were set free from the requirement for verisimilitude much earlier and were therefore able to engage in pure inventiveness much sooner. Their stance, untrammelled by obligation and pressure to imitate or reject reality, reflect the psychological troubles that – in addition to the difficulty of dealing with the burden of inherited traditions – have both shaped and paralysed figurative art, particularly in Europe since the seventeenth century, while European music since the same time has roamed free and unhindered, focusing its energies solely on its own development.

17.       Despite this advantage to music, which gives us the impression it is able to seek new avenues peacefully, it is in crisis. The difficulty of finding new melodies is real because of the almost infinite combinations of notes, those that are beautiful are limited in number. Seeking reassurance in simplicity and arguing that a fraction of infinity is still infinity is misleading if we fail to take into account that it takes infinite time to find them. The same is true of abstract painting.

18.       Time has the possibility of squaring up to the known to discover the unknown, in other words the accessibility of that which has been discovered and created. Time has the particular succession of ideas born of other ideas and the source in turn of yet more. Yet the value of these ideas is universal, hence timeless, as consequently is their use, whatever the time and place of their discovery: they correspond to ways the mind and brain operate and their value judgements. Sooner or later the brain will seize hold of them.

19.       The obligation to take up a stance of some kind as regards tradition – and more broadly, that which is familiar – is part of culture. When culture frees us from all forms of obligation, the claim to universality becomes an individual action. The worth of an individual's judgement is in doubt when he steps away from painstakingly won, long-established rules, when it is clear that, while copying is always easier than coming up with something new, ugliness and beauty are both copied everywhere.

20.       To those who challenge the right to judge an individual, and for the sake of avoiding misunderstandings, I say simply this: judgement is an indispensable part of creation, as is the belief in the universality of values; furthermore, experience has proven it legitimate, but it should be understood once and for all that a given individual, whatever their culture, can only put forward proposals. He can never claim to be right. An artist implements a number of judgements with the aim of putting forward his version of universality.

21.       Though abstraction is barely affected by moral and philosophical problems, it is not wholly cut off from affects such as ostentation, gigantism, disgust, and banality, which flood the space with invalid sensations and can be compared to an abuse of power.

22.       The term "abstract figure" could be used for a form or configuration of forms arranged together in a way that is clearly identifiable and appealing: the equivalent in abstract painting of a musical melody. While the painting as an overall unit may not be discrete, one colour zone within it may be. An assemblage of surfaces, contours, intensity, and blends can be defined and reproduced. Its complexity and precision are singular, even individual, in value, just like those of a melody.

23.       No-one will deny that melodies are precise: a few notes off and they lose their appeal. At the same time, as long as the original melody is repeated several times, deforming and interrupting it is part of the economy of musical enjoyment. The same is true of abstract figures, though they do not require such a high degree of precision. We tend to believe that melodies are invented wholesale, though hand-written scores show they are often altered and improved. According to Kenneth Gilbert, Bach constantly improved his scores. Similarly, experience shows that working on abstract figures can give them greater cachet, elegance, and mystery. Artists must become explorers.

24.       Abstract figures and melodies may be individual but that does not necessarily mean they express subjectivity. Satisfaction comes not from their uniqueness nor from personal feelings, but from the success – there is no other word for it – of a harmonious relationship between tones, tempos, shapes, colours, and light. Emotion is not absent; it is not bound up with an object or a living being, but rather is felt for itself, born of shapes and bound up with them.

25.       Though vital, melodies are not in themselves enough, else we would be content with the simplest of songs. Like musical compositions, painting must forge a network with configurations that grab our attention. Just as a fugue includes a subject, taken up by voices in turn, a countersubject, a return to the subject, part of the subject, and a development of the subject, just as a melody can be diverted, stretched, and cut up into sections, abstract configurations can be given a new slant, dilated, begun, scattered, reproduced in other colours and other contrasts; a subset can ricochet and overlap or swallow up a new motif; it may go from one movement to another by means of transitions, intermediary figures, and pivots, just as in Beethoven, a chord or a repeated note brings about a change in key or triggers a new melody. (Fig.2)

26.       The light-filled, soaring triangles of Tension vers l’inaccessible (1986) playfully, cheekily and joyfully tease the purple-brown directional mass of the underlying triangle looming up from the shadowy depths. Darker triangles form an echo as they slide down its flanks, while other voices, other diamonds, chase the triangles and chessboard pattern of diamonds, creating a sense of movement around its edge. The light comes from behind, the interplay of light and dark creating a sense of mystery.

27.       The repetition of similar figures, even non-geometrical ones, builds coherence, creates order and rhythm, and intoxicates the senses. Recognition seems to be a source of pleasure, creating bonds in the chaos as shapes, unexpected yet recognised, hidden, twisted, and rediscovered, resonate and delight the brain. Can the enjoyment arising from this tension between the known and the unknown, between order and chaos, be compared to alternating senses of safety and danger? Remember Freud's interpretation of the bobbin game that the child makes vanish and reappear. Overcoming danger is something vitally important that may play a role in the work's power of enchantment.

28.       Mass, weight, and lack of balance can be detected in two dimensions, triggering kinesthetic nerve reactions. Though such sensations are felt less strongly than in architecture, they overlap with properly pictorial emotions. Artists can challenge gravity, reverse masses, build precariously balanced piles of weights and sequences of curves, tie them in knots, create whirls, expansive spirals, concentric pressures, threats, freedoms.

29.       We need sweeping movements, breaks, reprises, bursts of energy. We need the unpredictable, accentuation, confirmation. Steering trajectories, breaking them off here to pick them up there, in their own mirror image. Colour can create movement independently of shape, when in one clearly outlined trajectory it slips out of one shape into another.

30.       One key to complexity lies in overlayering. Movements can be overlayered like the voices of a quartet that each follow their own path, now intertwining, now going their separate ways, now overlapping, now alternating. Trajectories meeting at intersections thanks to the transparency of the upper element, which sparks a new series of ideas. Two shapes can create captivating intersections.

31.       Abstract figures are not as clear-cut, or as tight-knit, as a melody. Since the contents of a painting are immediately apparent to the viewer, they are closely bound up or intertwined with its composition. The composition of an abstract painting can arise from an ensemble. If it is complex, it can form a self-sufficient unit. It, too, is constructed on lines similar to musical composition, since it must feature variety, inventiveness, coherence, rhythm, energy, similarities, dissimilarities, extravagance, and regularity.

32.       Echoes between similar figures lend order to chaos; too much similarity, however, is dull. A degree of chaos, impulsiveness, and energy is needed. Everything is intertwined, choices are forced on the artist, who aspires for moments of disharmony in the harmony.

33.       It is as if zones of the brain act and react like an orchestra: they each play on their own, in tune with their own section, sending each other messages, joining in one overarching theme, providing rhythm and accent. Visual chaos is as unpleasant as cacophony, as there is no confirmation and no support; the responses are scattered, unconnected, they count for nothing and are confused and harmful. We are often tempted to associate truth and beauty. Can truth at the very least be taken for reality or the life of the mind?

34.       The ability to handle complexity also comes from practice. Abstraction has to be mastered; practice will develop and detail zones, leading to a finer-grained, more pleasurable understanding.

35.       Illusion has a role to play in abstract painting. The artist must paint as if the shapes were real and important; he must look after them, imagine them bathed in light or draped in shade, give them volume, arrange them alongside other figures.

36.       Geometry allows for ricochets and sequences, for instance a movement finishing on one side of a triangle and starting up again on the other side, or parallel. An artist cannot be indifferent to the power of vertical and horizontal lines. Parallels have a certain appeal; their energising rhythmical and ornamental power gives them a range of roles and interventions.

37.       Masses, calmer spaces and irregularities are required. Masses selected for their visual relationship or their weight can contain localised areas of movement, zones of detail, and directions which do not threaten the overall stability of heavy masses but which, like stimulants, cause local tremors.

38.       No painting is perfect first time. All are copied afresh after corrections, cuts, and layers of pasted scraps of paper – a swift and easy method of hiding and re-doing parts of the work. The most complex works have had as many as five layers of paper, including the first, Tension vers l’inaccessible, which took several months of research. I waited fifteen years until I was certain I had mastered oil painting enough to start the version in oils, which is the same size as the original rough version, now destroyed. (Fig.3)

39.       Improvisation always ends in failure. But it still needs to be done. Thinking of the paper as a rough draft from the outset frees up the mind and sparks more discoveries than the artist's hand, which enjoys all the glory.

40.       The years from 1986 to 1990 saw the greatest effort at composition as I had to test the comparison with musical composition.

41.       This effort, which reflected a certain mistrust of abstraction, a fear of poverty and inadequacy, could not be kept up without burdening my vision. Obstinately keeping figures together when they did not match risked burying other ideas which clamoured for attention. Finishing simpler paintings in restricted formats is also a meaningful endeavour.

42.       Conventions are not rules. Clearly, musicians can turn their backs on conventions such as the number and length of movements, changes of tempo, and reprises. But a systematic refusal of variation, of tonal relationship, a preference for short melodies (while long melodies are so rare), simply juxtaposing them when the whole point is how they are combined, and failure to follow the convention not to repeat a note in the first twelve, are simply sterile transgressions of a painstakingly built tradition. The parallel in painting would be a complete lack of order. Prokofiev is hardly held back by working in a given key. He remains sovereignly inventive, jubilant, eager to play with all the capacities of music. His astonishingly long, unique, perfectly individual melodies subjugate the listener. (Fig.4)

43.       Over the years, the brain stockpiles experiences, symbolic silhouettes, types of arrangement, and principles. A new project triggers these repertoires, ready to intervene and make a suggestion. Their availability is not, however, automatic: a brief sketch of ideas is needed to call them forth.

44.       Great background masses can provide a force of direction, a weight, a balance, an unsteady heaviness. Determining their place from the outset can, however, act as a stumbling block and intimidate the artist into dropping new initiatives. The form of the mass is, in the final analysis, determined by what is added to it. The artist simply needs to know that its presence may be reckoned with and wait for other bright ideas before settling on it.

45.       Good ideas can be a long time coming. It can feel as if they are behind prison walls. Rather than stubbornly trying out different ideas, it is better to spread them out over different paintings and wait. Either they eventually give rise to new developments, or some minor change will enable them to become autonomous, or they can become an element in a sequence of paintings.

46.       Arranging similar things together is easier, but the artist rapidly becomes aware that the process can become monotonous: new material is needed to shake things up and throw them off-balance. Newness is unsettling, but presenting it with variations can help the viewer attune to it. The curved lines of Esprit de l’Asie, which might initially appear odd, form a cadence that soon makes them familiar.

47.       Shifting from one type of composition to another simultaneously maintains different registers of form that meet each other in unexpected combinations without our knowledge. Observing this phenomenon invites the artist to play with several sorts of register, juggling them to spark such encounters.

48.       Bright colours are a must. Saturated colours enliven, delight, and transport the viewer. Ecoline is more transparent than usual watercolours and encourages bolder compositions. Is it a gift of light?

49.       Colour dominates and triggers sensations and emotions. But in creating a work of art, trusting in the power of colours is not enough. They must also be arranged. However, arranging patches of colours is a weak, vague, ill-determined pleasure. The arrangement needs a pretext: in other words, shapes. Shapes satisfy the demand for rationality. The links between shapes are conduits for emotions, directing them, honing, them, and justifying them. (Fig.5)

50.       There is an inverse relationship between drawing and colours. A complicated drawing will not need much in the way of colour. This holds true for figurative art: black and white are enough for a Clouet drawing; the complexity and finesse of sixteenth-century oil portraits is fully satisfying to the eye and more than makes up for the relatively limited palette of colours; the Fauves worked from the opposite principle, with touches of colour on the face making up for the paucity of features.

51.       The artist can shift from one colour harmony to another, just like the composer shifts from one key to another. This is an advantage that serial music has turned its back on, since it refuses to acknowledge keys and relies on chance as a guiding principle. Yet what beauty is hidden by dissonance in painting and in music when it emerges from a key or harmony!

52.       Glazing on paper creates a highly striking effect when it covers a surface that has been painted with motifs in two colours: it blurs the edges and unifies the shift from one colour to the other. Glazing allows the artist to experiment by improving his work and let him anticipate changes. Planning glazes and their underlying hues can give a more velvety aspect to miniatures and to juxtaposed zones of detail.

53.       Playing with light transfigures paintings. Light generates flights of lyricism and a sense of marvel even in abstract works. It is not easy to handle. In an abstract world, where is the light supposed to come from? What justifies its presence? Gradually, the artist comes to realise that there's no need to justify it. Light is just another element in the set of combinations. Artists use it because they want to create a sense of marvel and mystery. They can place sources of light wherever they like, between motifs or behind figures to light up their contours, just as windows and candles are used in figurative paintings. Since light creates relief, it is best to avoid placing it illogically, which risks confusing the viewer.

54.       Tension is not sadness. Lyricism is not melancholy. Can an abstract painting plunge the viewer into a poignant emotional state? That is a real challenge that has yet to be met.

55.       Formal ideas can be triggered by a range of causes: some are bound up with symbolic life, others arise from sensory domains and musical constructions, but all are prompted by some degree of resemblance. Brahm's duetting violins left their mark on Nœuds et dénouements, Bartok's percussion shaped Staccato. The overlaps in En suspens, Quatuor, and Sensation psychique instill discreet rhythms like the rows of foot-soldiers shown in profile in the bas-reliefs of Antiquity. Triangles affrontés revives the tension between two animals in a stand-off found on Scythian belt buckles, Cretan vase handles, and the Chartres cathedral tetramorph. The discontinuity of stained glass windows feeds the "urge for a circle", the supreme coherence, the very definition of balance, in Anneau, discontinuité, which is also inspired by mandalas and decorated Greek vases. The relationship between the great unsullied expanses of golden-white stone and the magnificently worked rose windows in Italy's Romanesque cathedrals, between their bare flanks and their bewitchingly attractive long, high-perched arches, and more broadly the opposition between the void and areas of detail, becomes a major principle that frequently comes into play, most notably in Composition héraldique and Pan k gris. Chinese pagoda-style roofs, the elegant curves of Japanese torii gates, and the prows of ships protruding from the rostral columns of Saint Petersburg wove their way into Esprit annonciateur and Esprit de l’Asie. Persian miniatures led me to place a motif in the En descente sequence off-centre and frame it with uneven borders.

56.       The energy in Kandinsky's work is striking. Russian painting rooted abstraction in an essential dimension from the outset. It showed the way, clashing shapes and playing with curves, trajectories, and focal points, while prizing colour and energy over shape.

57.       Drawing on instinct is tricky as it will not allow itself to be corrected. It is overcome by paying attention to composition and neutralised by care over the choice of materials. For various reasons, in reaction to the neutrality of geometry and the anonymity of minimalism, the artist's mark has become the dominant force, earning its independence to the point of caricature, and exposing its inadequacy. It is shapeless and interchangeable, a sign of impatience that sidesteps problems and simplifies judgements. It quickly reaches its limits and remains within the realm of banality.

58.       Abstraction can seek to strengthen the vitality of the line, borrowing from Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, or Indian calligraphy, an art of stylising curved surfaces while maintaining the appearance of a first draft. It is possible to improve on improvisation, to copy movements, to carefully layer glazes over the same curves or brushstrokes, however irregular or fleeting, with ink and even more so with oil paint. This is a way of solving the dilemma of improvisation versus composition, of allying energy and invention.

59.       Calligraphy and friezes come together in the concept of animated linearity. Figures, oblique, vertical, or calm zones can be interrupted by linear sequences of new, related motifs.

60.       Signifiers can find their way in through lines with symbolic value. A broad span acts a sign of warning, wielding its power in Esprit annonciateur, Esprit protecteur. The wings freely unfurled in Esprit vagabond give the work an untrammelled appearance, hence the title. The Esprits tutélaires, silhouettes evoking human torsos and limbs, take on characters that are royal, slender, peacefully bulky, or frenzied and agitated. The Force qui s’ébroue strives to free itself from the forces dragging it down, like the crouching beings croaking and leaping in Béjart's choreography for The Rite of Spring. Impeccable points, blades, and curves whip across space, cleanly, deliberately, serenely: decorated with vivid yet tamed colours, their enchantment becomes the Hache cérémonielle. Bucrania are hinted at in Invocation barbare. Such intrusions of symbolism refer to means of intimidation, subjugation, and evoking terror.

61.       Composing a work based on one emblematic figure raises the same difficulties as for a geometric shape: how to increase its complexity without denaturing it. The two paths, symbolic and combinatory, seem incompatible. It is difficult to merge the two because the symbolic form has low tolerance for disturbance. When it is shot through or overlaid by other elements, its evocative outline is diminished in power. In Célébration des esprits tutélaires (1992), the symbols are left whole, floating above the anonymous, shifting, orchestral mass – a step towards a solution.

62.       The artist must consent to abandon the strength of the outline and to accept loss. The outline can be disturbed in one way here and another way there. Repeated differently, the outline's power is reconstituted, its uncertainty is mysterious, the background plays a part. In the sequence En descente, spirits of vitality create trajectories, scatter obstacles, and cross through three fetishes without breaking rhythm or losing any of their vigilant solidity.

63.       Just as a landscape seen through a window in a figurative interior scene creates discontinuity, the artist can create a sub-space in a composition to incorporate motifs that are fully different and independent. The formal discrepancy can be perfectly assimilated in a figurative painting because its meaning is justified in rational terms. The artist cannot include whatever he likes, but he does have a fair degree of freedom; the aim being to create a sense of surprise, this is the place to include a degree of dissonance. The quantity of surface is the deciding factor. For over a thousand years, Japanese culture has appreciated the art of playing with subtle colours and boldly different motifs on kimonos, as shown in The Tale of Genji and in prints.

64.       The artist can vary the proportions of continuity and discontinuity. The use of discontinuity is similar to that of dissonance. At a low level it creates invigorating jolts and gaps. Used to excess, it breaks down the work's internal cohesion. Excessive discrepancies stop the viewer from enjoying the relationships between different parts of the work and splinters emotions to the point of destroying them altogether. Changes of octave and overly large gaps between notes in serial music stops them being understood in relationship to each other; the leaps experienced by the listener or viewer all merge into one since they cannot be identified individually. Discontinuity acquires meaning when it breaks a network of relationships momentarily or temporarily.

65.       Dissonances between close sounds are more accessible: they do not disturb the melody, but rather create a sense of abundance. The same is true of a grouping of multiple colours on a small surface, leaning towards impressionism, which is easier to grasp.

66.       The outline is a highly visual manifestation of discontinuity, which delights us in medieval art, trecento painting, and icons. The firmness – even when not underlined – of outlines in quattrocento painting is again an abstraction in that it densifies the figures and heightens their contrast with the landscape or architecture. The issue arises with the presence of abstract figures that need to stand out from the rest. But this raises new difficulties: the more they stand out, the more they risk clashing. Firm, distinct figures clash with other shapes violently, whereas patches "pass" more easily, but are more indifferent. The problem arose in the degree of precision to use for the triangles, diamonds, and vague curves in Insondable.

67.       The pleasure of abstraction takes the taste for transposition and the breadth of the gap between reality and invention felt in figurative art to extremes. While it arises from a break with reality, giving the joy of entering a new world in which the viewer escapes reality and lives freely, it requires "something" to live. Abstraction is not the absence of content; seeking abstraction is not crashing into the void.

68.       It is abstraction's good fortune to enjoy the advances of the past fifty years in the quality of media and pigments and scientific analysis of the techniques used by the Flemish primitives. These techniques, perfectly suited to planned, composed abstract paintings, have now been made so easy that there is no constraint in them at all. There is no denying that a modicum of methodology is still needed to attain the finesse, transparency, enamelled density of coulour, and quality of matter that conquered all of Europe.

69.       When the artist bases his work on a watercolour original, equivalence becomes impossible, due to the higher concentration of pigments in oil painting – a major difference. Tiny changes of shade are of considerable consequence where in watercolour they would go unnoticed. The artist can no longer over-use pure colours: they clash and destroy each other, while the transparency of Ecolines saves them, lending them vigour and innocent grace. Across small areas, divided by broken hues of purple, brown, and grey, they are very striking, creating a touch of excitement, a degree of lively animation, and capturing the viewer's attention.

70.       Pictorial intensity also obliges the artist to attenuate the complexity of his draughtsmanship compared to the model on paper, or to increase the size of the painting to make the complexity graspable. The oil version of Insondable could have been larger, as the quantity of information – the number of colours and precision of the shapes – remains overly dense compared to the surface area. Tension vers l’inaccessible, painted in oil on wood from 2001 to 2005 in the largest format that was still manageable by hand – the same dimensions as the original painting on paper, corrected numerous times and therefore destroyed – has a balanced density that is wholly accessible.

71.       Oil is the sphere of blended, shimmering, translucent touches that can be maintained within an outline to preserve the power of associated shapes and colours. The artist needs to use translucent glazes and keep transparency to limited sections of the surface area. Layering glazes lets him settle on imbrications and interpenetrations that make up the work's richness of design and plenitude of matter. Just like in watercolour painting, using one glaze across contiguous underlying areas blurs their borders, combining different underlayers into one single expanse. (Fig. 6)

72.       Complexity requires a sufficient surface area and the artist constantly runs into the problem that an oversized format makes a full grasp of the work imperfect or incomplete. The viewer's approach to the painting is by turns remote and close, synthetic and analytic. The painting should not exceed two metres in height if the aim is for the viewer to take in and enjoy a full overview of the work as well as its details in a single viewing.

73.       This is why, rather than overburdening one single painting and making it too tall, one solution might be a sequence of paintings. Imposing a sequential viewing, the linear juxtaposition of a theme, similar ideas, variations, echoes, and contrasts, avoids clashes that might otherwise be impossible to solve and also allows the viewer to retrace their steps to understand the relationship between the various parts.

74.       The idea of the sequence matured, found its first applications, and grew in diversity with the advent of digital imaging, which furnished new elements. Projection on a screen allows the artist to intensify the emotional content of a watercolour by adjusting its light and contrast. Projecting enlarged images in high or very high definition on a cinema screen is also liable to heighten sensations in the viewer. Static images can now be rolled out in succession. This does not make them animations: it is still a far cry from the concept of abstract film that has haunted abstract painting since the beginning.

75.       Suite aux losanges, a sequence of forty watercolours measuring 30 cm x 40 cm produced between 2004 and 2007, produced the effect of canon singing and polyphony. The actual watercolours quickly triggered the possibility of combining them with digital images based on details from the originals to make their voices sing, to focus the gaze on small parts, drawing multiple parallels, and recreating new derived shapes, until the project eventually culminated in a hundred or so digital images. The eight-part sequence, initially shown as a PowerPoint in 2007, was then converted into a video timed in two-, three-, or four-beat rhythms. An experimental sequence randomly shot a zigzag motif between four points on the screen, each image remaining on screen for one second. The thirty-nine minute video contains around six hundred virtual images, each on screen for between one and four seconds, as against forty actual watercolours. An (as yet unfinished) high-definition version offers other perspectives, the images being large enough to provide the basis for two-part compositions with the upper part devoted to melodies and the lower part a kind of basso continuo, a voice that is less individual, though still shimmering. (Fig. 7)

76.       I will not go into further detail here about digital images and videos and will merely mention their impact on my painting. Once I had taken up the concept of the sequence and composed several sequences of images based on details of actual paintings (digitised in two formats, 720 x 576 pixels and 1920 x 1080 pixels), a change of direction became necessary in around 2012. I had to reduce the ratio of images composed and increase the quantity of actual watercolours, which could be smaller in dimension, in A4 (20 cm x 30 cm) or even A5 (15 cm x 20 cm) format. This solution let me maintain the time-honoured act of painting, of creating a fully autonomous work with all its nuances, while saving time in the studio. In this sense, the paintings on paper can be thought of as original Ektachromes. They are not destined for display and can be kept in perfect condition away from light. I produced a large number of works inspired by antique paintings to create linked sets that can be left unfinished, continued when inspiration strikes, or worked on in parallel. (Fig. 8)

77.       This is a means of creation that foregrounds and stimulates the very principle of the association of ideas. Unpicking the elements of a watercolour vastly increases the possibilities for association, connection, invention.

78.       The principle of the successive display of connected, reactive formal ideas triggered by each other becomes part of the overarching oeuvre. Planning a step-by-step reading makes it easier to build connections between the works. Some paintings will have a high degree of internal coherence, while others will gain coherence from their neighbours and the presence of a theme developed in earlier or later works in the series. Unresolvable clashes are avoided as the relationships between the works are partial and progressive. The themes of the original works may trigger new ideas to the point of inspiring new sequences.

79.         The results obtained from this time-based approach and small-format watercolours gave rise to one final new direction: the composition of shorter sequences of no more than ten paintings in larger formats, all of different dimensions, to be exhibited in a given order. In this sequence, each painting gains in complexity compared to the A4 format paintings, but not excessively so. They remain easily grasped, multi-faceted and autonomous, but become more interesting by being juxtaposed with other works earlier or later in the series to develop a broad theme. Their reading is enriched by surprises and attempts to uncover the mystery; the viewer can backtrack, discover early clues, complete a configuration by seeing a variant connected in a new way, feel a rhythm, and recognise similarities in other colour harmonies. There is a change in the way the work is understood: it becomes composite. The analytic vision is now equal to the synthetic vision.