Artist Talk
Cathy, how did you get into art? You are from Belfort, an industrial town and in your family there was basically nothing that could have led you to art.
I was born in Belfort and I was nine months old when my parents moved to a small village in Burgundy. Yes, my parents aren’t artists but they have always been interested in a variety of things. We travelled a lot when I was younger and we learned to play the piano together. I was allowed to try different things, without pressure or expectations: from ballet to diving to target shooting. And of course, art, as soon as I was able to hold a crayon. So I did art courses, too. I was quite free, growing up – a good foundation for art.
Did you only start painting when you came to Franz Erhard Walther in Hamburg? Did you have certain expectations as to what would await you at the academy?
Yes, I had. For me, Germany was the country of painting. In my view, there is a lot of freedom here which I did not have in France. The death of painting is a recurring subject in France, for example. Not in Germany, however. Moreover, painting in France is very conceptual, which is not an approach I wanted to take. My expectations revolved around freedom. For this, Hamburg was the perfect place, especially because of Franz Erhard Walther. Despite being held in high esteem, Franz is no guru, but rather a free thinker, maybe precisely because he is not a painter. He always keeps the right distance and has broadened my perspective on shapes, spaces, the object, the materiality of colours and so on – everything was even better than I had imagined it to be.
A number of famous artists have come forth from Walther’s class over time. What does your teacher mean to you when it comes to your later work?
Franz is still present in my mind. His work is so broad and varied that there is always something new to discover. For me, he is the master of form. Form is always questioned with him. Its stagnation, its presence, its activation, its extension, its transformation and so forth. It’s not only about the representation of form – drawn, I mean – but also about the form as object or sculpture and the effect it has on space. Consequently, the life of the form in its vast complexity. His work is like an encyclopaedia for me.
Are there texts that have influenced you as an artist?
I don’t know what has consciously or unconsciously influenced me in the end. Of all the things stirring in your subconscious, it is hard to tell which are the things that have truly had an impact. I assume that everything I read influences me unconsciously and unknowingly. I can’t point out the effects it has clearly, though. It seemed necessary to me to engage myself with texts by important artists, especially in the beginning. Here are some definite examples I can name of texts written by the artists themselves: all texts by Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malewitsch, Yves Klein. Certainly also the texts by Franz Erhard Walther and Danie Buren. There is a negative example to be made, too. It turned out to be important as well, as it influenced me nevertheless: Agnes Martin. The spiritual aspects of her art and her texts have not stimulated me at all. It was exactly what I didn’t want but to realize this is just as important. Dealing with her work helped me define where I stood much more clearly. I think, that one is neither exclusively human, nor exclusively an artist.
I would like to point out a novel here, even though my work has no direct correlation to its narrative. “Deutschstunde” (“German lesson”) by Siegfried Lenz has helped me immensely in getting to the bottom of the question of painting itself. Apart from my admiration of the German language – its structure and possibilities of syntax – the novel touches on a captivating problem: the fate of a Jewish painter who is not allowed to follow his passion anymore during the Nazi era. Reading this led to reflections on painting itself; about its possible effects and of course about the freedom to paint. About what it means today where everything is possible – at least in the society I live in. The novel contributed to starting a real process of reflection. Non-fiction novels that have nothing to with art did their part as well, for example the small book by Stephen Hawking “A Brief History of Time”. It helped me understand some pictures. Images of the cosmos or remote ones: what is it we see there? What will be left? What is happening? Through this, questions about cosmology and cosmogony arise. Questions about distance and proximity. About creation, of course. About time, energy, the speed of light. It is unbelievable that there are already established theories about time. Concerning time: we experience a shift in time when we receive images from the cosmos. Basically, we see something past – not the stars here and now but we see them with a delay of billions of years. It is not the contemporary reality we see but rather an erstwhile reality. Therefore, reality is very subversive. The progress of our time and of our technology allows us to see these pictures. Further thoughts about images stem from my global perception. The book is also about entropy as the measure for the level of order in a system. About order and disorder right up to chaos. Hyperspace is an issue as well: the non-Euclidean space with more than three dimensions. All of this establishes interesting parallels to painting for me. To be able to say that painting is inspired by everything, and painting in turn inspires everything, is amazing. Such examples ultimately prove my conviction that everything I read influences my artistic work.
To come back to your time as a student once more: which artists have impressed you most back then?
Agnes Martin, Rosemarie Tröckel, Jean Pierre Raynaud, Imi Knoebel, Noel Dala, Katharina Grosse, Kenneth Noland, die frühen Werke von Frank Stella, Gunter Fruhtrunk, François Morellet, Günther Förg, Raoul de Keyser and many more. Amongst the classics: Malewitsch, Mondrian, Fontana, Yves Klein, Josef Albers …
The stripes in your work Marie Antoinette (2006) are of the same width. The width of the stripes in Daniel Buren’s work is exactly 8,7 cm, in different colours alternating with white; they have become his trade mark, he uses his “visual tools” since 1966. Does your work touch on his?
Buren talked about the blank value of painting, as did Roland Barthes in „Le degré zéro de l’écriture“ („Writing Degree Zero”). I thought it was genius, of course, but this kind of radicalism belongs somewhere else, to another level. I value painting very much but there is no point in continuing to use the same stylistic devices or to copy them. For me they are more like a lighthouse, I keep an eye on them. I know there is a place of neutrality but at the same time it’s obvious that this is not where I want to harbour. Besides, I use more than just one “visual tool” and they have developed over the years.
Let’s talk about your work. What is your incentive for a painting?
The wish to bring an idea into the world, in a tangible way. Or, as Deleuze describes it so well: the picture is “un produit de la pensée” (“a product of thought”).
How do you approach a painting? With a model or with sketches?
With a construction or deconstruction or reconstruction. Just kidding… yes, I sketch until the pages come closest to my original idea. Concerning the 3D-paintings, I sometimes have to create a mobile or sculpture to better visualize the developments and movements of the shapes in the room. With other words, this preparation work allows me to study the life of shapes. In sketching it is first and foremost about the shapes, not the colours. The latter I figure out later, with acrylics on paper. However, the colours are not reliable; their effect is reduced on paper. Therefore, I focus on the shapes in correlation with the composition and on the rhythm of the “ensemble”. The colours will be dealt with afterwards, directly on the canvas.
Do you begin with a shape and then develop it further in the painting?
I have a preconception but it’s all about the result. It’s no experiment. Everything is weighed and measured, the composition already chosen. Apart from the effect of the colours, which activate the painting, there are no surprises.
Is every colour available to you and do you think of every colour as equal?
“Colour cannot be mastered by reason, unlike forms”, said Mondrian. I am convinced of this. It’s not about harmony or disharmony when it comes to colours, which cannot be comprehended through rational thought anyway. My personal taste is of no interest in this. The magnificent shine of the colours transcends my preferences as well as every theory or dogma. All I see is that the colours have an effect. Every colour has its own potential and it’s the combination that bestows something new onto the viewer. The combination can be more forceful, softer, more aggressive or boring even. The colours can better, destroy or enhance each other and so forth. So yes, all colours are equal in the sense that every one possesses a different potential. I make no difference. Whether you like them or not doesn’t matter. The important thing is that something happens.
Is it necessary to consider painting with respect to artistic purpose?
Of course. Otherwise you would have to add an adjective.
Do you have an artistic policy?
No, not in a radical sense. I just want to perceive painting as painting without reference to anything other than itself.
Were your works from about 2013 onwards a way to turn to new things, or to revive what you have been engaged with from the start?
I wanted to develop the same things and thoughts further, still with the same tools but with a new perception.
Under which conditions did these works develop?
I was living with the feeling that something had been missing. It wasn’t enough. There was no depth, little contrast. I wanted three-dimensionality, didn’t want to work in the second dimension any longer, or on the surface, respectively. Besides, I had also contemplated the significance of 3D today. I had difficulties understanding what three-dimensionality meant. I had the feeling that it was about “more reality” when it came to 3D. Furthermore, images have no materiality. They are inspired by reality but it is never about recreating reality. There was an interesting parallel to one of the fundamental questions of painting: is painting not a recreation of reality? Is reality not enough or is it about being able to better grasp reality? What does it do for us? What are we searching for? The painted is an illusion yet it leads us to a thought that correlates directly to our tangible reality. So, which role does reality take in the examination of abstraction? It’s not only a question of aesthetics but of the evolution of the representation of the image. It can be called a revolution because 3D-pictures are also dangerous – they’re not only appealing but also alluring. On top of that, everything is possible, as it is with painting. That was very inviting and fascinating for me. This contemporary problematic is a whole new inspiration for my artistic reflections.
When is a work finished?
Haha – one of the biggest questions in painting. At my stage, since I’ve only painted for 10 years, a work is “finished” when the result matches the original idea.