Present, past, future_
Ron Johnson
In a brief pocket of time in the always-busy life of Christian Bonnefoi, this interview took place while driving in Bonnefoi_s car one very foggy and rainy evening, between Vitry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, and his home in Montargis, France, south of Paris.
Bonnefoi works in a space he calls "interstitial," which loosely translates as "the space between." He simultaneously works in two medias, collage and painting. His paintings enter a physical space inside because he uses a transparent/translucent material as his surface.
Ron Johnson: Today, in France, is painting still considered a dead medium? Your work pushes the idea of readdressing painting, breaking out of a classical interpretation, but still remaining very much a questioning of painting.
Christian Bonnefoi: The idea of the end of painting is because something else appears. We spoke before about the fact that events produced in real space are more present than ordinary symbolic situations, such as paintings on flat surface. This is why there is a lack of interest in painting. The fact that you can go inside the "real space" is not in contradiction to the idea of painting.
Turning the corner, the conversation instantly changes. Jean Dubufett’s "The Flame" is at the front of the car, at the center of a circular intersection in the road. Bonnefoi speaks highly of Dubufett, saying that this is possibly his favorite work. The moment comes and goes as we circle the sculpture and continued on our way.
RJ: The "space" in your work is a traditional picture plane space, but you use the idea of space literally. The viewer is able to enter in a two-dimensional planes physical area, visually, because of the use of transparent surface. But there still is a relation to painting.
CB: It is what I call the symbolic level. In painting, you can give the direction of space. But when you give this direction you can encounter this course or not. You can stay on a classical level such as painting on canvas or panel, but the most important is the questioning of the situation. In fact, painting can be thought of as the major position, between all practices. It can be thought of as an instigator of sorts to all other mediums.
RJ: It’s the idea of the hybrid, or the between. Between painting, between sculpture, between video’s
CB: _and movies and so on. One of the most important filmmakers in history is Soviet filmmaker [Sergei] Eisenstein. The novelty of Eisenstein is the invention of the montage. He would take a movie, and make an articulation. This quality, which is very specific to Soviet movies, comes from Cubist Collage: the idea to cut and reconstruct an image.
RJ: The idea of deconstruction and reconstruction is prominent in your work. It is evident from the catalog of your recent exhibition in Barbizon, France that you use pieces from different paintings. You remove, or deconstruct, elements from these works and replace these pieces in the other paintings. The point is that viewers can see associations between works. There is a literal relation connecting separate works.
CB: This is interesting because you have illustrated the questioning of the possibilities. What is very specific to painting is to make a complete circle. You travel outside of the work and you come back.
RJ: But, there is no beginning or end to a circle
CB: Yes, but you can decide to stop outside of the circle. My pushpin collages illustrate this idea. And when you come back, you will never come back at the same point. But you come back with the benefit of the past.
RJ: Does this relate to the idea of the machine?
CB: Voila!
The sky darkened as we continue down the freeway. We both comment on the colors and the fact that the car continues to fog up.
RJ: The circle idea or reference is related to minimalism. I am thinking specifically of Samuel Beckett’s "Rock-a-bye." The viewer can enter at any point of the play and always be in a similar place.
CB: But my circle is not a perfect circle, it is more like an ellipse. You never return at the same point, and you like being in a different place. I like that you can never close these ideas.
RJ: Do you consider yourself to be part of the support/surface movement?
CB: I have no relation, because I started just after this movement. At the same time of support/surface there was another group called BMPT. I had a conceptual interest in Buren, however the way I work is completely opposite of Buren. But, because I work with texture and color there is some similarity to support/surface.
RJ: You are compared to this group because it is easy to classify. But your work goes beyond their ideas. And the fact that you have a critical, theoretical foundation surpasses these other artists.
CB: Yes, but the work of art itself produces theory, theory doesn’t make the work, the work makes theory. This is a very important distinction, because art is my theoretical reference. It’s not critical farce, it’s not Michael Freed; it’s the experience of painting. This is why I have stopped practicing as an art historian. I am interested in art history, but I discovered late that art generates more theory than art history.
RJ: So, it is a problem when people think of you more as a theorist than an artist, because you are saying the visual experience of art creates more theory than any text could produce.
CB: Yes, the visual experience produces more. When I discovered Ryman and others in the 1970s, I said, if you put a work on the wall with a pushpin or tape, you have an event. The minimal event is very quick but very present. After that, you can produce reflection and production about the object to open this question. So the event is very quick, the first is very curious. In fact, I discovered contemporary art from American painters like Ryman and Newman. It was after this knowledge that I rediscovered European paintings. I experienced Picasso and Matisse again because of the painters of the sixties and seventies. Because all the problematic–and Yves Alain-Bois spoke about it–all the problematic of cubism was completely forgotten in the seventies. The cubist movement came to be seen as cubist style.
Collage is an intelligent technique, but of the past. The technique of collage and all the propositions of the cubists and Matisse are always open. And to come back to the beginning of our conversation, another relation to the circle, painting has the possibility to stock information. During the last one hundred years or so we have lived with the memory of cubism as a big moment of art history. But years after this event we find out that something is always alive, as in the movie "Alien." (Laughs)
The intensity of the conversation turns to a lighthearted banter as we talk about my work and how I come to conclusions. Over the last five years Christian and I have spoken many times about work and ideas. The conversation will continue…
