| Claude Gazier, New Figuration |
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A Lesson by Claude Gazier Claude Gazier paints scenes from the movies : his works nearly always portray couples. These actors, who were famous in their own time, are legends today. We are, of course, talking about old pictures - from the golden days of Bogart and Bacall, for example – rather than contemporary movies. What interests the artist is what lives on in his memory, and in our collective memory. For Claude Gazier, his work is not simply a exercise in nostalgia, but rather a way to revive memories. What can an artist do, when he feels such passion for a movie era that has now disappeared? In Claude Gazier’s case, he starts by covering the faces with an intense blue : the reality is thus cloaked in strangeness : a distance has been established. The point is not to say : “Here is Marlene”, but : “Here is my memory of Marlene”, which is not, of course, the same thing. However, even while he has established a distance from the subject matter, these same works establish a striking proximity with the viewer. The artist has chosen an original medium, working on a base of marble conglomerate. The rough texture adds weight to his works, and helps to create an exceptional sense of presence. His paintings could not be further removed from the rectangular screen of light projected on a screen. On the contrary, we are looking at heavy objects : the depth of these paintings, which is essentially pictorial, stands in marked contrast to the world of film. These film stars impose their presence on us in a curiously ambiguous manner, based on both distance and proximity. It seems to me that Claude Gazier’s art resonates not only like a declaration of love to that authentic cinema of his childhood, when TV was in its early days, but also like an implicit – and eloquent – denunciation of the futility of cinema today, which has been created for (and by) the world of TV. Twenty years later, and in his own original way, Claude Gazier seems to be continuing the battle led by Fellini – in his admirable Ginger and Fred - when he struggled against what was being created at the time. Italian cinema was already foundering on the rocks, thanks to an entrepreneur who, in true Berlusconi-style, was already showing his expertise in lobotomizing the public. No doubt, a predecessor to the French TV company CEO, who famously declared that his task was to make the viewing public as receptive as possible to the publicity messages of Coca Cola. But Claude Gazier is not trying to create a satirical tract, rather he is showing that the painter has the power to address man’s concerns without making speeches. His artistic language creates a presence before arousing the senses : this is what I have learnt from Claude Gazier’s celebration of a cinema style, which has disappeared today. Jean-Luc Chalumeau, october 2004.
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