my motivations as a painter

Leonardo

My Motivations as a PainterAuthor(s): Léon ZackSource: Leonardo, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter, 1976), pp. 61-62Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1573306 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 9, pp. 61-62. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain

MY MOTIVATIONS AS A PAINTER

L6on Zack*

From a very tender age a blank sheet of paper fasci- nated me. I found it beautiful and was filled with a desire to draw or write on it. Unfortunately, whenever a pencil made its impression, the sheet of paper lost for me its charm and pristine beauty. This fascination for blank sheets of paper has remained with me all my life and, when I draw or paint on paper, my aim is to make a picture that is as fascinating.

I fully understand Yves Klein, who made monochrome paintings. But his idea was the easy way out: to produce a monochrome surface, either white or blue, and not to proceed any farther. This facile choice is a surrender of an attempt to express life artistically with its contradictions and plenitude and with its diversity, which is at the same time its uniqueness. For, does not a bare surface provide the starting point for the testing of an artist's potentiality? An absence of marks promises the possibility of the presence of something but only promises it-the possibility of meaning but not meaning itself.

It seems to me that there are two motivations for being an artist. On the one hand, paper, canvas or other bare surfaces evoke the desire to dominate the material, to animate it. On the other hand, there is the urge to create at least a reflection on life. I find that there is voluptuosity in painting, like that in lovemaking.

An ideal painting, in my opinion, unites the two antitheses-the purity of a virgin canvas and the diversity of life, a union that expresses itself in blots, shapes and rhythms. It is organized in such a way that in spite of its diversity it possesses a unity. Such a work is not confined to itself. Like a white surface, it retains an unlimited range of potentialities that stimulate those who view it with the same imaginative urge as that of the artist. One of the elements of aesthetic pleasure is the realization that viewers can experience this urge and, hence, participate in it. Ideally, life is freedom to be all that one is not. I feel that if a painting fails to convey this spirit, it is not Ialive'.

When I refer to a work of art being alive, I am not thinking about the 'living' character of a masterpiece showing fruit painted so realistically that birds could be imagined to fly to them and to peck hopefully. Rather, I think of the 'life' that is conferred by painting or drawing to forms, colors and rhythm by exploiting their internal contradictions. The symmetric and asymmetric, the clear and obscure, the cold and warm tones can be taken as contradictory; they reflect my own attitudes and the contradictions that I encounter in life. When I paint, I am like an acrobat moving along a tightrope separating contradictory elements and I must not fall on either side.

* Artist living at 10 rue Gaudray, 92170 Vanves, France. (Based on a text in French. (Received 10 Oct. 1974).

I regard virtue as a vice if it is not balanced by an opposing virtue. The lack of balance can be caused as readily by conscious reflection or by carelessness. I believe that a painting should come into existence naturally and without planned invention or calculation; I must play the role only of a skilled midwife (and even this skill can stifle one's work). On the other hand, when I paint, am I not like one who is thrown into water without knowing how to swim and for whom the only way to survive is to float without making too many movements?

I am often asked the following question: 'What do you think about when you paint?' Usually I reply: 'My painting.' But this is not quite correct, for I think of my work as a true interior expression. While painting, I ask myself constantly if what I see is in con- formity with my interior vision.

The ideal painting should be true, which means that

Fig. I. 'Peinture', oil on canvas, 81 x 117 cm, 1965.

Fig. 2. 'Peinture', oil on canvas, 73 x 93 cm, 1967.

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Leon Zack

while an artist painted it he was sincere in transcribing his feeling for liberty. He generally does not experience the feeling but then it sometimes manifests itself by chance. To be sincere is to listen to the interior demon to which Socrates refers and which is the voice of transcendence. I have not found an objective test that would permit a viewer of a work of art to decide if the artist who made it was sincere. The viewer must be guided by his own sensibility.

I have the feeling when I paint that I am in profound communication with the elementary powers of life (Figs. 1, 2 and 4, Fig. 3, cf. color plate). This sensation of getting to the bottom of things leaves me in constant anguish: How can I be worthy of participating in universal creation? This anxiety is always part of me.

Fig. 4. 'Peinture', oil on canvas, 101 x 80 cm, 1974.

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Top left: Kirill Sokolov. 'House of Culture, Moscow', oil on canvas, 23 5 x 31-5 in, 1973. (Fig. 10, cf. page 16.)

Top right: Perle Hessing. 'Kol Nidre' ('Eve of Atonement'), oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in, 1974. (Fig. 2, cf. page 46.)

Centre: Gert Marcus. 'Disposition, I', smalti, plywood base, 152 x 152 cm, 1955-58. (Fig. 1, cf. page 49.)

Bottom left: Ldon Zack. 'Peinture', oil on canvas, 160 x 125 cm, 1973. (Fig. 3, cf. page 62.) Bottom right: Pic Adrian. Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 81 x 65 cm, 1968. (Photo: Calvet, Barce-

lona, Spain.) (Fig. 4, cf. page 2.)

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my motivations as a painter

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