“Being an artist is a heavy responsibility
because all artistic activity plays with people's minds.”
Martial Raysse
The French artist Martial Raysse has been
labeled as being French Pop, European Neo Avant Garde and the School of Nice all of which he regards with ambivalence.
As told Art
in America’s Aimee Walleston last year "I do not think
my work belongs absolutely inside any of these boxes."
It is only recently that Raysse has re-entered the public
gaze. From 1980 he has lived in a self imposed exile on a remote farm near the
town of Bergerac in South West France. As he told the Wall
Street Journal “I live with my wife,
who is also an artist, near Bergerac, in the Dordogne. It's an old farm—very
rustic, very beautiful. We have no neighbors and don't receive guests, not even
our good friends. My studio is in a stone barn. For a long time, we had cows. I
used to sell them instead of my paintings.”
"I felt the sudden weight of commercialism on my art
and I thought I was going to lose my soul,” Raysse says was his reason to seek
solitude. And during this time of self reflection his work changed from the examination
of the obsession and worship of advertising and commodities using fashion
images, found objects and neon illuminated sculptures to allegorical works that
mine the history of art with an interpretation that expresses the values of
today.
For Raysse many of these values he found though the written
word. In his youth Raysse had dreams of being a writer and it was whilst studying
literature that the 19 year old started making sculptures from found objects.
But the love of books stayed with him even though he pursued a career in the visual
art and in his library there is a well worn copy of Robert Pirsig’s 1970’s
bestseller Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
One of the take a ways from Pirsig's journey of self discovery is ”The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the
Zen you bring up there” which could equally well describe Raysse’s journey. For as he is
quoted as saying in the publicity for his current exhibition “I’ve
always thought that the purpose of art is to change lives. But the important
thing today, it seems to me, is to change what surrounds us on all levels of
human relationship. Some people think that life is copying. Others know it is
inventing. You don’t quote Rimbaud,
you live him.”
Raysse’s latest exhibition is a self titled retrospective which
is currently showing at Venice’s Palazzo Grassi
until the 30th of November.
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