One of his last exhibitions was titled after a novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint,
L'Urgence et la Patience
.
Nothing better than this oxymoron to define the work of this prolific French artist based in Los Angeles since 2015, known for her group paintings, her portraits and self-portraits, but also her sculptures or tapestries... They form a work that she creates with perseverance and which seems to tell the same story, whatever the theme or the medium.
Like a modern-day park, it weaves the thread of life.
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Madame Figaro.
– You said
, “I need the discomfort.”
Is this still the case
?
Claire Stool.
–
Today I would rather use the word “movement”, both in my personal life and in my artistic practice.
I have always been afraid of immobilization, of representing characters frozen in ice, in a group.
I prefer to run, to be caught in perpetual motion.
So, even if I am only at the beginning of this adventure of parenthood, watching my children grow pushes me to a form of permanent adaptation that is entirely compatible with my way of working.
The movement clearly evokes rhythm, the creation which is made up of moments of emptiness during which we wait for the Epiphany, this moment of urgency where we give shape to a vision.
I am very productive, but also cyclothymic, it seems: like everyone, I have ups and downs, but during the same week, I go through phases where I am crushed by doubt.
The movement is like emptying a bucket, and filling it again.
Painting is also a very melancholy attitude.
Show moments, continue to make them exist where photography freezes them.
Painting allows us to retain something that escapes us, it is a medium which offers an element of mystery.
Just look at
Monet's Water Lilies
, this relationship with the surface of the water, with light... These paintings offer a possibility of contemplation, of returning to oneself.
They represent something very enveloping.
You have multiplied collaborations, shoes for UGG or bag designs for Dior. How do these collaborations inform your work
?
Each collaboration is a challenge.
For me it's about getting out of the space of the painting, and therefore the workshop.
Working with artisans who have other techniques gives me another image of my work and allows me to reach out to another environment.
It can be more luxurious when it comes to Dior or more accessible.
This association with the world of fashion also gives me the possibility of investing in both the body and public space: those who wear the clothes or shoes propagate a moving image throughout the city.
Artists should not be forced to confine themselves to the
white cube,
but should confront other disciplines while remaining true to themselves.
I like the constraints that making a pair of boots or a coat imposes on me: it's a humbling experience.
I made costumes for a dancer, here in Los Angeles, and this experience, which requires a more narrative spirit, made me want to create sets for an opera, a play: I take advantage of it elsewhere to throw a bottle into the sea… At the moment, I am making a tapestry for Aubusson.
Seeing the artisans reinterpret my paintings by adding their know-how surprises me every time.
It's a good school to learn to let go.
Along the same lines, I sent images to some weavers in Morocco asking them to make a rug.
When they sent it to me, there was such a difference in colors and format compared to the original drawing which had become more abstract that I wanted to send this transformed image to other weavers, in India by example, to see how my table could still evolve.
Like this nursery rhyme,
Marabout, piece of string,
which takes the last word to start the next sentence.
Painting,
Au Bois d'Amour (pink)
, 2023, by Claire Tabouret.
Photo Marten Elder
In your latest paintings, the human figure has disappeared. What caused this return to landscapes
?
My very first exhibition was composed of landscape paintings, faces came next.
So we can say that it was Covid that made me return to this genre.
During the pandemic, I was stuck in the workshop where I can't see the outside.
The windows are a kind of Velux on the ceiling, it's my only source of light, all the walls are reserved for hanging.
In the workshop, I am in an interior landscape.
So I painted this series based on reproductions seen in catalogs.
I was inspired by the paintings of Giorgio Morandi who himself painted after Cézanne.
These different views of the same place are my way of thinking about the landscape, starting from the imagination and not from a specific place.
My latest paintings, those from the
Au Bois d'Amour series,
are almost abstract evocations designed as a sequence around the same theme.
They were made with flying colors.
That's what I like, pushing repetition in the same corpus, draining the subject and then moving on to something else.
Like when I paint on fake fur.
This different medium takes me to another place more related to sculpture, because depending on the direction in which I brush, the way of retaining the light can be similar to a bas-relief.
Painting
Au bois d’amour (yellow),
2023, by Claire Tabouret.
Photo Martin Elder
You exhibited a bronze sculpture at the Picasso Museum. How does the transition from painting to volume interest you
?
What interested me with these bathers transformed into fountains was the relationship with water, with liquid, with movement.
And since they are larger than life, making them was a very physical adventure.
No more going back and forth with my little brush in front of my little painting, I had to handle hundreds of kilos of earth, which I molded around a metal frame, then which were cast in bronze at the foundry.
When I then return to painting, I experience it as a liberation of my gesture.
But this wasn't my first experience;
apart from the invitation from the Manufacture de Sèvres to reinterpret some of their iconic vases, I created in 2013 a series of earthen busts, characters taken from my paintings to which I put fabric collars, a little like Edgar Degas added a tutu to his
Little Dancer,
to give them that extra bit of reality, like I painted these striped swimsuits on
Baigneuses en bronze
instead of leaving the patina bare.
Claire Tabouret working on
Les Deux Baigneuses.
Photo Amanda Charchian
In 2022, you have chosen to present two ex-votos symbolizing the gratitude of mothers at the birth of their child. Is this a theme that you will continue to explore
?
In April, as part of the Venice Biennale, I am speaking at the Vatican pavilion * with a project related to maternity.
I asked the inmates of the Giudecca women's prison to send me photos of their children so that I could make portraits of them.
I will not talk about prison or crime, but about this infinite tenderness which emanates from the photos transmitted by these mothers separated from their child: in the look they look at him, in the caress of a hand on his hair .
I put myself at their service as if they had ordered a portrait painter.
Result: there will be twenty to twenty-five portraits which will be exhibited in the women's prison, the number will vary depending on the time that my youngest, Liona Marie, born on January 14, will give me, even if I am lucky enough to be able to bring it to my workplace, to the workshop.
Self-Portrait (double),
2020, by Claire Tabouret.
Photo Amanda Charchian
*
From April 20 to November 24, at the Vatican pavilion, at the Venice Biennale (Italy).
Claire Tabouret is represented by three galleries: Perrotin and Almine Rech, in Paris;
Night Gallery, Los Angeles.