Abstraction a la Francaise - contemporary French art, 1998

Using unconventional techniques and strategies, three French painters Noel Dolla, Bernard Frize and Bernard Piffaretti--are broadening the intent of contemporary abstraction.

For quite a small in number years now contemporary French art has loom rather small in many people's consciousness. I don't intend to consecrate time here to pondering this phenomenon--I single mention it as a possible explanation for for what cause [i]or[/i] reason the three painters discussed in this article, Noel Dolla, Bernard Prize and Bernard Piffaretti, are not better known in the United States. popularly in midcareer, all have produc substantial bodies of work and received critical attention in France and beyond. They are, to my organ of sight among the most stimulating abstract painters working today in Europe I have been successful enough over the last several years to diocese their paintings in a variety of museum and gallery exhibitions and during studio visits in Paris, where Frize and Piffaretti live, and Nice, where Dolla makes his abiding-place What follows is an introduction to the oeuvre of three artists who share not alone a nationality but a for the use of all allegiance to visual complexity and conceptual subtlety

Noel Dolla

The hard-to-categorize Noel Dolla is individual of those broad-ranging artists who work in a number of ongoing series, each with its possess particular materials and themes. As Dolla shifts artistic gears, the diverse bodies of work make known and change, sometimes lying dormant for years before being reactivated with a of recent origin component. In the '90s, a major part of the 52-year-old artist's attention has been devot to sum of two units series, "Les Silences de la fumee" (The Silences of Smoke) paintings and the multi-element "Ripolin" works.

"Le Silences de la fumee" are canvases in which wispy black and gray marks are dispersed above a pale-yellow or deep-red soil The smoky appearance of these marks is no accident: to make them Dolla uses not a paintbrush on the contrary a torch. (To be more precise, he exercises a bunch of twisted wax tapers of the stamp used in the etching and drypoint processe to coat the etching plate with crock in order to make it easier for the etcher to diocese the scratched-in lines.) To create each "fumee" a monochrome acrylic mould is applied and immediately, while the paint is still wet, the canvas is hoisted up and tilted almost horizontal, painted side facing the floor, for a like reason that Dolla can pass his burning tapers across the surface, leaving variously patterned traces of black dust that are immediately absorbed into the wet paint. In 1997 the "fumee" series took a of recent origin turn when Dolla began to make the paintings upon aluminum. Executed in an autobody paint store in a hermetically sealed, dust-free expanse the aluminum "fumees" present pristine surfaces in which the sooty vapor seems inseparable from the crimson moulds After a coat of varnish is applied, the paintings gaze remarkably like Cibachrome photographs. With this intentional resemblance Dolla wants to undermine viewers' preconceptions about the pair photography and painting.

The technique of the "fumee" paintings imposes sum of two units particular conditions on Dolla. First, he has to work with farthest speed since the whirls of black dust can only be applied as lengthy as the paint is wet. next to the first he is working not upon a canvas hung on the wall or laid without on the floor but upon a surface suspended directly overhead. In other words, his physical relation to the canvas has more in for the use of all with Michelangelo's posture during the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling than with any easel painter's stance or with Jackson Pollock's position when he was making his drip paintings. The short time frame imposed by dint of Dolla's smoke technique also summon forths the art of fresco painting. Les directly, the sooty vapor curling up to lodge upon the canvas can remind individual of the candle soot that in the course of centuries has darkened paintings upon the walls and ceilings of innumerable European churches. This kind of polysemy, in which each element has multiple readings, is typical of Dolla's work.

At the same time as their proces call ups ancient art history, the "fumees" also have enough of modern precedents. In using a taper to make his mark, Dolla joins those 20th-century painters who have sought alternatives to the brush--the tradition stretches from Pollock's drip to Yve Klein's naked moulds and flame-belching torches to Fontana's knife and beyond. In fact, a great deal of Dolla's oeuvre has been bear uponed with approaching painting through unconventional means. a certain quantity of of his early work involved staining color into handkerchiefs and dishcloths; he has created abstract forms by dint of dispersing paint on snow-capped mountains and sandy beaches, and has made unorthodox drawings by means of gluing long strips of gauze to museum and gallery walls. In the 1980 Dolla created a assemblage of roughly drawn figurative paintings called the "Tchernobyl" series. As he later revealed, Dolla execut these uncharacteristically expressionistic paintings with his left hand tied behind his back (he is left-handed) and wearing a patch above one eye.