Product Code Database
Georges Mathieu (27 January 1921 – 10 June 2012) was a French abstract painter, art theorist, and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is considered one of the fathers of European lyrical abstraction, a trend of informalism.
From 1927 to 1933, he attended a variety of schools in Boulogne-sur-Mer and later in Lycée Hoche in Versailles. Thereafter, he studied English and law at the university of Lille.
Mathieu obtained a position as an English teacher in 1942 at the lycée of Douai in the north of France. During the ensuing years he held several jobs, serving as an interpreter for the American Army in Cambrai in 1944, teaching in the American University of Biarritz, and teaching at Istres during years 1945–46.
In 1942, he executed figurative paintings of England from postcards as a hobby ( Oxford Street By Night). Later during year 1944, he began his reflection on aesthetics held by the following concept: painting does not need to represent to exist. This revelation originates from the readings of Edward Crankshaw and his interpretation of the work of Joseph Conrad as an abstract literature. Consequently, he executed his first non-figurative painting, Inception.
Mathieu then worked for the United States Lines in charge of public relations on the line between New York City and Le Havre: his function was to welcome and accompany the travelers during their move between Le Havre and Paris. This position was an opportunity for Mathieu to reach a prestigious clientele, and form his first network of potential customers. He meets Salvador Dalí for the first time on his occasion.
From 1953 to 1963, he was proposed to be the editor-in-chief of the United States Lines Paris Revue. With a print run of 15000 copies, this yearly journal is distributed for free until 1963 : it gave Mathieu the opportunity to interview celebrities of the time, from the artistic (John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Mark Tobey, Henry Miller) and scientific scene (Albert Einstein, Norbert Wiener, Oskar Morgenstern).
The group is later expanded, with Michel Tapié, Picabia and François Stahly to form H.W.P.S.M.T.B., exposing at the Galerie Allendy. He promoted an art free from the constraints of figurative paintings and defining the concept of Lyrical Abstraction.
In 1948, he put in place the first confrontation between American and French avant-garde painters : on this occasion he revealed the importance of the American abstraction of Jackson Pollock and Alton Tobey to the French audience.
He painted his first large canvases as soon as 1952.
Mathieu and Simon Hantaï held a series of conferences called the Cérémonies commémoratives de la seconde condamnation de Siger de Brabant in 1957. During three weeks, various debates questioned the foundations of western civilisations, the role of the great men and revolutions that shaped the western culture from the Edict of Milan in 313 up to the contemporary breakthroughs in physics and philosophy. Many scholars like poet T.S. Eliot, philosopher Stéphane Lupasco and scientists took a stand at these conferences. The event was named after the philosopher Siger de Brabant, who played a key role in the 13th-century.
In 1965, Mathieu exposed a hundred paintings at the Galerie Charpentier. He executed for this event Paris, Capitale des Arts, a giant canvas featuring primary colors on a blue background. Today, Galerie Charpentier's walls house the headquarters of Sotheby's France, rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris.
A great retrospective at the Grand Palais opened in 1978 and covered the fifteen last years of his production. Seven six meters wide paintings, executed from January to March 1978, were made especially for the occasion.
He received the Legion of Honour and is Commander of Arts and Letters. Mathieu's works now appears worldwide in more than 90 museums.
Concurrently, he rose up against the weak presence of arts in national education and defended the introduction of compulsory art courses in French schools, covering history of arts, practice of sensitivity and exercise of arts (drawing, sculpture, music, singing). He finally initiated political workgroups with Pierre Dehaye in 1980 to reform the cultural education at the French ministry of education and submitted a bill presented to the French parliament. The bill was refused in 1980, for lack of proper financial support.
He died on 10 June 2012 at 91 years old in Boulogne-Billancourt and lies in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
Mathieu positions its work, and more generally lyrical abstraction, as the latest of all cyclical transitions to happen in history of art. Each transition concerns a specific painting characteristic : shape, color, signification of signs, ...). One full transition can be broken down into six different stages, according to the intensity of the alteration of the considered painting characteristic.
| >+ | |||
| ! scope="col" Stage ! scope="col" | Name ! scope="col" | Description ! scope="col" | Artists |
| [[Wols]], [[Henri Michaux]] | |||
| [[Hartung]], Giuseppe Capogrossi | |||
| Piet Mondrian]] | |||
| [[Dubuffet]] | |||
| [[Picasso]] | |||
| [[Tobey]], [[Rothko]] | |||
Mathieu reacted consistently against greco-Latin classicism, Renaissance's legacy and all forms of later geometric abstraction. He considers lyrical abstraction as the latest revolution to happen in the history of arts : freed from realism by Impressionism, from shapes by Cubism, from representation of perceptible reality by geometric abstraction, art experiences the liberation of the all its past references from nature. From his reflexion he develops his own expression of a lyrical abstraction : "Henceforth in the history of shapes as in the history of the world, the sign precedes its meaning".
Thus, Mathieu considered later art movements as Dadaism, Nouveau réalisme, Arte Povera as a relapse, because they appeal to representations of visible real. In addition, he criticized them for their so-called nihilist dimension, as their interpretation does not call on human sensibility.
"The most important moments are clearly when I paint in public. In fact, this process, without me being aware of it, works in a mediumistic way to heighten the concentration of the situation. As a result, concentration is the decisive element that separates this type of art from all other art the West has known over the past twenty centuries… It is the joy of communion with the other. A little like what happens in love. What defines love is this tension between two beings with a shared focus. If it were just a simple attraction between two people, it would have none of the grandeur."
He also worked with sculpture and performed light painting.
His speed of execution very quickly became his signature style. In 1959 he painted the 2.5x6 metre painting Le Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy (The Saint-Bartholomew's Day Massacre) in less than half an hour, accompanied by the jazz drummer Kenny Clarke. "I did not paint fast by lack of time or to break records, but simply because I did not need more time to do what I had to do and conversely, a longer time would have slowed down gesture, introducing doubts, would have affected the purity of strokes, the cruelty of shapes, the unity of the artwork."
He occasionally wore outfits during his performances. He painted most of his major works and wrote most of his essays on Sundays.
Mathieu rapidly explored giant-sized canvases. "I love to paint excessively large paintings, because the risk is hereby higher". Furthermore, it allowed him to exploit graphical effects of centrifugal forces applied by wide gestures on the paint.
| >+ Some of Mathieu's largest paintings | ||
| ! scope="col" Title ! scope="col" | Year ! scope="col" | Dimensions |
| 250x200cm | ||
| 300x600cm | ||
| | La Bataille de Goya || 1957 | 150x1500cm | ||
| 400x1200cm | ||
| | La Victoire de Denain || 1963 | 275x700cm | ||
| | Paris Capitale des Arts || 1965 | 300x900cm | ||
From 1951 Mathieu studied tachism on monochromic canvases: blobs of painting appeared "because one needs a certain colored area at a certain place, and the most direct way is to lay the brush on the canvas with a varying degree of violence (inducing spatters) without having delimited the space to be so colored.", as in Le Maréchal de Turenne, Blanche de Turenne, La Bataille de Bouvines.
In 1970 Mathieu focused on the equilibrium between balance and vividness, and showed central shapes on a uniform blocks of color.
From 1984 Mathieu achieved what he calls a "cosmic turning point" in his painting. His compositions did not favor a center anymore: the graphical elements multiplied on the canvas, the painting found its balance by the tension between these elements.
However, the painter always denied any representation of historical events in his works. He nonetheless admitted having chosen titles in relation to the place where the canvas had been painted ( Hommage au général Hideyoshi, Hommage au général San Martin), the day it had been performed ( La Victoire de Denain, La Bataille de Tibériade), or its tone ( La Bataille des Eperons d’Or).
Other titles were inspired by mathematics ( Théorème d'Alexandrov), physics ( Le principe de Pauli) or philosophy ( Grand algorithme blanc).
The French television awards Les 7 d'or, broadcast from 1985 to 2001, offered a statue designed by Mathieu to the winners.
The Champagne producer Deutz created decorated bottles of Champagne designed by Mathieu.
Some of his works anticipates the revival of the modern-style Graffiti.
|
|
