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DISCIPLINED EXCESS By Pierre Restany |
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Only the passage of time will allow the work of Jacques Zwobada to find its true
place within the annals of twentieth century art but it will doubtless be one of
honour. Zwobada exemplified the progressive vision of
this vein of modernism, in his discipline as much as his excess. Today, at the
dawn of the third millennium, the die has been cast for both sides of 20th
century art. The time has come to reappraise Zwobada's work by placing it in its
true, objective and subjective context. This is what I am endeavouring to do
here: it may appear paradoxical that a deliberation of this nature be left to
one of the protagonists of the art world whose theories and commitment to
critical analysis have been instrumental in obscuring abstract lyricism from the
landscape of this half-century's modernity. But it only appears so. Nobody is
better placed than I am to address the problem from the other side of art,
admittedly the opposing side, but one with sensitivity to the references,
contacts and influences osmotic with its counterpart. César comes as a timely extension of the reference to Germaine Richier in my analytical approach to Zwobada's work and helps me to decide on her rightful place in the panorama of contemporary sculpture. I simply have to imagine Zwobada's " Chevauchée Nocturne " " (night ride) between "La Montagne" by Germaine Richier and the great "Rambaud" by César: it simply belongs, there is nothing else to be said. But why do I still find myself having to proclaim this simple truth in the tone of a protest, as if to make up for an oversight? The explanation is clear: romanticism. Zwobada was the last great romantic of 20th century art and he lived this romanticism as an extraordinary and solitary destiny, which grafted itself onto the duality of his nature, underlining contradictions, exacerbating extreme situations. He conjugated his life around the dual rhythm of boundless love and the formal teaching of drawing. A lengthy academic apprenticeship at the Ecole des Beaux Arts (1918-1924) transformed his innate penchant for Drawing into a didactic vocational ambition which he would push to the very limits of perfectionism and embrace until his death. The profound sensuality of his character which can be perceived in his nudes and highly "art deco" Low-reliefs produced in the 1925-30 period was given full rein as of 1939 with an exclusive and all-consuming passion for Antonia Fiermente, whose body would be glorified in his work. Antonia was omnipresent in the morphology of the flesh which obsessed the sculptor in the 1940s. The firm and supple model of his Nudes in Charcoal and Sepia reflects a growing carnal intensity culminating in " Offering " of 1952. He placed this generous and tender drawing style at the service of music, his other passion, by illustrating in 10 drawings " Afternoon of a faun " " by Mallarmé and 25 lithographs based on as many poems of the " Fleurs du Mal " by Baudelaire. The musicality of the aesthetic cadences harmonise with the flow of acoustic cadences as with the eroticism of the language. A romantic from a bygone era, Zwobada
practised an amalgam of languages and feelings. The inspired drawer whose first
passion was Music
was also a great letter writer. His many Letters
to Antonia and to friends consolidated his egocentric relationship with the
world and provide the most revealing insights into a creative approach for which
drawing remained the Ariadne's thread. Drawing is the key to any in-depth
reading of Zwobada, the keystone which supports the diverse and apparently
dispersive architecture of the work: in the progression of language, he brings
out what Lupasco called the logic of contradiction. The arrival of Antonia in
the life of the sculptor, or rather her passionate intrusion, triggered a chain
reaction whose diversity had no impact on the coherence of the dynamic influx:
Antonia embodied the physical reality of an intense beauty which gradually led
Zwobada away from the pure idealised beauty of the Novecentisti, he distanced
himself from Maillol and drew closer to Rodin and the "emotion which makes
a martyr of the heart", opening up the emotional channel of formal
liberation which led him to the free-flowing excesses of "La Liberté"
" this magma of sinewy curvatures energised from within by a breath of
cosmic sensitivity which Yves Klein described as "immaterial" and when
one thinks of "Offering", the Junonian woman presenting her heavy
breasts, the artistic journey he has made is self evident. And yet"Offering"
and "
La Liberté " are strictly
contemporary since they only date from 1952. In both cases the body gives
expression but on parallel registers, that of exaltation of the senses and
sublimation of desire. As of 1952, the spirit of " La Liberté " "
began to gain the upper hand over the formal fixation of " The
Offering ".
This is the era of the major "Compositions" where visionary lyricism,
free of all figurative illusions, finds its full expression in the rhythmic
élan of powerful calligraphy. The abstract gestuality became monumental at this
point. The "compositions" fit in with the direct perspective of
Zwobada's architectural vision and problems with public art which he confronted
very early on, with the orders for the monument to the musician André Caplet
in Le Havre (1924), ), the monument to Bolivar
in Quito
(1929) and various low-reliefs of the 1930s. A trip to Caracas in 1948-50 gave
him the chance to reconnect with the celebratory myth of Latin American
independence. In his "precursor" projects or the
monument to Miranda Miranda (which was never undertaken), he developed his
monumental frieze concept which he returned to in 1958-64 in his project for
Mentana. The liberating élan is translated on the pediment of a wall by the
linear trajectory of the tangled body in vital twisting. The large graphic
compositions in the early 1950s were designed for a wall display: their
calligraphic loops convey the same sensation of diffuse energy as the
intertwined Venezuelan warriors of 1948 or the powerfully erotic poses of
reclining or squatting nudes of 1944. "Composition for a frieze"
(1952) revealed, as much by its content as its title, the clear intentions of
the artist. "Invitation au voyage",
", a large charcoal drawing of 1961, measuring 110 x 2980 cm was to be the
subject of a mosaic of the same format, for the "France" liner now
rebaptised "Norway". The charcoal drawings "L'Invitée",
" (the guest), "Aurore"
(Dawn) and "Equinox"
" became the tapestry
cartoons produced in Aubusson. The "theme of
the Rennes mosaic"
(1966) ) took up 100m2 of the side façade of the faculty of letters at the
University of Rennes. This inventory of the monumental destiny of Zwobada's
"compositions" is far from exhaustive. The spirit of synchronised dynamism embodied by "la
Liberté" went on to inspire the creative approach of Zwobada through to
his death in 1967. He struggled against the tremendous sense of loss at the
premature death of Antonia in 1956 and presided over the sublime apotheosis of
the final period, that of the "
Couple ", "Elevations"
and "Verticals",
the " Chevauchée nocturne "
(night ride), " Animaux Fantastiques "
or "
Mythological Metaphors" of 1965-67, Ariane, Cybele,
Gea, Tellus.
Depending on the formal variations of the compositions, the sculptures of the
final period make reference to two fundamental structural orders. The vertical
order, that of Metamorphosis,
the Couple, Orpheus
and Eurydice, not to mention the various versions of Vertical, reflect the
spirit of elevation, the underlying poetic motivation in the work of Zwobada,
according to Jacques Delahaye who was his pupil at the Ecole des Arts Appliqués
and who saw him as his spiritual master. The horizontal order, that of "La
Liberté ", " Orogenie ", "Palindrome" or "Interpénétration"
through to "Chevauchée
Nocturne " and "l'animal
fantastique ", two undoubted masterpieces of contemporary sculpture,
embodies "movement in motionlessness, the élan which underpins the balance
of forces in the motionlessness of the weightless environment", the lesson
that Zwobada learned from the work of Rodin. Etienne Martin, the sculptor of
"demeures" (dwellings), the poet of places which are mysteriously
inhabited by existential tensions, was right in 1959 when he paid tribute to the
muted life-enhancing power which inhabits the two forms joined in the spatial
élan of "la chevauchée nocturne", calling it "this
extraordinary underground coupling". Pierre Restany |
