Paul-Armand Gette: “Can I Touch You?”
Born in Lyon in 1927, Paul-Armand Gette remains an unclassifiable artist. Photography, sculpture, painting, video or literature: whatever the medium, his “scandalous” practice, midway between art, entomology and botany, revolves around the female body. In the context of the publication of the first major monograph devoted to him by Les presses du réel, he discusses two themes with Bernard Marcadé which are at the heart of his work: Artemis, the goddess who has fascinated him since childhood, and his relationship to his models, fully-fledged actresses of creation. He also touches on the difficulties that his work still encounters today.
One of your exhibitions was due to take place this year in Besançon and was eventually cancelled. Three years ago, Blandine Chavanne (1) had the idea of organising an important event, called Artémis & Paul-Armand Gette: 50 ans de rencontres et conversations. She thought, very wisely, that if we could host this event at the Besançon Museum of Fine Arts, it would be a privileged setting, because the museum’s collection contains paintings by Lucas Cranach, and especially a Nymphe à la source which is a big part of my research. After visiting the Director of this institution—who initially showed an enthusiasm that struck me as somewhat exaggerated—, Turid, my wife, Blandine and myself worked on the project and gathered a collection of documents that covered my activity related to the figure of Artemis. You know the “thing” well, since you are the first person I spoke to in 1986 about my reading of Cranach’s paintings.
It’s true that I was particularly impressed at the time by your insight.The presence of the goddess’ genitals, displaced in the landscape, is so obvious that you don’t see it. You don’t see or you don’t want to see this presence of the source in all the paintings in this series. You don’t see it…
SPLASHED
Yet it stands out a mile… Absolutely… Based on these considerations, we went back in time. The presence of Artemis manifested itself very early in my life. Already as a child, around the age of 5 or 6, I was fascinated by two images that appeared in the album of postcards that my mother collected and that turned out to be images representing Diane. To come back to the project, it went awry. This project was very important because it encompassed my entire body of work, with Artemis as the common thread. It also included what I’ve been done in the field of the “applied arts,” but which was related to the
subject: the Gobelins tapestries, the remembrance basins by Sèvres, the lace made in Alençon, etc.
The loans had been requested and accepted by the various institutions that owned the selected works. And then the project gradually fell apart, for reasons that remain obscure to this day, until it went down, with all hands on deck… Blandine Chavanne, who was at the origin of the project, then made every effort to make the book. She advised me to apply for a grant from the ADAGP… There, the nightmare continued. I was confronted with questions which I answered, but which upset me a lot, because they were idiotic. I cut things short and withdrew my grant application. The ADAGP insisted and finally presented it to a jury. I didn’t follow it up, but Blandine asked for news. And she was told, “Oh yes! The jury didn’t respond favourably. They thought that there were too many publications!” Appalling!
So everything started again from scratch. Laurent Cauwet, from Al Dante, attached to Les Presses du réel, decided to produce the book that has just been published in June (2).
Yvon Lambert supported me in this adventure. Under the title Danger, an exhibition was presented in his bookstore at the end of April 2022. On this occasion, the film directed by Sylvie Boulloud, Paul-Armand Gette au pays des merveilles, was screened. Her idea was to film me accompanied by five people who had been important in my artistic activity over the last fifty years.The film features Nathalie Heidsieck, who was the first person to model for me.There is also Sophie Volatier, who has accompanied me from Souvenir de S. (she was then 9 years old) to the present day. Sophie really appropriated this Artemis position. Recently, she sent me an e-mail, telling me that she had gone for a swim on such and such a day, that she had seen a pecten shell on the beach with a crescent moon in it, that she had brought it back to Paris and that she would like us to make pictures of it. Enna Chaton, a long-time collaborator, is also present in the film. As well as Cécile Hug, the artist who once expressed the desire to mould one of my nipples. And finally, Camille Moravia, who had an artist’s attitude to the freedom of the model, since after undressing on my request, she turned the tables, proposing to undress me. So, in
Sylvie Boulloud’s film, there is an image of me naked in Camille’s arms.
This film raises a lot of issues. Sylvie Boulloud submitted it to a festival in Canada devoted to films about artists. But it was refused. It is very difficult to get it shown, for the same reasons that I usually encounter in the exercise of my activity. It is true that thanks to my friends, I manage to escape the worst, but when the suidae wallow in the mud, I get splashed!
The suidae? You know my taste for scientific classifications! Suidae is a family of artiodactyl mammals—whose canines are developed and whose feet have three hooves—, the family of pigs and wild boars…
CAN I TOUCH YOU?
So, by wallowing, the suidae splash? These reactions are interesting… You put your finger on this aspect in an artpress article in 1986 (3). You used to call me an “authorised voyeur.” That’s the crux of the matter. You saw that in my attitude, the exhibitionistvoyeur couple was divested of guilt. From the moment that freedom is put forward, it opens up horizons and perspectives in the
field of art. Why did I propose what I called “the freedom of the model”? Because the artist/model relationship always struck me as scandalous. I’m not from the art world. I’m from the science world. When I came to the art world, I was really shocked by that relationship. It took me a while, yes, because I came into this world in the late 1940s and I came up with this idea of “the freedom of the model” in 1980. I’ve always asked myself this question: “Who is the Aphrodite of Knidos? Who is the Venus of Botticelli?” We obviously have no answer. And yet there must have been a model. On the other hand, when Marcel Duchamp moulded Maria Martins’ breast, he didn’t hide the fact that it was his lover’s breast. He also placed this breast on the cover of the catalogue le Surréalisme in 1947 with the caption “Please touch.” I do have predecessors, clearly! When I spoke about the “touch of the model,” it didn’t come out of nowhere!This proposed and accepted freedom was not devoid of humour. It is true that the question “Do you want to be my model?” doesn’t seem incongruous. The question “can I touch you?” opens up other fantasmatic horizons. But I like to go further. I do not put myself in the traditional position of the artist with his model, which is to ask them to do what I want to see, because I want to see what they want to do. To the question “Do you want to be my model?” most of the time the answer is positive, but it is always accompanied by the question “What should I do?” Invariably, my answer is “Whatever you want.” Another question I ask is, “Can I touch you?” If the answer is “no,” we say no more about it. If the answer is “yes,” it becomes important to know, “Where, where? At home, on the street, in a park, on a beach? What do you want me to touch: your nose, your buttocks, your foot?” I have had the proof of this question from the fantasy universe, because I saw things I would never have imagined. The negative responses are interesting in this respect. I remember one student from the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse saying to me spontaneously: “I would like to be your model!” We made some pictures, I showed them to her, and when I asked her if I could use them, she said, “No! Destroy them all!” When I asked her why she refused, her answer was surprising: “I wanted to know how a guy looked at me!” I said, “I’ve been at the school for a while. Plus, you’re living with another student.” And she immediately replied, “Ah, but he never looks at me!”
My attitude towards what was called the “model” led to a reflection that continues to this day and that produces results. These results do not always appeal to the public, or even to the critics. I remember a discussion in 1989, in NewYork, with critics who seemed shocked that I was exhibiting in the Guggenheim Soho bathroom. And I told them that they could go to the Metropolitan Museum to see a Cranach painting that was clearly “scandalous” according to their criteria, and a painting by Lorenzo Lotto, Venus and Cupid, which is even more scandalous, since Venus is sitting, naked, with rose petals on her belly, holding a crown of myrrh at arm’s length, through which Cupid is peeing on her… In this painting, Cupid is peeing on his mother! The reaction of critics, except for one: “Ah, but that’s a painting, and it’s old!” This answer is interesting because it raises the question of the quality of the image. Painting has to do with icons, photographs have to do with clues. Painting does not imply the presence of the painter, nor that of the subject who is represented. Whereas photography says: presence and distance. It is this distance that I sort of cancel out by switching from optics to haptics. Even though, already
Sylvie Boulloud. Paul-Armand Gette au pays des merveilles. 2021. 46 min
for the Greeks, the gaze was a form of touch. If I am allowed to look, it is already a form of touch. I extend this by asking: “Can I touch you?” Hence the images that show my hand, touching or approaching the body of the model. Disturbing images, because my hand is not a “young” hand. Then comes another stereotype: the age difference between the two protagonists. For some people, this is unacceptable. They then invent an explanation that consists in taking these images out of the world of art and placing them in the so-called “real” world.
DELIGHT
The “real” world, with all of its societal and moral connotations? Yes, they define the attitude of the people with whose complicity I produce images: they are “depraved youth” visiting a “disgusting old man”! In this way, everything goes back to normal. An explanation is given. Because, if this “explanation” were not provided, it would be necessary to review the positions of the preconceptions, the taboos, the violence related to these issues. Censorship, in my case, is done upstream, before these images are shown. I’m often told, “Oh no, it’s not possible!” I say, “What is not possible?” Obviously, it is not possible to see urination in the sources represented by Cranach, or to show what some of my “accomplices” wanted to show me in response to my project about the “menses of the goddess.” On their own initiative, these accomplices came up with interpretations of these menstrual periods that I found very moving. When I showed the contact sheets to the person who had first made this proposal (digital did not exist at the time) and she then showed them to her friend, he turned pale and couldn’t help exclaiming: “You never showed me this!” We were clearly in this fantasmatic universe that I mentioned earlier.
So, that’s where I’m up to. And I must say that I am comfortable with it, because despite the difficulties I have in showing the results, these initiatives are a real delight. ■
Translation: Juliet Powys
1 Blandine Chavanne is Deputy Director of Museum Policy, Service des Musées de France. 2 Artémis & Paul-Armand Gette, 50 ans de rencontres & conversations, Les presses du réel, “Al Dante,” 264 p., 35 euros. 3 artpress n°99, January 1986.
Bernard Marcadé is an art critic and exhibition organiser. He is the author of a biography of Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp, la vie à crédit, published by Flammarion in 2007, and since reissued. Also with Flammarion, he has published Marcel Broodthaers, Livre d’images (2013) and Francis Picabia, rastaquouère (2021).