The Spirit of Graphite
Annabelle Gugnon
“Graphite is carbon that has been subject to enormous pressure for millions of years and that might have become coal or diamonds. Instead, however, it has been transformed into something more precious than a diamond: it has become a pencil that can record all that it has seen…” (1) In 1967, Varlam Shalamov, a Russian poet and writer, devoted an entire book to graphite as part of his witness account of the hell of the Kolyma concentration camps above the Arctic Circle. Miraculously, he survived 17 years of extreme deprivation, cold and violence. And he talks about graphite… Which shows how in all its forms—a simple wooden pencil, a stick with moonlit reflections, an anthracite powder— graphite is a tool that contains a spirit.
UTILITARIAN HISTORY
It is one of the main mediums used by Jérôme Zonder, a virtuoso of frescoes and polygraphic drawings ( Fatum, 2015, Sans issue, 2022). “I mix graphite with charcoal. In several ways: by mixing the powders, but also in optical mixtures by means of adjacent drawings or in successive layers like the glazes of Renaissance paintings. Charcoal has qualities of deep black and absorption, whereas graphite offers metallic subtleties and strong coverage capabilities.” (2) It is true that charcoal and graphite are not of the same vein. Charcoal derives from charred vegetation, and has been used since prehistoric times to decorate caves, whereas graphite, used since the thirteenth century, is a crystallisation of carbon, like diamonds. In her own words, Louise Hervé is a “performance archaeologist.” The graphite pencil is a privileged instrument in her research. On paper, she reproduces attitudes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found on canvases, engravings and pottery, in order to reactivate them in public performances. On these occasions, her graphite drawings, projected on the walls, serve as scenery. For example, she has reincarnated the attitude of Emma Hamilton as a bacchante, dancing in front of Vesuvius with a tambourine, as Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun painted her circa 1790.
Éric Manigaud. Gonichi Kimura, motifs de kimono incrustés par brûlure dans la peau, premier hôpital militaire d’Hiroshima, vers le 15 août 1945. 2019. Graphite sur trame digigraphique. 75 x 60 cm. (Coll. MAMC+, Saint-Étienne ; Ph. Cyrille Cauvet)
Bodies and graphite are also associated in the full-scale drawings by Gilgian Gelzer (presented at Drawing Now by the Jean Fournier Gallery): “The pencil is the most elementary thing to make a trace, to build a 2D space. This elementary relationship is what interests me with graphite. It is the simplest extension of the body to make a trace. Thanks to its inflections, its densities, its nuances… Each drawing is a dialogue, a face-to-face, the renewed quest for a path, an attempt. Graphite enables wandering and abandonment in a to-and-fro between the page and me, from whence the image is born.”
The simplicity of graphite, used by carpenters as well as woodcutters, children and artists, seems to engage a spontaneity, a self-evidence, which corresponds to the outpouring of drawing, to its primordial power of elaboration.
Born on a farm in Vermont in North America, Ethan Murrow makes precise pencil drawings of adventurers and hucksters, offbalance between dreamlike landscapes and theatrical scenes: “I value graphite’s utilitarian history and the way its value and function cross over many fields, from shopkeeper to engineer to artist. It is still a primary material for planning and daydreaming even as we surround ourselves with contemporary technological tools. I love the fact that this accessibility is so tightly bound into its history, as I always hope to build artwork where the material itself can have as much conceptual weight as the imagery.”
Above all, for him, the simple graphite pencil is a compass for an extraordinary adventure: “Many of the stories I tell in my projects focus on extraordinary obsessions and Sisyphean efforts. The slow, precise intensity that graphite drawings demand fits nicely with these content goals. Getting lost in the making of a drawing is a wonderful thing and the epic nature of making large works in graphite helps me arrive at this somewhat meditative state.”
THE MATTER OF THE IMAGE Graphite has this power. It enables a deep dive into the matter of the image. “My drawing needs detail, it is a meticulous stratification. The more layers I accumulate, the brighter and more crystalline the graphite becomes, the more the light diffracts on the surface of the drawing. But I don’t see the
image that I am drawing when I work, I see only a completely abstract piece, a matter that is modulated, shades of grey,” says Éric Manigaud.
He lives and works in Saint-Étienne, which he chose precisely because it is a country of mining, carbon and coal. He works from archival photographs, documenting painful moments in the history of humanity with the exclusive use of graphite. His drawing of a photograph by Gonichi Kimura, taken around August 15th, 1945, at the Hiroshima Military Hospital, after the atomic bombing, depicting the graceful back of a woman whose kimono motifs have been embedded by burning on her skin (2019), gives the analogue document an existential depth that propels it out of time.
Ethan Murrow has also evoked the faithfulness of the nuances of graphite: “Painting— and color in particular—has often caused notes of elevated exaggeration and absurdity for example, whereas graphite often feels more serious emotionally.”
To find colour, Clément Fourment (presented by Galerie F) looks for his black: “The richer my black palette is, the richer my colours will be. I’m looking for my colorimetric range and that involves studying black.” Charcoal, black chalk and graphite combine in his 34page leporello, which is five metres long. Acquired by the Frac Picardie and awarded the Pierre David-Weill Drawing Prize, Persée (2017) evokes the Gorgon as the mistress of drawing: she petrifies and freezes the image. But only momentarily… Very quickly, one of the drawings of the leporello depicts a cinema. A foaming blade is projected on the screen. In the audience, spectators are captivated by the movement of the wave that seems to break before their eyes.
FLUIDITIES
With its silver reflections, graphite has amazing powers of fluidity. In his series of drawings entitled Les Métamorphoses d’eau vive (2022), Arnaud Kalos draws closer to nymphs, Ovid and naiads: “I tune in to the perpetual transformations of the universe of the torrent and its back-and-forth between abstraction and figuration. Graphite grants me the technical subtleties to create swirls, reflections and sparkles. The harder leads sink into the paper and create bright, light grey furrows whereas the bolder leads stay on the surface and bring depth to the drawing.” Graphite develops a range of possibilities that begins with the hardest lead (10H—H for “hard”) and ends with the boldest (12B—B for “bold”). In 1794, as France was in the grip of an embargo which deprived the country of English graphite, NicolasJacques Conté invented a mixture—which is still used—of graphite and clay. The more clay there is, the harder and more incisive the lead. The more graphite there is, the bolder and more tinted it is.
Perrine Boudy, a student at the Villa Arson, combines graphite and pigmented chalk in her frescoes which seek to translate GrecoRoman iconography into the contemporary world: “I like the malleability that graphite powder allows. I tried to draw with acrylic but it was too static. Because of the spontaneity of my drawings, I need to have numerous possibilities and be able to erase.” Myriam Mihindou, who uses graphite in her research phases, also welcomes this flexibility: “It takes me wherever it wants, I have no authority over it. Graphite is part of a world of revelations because it is a sensory, intimate, physical material.” It is also sensory and sensual for Sarah Jérôme (exhibited on the stand of the Galerie Vazieux). She paints almost exclusively on tracing paper: “Contradiction is at the heart of my work. Graphite is both metallic and sensual. Mixed with oil paint, it glides like wax. But it also allows for precision, nervousness.”
So many artists, so many graphitic affinities… Graphite is at the heart of current creation, as illustrated by the book by Barbara Soyer. (3) She lists 80 contemporary artists who have chosen drawing as their means of expression. More than a quarter of them use graphite. And their creations are striking, such as Naoko Sekine’s Mirror Drawing (2017), for example.
1 Varlam Shalamov, Graphite, Boston Public Library, 1981, trans. John Glad. 2 All of the artists’ quotes are taken from interviews conducted by the author in December 2022. 3 Barbara Soyer, Dessin dans l’art contemporain, Pyramyd, 2022.
Annabelle Gugnon is an art critic and psychoanalyst, member of the Société de Psychanalyse Freudienne.