Edutainment > Interview with Haessle

This interview of Catherine Ulmer with the artist Haessle is an excerpt from the book Haessle, 30 ans de peinture. Publication by artelino is with the approval of the artist. All images are for personal viewing purposes only and are protected by copyrights. They may not be copied or distributed without the prior permission of the artist.

The artist in his New York studio
copyright Haessle

Catherine Ulmer: When we look at your paintings, the latest ones at least, there's a sense of rapidness, of spontaneity. But there's a lot more to them than that.

Haessle: In fact the amount of time you spend on a painting does not mean a thing. It's quite rare, but sometimes I do a painting very quickly and leave it as it is. I think to myself: "That's exactly what I was looking for."

The radical part is the repainting. I started this painting for example in 92. It represents four years' worth of painting, intermittently of course. What we are left with are effectively very free, very immediate, spontaneous brush strokes. But for me spontaneity still remains a kind of Sphinx. Complete spontaneity is an illusion.

Pollock for example, who worked in the spontaneous, the completely intuitive, used to say there comes a moment when you're no longer "in touch" and things no longer work. It's complicated because sometimes we think we are in touch but when it comes down to it we aren't. At other times we are, but we don't realize it. I am gradually beginning to realize better than I used to when I am in touch. Perhaps that's experience.

Hot Days, 1994
copyright Haessle

Catherine Ulmer: What do you call being in touch?

Haessle: Being intuitively on the same wavelength between what I am feeling and what I am able to paint, what I end up with on the canvas.

Catherine Ulmer: Being able to express what you want?

Yes.

Or not letting expression get the better of you?

Haessle: With nothing but will you're bound to fail. If all it took were will, everyone would be making masterpieces. There's something else: intuition. You see, intuition is something that can occur between two phone calls, when someone's waiting for you..it's like playing hide and seek. By pass that is another way of working. Sometimes I pick up a brush gorged with water, with mud, and something happens that makes things click for me. Sometimes when I feel I am losing it, if I attempt a brush stroke I get the impression it's not going to work. That's when I say to myself: "leave it as it is", or even go in that direction.

Catherine Ulmer: How did you come to use this anthropomorphic alphabet?

Portrait in Blue, 1993
copyright Haessle

Haessle: Towards the end of the eighties, I felt frustrated about my work's ability to communicate, and then I came across these human bodies, which I found fantastic.

I wiped the slate clean from one day to the next. I took a single image, the B for example, and I projected it on a black background and ruled out color for over a year.

What particularly aroused my interest were the uneven lines of these woodcuts which became more apparent as they were amplified through the projecting process. In fact the truth is that introducing these human bodies into my work was a way of bringing out the expressive power of the line. Like Cezanne's apple, they became a necessity for me in their form.

Then I fragmented these bodies, these forms. The brush stroke became more visible and present. The fragments I enlarged quite logically grew more and more abstract, they became lines. What I also discovered was that using the projector meant working in semi-darkness, and there are times when you can't see what you are doing very clearly.

Catherine Ulmer: Regarding the line?

Haessle: Yes, just in the shaky, hesitant quality of the line. I add color in the light and draw in the dark.

The paradox is that to get a better look at the drawing, I have to remove the light, and therefore the color. Things happen, there are runs. The drawing has become a lot freer than before. By projecting, I realised that not seeing everything, having hesitations is a plus. It is also a way of systematically coaxing chance.

Catherine Ulmer: Perhaps you've also gained in confidence, freedom?

Haessle: Before I used to take the drawing, project it and that's how I invented compositions. Now I choose a drawing almost at random and "focus" it. It may be sideways or truncated, that's fine. The fragments I'm using at the moment are different. They are themselves collages of fragments. I derive all these combinations from two or three original drawings. What were apparently insignificant drawings to start with become surprising once they're enlarged. This doesn't mean figurative elements cannot reappear.

It is true that I'm freer in the drawing than I was before, I don't hesitate to rework. I build up successive layers, and chance - intuition - guides me in saving certain areas of the painting which creates a dialogue between the various surfaces and gives depth.

Finally the canvas' ultimate legibility has to come from the line - the form.

Literature source used for this article

• "Haessle, 30 ans de peinture", Editions Alternatives, 5 rue de Pontoise, 75005 Paris, 1996, ISBN 2-86227-095 4

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