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Judit, about 5 months have passed since your exhibition in Hungary.
5 months?
You surely had time to think about your experiences.
How do you remember the exhibition in Budapest?
When Kálmán invited me around a year ago in March,
I had the impression
that it was going to be a L'entreprise suicidaire.
A suicide attempt.
It was very difficult.
I knew it was going to be exhausting.
Due to Betty, due to everything.
Well, it was tiring indeed.
I always had to control everything.
I cannot substitute your work,
but sometimes there are also things that only I can do.
I constantly had to deal with such things.
And everything else in the meantime.
The delivery…
How many problems I had with Beaubourg!
You would not believe it.
Of course, finally all succeeded.
The way you and everyone around us welcomed me was so kind.
Your group did its best to help me succeed.
And my own family, whom I had not seen for a very long time.
Whom I was completely separated from.
Well, I have found them. As a real family.
This double happiness was so surprising and touching!
It was like a resurrection.
The Salto Mortale experiment has succeeded.
I was worried about Betty too, that I cannot do it with her.
Somehow there was always a family member or friend to help.
My friends were also there. Even from America.
They cared for Betty every day, and thus everything went like clockwork.
I was very happy.
The book is so nice, your work, Johanna's work.
Everyone worked beyond their limits.
The quality, the European niveau was one that I had never hoped to expect.
Or maybe I had hoped it as a miracle.
Well, it happened.
Everyone loves the book here, really.
Ameline, the head of Beaubourg, they were all there.
There were 3 or 4 conservators from Beaubourg.
There were several museums: from Angers, from Dijon,
many museums from France.
They all told me
that the book is of excellent quality, is of European niveau.
So I was glad.
That's why we had to do it eventually.
Did you like the exhibition, Judit?
It was very good. Clear, nice.
The high ceiling is always very important for me.
They wanted to build in a faux plafond here.
How do you say it?
Suspended ceiling.
Without this space
I could not have painted the large paintings.
Secondly, to refer back,
I really liked that the Kunsthalle is very tall, 7 meters tall.
It was very bright.
I was worried about the evening illumination,
but it was excellent too. Perfect.
In addition, natural light illuminated the paintings in daytime.
It was very well constructed. Bravo.
It was of high European niveau too.
Everything was very neat.
We could have exhibited double or triple as many paintings,
but at least for me it was easier.
One thing…
we cannot say collection because it is not at all one.
These are selected paintings, still they were unified into a whole.
It was a huge task.
In the gallery, where we were the day before yesterday,
I was desperate.
50 years: it is impossible to jam it into such a small place.
Somehow it still worked out.
When did you have your previous exhibition at Galerie de France?
7 years ago.
7 lean years or 7 years of plenty. I don't know.
So 7 years ago.
I did not want it now, but somehow I could not say no.
I wanted to say no.
To say that I cannot, I am not strong enough.
But everyone told me,
Pleynet, my gallery, the Beaubourg.
Everyone told me that is has to be done.
Okay, it has to be done… but I know what I can do.
Well, eventually I could do it.
I am still here by some miracle.
When you were in Budapest, when we were talking there,
although you were very tired, as you have also said,
the exhibition took a lot of your energy,
you told that you do not know if you would ever paint again.
At the exhibition opened the day before yesterday
at the Galerie de France, you also have paintings dated 2006.
That painting…
Here there are some drawings that I have made.
That is all.
I could not work for 4 years.
For 2 years because I had a sériux accident de voiture.
And Betty's illness…
Car accident.
Everything prevented me.
2 years ago I started to paint.
10 days later a van knocked me over.
It was his fault.
It knocked me over.
My leg got trapped, 3 or 4 of my toes broke.
Again, it restrained me from painting.
I walked on crutches for 3 months.
Afterwards Betty again… I could not paint.
Regarding the two paintings you have seen at the gallery:
Catherine Thieck came to select them. 'Oh, I want those two'.
Because she has given the title:
50 years from 1956 to 2006.
People at the gallery said that we cannot write 2006
because we do not have any paintings from that year.
She came to take the paintings, I dated them to 2006,
it was 2006, February 16, I remember exactly.
I have not been able to work since then.
So she was happy, the two paintings are displayed there.
50 years were completed.
It would have been false without them.
Intuition, or whatever you call it, accident, faith…
It succeeded.
Your previous series was the New York series.
It is obvious that these paintings do not belong to the New York series.
Have you started a new series?
No, the New York,
the large, last painting of the series,
the one you can see on the invitation card too,
is already from 2002.
Because I started the New York series in September,
and I started that painting in November,
and I finished it in April or May.
Since then I could not work.
When I started to work the year before, then came the accident.
Once Betty, once me.
So the ones you could see were accidental, miracle-like.
The painting from 2006…
Wait a minute, I will just finish my answer.
Even if they are not sequels of the New York series,
you can also call them sequels of it.
Why?
Because the situation is the same:
A body is flying.
You do not know if it is going upwards or downwards,
if it is falling or diving.
Like a screenshot.
When the TV broadcast is stopped for a moment.
It is the same and yet different
because it is spontaneous.
Perhaps I could say it is more realistic, could I?
I do not know.
Even I cannot tell you that now.
Or perhaps more classical…
So from one perspective, it is a sequel.
Because what New York gave me as an event, as an experience…
Everyone, the entire world saw it on the television.
Shocking, no one knew what was happening.
I was shocked too.
Like everyone else.
Though right afterwards I was shocked by something else,
which no one else could have been shocked by.
Only me.
Do you know what?
My work: my problematic approach as a painter.
A body that cannot be defined in space, you do not know if it falls or rises.
Hesitation…
Hesitation?
Hesitation between up and down.
Or a swing.
Or a fall.
So I had the same problem in painting.
The two large Tryptichs.
Do you remember?
It is the same, isn't it?
The various changes of bodies.
A pre-abstract becoming abstract and returning to realistic…
It has always been my problem.
With the exception when the image is stopped on the screen.
In this case it becomes horizontal.
And when it is horizontal, it is completely abstract.
When you look at the TV
and there is a bit of disturbance at the station, out in space,
somewhere, I do not know…
You have surely noticed that some kind of horizontal waves appear.
Do you understand what I mean?
It is almost the same in my works.
Completely unintentionally.
I never paint a program.
I always find something interesting meanwhile,
something that has been born.
I never force it,
but sometimes I continue it or I let it become what it wants to be.
Why do I let it?
Because painters are the mother/father and the daughter/son of their works.
Sometimes you need to let it: you are the child.
Sometimes you need to be assertive, to give a momentary direction,
because you are the mother/father.
I do not know if it is clear.
Yes, absolutely.
As a matter of fact, this change completes the work.
The abstract part:
the entire Déroulement
and its sequel, the Suites des Déroulement,
the Hydrogen,
which is continued for 15-20 years.
This is the abstract part.
But it is the same: motion.
You can feel it.
Everything is in motion.
I do not paint these paintings standing and they are always on the ground.
I never use stands, they are old-fashioned.
I always walk while painting.
As you can see.
It is also a motion.
Technically today everything is always different,
so the same result can be achieved.
It is like time.
Time changes so that it can remain the same.
It is the like the river:
it flows so that it can remain the same river.
Can you understand?
Heraclitus said: Panta rhei.
'Everything flows'.
And still it is always the same.
You can see the Danube
2000 or 5000 years ago…
Let's not go further back in time.
Or maybe even 10 thousand years ago… or perhaps not…
But let's say.
10 thousand years ago the Danube was the Danube.
5 thousand years ago for sure.
It is the same.
As a matter of fact,
I realized it later, as a reflection,
looking back,
that it is like breaking it down to subatoms.
I do not know how to explain it. Subatomic world.
Beyond the scope of microscope.
To the smallest.
To the infinitely small,
to formulate it more politically.
It goes towards the infinitely small and also the infinitely large.
The cosmic, the large, supernova, explosion, galaxies.
These are all included in some form.
Or at least I feel so.
And the incredibly small too.
I could show you:
someone who is writing a thesis about me
has took and sent me microscopic pictures, photos of fragments.
Like tiny flakes.
The entire has become abstract, even those that are not abstract.
You feel like being out in the space.
The new sonde…
How do you call the ones exploring the space?
Probes.
Ah, probes.
So these are very similar to the photos that these probes send.
Or when using the microscope you break it down entirely.
To the electrons, neutrons, to the most fundamental particules.
Elemental particules.
Particles.
This is between these two.
This Tension, which is also in the title.
I was written about first in 1956. The title was Tension.
High Voltage.
Now it is the same as in '56: high voltage.
It includes a permanent, cyclically returning element.
A constant motion.
Nothing stops.
Even if it seems to hesitate for a moment.
Nothing stops.
It always returns cyclically to its place,
which is though not exactly the same place.
In a spiral.
So it is the same and at the same time a different level.
When it arrives at one point,
to the same point, yet a bit below and above,
it becomes a human.
It is an obligation.
A requirement in my paintings.
Not for me, I only let it happen.
Let it become a human.
Then it becomes abstract again.
It is an obligation,
a requirement that I obey.
Why would I go against it?
So I accept it.
Abstract becomes figurative.
It has happened several times during my 50 years of work.
At the beginning…
my work bought by Beaubourg is figurative.
Then it becomes abstract, and then figurative again.
It returns in my life 3 or 4 times, cyclically.
This is the answer to your question.
This tension.
The infinitely small and the infinitely large.
And sometimes the human inbetween.
Not as a more important component.
It is not more important than the other ones.
But it is an obligation.
I am required to go through these phases.
You have said that you would like to depict the subconscious on the canvas.
I was wondering how you paint
so as not to let your consciousness influence it?
Do you clear your mind?
Do you focus only on it?
So how can you depict the subconscious on the canvas?
Well, this is the art.
Do you have a ritual before painting?
No, I don't. Do you mean meditation? Or…
Well, anything.
No. It appears because I do it.
However, it also entails that
I destroy or throw away a lot of my works.
More than half of it.
Beyond a certain point, it is just automatically created.
I never really start painting.
I fall or jump into it.
Honest to God, it is the truth.
Usually I do not like if the atelier is clean.
I cannot work then.
First I need to make chaos.
I do not know, I guess nobody does so.
For me it is an obligation.
I cannot work without it.
It is not a mess, but a chaos.
I cannot say it otherwise.
And suddenly I jump in.
I change dimension.
Like a plunge into the sea. Or I don't know.
So the chaos is created, the white canvas is in front of you,
and you just start working instinctively?
Well, for sure, it is inevitable.
But there is no pre-meditation.
Can you understand?
Before it I do not say that I will do this or that.
I do not have an idea.
It is included somehow in a process.
It is Déroulement, which is a very good expression.
I do not know its exact equivalent.
We have never found a perfect one.
Perhaps progress.
I find the progress and the flow captivates me.
This flow, electricity or radio…
All these waves coming and going all over the world.
Water is the same from one aspect.
On the other hand, cosmic movements.
These electric vibrations…
Somehow I have to get into it and it captivates me.
This flow takes me until it takes me.
And then oops, it throws me out like a fish from water.
A figuralist painter, surely protecting his own position, said…
Who?
A figuralist painter.
I see.
He said that in his view
painters who turn to abstract
do so because they do not have the right technique.
What did he say?
That abstract painters paint abstract
because they do not have the correct technique
in their hands to paint figurative.
What do you think about it, Judit?
Absolutely wrong. Absolutely false.
You have seen my figurative works.
In college I always received awards from Szõnyi for my figurative paintings.
I drew large act paintings.
On a 3-meter high, large table.
Huge act paintings.
I always received awards from Szõnyi.
In his view, I had such a niveau…
He said that I attempted a difficult task.
When I first drew large figures on a large, 3-meter high table,
based on the model but in a larger size,
he said exactly the following, Honest to God:
'you attempted a difficult task but you succeeded'.
So it is the counter-argument.
Not mine, but of a teacher who was a grand master and artist.
Who is recognized at home.
He is acknowledged… I hope he is acknowledged.
About this series…
I still have the studies.
You can see that it is completely realistic, not naturalistic.
He did not say so in connection with Judit.
Yes, I see - all one to me.
So it is a general statement… It is even worse.
Had it been said about me, that would be an exception.
But judging all… no. It is false judgment.
What do you think about bad critiques?
Have you received a lot or not really?
I received only manuscripts, I have not received the reviews.
But I think they are good, the ones I read were very good.
I mean your career in general.
Regarding your entire career as a painter.
Ah, I see.
Have you received any?
In general, critiques have always been better than the financial results.
Interesting. I don't know.
Commerce was never easy for me.
Therefore I secluded myself much.
I did not even care.
I could not deal with the issue.
There were no galleries to deal with it either.
One thing I did not let happen: to commercialize my painting.
What I would have wanted, what I would not have refused:
Valoriser commercialement.
Do you understand it?
Creating values?
Well…
Giving it a commercial niveau by esteeming the value.
But not commercializing it.
Do not sell it and sell it to whoever wants it.
I have always wanted to avoid it and I have always avoided it.
Therefore financially it was more difficult for me.
Much more difficult.
However, interestingly, when I very rarely had an exhibition,
the critiques were always good and I was always invited abroad.
The Germans noticed my works earlier…
You saw: I was exhibited at the Galerie Van de Loo 3 or 4 times.
In Essen, in Munich…
I have had exhibitions everywhere in Germany.
In England, In America.
And I did not have any exhibitions in Paris for 10 years.
It is nonsensical… or weird,
like fate,
that they were the slowest to notice what it is about.
If you received bad critique…
Pardon?
If you received bad critique, were you concerned with it?
Did you try to paint otherwise or you did not take it into consideration?
In all critiques,
I am concerned with the length and the correct spelling of my name.
They spell it almost always wrong.
If my name is correctly spelled and the critique is bad,
I do not care.
And fellow painters?
In Germany, I received very good critiques.
In America too.
And from fellow artists? Other painters?
Fellow artists…
One cannot say that I beware of them, but let's say I keep distance.
There are always 1-2-3-4-5 exceptions
with whom I have a very good, warm, friendly relationship.
I cannot be concerned with the others.
I do not have time.
It is not possible to find a common tone.
Are you in touch with Hantai?
I esteem their works.
The only law I have:
regardless of whether I feel it is good or bad, or I don't know it,
first of all I learn and see the works of the person that I am going to review.
I wait for an exhibition.
It was sometimes difficult to leave Paris.
It is easy if you live in the heart of Paris,
but leaving it has always been more difficult.
But I did it.
Even in the case of much younger or older artists.
In order to be able to honestly say how I see it.
Because this objectivity
is a requirement toward a colleague.
You always have to respect them by doing so.
I never like making statements.
It is not my business any more.
Are you still in touch with Hantai?
I have not been in touch with Hantai for a very long time.
Why?
I do not know. It is faith.
It is faith.
But you worked together for a long time.
Or at least you followed similar roads in automatic writing.
We did not work together, he was a very good friend of mine.
His wife, Zsuzsa, his kids were also very good friends of mine.
Here, in France…
I can tell you two metaphors:
One was said by Brancusi, who was Rodin's secretary or assistant.
As a young man, he worked with Rodin.
When he was asked why he left Rodin,
he said: 'Nothing grows in the shadow of a big tree'.
That is one of them, Brancusi.
The other is a bit more trivial.
Two pipers cannot get on in one tavern.
I guess it is the correct Hungarian proverb.
One master in a house is enough.
It is also a good metaphor.
But anyway, we do not talk about it.
I have only mentioned it between ourselves.
I have only asked it because now we were at the Art Paris…
Where were you?
The Art Paris Art Fair.
There mainly Hantai and Reigl paintings were exhibited.
We told French gallerists
that we are interested in Hungarian artists,
and everyone said: 'yes, Hantai and Reigl'.
So even today, there is a parallel, you are dealt with together.
Some years earlier they did not know about it.
Ameline, an excellent conservator of the Musée national d'art moderne,
the museum section in Beaubourg, Centre Pompidou.
wrote a very good, an excellent analysis about it.
Since then people realize this parallel.
When I left the Fournier, Hantai's gallery, I completely retired.
For 10 years, I lived in a way that no one knew who is Reigl.
They did not know me.
For 10 years, until the Galerie Rencontres,
where Betty was the Director afterwards,
brought me back.
You know the stories of Lazarus, from the Bible?
Lazarus has risen.
So recently this large text by Ameline,
the Beaubourg exhibition, where I had an entire room…
these all made things a bit more understood.
But is it accidental?
There are no accidents in life.
Hantai was a very good friend of mine.
I am the godmother of one of his children.
Betty is the godmother of the other one.
Let's say the fate has separated us.
It is no one's fault. It is faith.
Who was the first to do automatic writing, Judit or Hantai?
Automatic writing…
I learnt a lot from Hantai.
Before automatic writing.
But I was the first to do total automatic writing.
I can definitely tell you it.
I would tell you it in the sight of God.
I was the first to do so.
Writing in fresh paint
without breaks, without interference.
I was the first to do so.
But then we parted ways.
Hantai became a very great, very good artist.
He is entirely different from me.
Since then there are no similarities.
It is like Braque and Picasso.
You know, cubists.
You can confuse them.
I sometimes do not know if it is Braque, Picasso or another cubist artist.
You have surely seen such paintings.
You cannot know.
It is exactly the same in empiricism or expressionism.
So it is normal, but here somehow it has become weird.
Because 'two Hungarians…' 'Why two Hungarians?'
'Friends…'
Pissarro was also a very good friend of Cézanne, who learnt a lot from Pissarro.
Still Cézanne became Cézanne and Pissarro became an impressionist.
Braque is the same.
At the beginning, the cubists worked really together.
Doren too with someone else.
I could tell you 1000 examples.
If you know the recent French past, you can notice it.
But I do not even want to talk about it, it is not important.
It is a personal thing.
Art is different.