JULIO LE PARC 1958 → 2023
GALLERIA CONTINUA - SAN GIMIGNANO
A REVIEW & AN INTERVIEW
Embedded Files
09/10/2023
Detail from exhibition view of Continuel Mobile Losange Blanc Translucide (2018)
Julio Le Parc 1958 → 2023, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano.
Photo © Hande Eagle
I arrive at the Piazza della Cisterna and I am immediately drawn to Galleria Continua’s easiest-to-spot premises in San Gimignano which is currently dedicated to a concise retrospective of Julio Le Parc.
By the grand, arched- window the exhibition opens to the outside world with Continuel Mobile Losange Blanc Translucide (2018); a mobile made of hundreds of white translucent plates. Walking anti-clockwise within the gallery space, Alchimie unravels before the spectator. This recent series (2018-2023) stuns the spectator with Le Parc’s own range of fourteen colours and optical illusion. Though new, this series has its roots in early 1988, when the artist started with small sketches inspired by casual observations. These then materialised into a multitude of drawings, a select few of which at first became smaller paintings, and later larger masterpieces of Op art. The exhibition reveals the most recent larger works, before guiding the visitor to pencil on paper preparatory drawings for the Alchimie series in acrylic. Curatorially, there's a cinematic approach to grabbing the attention of the idle tourist who visits San Gimignano for history and finds himself transported to a shrine of abstract perfection.
It was as early as 1959, a year after he moved to France, when Le Parc began to dispel the myth of the “messy artist” with his methodical approach to the study of his genuine art form. He eliminated all traces of manual execution and subjective composition and creating his own palette which make up a complete chromatic circle.
Pigment is such an integral part of art. Nowadays, we rarely pay attention to the work artists undertake in creating their own signature palette. With so many varieties and colours of paint and pigment readily available, most contemporary artists don’t even bother to think about the creation of colour. Though once upon a time, the apprenticeship of an artist-to-be began with the nitty-gritty of mixing pigment powders to make paint for their masters. Colour is serious business to Le Parc. However, it is also here in this exhibition that one can trace the artist’s progression and transformation from early experimentations in Op Art – tesellations with ink on cardboard, which maybe considered as the offspring of works by M.C. Escher, certainly with a generational divide ever-present. Although, I have an inkling that Le Parc won't agree.
Continuel lumiere boite No3 (1959-1965) has rightly been given its place of honour in a space of its own. It is my opinion that the room should have been made darker to be able to fully appreciate the modulation of light in this early lightbox work; a curtain installed at the doorway would do the trick. I observed that Le Parc himself is extremely sensitive to light. Ipso facto, (and perhaps needless to say) his entire oeuvre feeds on light.
On 23rd September 1928 a baby was born in Mendoza, Argentina. They named him Julio Le Parc.
On 23rd September 2023, that baby – now a painter, sculptor and plastic artist of international recognition; a pioneer of kinetic and optic art; an unyielding defender of human rights; co-founder of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) and more-than-meets-the eye – wearing a dark blue shirt, a cap and his defining-spectacles, attended his 95th birthday celebration in San Gimignano.
The cycle of life, like his colour palette, comes full circle.
I sit before Julio Le Parc, surrounded by the art to which he dedicated his entire life. He was my age in 1967, and if I'm lucky enough, I'll be celebrating my 95th birthday in 2079.
Next to him, his partner; Japanese artist Yumiko Seki.
Behind me, Yamil Le Parc, his son and Artistic Director to the Le Parc Studio, who kindly brought me a cup of coffee.
In front of me, a reflection of life lived to the full. During dinner the previous night, I watched him from across the room as he doodled on napkins for children. Transported back to my childhood, when I was entertained in the same way by the modernist painters represented by my mother's gallery in the 1980s, I thought: Which questions do you ask such a man? Questions about the present, the past or the future? Or perhaps, what mattered now was no longer the questions but the invaluable exchange in which I was about to partake. I hit record and we start with whether he would repeat what he did in 1972; flip a coin to decide whether he would hold an exhibition at a specific institutional site...
Hande Eagle: If you had to make a choice of great importance again, would you still flip a coin to decide the outcome?
Julio Le Parc: The circumstances have pushed me to make that decision, not desire. There were political circumstances, in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, against an exposition in [Centre] Pompidou. I’ve made a decision by myself, I wasn’t pushed.
H.E: At age 95, with your lifelong endeavour in Kinetic and Op art, where do you see the future of this movement?
J.L.P: I’m against classification.
H.E: But it did become classified, and now it is.
J.L.P: For me, there are people that do things in all fields. And sometimes, it seems that they are similar in the way they do things, their positions while working. The kinetic then becomes a repetitive thing, it becomes academic. So I prefer people that do things. For me categories are artificial. Classing watercolour painting and photography in the same group is absurd. It depends... If it becomes academic, it pops up everywhere in the world, it becomes ridiculous.
H.E: The artist is a humanist. What do you think happens if the “human artist” is replaced by the “AI artist”?
J.L.P: No, it’s not possible. A machine is a machine. A tool is a tool, it cannot change the experience of reality. The reality is our world. Artificial intelligence can manipulate reality, or reality can be manipulated by it, but it doesn’t go further than that. If you ask a question AI responds, but that’s it.
H.E: When Pablo Neruda said there should be a Le Parc Museum, Le Parc House and Le Parc Gallery[i] he had no idea about the impending advances in computer technology. With your Virtual Labyrinths Museum and the representation of your work across the world you turned Neruda’s wish into reality. Do you think people will still be visiting museums and galleries in situ in 50 years or will they be a thing of the past – like relics?
J.L.P: No, it will be complimentary. It’s not the same thing as visiting a gallery. It adds to it, because you can always carry it in your pocket, you can put your headphones on, project it on a screen. The virtual has a different use. In my retrospective exhibition, there are texts, films, videos, books, different mediums.
Yumiko Seki cuts in: What’s the use of the real museum today? If there is a virtual one what’s the need for a real museum?
J.L.P: In the virtual museum when you put the visor you can walk around on a predefined path. I see people walking around, they’re looking at things, but nothing is real because it’s all virtual. There’s no connection.
H.E. Do you think people prefer reality?
JLP. It’s not a matter of preference. It’s a matter of different situations. For example, if you are looking at a painting and you put a visor on, you experience it in a different way, you enter into the artwork, it is a completely different reality. It’s impossible to do with art in the real world.
H.E: You’ve had many exhibitions across the world. Does this location, San Gimignano, have a special meaning for you?
J.L.P: Here, it has been a surprise. I know many places in Italy but I’ve never been here. This town is a world apart, but we are looking at it through the eyes of today. Compared to the inhabitants that have created this town, I look through different eyes. They did not create the town as it is today, like an open-air museum. It was a town where people were living, working. There are people that come and look around here, but with the eyes of today. We look at the town through a contemporary mentality. I’m very inspired by this town. The spaces, the perspectives... It’s better than contemporary exhibition spaces.
H.E: The future of democracy?
J.L.P: Democracy continues. People decide who they want to be governed by. If there is a military coup d'état, it's the military that decides. Revolutions are really good for the world, especially where there are extreme cases. Monarchy in France, dictatorial regimes in South America... Democracy allows stability and continuity which allow to create things, the mindset to reflect and analyse. I prefer democracy to coup d’état.
H.E: How do you view yourself today?
J.L.P: [A BIG SMILE] Happy.
H.E: A word of fatherly advice for the young people of today?
J.L.P: It’s impossible to give advice because everyone gets by as they can. What I can say is that they need to be themselves. Don’t become a copy of other artists, other personalities, or a copy of modern society’s role models.
H.E: That's a lot of advice.
J.L.P: It’s a small advice.
H.E: Gracias!
[i] "I would like there to be a Le Parc House, a Le Parc Museum and a Le Parc Gallery. One in Buenos Aires, another in Chile, another in Caracas, in Guayaquil, in Mexico City... everywhere." Pablo Neruda, 1966. Extract from Julio Le Parc: A Monograph, Le Livre Art Publishing, 2019.
N.B: On the dedication page of the above-referenced monograph Le Parc wrote, "To my clairvoyant mother who, when I was fourteen years old, enrolled me at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires". This touched me deeply because the reason why I have been able to become a citizen of the world that I tread upon, was yet another clairvoyant mother, who enrolled me at a boarding school in England when I was just 12. This interview is dedicated to past, present and future clairvoyant mothers all around the world.
Special thanks to Alena Magnani, front of house at Galleria Continua for helping me arrange this interview, and to Camilla Magnani, Director Assistant at Galleria Continua Paris and Artist Liaison for Julio Le Parc, for her patient simultaneous interpretation from French to English.
Page updated
Report abuse