Bring together five painters who work in France today and, to choose their works, this rule: that we see only one human figure. This is the principle of this exhibition. The artists are, in alphabetical order, Brigitte Aubignac, Ymane Chabi-Gara, Marc Desgrandchamps, Tim Eitel, and Djamel Tatah. Their ages, stories, and ways of painting differ profoundly. They have only the question of the figure in common and it is therefore from this point of view that they will be considered here.

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Two risks of misunderstanding should be ruled out. This exhibition is not intended to be a manifesto in favor of any particular artistic cause. It is not a question here, as we have seen in recent times, of defending painting as such, for itself, against other modes of expression. That it was held to be obsolete in most art schools and institutions in France for several decades - as in other countries of the rest - in the name of increasingly academic modernism, this exclusion is not in doubt. But on the one hand, thanks to the artists, the painting has resisted and, contrary to some predictions, it is not dead; on the other hand, if it were simplistic to attack all the paintings, overall, it would have been obsolete, it would be just as important to defend it in the same terms. There is no "painting", there are painters, as there are artists who practice performance, assembly, sculpture, or video, and often several of these media alternately.

 

Nor is it a question of defending the so-called "figurative" painting against that which is called "abstract". Three reasons for this, going from the particular to the general. First point: there are abstract paintings in the work of three of the artists present. Chabi-Gara devotes some of his time to it, Desgrandchamps once did so and Eitel explicitly quoted Mondrian and other geometric abstracts. Second observation: in their trajectories, references, and reflections, it is obvious that the five integrate abstraction. It is obvious that Newman is essential to Tatah. The third argument, if it were to be developed, would require much more space than can be taken up in this introduction.

To put it succinctly: does a painting that represents no recognizable element of reality have no relation with this reality?

Certainly not. Through geometry and colors, Mondrian, Malevich, Rothko, and Newman give visual forms to their thoughts, their emotions, and their religious or philosophical feelings: in relation to the world in which they live. The same goes for Lee Ufan, whose works are in relation to nature, from rock to wind. The great abstract painting gives to experience of physical and mental relations with the world, in which it differs from the great non-abstract painting only in the means, but not in the ends.

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So, five painters and works inhabited by a unique human figure. It is important to clarify one more point. The works presented were chosen by the artists themselves, responding to the declaration of intent of the curator of the exhibition: this strange idea of bringing together paintings with a single human figure. Why this decision when it would have been possible to give ourselves other rules, less binding, or none? To explain this point, it is necessary to go back on the reflections that led the project in this direction.

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The first is neither history nor art criticism. In "Figures Alone", we must begin with the adjective. This refers to individual states of various natures and intensities. There are the voluntary and happy solitudes: withdraw from the world for a while, retreat to a protected place. Among them are the solitude of artists in their studios and that of writers at their tables. They need it. Their creation is a solitary activity that does not tolerate the presence of anyone and they establish an intimate principle. Thus Montaigne, Descartes, Flaubert, Cézanne, Picasso, Mitchell, Messager and many others. There is the simple momentary loneliness, that of waiting for example, during which the individual experiences a desire, a lack or the awareness of being for some time slightly separated from the outside world because others - the passers-by, the neighbors of the bar, etc. - they are not expecting anyone. It is a light experience, which usually leaves few traces: just the transient awareness that every human being is threatened to end up like this. Conversely, there are the suffered solitudes, painful or tragic: imprisonment and exclusion by misery, whose ravages it is all too easy to observe on the street. And there is mourning and death, with no return.

 

This is only a rough inventory. There are obviously as many experiences, perceptions, and definitions of loneliness as there are humans. It is understood that social and family uses, religions and morals, gender and age affect their perceptions. There are still other parameters, including architecture, urbanism, geography and political situation, the degree of freedom and constraint, peace and war. This is true in all places and at all times. But, for several decades now, there is no doubt that loneliness, isolation, and exclusion have become increasingly common. The phenomenon has been observed and studied many times according to the methods of sociology, psychology and psychiatry. Essayists and philosophers have seized upon it. Everyone can see how recent technological changes have accentuated it: screens, smartphones, teleworking, digital in a nutshell. The disintegration of direct links, the frequency of depressive states, the intensity of behavioral and discernment disorders, up to suicidal impulses, have correspondingly worsened. The recent periods of health lockdowns have brought these ailments to levels of intensity and generalization that may not have been experienced in the last decades of the twentieth century by Western societies spared from wars on their territories and grayed by the prosperity and belief in progress. But who would believe today in the end of history, the global triumph of democracy and other stereotypes of neoliberal discourse?

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It is equally obvious that several recent political phenomena, in France or elsewhere, are understood, at least in part, by the need to be together, the time of a protest, of demonstrations or rebellions that are experienced as exciting and unexpected social communions. This "being together" is prevented by the living conditions and hypertrophy of megalopolis becomes only more desirable at the risk of having to settle for short sequences. It is equally clear that the proliferation and fascination power of "social networks" are explained by an identical need, which is verified by the simple fact that the term "community" paradoxically refers to individuals isolated in front of their screen between whom only the digital establishes links, the time of the connection. Thus, these networks seem to remedy isolation, while they only maintain and aggravate it, sometimes even to extreme alienation states, as demonstrated for example by the cases of religious and political "radicalization" by and on the web.

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Nothing is written here that cannot be seen on a daily basis. And no doubt these reflections seem far from the exhibition in question and its genesis. But this one, without being aware of it, began with them, before an artistic experience: in 2020, in the general context that this date is enough to specify, the meeting of the paintings of Chabi-Gara. 

It had been some time then that the painter had given for theme the life-locked hikikomori. In Japanese, women and men, often adolescents or young adults, live in their homes for months or years, refusing to go out and meet. It is usual to explain this paroxysmal phobia by the necessity of avoiding too violent social, professional, or scholastic demands, by an attachment to the family unit which was more intense in the Japanese society than elsewhere, or, In some cases, through psychopathology. But explaining them does not reduce the disbelief and discomfort that these behaviors cause, which leads to the rejection of the other to its climax. We had heard about it before, but vaguely. Suddenly a young artist who is dedicated to it appeared. His appearance could only attract attention.

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It has had the consequence of making people look differently from what they have done before, works that are known for a long time - more than thirty years - those of Desgrandchamps and Tatah. Not all of their works, no doubt, but many of them, which it appeared should be seen as paintings of solitude. More precisely: to be looked at as well. To the interpretations that had been advanced before, it was necessary to add - or substitute? - another one, under the sign of solitude. Until then, they had not stopped there or only temporarily, probably because the circumstances favorable to their understanding in this sense had not yet come. What had previously been unnoticed has imposed itself on sight. Similarly, it appeared that many of the works of Aubignac and Eitel call feelings of the same register, Aubignac for his series of Insomnies - insomnia being an intimate experience of solitude - and Eitel because he often places the human figure in a space so vast and empty that it cannot be comfortable.

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Thus the importance of the subject, first perceived empirically, was verified by its presence in the works of painters who, for some, did not know each other then or little - another proof of the correctness of the initial hypothesis. That they are sensitive to this state of the world today has nothing to surprise, because the ability of artists to perceive and make visible the essence of the present in which they live and create is one of the most constant data in the history of arts

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Then comes the second reflection, which concerns pictorial expression. Can it deal with loneliness? Writing it is, not simple certainly, but at least accessible, whether in the mode of autobiography, novel, or essay. They don't need to be the only theme of the book so that it penetrates it completely, as one feels when reading Woolf, Walser, or Murakami. Filming also seems possible, the cinema and literature both having time for partners, which allows them to show how loneliness is established, how it can be locked up and become dangerous, which can allow you to escape too. But for painting, time is a reluctant partner. Temporality, in a painting, can only be suggested, when a book or a film is part of a real-time, that of reading or projection, and allows there to be narrative. The immobility of the pictorial object and the immediacy of its perception oppose it, and the artist needs subterfuges to succeed in including a narrative in his painting: the history of painting is partly the chronicle of such attempts to fair that the still and mute image nevertheless creates the illusion of duration and the elements of a narrative, whether sacred or profane. History painting has never ceased to face these obstacles, and the uneasy fate of the canvas L'Exécution de Maximilien de Manet, never completed and finally cut after the death of its author, is emblematic.

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But in the case of loneliness, another difficulty is revealed. Loneliness is a negative state - absence, lack, or refusal - and it has no identifiable bodily manifestation as such. There is no particular posture of the body alone, nor an expression of the face that is peculiar to it and which, figuratively, can be interpreted without hesitation. There are repertoires of poses and expressions for intense psychic states, desire, mourning, illuminations or madness. But solitude is not so easily represented and it is enough to go through the history of painting to verify that few painters have measured themselves to it. Approached it those who wanted, in the Renaissance, to invent the visual form of melancholy, which is linked to loneliness since it discourages passions and therefore vows the melancholic being to withdraw from the world. In modern art, Munch is one of the few to have made the subject his own by loading a profile or silhouette with a strong symbolic load. These are admirable works, but because of a centuries-old history, they confirm rather than deny the overall observation: we do not really know how to paint solitude.

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The five artists gathered thus sought to inscribe in their paintings a state that hides itself from its representation. They test their art and push it to its limits. This is yet another reason to take an interest in them and to bring their works into conversation.

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It remains therefore only to briefly analyze the pictorial solutions they experiment. They are specific to each of them, but comparisons seem possible.

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The one who is immediately imposed is in the presence of Eitel and Tatah. When they represent a single human figure, it appears on an often bare and empty surface. It is defined by planes of colors which are themselves determined and divided by straight lines or, in Eitel’s case, curves. These planes are monochrome in Tatah, slightly modulated by differences in luminosity in Eitel. They only allude to a place, except an ancient architectural element in a diptych of Tatah. Eitel does not go further than the indication of a door or the edge of a wall, and no more can be said about these interiors, to suppose that this word itself is relevant. Interior" refers, in the history of art, to the representation of a real space, while this is not the purpose of Eitel. It is rare that it characterizes a place and suggests its function. Its places are anonymous and one would be tempted to designate them as "places of painting", as opposed to any explicitly designated space. The notion applies equally to Tatah, who raises, sits, or stretches a figure or several on a surface defined by the juxtaposition of monochromes or by one. It may be that the relationships between monochrome surfaces induce the sensation of a perspectival space, but then the perspective is so shallow that it is hardly perceptible. In Eitel, it is sometimes more pronounced, but the gaze does not go far, quickly stopped by a vertical plane. There is therefore here a conception of the presence of the human figure which detaches it from any circumstantial precision and places it in a "place of painting" that can be called "abstract".

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This proves once again the insanity of the distinction between abstraction and figuration. Otherwise, what can we think of so many works by Vermeer, Hammershoi, or Hopper, in which the architecture determines a space with geometric structure, if not an abstract construction is accomplished there, through the door, the window, the wall, or the corridor? In their time, none of these painters passed away the figurative elements that Eitel and Tatah do not need, because this was made possible to these modernists by the history of abstraction. But confronting the human figure with the order of geometry, this idea is common to them, at different degrees of realization. Confrontation, by its nakedness and even neutrality, exasperates the feeling of isolation and silence. Tatah’s standing female and male figures give the impression of facing, alone, a world and a time of which, it can be said, they are not part. They are separated from it, as are the colors in front of which they lie: a distance that is considered insurmountable. The sensation is also intense - and sometimes painful - in the paintings of Eitel, who paints the impossibility of what we call "communication". It is not quite a prison world, but a divided and silent world, that looks rarefied - and this is also strongly felt in front of its landscapes, if one can designate thus its outdoor scenes, no less refined and silent. Eitel and Tatah "say" loneliness by suppression of the surrounding world.

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Neither Aubignac nor Chabi-Gara removed it. Their figures are located in a room or a room furnished with a chair or sofa. The detail of objects is important to understand their paintings, in which there is realism and symbolism. Les Insomnies d'Aubignac show a woman who cannot sleep. She tries to fall asleep on a sofa and, to do so, places one of those masks that the airlines distribute over her eyes. To be comfortable, she took off her bra but did not fall asleep because otherwise, she would not hold a cup in her left hand. Despite pillows accumulated on the sofa, another leans towards the floor as if to count absurdly the threads of the carpet. 5h of the morning specifies the title. A third person has her head on the armrest, but her position is so uncomfortable that it is doubtful she can rest like this. These elements might seem details, but how to paint insomnia, this particular case of loneliness? There is no shortage of sleepers in the history of painting and, in the twentieth century, Matisse and Picasso drew the motif towards the dream or the lascivious languor. But insomnia is neither a dream nor an emotion of the senses, but impotence and exasperation; therefore, does Aubignac introduce the details that have been reported and, twice, place his insomniacs in an intense light, as to signify better that darkness and night are denied them. At three o'clock in the morning, brushes are strewn on the floor and the bra is hanging from an easel. So this woman is a painter. Perhaps there is autobiography in the work. Do the two portraits, Le Cri and Portrait d'une folie annoncée, also contain it? Indirectly, no doubt. Few works are known that, in recent paintings, carry to such a degree the suffering of forced silence - the gag of a paper stuck into the mouth - and the anguish of an error that would be the consequence of the condemnation to not speak or never be heard.

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Other decisive objects are those accumulated by Chabi-Gara. The question asked about insomnia comes back to these wanted internments: what to do with painting? The solution is in saturation, confusion, and erasure. Saturation, because objects, furniture, paper, or toys accumulate on the floor, which has become invisible, on the shelves of cupboards and under furniture; and also because dense colors, sometimes very thick, are laid sometimes by superimposed sheets, sometimes by areas delimited by straight lines that stop the eye. The viewer collides with these surfaces that block him, as hikikomori are blocked in their homes, and the viewer is in turn locked in their space. Confusion: one of the consequences of the abundance of these objects is that only an angle or a fragment remains visible to some, This makes their identification impossible and increases the feeling of an individual buried under the products of contemporary consumption as under a deadly avalanche from which he will not escape. Erasure: it is the ultimate consequence of saturation and confusion. The hikikomori tends to disappear, it no longer has a face, or the eyes are closed as a sign of withdrawal. He has already disappeared socially and now physically.

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It is therefore possible to paint the psychosis as much as insomnia.

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As for the painting of Desgrandchamps, it was at first populated with figures whose postures and faces refused to be interpreted. Alone in a "place of painting" - again - defined by two surfaces, one green and the other blue, a woman with an orange dress stands face to face, with an abnormally large body. Alone, another woman, slightly less geometric, has her hands crossed over her chest and her gaze indicates questioning or concern. The landscape behind it is made of dead trees with sawn branches and strange white lines that we do not know how to understand. Why these crossed hands? The gesture of fear, protection, or religious adoration? Holding this figure for an allegory would be too easy. This painting, like that of the large woman in orange and like most of the Desgrandchamps of this period, refuses to be interpreted, a characteristic they share with the contemporary Tatah. They are both simple - we know immediately what is figurative - and impenetrable. The identification of the motif does not determine any identification of an action, a story, or a symbol, contrary to the oldest habits of painting. The solitude is here simultaneously that of the painted figure and that of the viewer. The latter is alone with his uncertainties, his unanswered questions, and his pending reflections. In this, these canvases are a new form of pittura metafisica, in the sense of the Chirico of 1913 or 1914: we know what we see and we do not know what to understand.

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Three decades later, the most recent Desgrandchamps still subject us to the experience of disorientation, confusion, and aporia. But in the meantime, things have gotten worse. The figures and what surrounds them have lost most of their substance and density. They have become translucent until they vanish; and they are alone, as before. They look forward, but as they are facing back, the direction of their gaze is unknown. Is it the landscape that interests them? But it is neither spectacular nor moving, reduced to colored areas that vaguely indicate the sea, a lake, or distant mountains. The one that Desgrandchamps calls Observer takes a photo with her laptop, but a photo of what? From the liquid surface or the spectral figure white lines - again - draw in the void. Would it be a photo of the passage of time? In an undefined space, this woman is standing in front of a world that is falling apart and slipping away. A tenacious and oppressive impression of slow destruction emerges from these paintings that nothing could stop. Is it necessary to add that loneliness predisposes to a sharper awareness of death?