PAINTING IS PHILOSOPHY IN ACTION…

When we look at your paintings, there is no trace of how they were made or any approximation. It is as if they
were the product of some sort of mechanical process or simply painted or retouched photographs. Does it
bother you to paint in a way that doesn't look like painting?

I produce paintings, not 'painting'. Painting as such doesn't exist. What exists are the paintings that were
produced using paint. Paint is the material, the pigments that make it possible to reproduce the colours and
shades one sees on the figures that will appear in the painting. It is like stone or marble in sculpture.
Paradoxically, we say that a sculpture is sculpture, not 'stone' or 'marble', whereas we say of a painting that it is
'painting'.

Curious, indeed.

We are losing the distinction between artist painters and house painters. Nobody knows what painting really is
any more these days. This stems from a misunderstanding that connects pictorial art with prejudices,
particularly since the cult of Impressionism arose. Today, when you talk of painting, you think of brush strokes
and splatters of paint, improvised, crude gestures that make you think that the faster a painter works, the greater
a genius he must be.

But is it really necessary to dehumanise paintings? Does the trace of the hand that created them have to
disappear entirely in order for a painting to fulfil its role?

A painting is not technique, but the result of a technique. The best technique is that which remains unseen -
only the result should be visible. It's like the motor of a car, hidden under the bonnet, or the rehearsals and
backstage at the theatre, which obviously aren't part of the performance. Or, again, like all the organs and
muscles that make up your body, hidden by the skin - good thing, too, as otherwise women would be much less
beautiful…

Where do you think this misunderstanding that associates painting with improvisation and does away with
technique came from?

It has been taking over people's spirits bit by bit since painting lost its social function. Photography, the cinema
and then television have progressively taken over painting's function as a producer of images. Painting has no
use any more, but seems to have become an end unto itself, since it can't disappear all together, like a cadaver
eating its own organs and guts until it finally decomposes…

Painting isn't dead for everyone.

It's painting's social function, its practical aspect that has disappeared, not painting itself. The creative aspect is
still there, but it no longer has any practical purpose. For many people, painting has become a gratuitous
exercise free of all technical criteria. It's pointless to apply rules to something that doesn't seem to have any
purpose any more…

You can still love painting, even if it is useless.

That's why it endures. Painting is also and above all a spiritual necessity.
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Painting doesn't need to have a function. Art as such, freed of any practical function, can serve the needs of the
spirit completely. Isn't that its actual vocation?

Indeed, that's its primary vocation. But art as such doesn't exist - it can't, just like man can't exist 'as such'. Art is
the manner, the right method, for realising something or another. The greatness of art resides in the beauty of
the manner. Art needs a support, a pretext in order to exist, so that its manner can express itself. But the word
'art' was stripped of its sense over time by interpretations and cultural vagaries and became an indefinite idea.
So, art pretends that it is an absolute value, untied from its sense and support, from the things that give it its
raison d'être. The danger in culture is that it finishes by substituting ideas for the realities that they are meant to
indicate. In doing this, it establishes a virtual, pseudo-intellectual world that is confused and full of nonsense.
Culture spreads itself through words that have lost their sense.

And the spirit?

It's the same for the word 'spirit'. You can't paint the spirit, because it doesn't exist as such. You can paint with
spirit in the name of the value represented by the spirit, which also give the work its value, its spirit, its sense.
Animals, for example, don't create art, because their actions are never guided by an idea of some greater value.
That is actually the only difference between people and animals. People live, at least as long as there are artists,
while animals only survive. Art is life, because it is the expression of the difference between living and
surviving. The science of 'manner', which is what the word 'art' originally meant, is what allows us to preserve
this marginal reserve of power, maintaining it through creativity.

But if, as you say, painting has lost its social function, what role can it have?

It still has a function for individuals, evoking emotions and communicating feelings. Individuals are not the
same as society. Individuals are natural, while society is artificial. Society has no feelings; it is a virtual
product, a fictional institution based exclusively on practicalities. And it is society, not the individual that
dictates what culture is, because it makes the laws. Society defines the place occupied by things, values…so, it
also defines what painting is, the role it has, its value or absence of value, its quality, even its form. And, as
painting has no purpose, at least for society, culture mocks its value.

But, really, it isn't culture that dictates people's feelings…

No, nature does. But if a society exists and is able to function, it is because people ascribe greater authority to
fictitious official values and cultural dictates than to their own feelings. Me, I find this distressing situation
rather interesting and stimulating. You could even say that it lies at the heart of my preoccupations, even in my
painting.

How?

I try to create paintings that speak to individuals, not to society or culture at large. I deliberately wish to neglect
cultural vagaries. I would like to appeal directly to people's receptiveness without making them go through all
the references culture has saddled them with. That's why my painting goes against the flow and is, perhaps, as
you say, not like painting at all.

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You are not the first person to paint precisely and with great care. There have been painters and even whole
movements that were recognised by culture, yet also rejected improvisation as a means of expression. I'm
thinking particularly of the hyperrealists. Your own painting is often identified as hyperrealist.

Hyperrealism wasn't spontaneous painting. It was a cultural phenomenon that emerged in the United States at
the end of the 1960's and only makes sense in its context, like Impressionism in its time. It was a reaction
against the absolutism of the abstraction that predominated at the time. It wanted to manifest this reaction by
the opposite extreme - a bit like alternating phases in politics - which was painting of a clinical and almost
caricatural realism. It was postcard painting with banal, neutral and repetitive subjects that were supposed to
fade before the photographic precision of their execution in order to make the rejection of the gestural violence
of abstraction that much more pointed. It was reactionary painting and can't be dissociated from the abstraction
that it sought to destroy. It wasn't a style, a new classicism, a manner of painting; it was a painting of conflict. I
have nothing to do with the spirit of hyperrealism. Anyway, this spirit has lost its purpose.

Can't we see your painting as part of the inheritance of hyperrealism?

I think that, if I had been born before all these cultural conflicts in an earlier age, I still would have painted the
same way as I do now. Perhaps my subjects wouldn't have been the same, nor my method, but I certainly would
have taken the same care in painting them, if for no other reason than out of respect for the viewer. When I was
a child, I already tried to produce smooth, carefully executed paintings, and that was before hyperrealism came
onto the scene. This was neither because I loved the Old Masters nor because I was trying to align myself with
some movement, but because it just seemed logical to me.

There are perhaps several logics in painting; each painter defines his proper logic.

Each painter finds justification in his painting and that is perfectly normal. You could also say that painting has
nothing to do with logic, but is a matter of feeling, of sensitivity, even if feelings also obey a certain logic, that
of the subconscious and, consequently, heredity. You don't experience certain feelings in certain situations by
chance. Feelings are the logic of nature, of life. That is why society encourages us to suppress them. As for
painting, it obeys this ancestral logic, that of the original function that created it.

What is this logic, in your opinion?

Painting, like drawing, is the representation of elements or figures in relief on a flat surface. It is founded on
this elementary principle. It was thus always obvious to me that it was necessary to achieve a certain level of
verisimilitude in order to move beyond visual reality and have it serve feelings. You gain freedom by mastering
representation, not by eliminating it or suppressing it through approximations. Denying the principle of
painting in order to paint is cheating - something, sadly, encouraged by official culture.

How can we qualify your painting, then? All painting has a style, a genre, whether it is logical or not. Isn't
there a movement to which you feel some kind of affinity? Which school can we say that your style and manner
belong to?

To the school of those who don't like school or schools. My painting is individualist, solitary and is like me in
that way, because, for me, it flows straight from the source and I really don't have to make an effort to adapt to
or try to align myself with the current trends.
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Actually, mine is a painting of the lazy vis-à-vis the constraints of cultural gregariousness. I don't pay attention
to other painters' work, at least not as inspiration for my own. I have no regard for classifications that try to put
artists in boxes - or, rather, in coffins - in order to bury them in a cemetery of references so that people can feel
that they know something about painting. Painting isn't a question of knowledge, but of sensitivity, something
that can't be taught. People have tried to classify me with the hyperrealists, the neo-Surrealists, as part of
Nouvelle Figuration, with the Academic artists, with the Fantastic Realists - ghastly - and, perhaps more
judiciously, among the unclassifiable painters…

Okay then, you aren't a hyperrealist or, as the Americans say, a 'photo-realist'. Nevertheless, you use
photography in your work. Aren't you afraid that using photographs could affect the spontaneity of the
painting? That it could give the work a certain 'prefabricated' look?

A photograph is a document of visual reality and, in and of itself, has no relation to painting or the act of
painting. We tend to forget that visual reality is 'photographic' and that it wasn't photography that invented
visual precision. If you close one eye, the other eye will give you a perfectly photographic image, but without
the stereoscopic effect of depth. Painting from memory is painting the snapshots your brain took of your
surroundings over time. If you paint directly from nature, you are prisoner of those elements that are present
and immediately perceptible, instant photos, as it were. On the other hand, by taking photographs rather than
forcing the model to sit still, there is no longer any limit to the freedom of subject, and I can adapt reality to my
desires and needs at any moment. This is the freedom I am searching for through photography, most of all the
freedom to paint at any time, day or night, alone, without models and without having to worry about lighting.
Because of this, photos have become precious intermediaries that allow me to distance myself from my
surroundings and the compelling circumstances in which one had to paint in the past. In short, I can paint
anything at any time and still be precise.

What are your photography sessions like? Do you think of yourself as a photographer or a painter?

I'm never a photographer and, to be honest, I have a certain contempt for photographs when one thinks of them
as art. I have taken tens of thousands of photographs and know from experience that you need other faculties to
be able to compose a painting, sketch it and paint it than just pressing on a button, even if with photographs,
you take care in choosing the image, the aesthetic, how you arrange things and how it is lighted. But taking
photographs is the one exhausting part of my work.

Why?

Because it demands an enormous amount of concentration. I can't afford to get the photographs wrong, as the
paintings depend in part on them. I arrange all the details - the folds of drapery, the position of the hand, the
fingers, the strands of hair and, of course, the pose. I put my model near a window, always the same one, so
that I always have the same indirect light in all the photos. This way, I can draw on elements from several
slides, even older ones, in order to compose a painting and make connections that I hadn't planned. I started
using digital cameras recently, which has opened up even more possibilities and combinations. I even
photograph streaks of paint and drops, which I often include in the image and paint together with their
shadows, reflections and relief, just like all the other elements. I even take photographs when painting paint.

How do you choose your models?

Based on the simple criterion of ease. I prefer to use whoever I have to hand, as it were, as my model - my
girlfriend, my daughters, their friends, or any woman who offers.
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It was for this same reason of convenience that I used myself as model for many years, which was actually a
mistake that resulted in a certain misunderstanding about my painting. However, I guess that is just part of the
uncertainty that comes with the need to paint. You know the feeling that you want to share but isn't always
certain how to communicate it.

So, you replaced the self-portraits with female models.

Yes, I have been using female models since 1987 almost without exception. 'Use' is the right word, as I don't
paint women, but use them to give the painting a presence. This forces me to paint more softly, more politely,
with a restrained aggression that is less apparent and therefore more implicit. I can't ruin a woman. I love
painting black women because of the blueish highlights of their skin, but it is never a thoughtful choice. A
model is just a pretext for me, an alibi, 'raw material' used as the support for the organisation of a closed
universe, just like the objects, bottles or fruit I paint in the still lifes.

You take all your photographs using natural light?

Yes, these past twenty years. Before, I preferred artificial light, which I felt I mastered better. But natural light
is so much finer and more beautiful - it gives a blue lustre to reliefs and makes shadows much softer.

Yet, you paint by artificial light. Why not paint by daylight, at least during those times when you are awake
during the day?

It's a question of convenience. I need a stable source of light that will always be the same. Besides, I
concentrate much better when cut off from the outside world, in a hermeneutically sealed room where I have
only myself for company. You forget the time that passes and live in a mental universe. What is more, as I
work with photographs, I need an area in my studio of half-shadow in order to preview the models I am
painting. My studio looked like a cinema for ages with my easel in the middle lit by a halogen lamp and, near
my palette, a screen on my left onto which I projected the slides.

You always worked with slides and now, you use digital images. Are you trying to be modern? Do you care
about modern technology or is it a question of convenience again?

Convenience. I don't have to develop my photos any more - I have them within a couple of minutes, which is
practical if I want to add an element to the scenery. Before, I had to look at my slides on a transparent screen
using a retro-projection system. I had a rather complicated piece of furniture built for this purpose, and it took
up a fair amount of space. The images ended up yellowing from all the projection; I could no longer gauge the
colours and had to reinvent them. With the digital images, the colours stay intact, which is really quite
important. What is more, a monitor takes up less space. As a result, my studio is now very 'high tech', a
computer to the right of my easel and the monitor to the left. The painting itself, however, is still done
completely by hand and remains the work of an artisan - fortunately.

You seem to be particularly interested in the precision of your colours, no doubt in the interest of realism. Yet,
in the self-portraits of your early career, the universe of your paintings was pretty unreal. Your figures
developed in a world without a frame, without scenery, engulfed in a nebula with artificial shades.
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Wasn't that a paradox for a painter who claimed to be a realist?

I am not a realist painter, at least not in the sense that you mean. A painting is a fiction, a visual suggestion, not
a plagiarism of reality as we see it. I could say that I am more realist than the so-called 'realist' painters, because
reality isn't limited to one's surroundings and the perception of them. It also encompasses, above all, the reality
of the observer, his psychology and the organic and subjective mechanisms of visual perception, which provide
him with a human, functional image of reality, not an objective rendering. At that time, I was trying to place
my figures in a sort of psychological universe, not in material scenery.

Why did you abandon this 'psychological universe' some time in the mid-1980's?

Because it was a trap. In trying to isolate my figures from any sort of context, I made them unreal and
phantom-like, when I never wanted to paint ghosts.

Your figures' colours were also not terribly realistic.

Between about 1979 and 1982, I reduced my palette to two or three colours: blue, pink and sometimes grey. It
was, so to say, my 'ultraviolet' period. I alternated blue and red, which I modulated with white. I wanted to get
rid of any notion of colour this way and recreate the effect of relief with only two colours, one warm, the other,
cold. This made the image fairly indigestible, but that was what I wanted.

Was the surface of the paintings as smooth as they are now, or was this not important?

My paintings were always smooth. At the time, though, the image was blurred and faded; I worked in much
less detail. The paintings were meant to be looked at from a certain distance, and so I frequently enlarged the
figures, sometimes outrageously; today, they have a more human scale. I had a hybrid technique, much like
watercolour or pastel. I diluted my colours with poppy seed oil in order to be able to spread them more easily,
but I was never able to paint very precisely, because the paint didn't stick well to the canvas and dried slowly.
What was more, it made the paintings look pale. I did, however, paint more quickly, always painting several
canvasses at once, all large-format. I'd finish a painting in a few days, whereas now, it often takes me months to
finish one.

So, you changed technique.

Fortunately. I finished by learning to paint better, having experimented with all the materials. These days, I can
paint very precisely thanks to the right materials, and find it much more agreeable. Painting with oil isn't just
skill; it's like chemistry or cooking. It only becomes easy when one reaches a certain level of mastery, not by
eliminating the criteria of technique. That said, I never had the impression that I really knew how to paint, not
in the past, not now. If you paint, you are simply never satisfied.

In the early paintings of your youth, your technique was, perhaps, less perfect, but your colours were closer to
reality than during your period of self-portraits. Sometimes you even placed your figures in natural
surroundings against a sky blue background, something which later disappeared completely. Why?

Because, over time, I wanted to enclose my subjects in a frame closer to their scale, in a universe that
corresponded to their condition. I didn't want to leave them outside any more, because neither my figures nor
the elements that I assembled were really free. I never painted freedom.
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What do you mean?

I don't contemplate things passively, not in my painting and even less so in my life. I always wanted to paint
things that bothered me, not things I found beautiful.

What bothers you so much?

Everything. Everything that isn't natural, everything that is oppressive - everything that is false, really. The
whole of the constraining, blind context that we have inherited, put in place over the centuries by former
generations. All that reeks of death under its mask of futility, life and order. There are people who can live with
it quite contentedly, but I never could. I don't believe in either society or civilisation: there is no beauty in what
is false.

But there are things that you like, no?

I am caught between a love of the individual and contempt for society. This apparently unsolvable conflict has
been furnishing me with subjects for my paintings my whole life, even for the still lifes and the drawings I
made as a child. At grammar school, I passed my time making ink drawings of figures caught in the whirlwind
of a conflict that had nothing to do with them, yet had taken them hostage. I always gave these drawings
captions explaining what was happening.

Not all your paintings seem to be full of a conflict or drama that you are trying to denounce. What is more,
there is an undeniable search for the aesthetic in your painting. I am thinking in particular of your paintings
since 1990, in which we see women wrapped in draped material, sometimes even in satin…

An image with no sense of the aesthetic doesn't work. The appearance and superficial quality of the painting
should caress the eye so that the gaze stays fixed on the image. The form should be harmonious and humanised.
The models should attract the gaze, at least in their posture - that is the minimum of politeness one can show
towards the viewer. If the image is repulsive, it may be shocking, but it will never be taken in and will
eventually be rejected by the gaze. On the other hand, the meaning of the paintings has nothing to do with
caressing, having become inherent. For example, I never paint smiles - except maybe a few times in the 1970's
- always grotesque laughing, the laugh of madmen, never smiles.

It's true that the surroundings in which you enclose your models aren't terribly welcoming …

I always paint the same dilapidated wall, dirty with the traces of an invisible conflict that is nevertheless always
there. I rather enjoy adding stains and drips, wearing down and messing up a wall that, when I started the
painting, was perfectly clean. These stains aren't there by accident - they are painted in all their detail with their
shadows and reflections. They are very important to me.

Your paintings seem to point to a lasting desire to do good work, where nothing is left to chance. Are you not
afraid that the handcrafted aspect of your paintings will dominate the spirit of the work owing to this extreme
care in execution?

I'm not at all a drudge, but, where something happens by chance, there is no creation, because there is no
control. The precise and 'careful' aspect of the form is part of the spirit of the painting, because the sense that
justifies its creation can only establish itself if the form obeys, down to the tiniest detail, the spirit.

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My painting has no message, but it has a sense, one that is always the same. The smooth texture of the surface,
which is what produces this 'careful' aspect, is supposed to help the gaze penetrate the work, just like the
aesthetic balance you mentioned before. If the surface was rough or uneven, it would be an obstacle to that
penetration, and the viewer's gaze would stop at the surface of the canvas. A painting isn't an object - it's an
image, an optical illusion suggesting the presence of figures and objects in the painting, not on it.

I guess that there are people who have a more liberal notion of painting and don't share your rather radical
view. Nevertheless, I must admit that you are a virtuoso with your brush. How do you produce such a
stubbornly smooth surface, one with no thickness at all, as if the painting had been printed in the canvas and
not applied to it?

People frequently think that I paint with an airbrush. However, if you look closely and look for imperfections,
you will find stray hairs from the brush and traces of brush strokes. Finesse is not a question of precision, but
one of scale. It is a bit like the pixels in digital images - the more there are, the more precise the details appear.
You have to reach a certain level of finesse to transform suggestion into illusion and allow the painting to
function entirely as the image it is meant to be. Considered in terms of its support, the image is flat, and so is
my painting. It becomes smooth because I spread the paint with a dry, soft brush, mixing it on the canvas and
not on my palette. I never paint by touches, always in shades, brushing and spreading the tones in order to
obtain a solid, homogenous film that is entirely flat.

This often makes your paintings look glazed or vitrified. One rarely sees bright colours in your works. Do you
never use pure colours straight from the tube?

Pure colours only exist in theory. In fact, colour as such doesn't exist as part of physical reality. It is produced
by our brains, which convert different wavelengths of light refracted by the surface of objects into colours.
Without matter and without objects, we couldn't perceive colours or differentiate tones. The object, however,
be it yellow or blue, is a volume, an element in relief with a shadow and highlights, depending on the direction
of the light; it is never a single colour, but always in shades and so, therefore, my colours. An orange is never
one colour, one sole shade of orange.

I noticed that you like painting oranges in your still lifes.

So long as I can make them stop being oranges. I often stain them with white or blue paint so that they exist in
a new condition in the world of the painting. A painting is its own world, in which the components are just
pretexts for furnishing a virtual universe. It is this universe that is the subject and raison d'être of the painting,
not the objects or figures represented in it. A painting isn't a novel; it doesn't tell a story. The orange one sees in
my paintings isn't an orange, but an orange-coloured presence with the form and texture of an orange whose
role is to help give a feeling a concrete appearance. The same thing for my models; the paintings are never
portraits, nor are they characters in a story, being rather symbols.

You frequently say that painting is the expression of feeling. Everyone has feelings, but what specific feeling is
it that you are trying to translate, what is it that nourishes your paintings?

What I'm really trying to translate is the priority I give to feelings over culture and knowledge. Feeling is the
internal language of nature, that of heredity and thus, of the whole process of evolution that produced the
individual. If you disavow your feelings under the pressure of various influences, then the entirety of this
internal communication becomes false. How can you trust a language one rejected in the past?

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But if you remain faithful to it, then the terms of this language get stronger over time and demand expression,
communication. That is why I paint.

According to you, feelings are a language. What do you mean by that?

Feelings are the components of a binary language, like that used by computers. Its elementary terms are joy and
suffering, the agreeable and the disagreeable. The directives of nature are formulated on the basis of these
simple terms, as one accepts the agreeable and rejects the disagreeable. But, again as for a computer, if these
terms are falsified or denatured, the system comes to the wrong conclusions and gives bad directives, and one
has to repress certain deceptive feelings in order to limit the damage they cause. Prejudices, which are the most
tenacious because they can't be analysed, are like computer viruses. That is why all culture and everything that
is learned should be taken with a pinch of salt.

You can be cultured and still be true to your feelings, to this internal language that you were discussing...

Culture isn't the danger; believing in it is, giving it the value of truth. Culture is a tendentious rendering of the
products of other people's feelings. You can't adhere to this while staying faithful to one's own feelings.

But there are feelings that we can share.

There are identical feelings, but not shared ones. A feeling is always personal, because it comes from inside; it
can't be made public. On the other hand, identical feelings bring people together and produce communities. The
one thing, in effect, that men have in common is the basis of their origin. The unity of man is sealed by this
unique basis, not by society, which, on the contrary, pushes them apart, because it brings people into opposition
with each other.

What is this basis?

It's the basis of the binary language I was talking about, that of feelings. All alphabets are built on a physical
reality whose differentiations are translated by signs that allow one to formulate messages. For example,
spoken language uses sounds, that is to say, vibrations. Vision, which is also a language, uses light - radiations,
in other words. The alphabet of feelings is built on an intimate attachment to this unique basis, which is 'being',
something the individual senses deep inside him and which everyone thinks of as his own. Yet, it isn't 'being'
that is personal and individual, only the attachment to it. The factors that menace this attachment produce
suffering, while those that reinforce it nourish a sense of happiness. It is in relation to this attachment to 'being'
that all feelings are, more or less, directly modulated. But the idea of a 'human being' is nonsense.

How so?

Because 'being' couldn't be born of some composition or simple organisation of physical elements. The
individual is not a being, but a sort of organic machine that obeys 'being', of which it is an extension, a
manifestation of power at the heart of a partially hostile environment. 'Being' is unique and indivisible, of
dimensionless ubiquity. Only the void, as a universal basis, deserves the qualification of 'being', yet one
qualifies it as 'nothing'. If the void were nothing, we could do without it, but then the universe couldn't exist.
The void is mere interiority, and we are connected to it through our own interiority. But it is no accident that
the reality of the 'void' has been obscured. Man has become the slave of his visual perception and only thinks
that what he sees, as he sees it, is true. If painting exists, it is precisely in order to re-establish the power of
feeling over vision.

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Okay then, back to our oranges. Your oranges are not oranges and your still lifes are not still lifes …

No - or, perhaps, they are as dead as the figures and vice versa. Actually, they are dying.

You said that, even in your still lifes, you referred to a conflict between society and the individual. How?

The objects and fruits that I put together in these paintings become the symbolic components of a micro-society
that partially denatures them. Usually, the elements are squeezed together or well ordered according to a rigid
structure. The necessity of cohesion takes precedence over the elements' natural characteristics, which can, for
example, be smeared with paint to bring them in line with the law of the group. Fruit or bottles lose their
natural sense and normal state. They are hostages of a unity with no sense. Sometimes, they become absurd. At
any rate, they never stay intact and they are never happy.

You speak as if they were alive …

They are dying, cloistered away in their absurd condition.

So, your still lifes are symbols …

If you insist. The problem with figuration is in using an alphabet composed of recognisable objects, or realistic
seeming models, to translate a feeling that has nothing to do with these objects or the model represented. They
are signs, like letters or numbers. The more profound a feeling, the further away it is from references and the
harder it is to give it form. But without form and without a legible, concrete alphabet, it is impossible to
transcribe.

Why does one need to use figurative painting, with all its difficulties, to translate a feeling? There are things
other than realist painting, which you want to be exact and 'photographic' to the extreme, that are capable of
eliciting emotions …

Of course, but it is the only thing that you can deepen indefinitely, at least so long as you resist the temptation
to approximate or make stylistic effects…It is the only thing that can approach the depth of feeling that justifies
the need to paint. Deviations, which are always formal but always doom the essential, can only lead to the
escalation of their excesses. They don't lead to a deepening but rather, to a progressive purification that, bit by
bit, eliminates all links with reality. Inevitably, they end in the death of the soul and the desire to consecrate its
exact opposite. All you have to do is look at the nihilist productions of the avant-gardes…

What do you think of all the movements that have marked the history of art for more than a century now? All
those artists didn't work to destroy art, after all.

No, but they were hostages of a negation. Negation follows the curve of fatality and arises with fashions, which
move away from the individual basis of creativity. In general, it is influences that deviate painters from their
course towards currents that only become important because so many people follow them. 'Artistic' movements
are chain reaction phenomena and have nothing to do with criteria of value. There is no notion of progress in
the history of contemporary art, and there can't be. Movements alternately succeed and oppose each other, like
the blind man seeking his path, because they are group phenomena and not individual manifestations.

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Still, there were great artists associated with these movements.

There were individuals who were more prominent than others, more talented, perhaps more cunning…Their
one fault was that they didn't remain entirely individual and true to themselves. A group is a group of imitators
and followers, not an assembly that conferred in order to agree on the superiority of an identical value. A group
has no feeling; it obeys the fluctuations of context and fashion - that is to say, an ephemeral present that never
stops changing.

Not all painters are necessarily great loners…

I don't mean physical solitude, I mean conceptual solitude, creative solitude. Art is individual in its essence,
because art is the science of feelings, and only the individual can have feelings. You can copy a painting or
imitate a style, but you can never copy a feeling, even through simulation.

The great creations and monumental masterpieces of the past would never have existed without this collective
work; art can't limit itself to the individual dimension.

The great creations of which you speak sought to legitimise the reigning power, whose authority was imposed
by force and constraint and had, therefore, no natural legitimacy. These works served - and still serve, by the
way - to demonstrate the power of the people who commissioned them, which has nothing to do with art. All
those grand monuments were erected to the glory of the state or the reigning authority, or again to utopias that
served the people in power. They aren't personal and authentic works intended to translate their creators'
feelings.

They're still works of art…

For a work to be a work of art, it has to be able to be connected to the person who created it. Creation implies
conception and realisation, not just the one or the other. Conception alone is not creation, nor is the realisation
of someone else's concept. Conception and the ability to realise what one conceives balance each other, so long
as they are personal and limited to the individuality of the creator, who will, logically, only conceive of things
that he thinks he can realise without sacrifice and without too much effort. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort,
because the effort will be all his. For collective works, on the other hand, conception and realisation have been
separated, because those who conceive and plan the work and those who execute it are not the same. You can
think up absolutely any crazy work - pyramids, temples, monumental statues - if someone else, slaves, for that
matter, are going to put it up. That is an open door for all excesses, all those abuses which brought about
civilisation. If it's art, it's art put to the service of its exact opposite - injustice. As the work remains after those
that have created it have disappeared, one only thinks of the grandeur and beauty of the work, not its true cost.

The great painters of the past had students working in their studios, which sometimes resembled factories.
Monumental paintings were the fruit of collective labour. But you would say that they aren't works of art?

But of course they are. At the time, however, painting had a function that it no longer has. It had a role in
society, a practical and public function. Masters had help, they guided their students and taught them methods
and techniques, something that no longer exists today, not even in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, because technique
itself no longer exists. The masters didn't commission the works; they didn't use artists to glorify their power,
as did kings and pharaohs. But, it is true, it was an art of compromise that didn't serve merely to communicate
feelings.
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According to you, then, there is no such thing as a perfect work? Certain old masterpieces nevertheless elicit
admiration and come close to perfection.

A work, a painting, never pretends to be perfect; perfection is an idea, not a reality. It means only 'completed'
and relates to a quality or state that corresponds entirely to its function and raison d'être, something that should
not be surpassed for this very reason, or it will become imperfect. Beyond perfection lies imperfection, that of
utopia, just like that here when perfection isn't achieved. The work only seems perfect to those incapable of
realising it; we can't criticise that which lies beyond our abilities, so we talk about perfection. But the artist is
always unsatisfied and never reaches the perfection he aims for - fortunately, or he would never progress. So,
you see, there is no such thing as a perfect work.

Is it not an act of desperation to want to progress towards an impossible perfection, towards a horizon that
never stops moving further away? What do you expect of painting other than that it protect you? Recognition?
Consecration? Are you ambitious?

For me, success is being able to live every instant according to your feelings, according to the desire of the
moment: eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are sleepy, paint because you feel like it, avoid
clashes…So, it is being able to cross the jungle without getting hurt, not climbing trees to reach the top. You
always ends up having to come back down, you know…

The success of your paintings must have made you climb up a few rungs, willingly or unwillingly …

I don't know if I have really been successful. When you face a public, even through your paintings, you get
both clapped and booed. You are both flattered and bruised, sometimes by the same person, particularly if he is
an art dealer. But the end of painting is not the painting itself. Its end lies in its causality, the ability to preserve
freedom of thought and be able to live according to that thought. What is more, when a child begins drawing,
he is beginning to think and spontaneously analyse his relations with his surroundings, as well as look at
realities from a critical point of view. I never have been able to separate painting from the mental activity that
runs parallel to it and, I believe, justifies it.

You have said frequently that painting was philosophy in action.

That's why I don't like talking about painting. As soon as someone wants to make me talk about my painting, I
turn the conversation towards what I'm thinking about. You really ought to have known better…Towards ideas
that don't appear connected with my paintings but for me are intimately connected. Asking a painter to talk
about his painting is like asking a voyager to talk about his means of transport, his car, mechanical things,
rather than the goal of his voyage.

It is a voyage full of adventure…

It is a voyage against the flow. Each step becomes an adventure, because you find yourself forced to clear a
path in the flow of a mass advancing backwards, a mass formed of people following each other. It is therefore
pointless to speak of the means of travel with those that haven't understood the meaning.

And to those that have understood the meaning…

Those people don't ask questions about technique. They understand that it is the difficulty of progression
against the flow that obliges you to find technical solutions and that these solutions only suit the sense that
justified them in the first place.
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It is pointless to want to learn the technique of a painter if you are going to try to adapt it to a backwards
journey. People make artists talk so that they will reveal their secrets, because they think that the artist has
found a novel way of advancing more easily in society, in the direction everyone finished by taking when, in
fact, his perspective is different. You can't adapt an individual perspective, that of the artist, to a general
perspective that is both false and utopian.

Why is the general perspective false?

Because there is no general perspective. That's why it is the utopian perspective, one of pretence and lies.

The whole world isn't living an illusion. There are also people who are indifferent to others' utopias…

Utopia comes from society, and society uses it as an alibi to legitimate a clockwork mechanism that no one can
stop. The individual doesn't adhere to utopia, but lives in utopia to the extent that he lives in society. Really, the
individual doesn't believe in anything; he has shrunk his vision to the limits of his every-day normality. So long
as he doesn't try to understand, he can act as if he has understood everything and get by quite well.

Why then do we try to understand mysteries that are beyond us?

The mysteries you are talking about aren't around us, they're deep inside us. So long as we hold on to a positive
notion of progress, civilisation and society, we can be certain that we'll never understand anything, not about
evolution, not about realities, not about original factors. Utopia obliges us to reason backwards.

And the progress of science and technology…You use photography - you should be happy that you were able to
replace your slides with digital images, which appear to be much more convenient.

Scientific progress is a fatality, not a proof of success. Its basis lies in the principle of the irreversibility of
memory, not in reason. You could say that intelligence progresses every minute, since everyone's memory is
being constantly enriched with new information throughout his life, yet, at the same time, he is declining
towards senility and death. If you don't put memory in order, you can't understand anything, despite the
accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge doesn't replace reason. Progress isn't nourished by an ideal, but by the
competition between people. Above all, it stems from the multiplication of problems that need new solutions
every time, problems that always outpace the solutions. But people only ever holds on to these solutions, and so
they talk of progress …

Are you interested in science?

Not any more. What interests me is reasoning. I used to study a lot in the past and bought all sorts of works on
astrophysics, nuclear physics, gravimetry, molecular structures…in short, on anything which had any
connection with my thoughts. That was nearly twenty-five years ago now…But science doesn't exist to explain
realities; it exists to exploit them, to loot and plagiarise nature without understanding it. It explains the how, but
never the why, or, when it pretends to explain that, it inevitably leads to nonsense. The paradox of science is
that, as a result of all the calculations and discoveries, it finishes by providing all the data necessary for
demonstrating the illusion on which materialism is founded. But science can't attack it own basis.

Yet, there are undeniable scientific truths …

They are limited to mere observations. Interpretations are always guided by an implicit fashion. The greatest
refutation of what people call scientific truth is man himself.
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Science is horrified by the truth and obscures all the factors that don't agree with the utopia that provides the
legitimacy of its research. I already deduced twenty-five years ago that the only exact science was painting,
inasmuch as it requires personal reasoning without prejudice. The only truth is that on which life is founded.
You can only reach it through introspection, not by cutting up laboratory mice.

You said that you bought scientific works once upon a time. I thought you never read any books …

It has been decades since I last read a book, but if a specific thing interests me, I will study it. For example, I
frequently look up words in the dictionary. I also frequently look things up in the etymological dictionary that,
in fact, sits on a shelf under my palette. On the other hand, I am completely uninterested in all forms of
literature.

Even that dealing with painting?

Especially that type. I haven't bought any art books for nearly forty years. Once in a while, I'll look at a book or
catalogue, but I don't read the texts. Even when I was a teenager, I only looked at the images and reproductions.
Visual memory is much stronger than the memory for words. I find interpretations and explanations
unnecessary, dangerous, even. One can say all sorts of rubbish with words.

In your words, in your stubborn search for an impalpable truth, as in your painting, you seem to want to reveal
the horror of the world. Your words seem pretty pessimistic…

I am an optimist, quite the opposite of the desperate man. If I were desperate, I wouldn't have the strength and
distance needed to paint. You can't be creative if you are a pessimist - that doesn't make sense. But illusion and
lies don't have a future, because the truth always catches up with them. The truth is deep inside the individual,
while lies and illusion are at the base of society. I am pessimistic for society because I am optimistic for the
individual.

We all live in society, you as well as me. Without society, there would be no art, no painting…

I live with society, but not in it, because I am not associated. To be part of society, you have to be associated
with the general activity that gives it cohesion. Society is not a spontaneous community that could dissolve
itself. It is a sort of synthetic individuality taken onto the collective level, indivisible, just like the human body.
It plagiarises the principle of the human organism, as, indeed, does everything that men do, to the extent that,
unlike the individual, society is devoid of reason, which it needs to replace with utopia.

Society is comprised of individuals and thus, individualities - and also artists…

Society doesn't create artists, it just tries to appropriate them - sometimes, unfortunately, successfully. Art is
always individual in essence. If, in an oppressive society, there are lots of artists, it's because there are lots of
individuals trying to defend themselves through personal expression, through creation intended to affirm their
independent spirits. Art is not the product of society, but a reaction against society, an antibody, the natural
defence of the individual against society. But you are right: without society, art wouldn't exist, because it would
have no reason to exist.

Not all societies are oppressive. There are people who feel fine in society and even find a certain fulfilment
there.

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That's precisely what society is for. When the species is in decline, its components structure themselves into a
society to help compensate for individual deficiencies. Reproduction and associations find their raison d'être in
scarcity. Social life makes us forget that we are all lost. However, if you are honest with yourself and dare think
intimately and objectively, then you have to admit the most elementary of truths, which is everyone's ignorance
of the causality and finality of life, something, however, everyone wants to defend. Society mocks this
ignorance but, at the same time, condemns people to a condition of pretence that they end up not even noticing
after a while.

Yet, there are intelligent, sincere people who find good things in society…

Society has nothing good in it, except for those who profit from the abilities of others. It is produced by human
cowardice. The mental comfort it gives comes at the price of submission. In a society, there are only
subordinates. People obey their leaders, who in their turn obey the mass of society as a whole, of which they
are also part. Nobody governs society, except fatality. It is the centre of gravity of its entirety that directs its
evolution, not those in the hierarchy. Society obeys the passive law of inertia, like all material elements. It
drags its components down towards the point of neutrality where all illusions converge. The more society
progresses, the more the individual regresses, even though one has the impression of progressing with society.
The paradox of society is that of matter: it evolves to the detriment of its own components. We should never
have played with fire, that poison at the origin of all illusions…that fruit of the solar tree hovering over the
centre of our ex-paradise.

We've come a long way from painting…

For me, this is painting. Painting is first and foremost a mental attitude. Technique comes later and builds up
progressively from that position one is seeking to preserve. It provides the means of being able to resist being
swept away by a collective movement that no one controls. I want to snub society. Actually, society snubs my
painting; it only esteems painting that resembles it and aligns itself with the direction in which it is already
going.

What sort of painting are you talking about?

The kind that comes from nihilist movements and their spin-offs. It's a mistake to think that the cultural
derision of official art is a load of rubbish. The art of all periods anticipates the evolution and indicates the
point to which it is moving. Art, be it good or bad, has always been premonitory. People say that art resembles
its time, but that's not true - it resembles the time that follows. As for my painting, I don't want it to resemble
any time, past, present, or future. I just want it to resemble my thoughts.

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