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I GEORGES ROUSSE: ARCHITECTURE AS REVELATION
By Régis DURAND, Art critic, former director of Jeu de paume, Paris
While in the twenty-odd years of its existence the work of Georges Rousse has certainly
evolved quite considerably, it has always done so gradually, within a working protocol that
has itself remained constant: one, and only one medium, photography; one kind of site,
buildings that are either derelict or awaiting renovation, in which the artist intervenes by
means of drawing or painting; a photograph showing how this intervention, which was itself
conceived with regard to the specific perspective of the camera, comments on or transforms
the existing architecture.
From the human figure to the laying bare of structures
I don't know why it was exactly that Georges Rousse started working in abandoned buildings
in the 1970s. No doubt, as he has himself hinted, it was simply because they were there,
available as temporary, nomadic studios. And no doubt too because they held (and continue
to hold) a certain fascination for him. Some have spoken of a penchant for (actual or
potential) ruins. But, in the first works especially, the buildings are practically invisible as such
while, in the more recent pieces, although the architecture of the site is much more to the
fore, the emphasis is never on the ruin aspect but, to the contrary, on the parts of the
structure that remain and the fact of their integrity. Obviously, one could assume that Rousse
is attracted to the solitude and emptiness of these spaces, but this does not take us very far
in understanding his work.
It might be more useful to attend to the hypothesis put forward by Rousse himself, that in
these condemned spaces which have lost their original function there remains, in spite of it
all, and if we know how to look, some spark of life, a vestigial "genius loci" or magic of place.
As for what this "magic" consists of, that is another matter. Rousse has spoken at various
moments of a spiritual, almost religious type of experience, as if these places afforded him
the revelation of another level of reality, a superior harmony of which the figures he paints on
the walls are somehow a representation, or at least a medium, an intermediary (more on this
later). In this undefined, vaguely Platonic experience we can imagine the artist in his "cave"
trying to give form not to what he sees reflected on the wall (nothing is ever granted in this
way, except in Plato's myth), but to a belief, a desire, an aspiration - however vague.
As we know, this decision to work in buildings earmarked for demolition and to pay
particular attention to matters of structure and light is not without precedent in the recent
history of art. The work done by Gordon Matta-Clark in the 1960s and '70s naturally comes to
mind, particularly when considering those newer works by Rousse in which he cuts boldly
through the structure (Argentan, 1997 for example). In the end though, as with other possible
comparisons, the differences are more striking than the similarities. Matta-Clark carried out at
real scale what we might call a "photographic" operation, in that he "framed" or, rather,
"reframed" a part of the building by making a cut into it so as to open it to the light and reveal
its structure. He offered a spectacular demonstration of the fact that art was now intimately
bound up with what, in a famous text published in 1977, Rosalind Krauss called "the
photographic" - not photography as a medium, but the theoretical and critical principle that it
manifests, by bringing to the fore such notions as indexicality, trace, reproducibility and
archive. (1)
In a sense, Rousse has gone about things the other way round. The work he does in
these studio-sites is intended solely for the camera but is photographic in appearance only.
For the idea is not to use photography to capture the trace of an ephemeral intervention, as
was the case with the earthworks of the 1960s and '70s, and even more so in performance
art. These were essentially time-based works that entrusted photography with the task of
capturing a - sometimes intense - bodily and spatial experience. Rousse seems to suggest
a different use of time, as if photography were being asked to reveal something less
"temporal," something that has less to do with the lived experience of time and is more
symbolic or spiritual. Still, the fact that all his pieces are given a title stating their location
followed by a year would seem to indicate that these spatio-temporal coordinates are more
important than may at first appear.
There are a good number of paradoxes here. The first (which applies right through to his
current work) concerns the elision of the sometimes considerable physical work that goes
into Rousse's photographs (work which remained very much in evidence with earthworks or
performances). Another paradox, which is more specific to the earlier pieces, prompts us to
ask why the artist chose these empty and generally obscure places to do this photographic
work, especially since what was being photographed was not something that existed in this
particular setting, but the artist's own wall paintings.
Originally, then, Rousse painted large figures on walls, using the features of the setting, of
the architecture (stairways, recesses) and its accessible surfaces rather as we like to imagine
prehistoric artists did in their caves. The use of the human figure in these places now
emptied of human activity inevitably acquired a symbolic value, as if intended to signify that
these spaces still held some spark of life - thoughts, beliefs, a promise.
Alone in the near-darkness, the artist thus projected his own thoughts, reminiscences or
dreams onto these empty surfaces. Rousse has spoken on several occasions about the
diffuse religiosity attaching to such an experience, referring in particular to the relation
between paintings in churches and the consecrated space in which they are set and
indicating that he was trying to achieve something similar. And even if his drawings have
become increasingly abstract, his constructions more geometrical, it is important to bear in
mind this very strong link between painting and the religious dimension, in the very general
and unspecific sense of that term, that exists within a given space.
Whatever else, the kind of painting practised by Rousse when he started out was more
than a way of reappropriating the human figure. It was a way of working on space, of
organising and structuring it. Construction is a key term here, one I shall come back to later.
But it is already clear that, right from the beginning, he used photography as a tool for finetuning
(for "focusing") a reality that was almost entirely his own construction - a reality that
was essentially mental and spiritual but was conveyed through specific protocols and
representations. The photograph thus became a problematic analogue of the picture plane,
of the pictorial surface. However, instead of receiving just the represented form, it
accommodated and revealed various aspects of the space as a whole, as a structure,
simultaneously revealing and distancing the act of painting. Rousse became interested very
early on in certain strategic elements of a place's architecture, such as the stairway, and
more generally everything related to its openings and places of passage (I will deal with this
point at greater length in relation to the question of the embrasure).
Working with the camera
Georges Rousse has often spoken of the pleasure he takes in physically getting to grips
with the spaces he works in. For he does not just draw or paint; he knocks down or cuts
through partitions, clears out rubble and, more recently, has built his own structures within
the work space. Still, the end purpose of these operations is nonetheless to take a
photograph. Everything that goes before is simply preparation. Everything is carefully
calculated so as to produce a particular kind of illusion, in that it is determined by what the
camera lens will capture and render. It is constructed, then, for the camera, in dialogue with
it, you might say. But for all that the result is not a "trap for the gaze," not a real optical
illusion. For if the photograph at the end reproduces the visual effect composed by the artist,
it also captures something of the general setting - the space, the architecture, the materials -
and thus allows us to realise that we are looking at an illusion, a construction, designed not to
deceive the viewer but to offer a complex reading of the space.
All of the artist's interventions (demolition, alteration, construction, drawing, painting) are
meticulously worked out in preparatory drawings. A transparency placed on the ground glass
of the camera is used to guide the projection of the drawing onto the space. A back-and-forth
process of adjustment and verification gives form to what the camera will view and record
from a specific point in space and in accordance with the chosen parameters (lens, light, film
sensitivity). In this regard Rousse's work might bring to mind that of Felice Varini, say, who
proceeds in a similar manner when tracing wall markings which, when seen from a particular
position, seem to come together to form a continuous line or recognisable shape. The big
difference is that the kind of anamorphosis invented by Rousse is intended only for the lens,
and not for an observer in the actual space. And were this observer to have access to
Rousse's "studio", they would often find it difficult to make out the form ultimately captured by
the camera. It is true that this site-specific work does leave traces (even if these are usually
ephemeral), but they only become coherent and meaningful through the mediation of
photography. In this sense, Rousse is perhaps closer to Thomas Demand, who makes
cardboard and paper models of architectural details in his studio around the viewpoint of a
camera that has been set up beforehand. For both these artists, the point is not to trick the
viewer or to get them to crack a little visual enigma, but to create a pseudo-illusion that offers
a glimpse of how it was made and its context (both Demand and Rousse leave the signs of
making deliberately visible) so as to play on several levels of perception. This is more a case
of metamorphosis (sometimes a double one) than of anamorphosis.
Rousse's use of photography is thus relatively simple and direct. He is not out to create
anamorphoses or complex distortions, even of a critical variety, as in Jan Dibbets'
"corrections of perspective". As in the work of John Hilliard, but with a very different purpose,
the point is more to take into account the various parameters of photographic perspective.
For example, in his photographs depth of field and the tiering of planes in space, the feeling
of depth that this creates, enters into tension with the flattening, the compression on a single
plane that reveals the constructed motif; or again, with the angle of vision (the lens's "width" -
as opposed to depth - of field) that determines how much of the space we can see and
provides the viewer with the elements required to make a global reading of the original space
and of the transformations that it has undergone. In this way, Rousse distinguishes three
zones whose coexistence determines the perceptual and critical field of his photographs:
circle, frame and field. (2)
The circle, roughly speaking, is the central area of the work, that is to say, the visual
translation of the transformation of the space. This zone may be materialised by a
geometrical figure or a patch of colour.
The frame includes that which surrounds this central zone, the part of the real space
included in the visual field, which dialectically allows us to perceive the reality of the site,
transformations aside. This, you might say, is the theatre of operations in which viewers can
immerse themselves and, rather as in Schwitters' Merzbau, find themselves in an
environment that is at once architecture, sculpture, drawing and photography.
As for the field, it is defined by the choice of camera and lens. In Rousse's case this is a
wide-angle lens that slightly foreshortens and deforms the perspective, bringing a touch of
unreality to our perception of the relative positions in space.
What these different aspects make very clear is a powerful tension between revelation
and disappearance, which places the viewer at the heart of highly divergent, processes.
However, there is nothing problematic about this experience, for these works exude a kind of
general serenity, a composed, meditative atmosphere. One is aware of the operations that
have been performed, of the considerable analytic energy invested. And, at the same time,
these photographs are peaceful, pensive, and invite us to enter another dimension.
From drawing to architecture
The concern with light and architecture is a constant in Rousse's work. Neither drawing nor
painting is an end in itself. On the contrary, what emerges from his various spatial
interventions is the tension between materialisation and dematerialisation. To bring out a part
of the space by highlighting it with paint or chalk is in a way to dematerialise it, to make it a
separate entity inscribed within a geometrical figure while the rest of the space remains
intact. Indeed, Rousse speaks in terms of the theatricalisation of space in the sense that the
section he thus distinguishes becomes a complex spectacle, with its layering of forms and
colours and with the previously described condensation of different zones in which some
enigmatic scene seems to be playing itself out.
This "scene" consists first of all in the laying bare of the structure of the working space.
Because structure is the essence of architecture, the effect of laying it bare is indeed
spectacular and theatrical: something is revealed, appearances are erased, making visible
what is essential. This is done, as we have seen, by delimiting a zone in which the different
"layers" that dissimulate the structure are withdrawn, demolished or brutally cut into. There is
certain violence in this action, but it would be a mistake to see it as the sign of a
confrontational or conquering stance. We are a long way here from the spectacular
interventions of the earthworks of the 1960s, with their logistical top-heaviness and theories
of displacement. With Rousse, the result puts the underlying physical labour in the
background, suggesting instead a movement beyond appearances, towards a different order.
Still, we should no doubt be careful not to over-insist on the religious component of such a
process, even if the symbolic and spiritual dimension is strongly present.
At the same time as this process of a "deconstructive" type (demolishing, cutting, laying
bare) there also occurs a form of reconstruction (revealing or building new forms). For this,
Rousse uses light and painting, but also, and increasingly, autonomous constructions.
In 1986-1987 Rousse produced a series of works entitled Embrasures. These show how
an opening (a door, a window or a simple, loophole-like slit), a simple light source, can reveal
the nature of an entire space. In works of this type the space is covered with an almost
monochrome-type painting, without any lines or figures. (3) The term "embrasure" refers to
the empty space between the surfaces of a wall and, by extension, to the opening made in
the wall for a window or door. Of military origin (it designated the space made in the ramparts
to install a cannon), it refers more to the structure itself than to the opening onto the exterior,
or than to the border between exterior and interior (in which it differs from the notion of the
threshold, for example). Embrasures draw our attention to what the light must pass through
on its way in, they reveal the path taken by light and, consequently, the way in which it will be
diffused in the interior space. For Rousse this is a way of attending to the question of the
relation between exterior and interior, a concern which, contrary to what we might gather
from a quick, "claustrophiliac" reading, is by no means absent from his work. Indeed, like
architects, he has always been interested in the way natural light reaches into the heart of
interior spaces. More recently, though, it is as if the flow of light has been reversed. Where
previously the light came from the exterior to spread through and reveal the interior structure,
the newer works open up towards the exterior: the interior space becomes a kind of camera
obscura which makes it possible to capture an image of the exterior world through the
opening (the embrasure). (This is the case in particular with some of the works made in
Japan, such as Miyota, 1999).
Now that it no longer serves to represent figures, painting functions essentially as a
revealing agent, something that sublimates the light (this is particularly obvious in t he
Embrasures series).
However, its function is continuously evolving. Rousse himself has described the
differentiated system constituted by line (drawing and hatching), colour and ground (the
colour black). The drawing or hatching determine the outlines or forms, which often take on a
spectral, somewhat unreal quality in an environment where, in contrast to the early figures,
these floating forms are no longer at the centre of the painting, since it is now light, colour
and architecture that play the main roles.
As for colour, it has considerable powers, including the one of making apparent a virtual,
fictional space that superimposes itself on the real space. However, it must be noted that this
virtual space (the usually geometrical "form" that floats in the space - a circle, cone,
checkerboard, etc.) does not strictly speaking constitute a trompe l'oeil. The aim is not to
entertain or deceive, but to make something appear, in the tension between the constructed
space and the real space. The colour black functions here as the regulator of this tension. It
hides things, thus giving primacy to the artist's intervention, but at the same time it allows us
to see enough of the real space for this not to be a total illusion.
The artist's growing interest in structure and architecture is reflected in particular in the
constructions that recently started to appear in his works. These strange assemblies of
planes and volumes in wood are in some ways redolent of the Merzbau, insofar as they
evoke a rather uninhabitable-looking space, something that suggests a dwelling but in
compressed form, folded in on itself according to rules that we cannot figure out. It is as if
some of the optical and spatial effects obtained by the transformations wrought by the artist
were now being transposed into an autonomous volume. Rousse, indeed, refers to them as
demeures, dwellings. This signifies that they can serve as a receptacle for other signs (colour
and, recently, photographs of the building's external structure, as in the works made in Clichy
in the autumn of 1999). But if they are described as dwellings, it is also because they can be
inhabited. The definition of space here arises from the way the artist uses it, that is to say, as
his place of work, his studio, determined by his comings and goings between the part of the
real space that he is intervening on, and the camera towards which he constantly refers in
order ensure the intervention's conformity to his plans. While the space thus constructed may
be materialised by a wooden structure (in the recent works) or by a painted area or "patch" (a
work like Milano, 1986-87, clearly shows the analogy and filiation between the two), it is
above all virtual, defined by a process. Rousse belongs to a long tradition, which sees
architecture as the embodiment of forms of thought more than as a set of functional material
realisations.
This "constructed space" thus has a dual function: on the one hand, it serves to analyse
and, by contrast, reveal the real (interior or exterior) space; on the other, it exists as a quasiautonomous
space in which something of a distinct kind occurs.
What this is varies from one work to another. Sometimes the constructed space functions
as a kind of vehicle to lead our attention towards another level of consciousness. The
dilapidated real space is requalified and redefined, and it as if the emerging geometrical
figure, the patch of colour or the constructed space enabled perception to attain a degree of
concentration capable of going beyond appearances to a different order.
At other times the experience is more indirect and, although analogous, needs to be
described differently (this is the case, for example, with the remarkable works done in San
Diego and exhibited there in 1999 at the Museum of Photographic Arts. One has the feeling
that the old order of things (appearances) is in some sense lightened, made almost
transparent, and that another reality is thus able to come through, a more harmonious one,
evoked by a few geometrical figures that, although simple, go on resonating in the mind.
The possible spiritualist or even religious interpretations of these processes do not
concern us here. We can simply note that in a way Rousse reactualises the close link
between philosophy and architecture in Western thought.
Since its origins no doubt, architecture has, as a symbolic art, always been linked to
funerary rites and death, and Rousse's early decision to use derelict interior spaces should
be analysed in this light. At the same time, though, it is also an art of beginnings, the
"ultimate beginning", that which opens, paves the way.(4) In this regard, Rousse's recent
opening towards the exterior, with the synthetic reconstruction of the building which this
enables, shows that he has have moved on to a more peaceful, less dramatic conception of
architecture, at the same time as it manifests a new energy.
Notes
1- "Notes On the Index", Part 1 and Part 2, The Originality of the Avant-Garde And Other
Modernist Myths, (Cambridge: The M.I.T Press, 1988 (1977)).
2- cf. in particular, Gilbert Perlein, "Entretien avec Georges Rousse", Georges Rousse (cat.),
30 May-6 September, 1998, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Nice.
3- An analogous principle can be found in the works from 1995, especially the ones made in
Kobe. Here the dominant colour is not red but deep blue.
4- For a historical study of the relation between architecture and philosophy, see Daniel
Payot, Le philosophe et l'architecte-Sur quelques déterminations philosophiques de l'idée
d'architecture, (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982). The analysis is introduced and strongly
coloured by Hegel's interpretation, as exemplified in this quotation from the Lectures on
Aesthetics: "Architecture as yet does no more than pave the way to a reality worthy of God,
and performs its duties towards Him by working on objective nature and striving to rescue it
from the undergrowth of the finite and the deformities of the accidental. It prepares the way
that must lead towards Him, it builds temples to Him, it creates space for Him, clears the
ground, elaborates, to put them at His service, the external materials." (p.24)
published in
Georges Rousse, 1981-2000, Genève, Bärtschi-Salomon Éditions, 2000
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