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PARTISAN REVIEW
Each of my paintings starts where the last one stopped. I manipulate
again the same clements; I try to carry them to a point where they em–
brace more reality, where they develop more energy, where they mean
more and show more. I began abstract painting with very simple geo–
metric shapes. From one work to another I developed these primitive
shapes into more complex ones. The more complex a form, the more
possibilities it offers for association with other forms. I have composed
my basic forms together in every order, thus building elements of different
character, some almost mechanical, some almost organic. These elements
I have opposed to each other in all the significant ways that I could find;
and I have also combined them together thus forming richer figures.
Those appear in my large compositions like individuals endowed with
a certain plastic activity.
Thus each of my pictures offers a range of forms varying from the
simple to the complex through clear steps.
To evolve from one painting to another is for me to vary the com–
bination of forms again for producing elements; of elements to produce
individuals; of individuals to produce new compositions.
Thus arc born new agglomerations of forms, new dispositions, new
rhythms, new movements, new plastic activities that in turn propose
new forms.
A systematic variation of every part and every aspect of my picture
stimulates my imagination toward all sorts of oppositions. By opposition
to elements well set down, some are up, in full space,-ftying above, so
· to speak. By opposition to flat surfaces some are curved, others built into
complete volumes.
I give you here the simplest aspect of my process. But these different
figures and oppositions derive also from concepts that I could not ex–
press here without lengthy explanations and from feelings that cannot
be divided into sentences.
Painting is for me a language where the meaning is a potentiality of
the words that cannot be separated from them. Here the words are the
forms. Each form is built up with other forms; each element is built up
with other elements. Every step of the process of construction is carefully
organized. Yet the final composition amountl> to a dominating "sign"
that surprises me. The meaning of the picture results from the particular
action of the forms assembled in this sign. It could not have been pre–
dicted.
Painting constitutes for me a complex union between plastic ex–
perience that can be conducted with logic and method, and sensitive
manipulations of the forms that can only be cultivated as a passion,
lyrically.
It is also an activity, a game where I permanently transform the
rules; and also a contemplation.
It is impure inasmuch as it associates factors from-different origins.
It tends toward purity in trying to stabilize those factors
in
a new
unity.
