Bernar Venet The Paradox of Coherence 6-37 Summary Art Selection 38-97 Early Wall Reliefs 39-45 Recent Wall Reliefs: GRIBS 46-63 Paintings: Saturations and Shaped Canvases 64-97

Curriculum Vitae 98-110

Acknowledgements 111

3 Portrait of Bernar Venet, 2011

4 5 Artistic production can only result from curious, open thought. It functions as a system whose richness consists of The Paradox of Coherence accepting, at one and the same time, the principles of harmony and conflict. It is the competition between those two elements or givens that creates a whole; and thus the principle of anti-organization becomes a factor in the development, the indispensable dynamism of the creative process. Bernar Venet, 1976 1

Bernar Venet has earned world fame as a sculptor of monumental art, but he began as a painter. Today he makes both paintings and sculptures which have their deep roots in an analytic program he began as a very young artist determined to escape the existing models and to formulate a radical art based on geometric theorems and the graphic imagery of mathematical formulas. As an inquisitive teenager he frequented the record store of the legen- dary “Ben”, the Fluxus artist Ben Vautier who drove around in a bus covered with anti art graffiti slogans and was a reference point for the international avant-garde.

Through Ben, the precocious Venet met the Fluxus artists George Maciunas, Robert Filliou and George Brecht whose work he appreciated but found too close to Dada. Ben also introduced him to the group of avant-garde artists like Arman, César, Yves Klein and the German “Zero” group who were challenging the high modernist ab- straction practiced in Paris. Although the assemblage artists Pierre Restany promoted as the Nouveaux réalistes became his friends, Venet’s natural inclination was to align himself with the more austere and intellectual mono- chrome artists, rather than with the assemblage aesthetic of the Nouveaux réalistes.

Ben remembered Venet as a young soldier already experimenting with radical art. (Venet was drafted in 1961, sent to Tarascon and later, as the war was winding down, to Algeria). During a furlough from the army he visited Ben, announcing he was the fastest painter in the world. “I take five sheets of paper, lay them down side by side on the floor, take a bottle of ink and spatter all five in a tenth of a second with a single sweep of my arm. That makes two one hundredths of a second for each one. Nobody’s faster than I am!” 2.

The spontaneous execution of these paintings could be considered a performance and indeed Venet became increasingly interested in actions documented by photography. In 1961 he started working with trash, poor mate- rials that anticipated arte povera, rescued from garbage cans. The “trash” paintings, which recorded not an image but a process, were made by spilling paint on the cardboard panels allowing gravity to determine the direction and form of the image.

1 Bernar Venet remarks, “Published for the first time in the catalogue of my exhibition at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art during the fall of 1976, this text is a virtual manifesto, announcing my return to artistic activity and the necessity of being in a permanent and rigorous state of questioning.” Lawrence Alloway and Thierry Kuntzel. Bernar Venet, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California, USA, 1976. 2 Ben tells this anecdote in the 1977 catalogue on the Ecole de Nice by Ben Vautier, Maurice Eschapasse, Nathalie Brunet, Musée national d’art moderne, CNAC Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, 1977.

7 Bernar Venet in his studio on rue Parolière, Scraps [Déchets] 1961 Représentation graphique Equations 1966-7 Nice, 1965 Industrial paint on cardboard de la fonction y = -x²/4 1966 Acrylic on canvas Exhibition: Kunsthalle Mücsarnok, Budapest, Hungary, 2012 Acrylic on canvas Exhibition: Kunsthalle Mücsarnok, Budapest, Hungary, 2012 146 x 121 cm Collection: Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

A committed experimenter, Venet had already rejected the idea that art transformed matter or that it depended on cowboy suggested freedom and adventure. Eventually he would find both in his own nonconformity. But first he the relationship of shapes to one another. Once again emphasizing process over image, in 1963, in the first work would need to reconcile the two opposing elements of his personality: intellectual introspection and physical ac- he made as a professional artist, Venet claimed as a sculpture a heap of charcoal whose form changed every time tion often expressed in a love of speed and spontaneity fighting against the periods of concentration and analysis it was dumped on the floor and exhibited. Both the specificity as well as the informal unpremeditated organization during which his premises are worked out. of the material predict the deconstructed elements of arte povera as well as post-minimalist anti-form. Recent investigations have found that the most highly creative and original artists suffer from various childhood ill- The 1963 Heap of Coal was intentionally inexpressive. In the tar paintings of the early Sixties, Venet dispensed nesses and traumas that take them away from normal physical activities and provoke episodes of depression dur- with color and texture. He used tar as a medium because it was free and available but also to avoid oil paint, ing which mental activity supplants the normal physical outlets of children and adolescents 4. Bernar Venet was no which is expressive of the hand of the artist. He termed the built up layers of tar painted on cardboard “industrial exception. As a child he suffered from debilitating asthma attacks that kept him out of school and indoors with time paintings” because of their standardized surfaces, which nevertheless do not look mechanical, geometric or pro- to think, read and reflect. Like Jasper Johns he is an auto-didact with no university education who attended a small grammatic. Thus even at the outset of his career, paradox and a sense of contradiction characterizes Venet’s art. art school only briefly. What he learned he taught himself in his quest for self-education motivated by a voracious intellectual curiosity. This effacement of his own hand is typical of all of Venet’s works from the beginning until the present. It was a choice made not because he lacked technical facility but rather to remove himself from his work. The Constructiv- Before he could move forward, however, Venet had to resolve an existential crisis that caused him to think of the art ists were the first to wish to create impersonal art that effaced the personality and emotions of the artists in favor of the past as a prison from which he had to be freed. In 1959 he produced a series of small paintings that he ex- of universality and generalization. Yet we know a lot about the lives of these Russian and Eastern European artists hibited in Saint-Auban before leaving for the army. In Life is a Furlough from Death, 1959 a tiny figure inspired by the who dedicated themselves to geometry and strict theories that inspired Mondrian and later non-objective artists. graphic symbols of Paul Klee enclosed in a square within a receding square looks as lost as a character in a Beckett But none managed to so completely efface their own personalities as totally as Bernar Venet, who thoroughly play. The work was painted in Nice while Venet was working as stage designer at the opera. At the time he was fas- erased his feelings and private life from his work to the extent that critics and historians have been turned into cinated by the mystery of symbols painted works titled Tomb, Life, Identity and Christ on the Cross… Given his future archeologists in order to reconstruct his evolution as an artist. development one can imagine that this period of late adolescence coincided with an existential crisis of faith. He had symbolically painted himself into a corner, Sartre’s Huit clos from which he had to find an exit in order to survive. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST THE SEARCH FOR ZERO DEGREE ART Creation is first and foremost a historic fact. This does not mean it should be understood as a simple mechanical relationship between cause and effect, for artistic creation is a function of social milieu, personal biography, the I reject all personal emotion translated onto canvas; we live in an age where industry has taken over… I think eve- subjective life of the artist, technical and economic resources, and many other things. rything can be reduced to graphs, which have no place for spirit and emotion. Development can only come about Bernar Venet, 1975 3 through logic: this is why I have taken my art in the direction of logic, which relies a great deal on discipline. Bernar Venet, 1967 5 Bernar Venet was born during World War II in Saint-Auban, a provincial manufacturing town in the northern alpine region of Provence. He was a very precocious child who copied Rembrandt drawings with such obvious artistic In his influential essay The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes continued his description of what he termed the talent that he was invited to exhibit his first oil paintings in the Salon de Peinture de Péchiney in Paris when he was “degree zero of literature”. This degree zero would mean a new beginning of a neutral art of surface free of emotional eleven years old. The youngest of four boys, Bernar was drawn not to science like his chemist father, who died content and distanced from its creator. This was the course Venet decided to pursue in redefining painting as an when he was fourteen, or engineering like his brother but to art, an interest his mother encouraged. intellectual activity. Today, Venet is world famous for his immense gravity defying steel structures that challenge the scale of architecture. Less known but essential to the full trajectory of his thinking are his paintings whose images Venet was a quiet intellectual bespectacled boy, by French standards very skinny and very tall. He dreamed of are taken from mathematical formulas. being a cowboy in America named “Jimmy”, possibly because the image of James Stewart as the gentle lone 4 Schildkraut, et.al. Miró and Spirituality. Wylie, New York, USA, 1992. 3 Originally released as “A Summary of Responses to Basic Questions” from 1975, it was published in Art: A Matter of Context. Bernar Venet: 5 Besson, Christian, “Transparency and Opacity: The Work of Bernar Venet from 1961 to 1976”, Art: A Matter of Context. Bernar Venet: Writings Writings 1975-2003. Hard Press Editions, Lenox, Massachussetts, USA, 2004. 1975-2003. Hard Press Editions, Lenox, Massachusetts, USA, 2004.

8 9 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Foreground: Pile of Coal, 1963, sculpture with no specific dimensions Background: Goudrons [Tars], 1963, tar on canvas, 150 x 130 cm, each Exhibition: Mücsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary, 2012

10 11 Bernar Venet in his studio on West Broadway, New York, 1978 Indeterminate Surface 1996 Torch-cut waxed steel 253 x 227 x 3.5 cm Collection: Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany

The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Venet refused any metaphorical reading of the work, a philosophical position aligned with that articulated by to New York since there was no place to sleep other than his own bed. However, Virginia Dwan was storing her Susan Sontag in her 1963 essay, Against Interpretation. The year Sontag wrote her signature statement, Venet Kienholz assemblage of a living room in the cramped studio so for two months Venet camped out on the red velvet moved to his first studio on Rue Pairolière, a working class neighborhood in the old quarter of Nice. By that time Victorian couch that was part of the Kienholz tableau. the group of artists from the South of France who became known as the “Ecole de Nice” including Yves Klein and Arman, had mainly moved to Paris, but Venet became their young companion when they returned to party in In 1966, the tenement building at 84 Walker Street was a beehive of activity. Arman, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean sunny Mediterranean port. A generation younger than the Nouveaux réalistes, Venet recognized that their break Tinguely who would become a good friend of Venet’s, were living and working on the second floor while Frank Stella with the modernist abstraction of the School of Paris was a radical rupture with the past, although alien to his own and Carl Andre used the third floor as studios. Although he admired the assemblages of Arman and Cesar, Venet was austere and analytic vision. drawn to their pared down conceptual styles as well as to the intellectual works of Minimalist sculptors such as Dan Flavin, and particularly Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt who became good friends and with whom Venet traded works. In 1964, Venet was invited to show alongside the New Realists and Pop artists in the Salon Comparaisons at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The works he showed were his folded monochrome reliefs made from crushed On this first trip to New York in April 1966, the twenty four year old artist stayed only two months. That summer cardboard boxes smashed into rectangles. He continued making cardboard reliefs covering their surfaces with he turned to Nice and began to study the objectivity of blueprints and the diagrams as possible models for an art fresh coats of monochrome industrial paint each time they were exhibited so that they always look fresh and new. based on semiotics rather than aesthetics. The accumulation of layers of paint unified their now shiny surfaces disguising their humble origins. Realizing his art could only develop in New York, which according to Jean Baudrillard had “stolen the idea of As much as Venet denies the influence of Marcel Duchamp, who he admired and finally met in 1967, his methods modern art”, in December Venet moved permanently to Manhattan. Before he left Nice, he designed a ballet that of investigation and discovery and his search for originality parallel Duchamp’s rejection of formalism and conven- was eventually performed in 1988 by the Paris Opera. The original sketches were related to the diagrams he was tion although he never made found objects. Rather he concentrated on found texts. Duchamp held that to think already doing as drawings. The ballet involved a complex arrangement or ropes that held the dancers in space differently and to make thoroughly original work, the artist needed to go to a country where he did not speak the across the whole of the proscenium. A rootless young vagabond, he often stayed in Arman’s apartment in the language, as Duchamp did during his trip to the Jura Mountains with Apollinaire. Venet, easily as French and as Chelsea Hotel, a meeting place for international artists. Cartesian as Duchamp, found himself at first mute in New York. He also followed Duchamp’s advice not to take art but rather mathematics and philosophy as a point of departure. And like Duchamp, he set out to strain the laws Shortly after his arrival in New York, he exhibited as sculpture a length of industrial cardboard tubing sliced diago- of physics. First of course, he had to learn them. nally, which permitted a simultaneous vision of both its exterior and interior. They depended on the laws of gravity because the slanted cuts determined their positions. The tube sculptures were made with cardboard rolls and At this point the ambitious young artist could have settled in Paris, but instead he decided to skip the French painted industrial yellow. Others were made out of industrial gray polyvinyl chloride pipes. These sculptures were capital and head straight for New York... empty; their surfaces were visible both from the inside and the outside.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK Venet had already begun making diagrams and he sometimes accompanied this work with a large-scale diagram of its parts and their construction. This diagram is the prototype of the black and white paintings and drawings My purpose was not to dematerialize art, but to stress, through the use of other media that the originality of my that resembled graphs rather than pictures. He used mathematical formulas rather than text to create a tension work was in its content, the knowledge it conveyed and its symbolic system - and not in its material characteristics between image and object that was first explored by Fluxus to then become the formula for conceptual art puzzles (or lack thereof). that Venet ultimately found facile and repetitious. Bernar Venet, “Ten Years of Conceptual Art”, artpress, 1968 6 Venet’s decision to work in New York engaged him immediately in the current dialogue on conceptual and per- Bernar Venet arrived in New York City in April 1966 with a smattering of English and only enough money to call Ar- formance art described by Thomas McEvilley. Venet wished to avoid the concept of the “aesthetic”, although man who was living on the second floor of the tenement where Frank Stella had his studio. Arman was somewhat as critics have pointed out, in the end even the most radical art can be seen as aesthetic after time passes. His shocked to find his young friend had taken him at his word that he would put him up if he ever wanted to come decision to base his art on the impersonal laws of physics and mathematics was an attempt to free art from the familiar designed elements of formal compositions. 6 Bernar Venet, “L’Art conceptuel a dix ans,” artpress, n˚ 16, Paris, France, March 1978.

12 13 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

The definition of the work of art as no more than its technical specifications was a direct attack on the idea of art as spiritual transcendence. Venet’s contemporaries in New York were the conceptual artists, but his formation was quite different from theirs. Whereas they based their explorations on the disjunction between word and image on the analytic investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the verifiability principle of A.J. Ayer - texts that were avail- able in English - Venet was inspired by the theories of French semiologist Jacques Bertin, at a time when semiotics was barely known in the United States because the texts had not been translated yet.

Venet had already been drawing and painting diagrams when Jacques Bertin published his Sémiologie graphique in 1967, but in Bertin’s theories of linguistics, which defined the three types of visual communication he found a solid basis for continuing his use of graphic linear formulas as imagery that could not be interpreted any other way, despite the fact that their context was displaced from textbooks to paintings and later sculpture. In France, Bertin ran a laboratory where researchers came with drawings for the technical publications. His colleagues noticed that almost nobody looked at them and even fewer people understood them. This was precisely Venet’s aim: to create a roadblock to interpretation.

In Paris, structuralism was the analytic method of the day. However, among the first to use the term structuralism in relation to art was the American sculptor and critic Jack Burnham who wrote The Structure of Art in 1971. The title refers to the structure based on linguistic models within a work of art that reveals how content is signified. Burnham singled out Venet as one of the most important practitioners of the structural model in art and repro- duced his photographic enlargement of a page of The Logic of Decision and Action that Venet exhibited in 1969.

Venet’s selection of the text was not arbitrary: he was searching for a way to base art on logical and rational deci- sions that would be the basis for a system 7. For Burnham, Venet’s conceptual work had a double-headed implica- tion. On the one hand, Burnham wrote, “He is presenting a text which to some extent reveals the constancy of the structure of art-making. At the same time through the dialectical, and thus historical, progression of knowledge as an integral aspect of the human condition, he is subverting the historical-mythic structure behind all avant-garde art.” This was of course exactly Venet’s intention.

1969 was a busy year for Venet, now an active participant in the New York art world. John Perreault often noted his activities as part of the downtown avant-garde in his columns in The Village Voice. On May 1, he announced the Free Art Street Works, a group exhibition in which Venet participated. Among the participating artists were Vito Acconci, Scott Burton, Arakawa, and James Lee Byars. In his June 5 column, Perreault reviewed the Para-Visual Language II exhibition at the Dwan Gallery and Lucy Lippard’s Art Workers Coalition Benefit at the Paula Cooper Gallery where Venet contributed works along with Lawrence Weiner, Sol LeWitt, Bill Bollinger, Robert Smithson, Mel Bochner, Michael Kirby, Joseph Kosuth, Adrian Piper, On Kawara, Robert Morris, and Bruce Nauman. On December 18, 1969 Perreault wrote: “I have been receiving The Wall Street Journal every morning courtesy of

Paintings, 1976-1978, acrylic on canvas 7 Jack Burnham, The Structure of Art. George Braziller, New York, USA, 1971. Exhibition: Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia, Spain, 2010

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Bernar Venet. Stock market figures and weather reports have been Venet’s special thing for a while now, so I guess this is a work of art.”

Venet photographically enlarged pages of stock market quotes as well as other pages taken from printed sources to mural scale size, which he showed in various exhibitions in the late Sixties. Venet’s development reflected both the French as well as the American approach to post minimal art. The French part of Venet’s aesthetic derives from his knowledge of semiotics and concrete art as it developed in Europe in the forms of musique concrète and concrete poetry. Indeed, Venet has created a concrete music composition recording the sound of the motors of the supersonic Concorde airplane as well as publishing a provocative volume of concrete poetry that consists of provocative lists and phrases. Because of his divergent dual background Venet’s work predicted rather than participating in the “dematerialization” of the art object that characterized post minimal and conceptual art in New York around 1970.

Up to that time he had not in fact concentrated on making objects. In her seminal book on art in the late sixties, The Dematerialization of the Art Object, Lucy Lippard described how Venet’s conceptual works antedated the disappearance of art as specific object, redefining art as a concept rather than as a thing. Concerning Bernar Venet she wrote: “Bernar Venet decides to present during the next four years: Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics, Space Sciences, Mathematics by Computation, Meteorology, Stock Market, Mathematics, Psychophysics and Psycho Chronometry, Sociology and Politics, Mathematical Logic, etc.” She quotes Venet’s explanation of how he proceeded: “For each discipline an authority advised me upon the subjects to be presented: these subjects were chosen according to their importance… The question was not to make a new object, a new readymade out of mathematics. I attributed a didactic goal to their presentation. Scientific diagrams were painted, at first by hand, on large canvases; later (1967) some were accompanied by taped lectures and the paintings became pho- tographic blowups of texts or diagrams directly from books.”

Venet’s activity as a conceptual artist did not go unnoticed. In 1971, Donald Karshan organized a retrospective of his early work at the New York Cultural Center. With that success in hand, Bernar Venet shocked his contemporar- ies and decided, at the age of twenty-nine, to stop making art.

9 lignes obliques 2010 Cor-ten steel H: 30 meters Installation: Place Sulzer, Promenade des Anglais, Nice, France

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Three Indeterminate Lines 1994 Rolled steel 272 x 305 x 411.5 cm Private collection, USA Exhibition: Sotheby’s at Isleworth, Florida, 2008

18 19 Wall paintings from the Equation series, site-specific dimensions Exhibition: Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, Germany, 2002

The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

STOP IN THE NAME OF ART Venet’s search for an irreducible image with a single reading that resisted interpretation lead to an exploration of lines, arcs and graphic signs in drawings and paintings that lead him to produce these signs in three dimensions The conceptual impasse of the “little piece of typewritten paper” is a cliché that has had its day. It, too, became and use them as building blocks for his sculptures. He began with black and white drawings, paintings and reliefs a new aesthetic, but looking back on it now, we see that its alleged contribution wasn’t that much to begin with. of graphs or charts of lines, arcs and angles, the basis of the sculptural style he was about to develop. The pared Bernar Venet, “Ten Years of Conceptual Art”, artpress, 1968 8 down black and white 1976 canvases looked like illustrations enlarged from the pages of a geometry text rather than paintings. By 1978, the measured black lines inscribed on canvas had become equally precise wood reliefs. When he moved to New York in late 1966, Venet set himself a program of investigation that he definitely intended In the succeeding sculptures based on the line, the arc and the angle, the mind completes what the eye sees. This to complete. Four years later, he decided that the conceptual phase of his work was over and that he would stop tension between the perceptual and the conceptual has been a modern theme since Cezanne drew his multiple making art. It was a decision parallel to Duchamp’s refusal to paint after he completed Tu m’ in 1918, which was line incomplete contours. Venet’s concern with essences lead him to investigate the conundrum of what a poten- an inventory of every conceivable type of illusion painting could produce. Instead of exhibiting, Duchamp worked tially infinite three-dimensional line could be. in secret for five years producing The Large Glass, the result of his investigations into physics and optics. Venet would follow a similar path, disappearing from view. Venet considers the open tubes in his 1966 conceptual piece his first three-dimensional lines. He continued this investigation of transforming the one-dimensional graphic symbol into two- and three-dimensional equivalents. Returning to Paris, he taught art theory at the Sorbonne and concentrated on writing and thinking without pro- This is a theme he picked up again in 1979 when he began to develop steel sculptures composed of two arcs and ducing art between 1971 and 1976. The process of finding his own vocabulary was both lengthy and arduous. a series of wood reliefs that lead to the three-dimensional sculptures (1983). The elements of the sculptures were The intentional caesura created by Venet’s decision to return to France, abandon art making and remove himself laid out on the floor of his studio to be organized by Venet following the linear scribbles he had previously enlarged from the New York scene for many years effaced his first New York period of conceptual art and mathematical into large metal wall reliefs he called “Indeterminate Areas”. and semiotic investigations. When he made the transition from wood to steel, a new element entered his repertory: the “Indeterminate Line”. In September 1976, his period of reflection and self-investigation over and bored by inactivity, Venet decided to Defined as a linear form that departs from regularity according to no preconceived plan, but rather takes shape start making art again and moved back to New York. He acquired studios first on West Broadway and then on through the artist’s interaction with his material. The first three-dimensional lines were factory made metal rods Canal Street, where the minimal artists often found modular industrial materials in quantities. Finding himself with that theoretically could be indefinitely extended. Extrapolated into three dimensions the graphic line becomes no furniture in his new studio, Venet designed simple geometric seating and tables as he had done previously in free and playful, antic and unpredictable, thus gaining in force what it loses in rationality. The three-dimensional 1969. They were sent to a fabricator to be made in steel. This was his first experience in large-scale steel fabrica- line becomes dramatic expression of the space penetrated while avoiding the constraints of composition. The tion, again a chance experience determined by necessity that provided a point of departure, this time for sculpture Indeterminate Lines are not mathematically defined but are variable depending on the artist’s decisions which in three dimensions. Indeed these unornamented geometric steel forms, which had their origin in practical neces- incorporate chance and acknowledge the mathematical principle of indeterminacy. The various configurations of sity, could be considered his first large scale sculptures. Indeterminate Lines Venet begun in the 1980s were made by bending and twisting long square rods of steel with an overhead crane. The coiled spiraling line bears the memory of the struggle between the artist and his obdurate Back in New York, Venet threw himself into the New York art scene, participating in group shows at Leo Castelli material. and Paula Cooper that included the leading American minimal and conceptual artists. Along the way he encoun- tered and practiced not only minimal and conceptual art but also performance, photography, poetry, music, cho- As Carter Ratcliff was quick to perceive, Venet’s tactics were based on oppositions and contradictions, paradoxes reography and theater design. He was audaciously experimental. Among friends he would practice entertaining that generated his forms: “This principle of opposition-sculpture against world, art against non-art, is so reliable magic tricks such as balancing a garbage can on his chin, a preview of his apparently innate and intuitive sense that it is easy to overlook the oppositions within his oeuvre” he wrote. “Venet advances by going to extremes, one of balance that permitted him to make huge sculptures that appear magically balanced. It was his last act before after the next, systematically.” Ratcliff also noted that many who knew him as a fabricator of large works in metal in deciding to start making art again. the Eighties and Nineties forgot or never knew about his work as a conceptual artist in New York in the late Sixties.

The Seventies were a period of transition and personal growth for Venet within the context of developments in New York. Among the most important of these developments was the possibility of creating large-scale 8 Bernar Venet, “L’Art conceptuel a dix ans,” artpress, n˚ 16, Paris, France, March 1978.

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Saturation 2006 30 x 4.75 m Installation: Galerie Philippe Séguin, Cour des Comptes, Paris, France

22 23 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

sculpture for public contexts. In 1967, the United States government began a program of art in public places. Barnett Newman was among the first artists selected to make a public sculpture. Having never done sculpture, Newman researched the possibilities for creating works on a large scale to be exhibited outdoors. The Broken Obelisk would be exhibited in front of the Seagram Building in New York City, in a manner that reflects Barnett Newman’s claim to “declare the space”. And indeed one can imagine that the vertical thrust as well as the use of cor-ten by Newman in his sculpture set an example for Venet. It was an example he could only fulfill, however, by integrating his life and art.

A NEW LIFE AND NEW HORIZONS

The artist should remain open and be opposed to sectarianism. Naturally, he or she should be aware of everything that has been conceived within art, but his or her main activity will be to leave the confines of art. The artist should take interest in the knowledge of others; have openness towards the outside world that will lead to an engagement in types of work assumed inconceivable before now. Bernar Venet. “Le contexte de l’art, l’art du contexte”, artpress, 1996 9

Bernar Venet has consistently held that life is unpredictable. He could not for example predict that meeting a beautiful Parisian journalist after an opening in Nice in 1985 would radically alter the course of his life, opening up possibilities for expression and expansion as well as bringing a joie de vivre he had never previously experienced. Now he would divide his time between New York and Le Muy, in the countryside near Nice, where he bought a large property containing an old mill that was gradually converted into a home filled with art he had traded with the artists he admired. Both a large painting studio as well as a sculpture studio was added to Le Muy.

Public commissions followed that permitted him to elaborate on a large scale his initial premises. Typical of the Indeterminate Lines is their relationship to the Asian ideogram or calligraphy. The “scribble” of the twisting and winding pieces has its analogies in handwriting and as divergent as it is from Picasso’s and David Smith’s geo- metric “drawing in space”, they nevertheless offer similar openings and transparency that are characteristic of modernism not found in traditional sculpture. Take for example the extraordinary and impressive 36-foot high Two Indeterminate Lines he created for La Défense in Paris in 1986 that rhythmically intertwine as if in a tango.

The Indeterminate Line sculptures preserve the trace or evidence of the resistance of the steel to his will to bend it into eccentric and unpredictable knots and curves adds drama to our perception of the work as based on a given material or proposition that is altered by the artist’s human physical intervention. The new studio in Le Muy permit- ted Venet to expand his horizons and to work on an architectural scale that few sculptors, despite the dreams of Constructivists like Tatlin, have ever been able to realize. 88.5˚ Arc x 8 2012 Cor-ten steel 9 Siegelaub, Seth, “The Context of Art, Art in its Context”, originally published as “69/96 - Avant garde et fin de siècle - le contexte de l’art, l’art H: 27 meters du contexte”, artpress, n˚ 17, Paris, France, 1996. Collection: Gibbs Farm, New Zealand

24 25 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

He added to the vocabulary of the Indeterminate Lines the “Arcs”, segments of circles that first appear in his earli- est drawings and paintings. In 1987 he initiated the series of monumental Arcs with the huge 60 x 120 foot Arc of 124.5˚ commissioned by the French government for the 750th anniversary of Berlin, which now occupies the Urianaplatz. Like the subsequent multiple arc sculptures, the work is titled in engraved block letters on the surface with the circumference, usually the number of degrees of the arc, which emphasizes their literal reference uniquely to themselves. That the inscribed title is a description of the segment of the circle that the arc represents indicates Venet’s insistence on specificity as a definition of the uniqueness of each work of art.

Each of Venet’s Arcs is a segment of the circumference of a circle, a concept he explored earlier in drawings and paintings. Our knowledge that although the full circle is not present is related to the concept of the indeterminate line whose beginning and end are equally implied without being given. These mental projections from the physical work add to the complexity of our reaction which necessarily invokes an unknown, not present but implied projec- tion. In the case of the precariously balanced Arcs we can project the circle from which they are derived, although their drama lies precisely in their projection of the non finito.

Working within the parameters of the given, Venet pushes those boundaries to see how far they can be extended. The latest large-scale works are increasingly powerful and dense expressions of Venet’s chosen medium and basic forms, which he may now combine and recombine in a variety of permutations. Inevitably the relation to the landscape affects the structure of the sculpture. Hard steel contrasts with the soft green forms of nature just as the diagonals and loops of the Indeterminate Lines contradict the cubic volumes of adjacent buildings. The huge Arcs look as if they could be rocked thus projecting imminent movement. The towering unfinished vertical Arcs that the mind finishes represent a penetration of space that defies gravity.

The progression from diagrams and formulas to the obdurate physicality of intractable heavy metal thrust the artist into unknown territories. The actions of chance, the gravity of materials, and the precariousness of equilibrium still concern him although now he is able to explore their interaction on a colossal scale. Chance determined heaps of lines are colossal versions of the original Heap of Coal. The looped skeins of the labyrinthine Indeterminate Lines that cannot be disentangled correspond to our own existential situation as we attempt to understand where the universe begins and ends. Thus in the end, Venet forgoes his initial rejection of metaphor, placing his work not in the realm of cold calculation but in that of the precarious and unpredictable human condition. Despite the cold calculations of his earlier work, Venet extrapolated his original mathematically based impersonal inexpressiveness into forms that have become—perhaps unintentionally—increasingly expressive.

As his concepts developed and his technical skill as well as his means to make larger works improved, Venet’s Lines and Arcs became denser and increasingly monumental and imposing. However despite their explicit weight- 37.5˚ Arc 2010 iness they are never passive or inert. The huge vertical arcs that lead the eye from earth to sky and back are also Cor-ten steel suggestive of human relationships which are totally at odds with Venet’s initial exclusively intellectual propositions. H: 38 meters The reductivism of inexpressiveness is replaced by the complexity of a variable and suggestive expressiveness Collection: Dongkuk Steel Co. Ltd, Seoul, South Korea that, however, is not to be confused with the sentimentality and weltschmerz of expressionism.

26 27 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Venet’s sculptures have a directness and immediacy as well as a sense of scale when contrasted with their sur- Venet had never been convinced by the strict axioms of logical positivism, which maintained that anything you rounding architecture that seems uncannily appropriate. Indeed, part of their allure is a sense that their precarious could not measure or prove was nonsense. He was far more comfortable with Gödel’s more elastic system in equilibrium is some kind of magic trick, the kind of surprise characteristic of his mercurial personality that we are which faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. Within this system, even if science rests on an assumption that provoked to understand and yet cannot quite grasp. The reason we cannot, however, is that behind their appar- the universe is orderly, logical and mathematical based on fixed discoverable laws, you cannot prove it because of ently simple presentations are decades of thought and experiment that permit the artist to create such astonishing the subjectivity of the human observer. Therefore what you cannot prove you must take on faith based on experi- forms. ence. And it was precisely experiences, especially new experiences, that Venet always sought.

As his work progressed, Venet became increasingly aware of human inability to impose a predetermined order. FROM AXIOMATIC PROGRAMS TO THE FREEDOM OF DOUBT This perception lead him to permit chance to play a role in his art. Thus he began a dialogue between the prede- termined and the indeterminate. He started to incorporate principles of disorganization or randomness in recent I work in doubt, far from the comfort of the assurance of habit. I paint shaped canvases which I can’t justify either. works that in their compositional formlessness—lines, angles or arcs heaped at random—pick up the thread of It is one kind of possible order… I follow my intuition and it seems to me that the result deserves to exist because indeterminacy announced the original Heap of Coal. of its difference and because I astonish myself. I don’t have one personality; I have several. I want to live change and to choose among all the possibilities that it seems to me deserve to exist. Tracing the course of his career from the “action” of spilling the pile of coal on to the floor and photographing it Bernar Venet, in conversation, 2010 as a work of art we see a strategy of oppositions and self-contradictions that challenge the conventional idea of stylistic evolution. However, as we review Venet’s career, we observe that his use of paradox is consistent in his A visit to Venet’s studios in Le Muy is an opportunity to watch Venet in action like a whirling dervish, painting in work in both painting and sculpture. Thus paradox becomes a principle of continuity rather than of rupture. The the morning, working in the sculpture studio usually in the afternoon, arranging and rearranging the various linear problem then becomes how to reconcile the contradictions of paradox with the logic of coherence. elements until he is satisfied with the configuration. Currently Venet fabricates the elements of the Arcs, Angles and Indeterminate Lines in a foundry in Hungary. Once the steel elements are shaped they are brought to his fac- Venet resolves this problem by depending on the logic of the conclusions he ultimately draws from his original tory near Le Muy in the Var region of southern France where he has one of his studios. (The other is in New York.) theses. If these first principles appear self-contradictory or at odds with each other than the wresting of coherence from paradox becomes a constant struggle, as other elements such as accident and chance are incorporated into The Arcs are created by rolling cold steel into predetermined segments, although again he may and often will the system of thought. It is a problem that has perplexed logicians and philosophers since Socrates. change the pieces once he has the elements in his studio. The three-dimensional Indeterminate Lines on the other hand begin as solid rods that he bends with clamps and tongs overhead cranes to twist them into unpremedi- In an effort to reconcile the contradictions of paradox into a coherent system Venet came across Kurt Gödel’s tated configurations that inject them with spontaneity and a sense of motion once they are installed. Venet has Theory of Incompleteness, which proved that any formal system that is rich enough to express arithmetic will have described his relationship with his material as an interaction he sets into motion but cannot completely control. a proposition which is true yet cannot be proved, which is a paradox. Gödel showed that formal systems strong At every point the artist himself intervenes in the creation of the large-scale works, which is particularly evident in enough for arithmetic are either inconsistent or incomplete and that an inconsistent system is worthless since the series of Indeterminate Lines that are the opposite of mechanistic, bearing their traces of the struggle of the inconsistent systems allow contradictions. In the end Gödel concluded that even mathematics was clouded by sculptor with his medium. subjectivity, leaving no grounds for distinguishing between the rational and the irrational. Venet does not make preparatory drawings for his sculptures although he continues to make large drawings as Gödel reasoned that although it is obvious that a line can be extended infinitely in both directions, no one has well as paintings as a separate enterprise. There are maquettes for the later works and from smaller versions, been able to prove it, which may be why Venet refers to his lines as “indeterminate” since they can begin or end but these are made after the fact or independently rather that to serve as models to be blown up. He sometimes wherever the eye decides is their projection. Gödel proved that there are always more things that are true than you creates different models choosing the one that best corresponds to the site, changing between the maquettes can prove because any system of logic or numbers that mathematicians ever came up with will always rest on at and the final work. least a few unprovable assumptions. Thus if incompleteness is true in math, it’s equally true in science or language and philosophy and art. Logic could not prove the existence or non-existence of God.

28 29 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

219.5˚ Arc x 22 2006 Cor-ten steel H: 360 cm, diam.: 430 cm; site-specific dimensions Collection: Capella Hotel, Singapore

30 31 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

In the final decisions that decide the form of the sculptures, Venet literally wrestles with his materials. He considers The mural paintings were followed by the Saturation series, large-scale canvases that added another degree of this intimate physical relationship with tons of steel a game pitting the constraints of the metal against his will to form complexity by altering the size and color of the equations on their monochrome fields. Finding pleasure in painting it. This physical struggle is at the heart of the Indeterminate Line sculptures. We feel the physicality of the wrestling with materials that did require a physical struggle, Venet continues to paint. The most recent series is inspired by match between the artist and his material as a drama of creation. The solid massive steel resists the artist’s wish to the gilded ceiling of the Cour des Comptes in Paris, a commission that Venet won in a competition. twist it. The resulting configuration corresponds now to no mathematical formula: it is as unpredictable and uncon- trollable as life itself. Thus the artist who began determined to reduce his work to a single meaning may find that ex- In making the “gold” paintings, Venet first decides on the dimensions and shapes of the works, as well as the texts perience denies that possibility. The paradox of coherence is the result of an infinite form of ever evolving complexity. and equations and their size and placement and paints the gold grounds himself, but admits he does not have the patience to apply them to the surface of the paintings, a task he leaves to assistants. He makes the paintings out In 2000, wishing to attempt something new, Venet - probably inspired by the Sol LeWitt wall drawing that oc- of a desire for change in order to get away from routine when he does not have any strong new ideas for sculp- cupies a wall of his house - created a series of murals paintings. The mathematical equations that cover their tures. “I take all liberties. I work from intuition which is complete opposed and contradictory to my mathematical monochrome surfaces are once borrowed from scientific works drawn in black on brightly colored grounds. These works of the Sixties in which theory and logic were more important than the pleasure of painting.” works were the subject of an article by Donald Kuspit in the New York Art Review that caught the attention of Karl Heinrich Hofmann, a professor of mathematics at the Technische Universität in Darmstadt, Germany. Originally, as we have observed, Venet focused on the relationship between the theoretical, the material and the practical. He based his forms on those of Platonic geometry—the line, the angle and the curve – that he ultimately Hofmann perceived a relationship between Venet’s algebraic formulas to Commutative Diagrams 10. “To a math- extended to a point where they suggested the infinite. Their concreteness and actuality however maintained ematician it appears that he is partly motivated by an artist’s desire to make the mathematicians’ infatuation with specificity so that they invoked neither Kandinsky’s spiritual dimensions nor Mondrian’s equally transcendental ‘elegance’—certainly an aesthetic category—manifest for the layman” he observed. However, he was somewhat associations with the purity of the geometric. befuddled by the critic’s interpretation. According to Kuspit, “We are no longer afraid to be ignorant, for the color allows us to embrace our ignorance as the way to the emotional truth.” Kuspit saw mathematics as the alienness, Despite the cold calculations of his earlier work, Venet extrapolated his original mathematically based impersonal an “entry into the emotional depths. What emotional truth? I suggest it is a sexual truth and depth… which at inexpressiveness into forms that have become—perhaps unintentionally—increasingly expressive. These new its deepest establishes an erotic relationship with the spectator. And which in itself re-enacts the sexual union of gold ground paintings have no theoretical explanation, nor does Venet search for one, feeling his new liberty is a opposites. I suggest that Venet’s wall paintings do so, without showing its consummation. They are profoundly hard won prize. He does not justify the eccentric shapes of the canvases, considering them just one kind of pos- sexual in import, on a grand scale that masks their poignancy 11.” sible order that permits him to cut off the texts in unexpected and unpredictable ways.

Befuddled, the mathematician asks himself, “Could it be possible that I have missed out on something?” Not shar- “After painting the saturations of numerous colors”, he explains, “Today my ideal solution is a ‘non color’ which ing the critics “orgiastic sentiments” he enjoyed the manner in which mathematical equations were presented in at the same time is the ideal background like those of the religious paintings of Cimabue. Besides which my first an aesthetic context. Hofmann remarks the deliberate repositioning and changes of scale of formulas from books paintings were blue, red and the green of the paintings of Cimabue on gold grounds. As a very young artist in that alters their function converting them into space defining marks aesthetically arranged. Now the signs used 1959 and 1960 I painted religious paintings with gold grounds. At the time I rejected color as much as possible 13.” by mathematicians to communicate information are translated into jumbled typographical markings to fill space. In the current series Venet delights in the artificiality of gold since it is a color not found in nature. He explains his attraction to gold on the basis that gold is not a natural but a cultural color associated with religious paintings “Mathematicians”, Hofmann noted, “are likely to react and respond immediately; outsiders are probably surprised and architectural embellishment. And of course the imagery of mathematics is not that of religious iconography. if not stunned by the artist’s proposition that tokens of a highly specialized technical language are to be used as building blocks of a new artistic expression. The element of surprise is calculated. In Venet’s work, mathemati- Despite the whirl of professional activity at Le Muy, because it is in a pastoral setting, there is a great quiet and a cal typography is recognized as its own graphical and architectural structure, utilized and elevated artistically in possibility for contemplation listening to the waterfall outside the ancient mill. The library is full of books Venet is a twofold fashion: first, by the brilliant monochromatic backgrounds, and second, by the monumental format 12.” constantly consulting and it is not surprising to find that above his bed in the place where a crucifix would normally be hung is the text of Gödel’s Theory of Incompleteness. 10 Hofmann, Karl Heinrich, Notes of the American Mathematical Society, June/July 2002. 11 Kuspit, Donald, “Bernar Venet’s Wall Paintings”, New York Arts Magazine, n˚ 9, New York, September 2003. 12 Hofmann, Karl Heinrich, Notes of the American Mathematical Society, June/July 2002. 13 Venet, in conversation with the author, 2010.

32 33 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

top left: Effondrement: 225.5˚ Arc x 11 2011 Cor-ten steel Diam.: 500 cm; site-specific dimensions

bottom left: Four Indeterminate Lines 2011 Rolled steel 270 x 550 x 320 cm

219.5˚ Arc x 28 2011 Cor-ten steel H: 400 cm; diam.: 500 cm; site-specific dimensions Exhibition: Château de Versailles, France, 2011

34 35 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

85.8˚ Arc x 16 2011 Cor-ten steel H: 22 meters Exhibition: Place d’Armes, Château de Versailles, France, 2011

36 37 Art Selection

Wall reliefs, 1978-1979, graphite on wood Exhibition: Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, Germany, 2007

39 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Position of Four Right Angles 1979 Position of Two Major Arcs of 287.5˚ Each 1979 Graphite on wood Graphite on wood Diam.: 210 cm; depth: 5.5-6 cm; dimensions may vary Diam.: 210 cm; depth: 5.5-6 cm; dimensions may vary

40 41 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Indeterminate Line 1981 Graphite on wood 189 x 189 cm

42 43 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Indeterminate Line 1984 Graphite on wood 177 x 195 cm

44 45 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Installation of GRIBS in the artist’s studio, 2011

46 47 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

GRIB 5 2011 GRIB 1 2011 Torch-cut waxed steel Torch-cut waxed steel 236 x 150 x 3.5 cm 225 x 215 x 3.5 cm

48 49 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

GRIB 1 2011 GRIB 1 2011 Torch-cut waxed steel Torch-cut waxed steel 225 x 215 x 3.5 cm 245 x 310 x 3.5 cm

50 51 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Foreground: Six Leaning Straight Lines 2009-2012, cor-ten steel, H: 185 cm; L: 12 meters Background: GRIB 2 2011, torch-cut waxed steel, 239 x 277 x 3.5 cm - GRIB 2 2011, torch-cut waxed steel, 246 x 240 x 3.5 cm Exhibition: Kunsthalle Mücsarnok, Budapest, Hungary, 2012

52 53 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

GRIB 3 2011 Torch-cut waxed steel 238 x 410 x 3.5 cm

54 55 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Installation of GRIBS in the artist’s studio, 2011

56 57 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

GRIBS, 2011, torch-cut waxed steel Exhibition: Kunsthalle Mücsarnok, Budapest, Hungary, 2012

58 59 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

GRIB 1 2012 Torch-cut waxed steel 248 x 146 x 3.5 cm

GRIB 1 2012 Torch-cut waxed steel 249 x 150 x 3.5 cm

60 61 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

GRIB 4 2011 Torch-cut waxed steel 233 x 461 x 3.5 cm

62 63 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Saturations, 2006-2011, acrylic on canvas Exhibition: Retrospective exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mücsarnok, Budapest, Hungary, 2012

64 65 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Saturation with a Large Bracket 2006 Acrylic on canvas 200 x 200 cm

66 67 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Gold Saturation with Four Blue Arrows 2008 Acrylic on canvas 200 x 200 cm

68 69 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Gold Saturation with four Q 2008 Acrylic on canvas 200 x 200 cm

70 71 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Saturations, 2010-2011, Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 80 cm, each Exhibition: L’oeuvre peinte, Hôtel des Arts, Toulon, France, 2011

72 73 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Gold Saturation with Horizontal Arrow 2011 Copper painting with ‘the’ in the upper left corner 2010 Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas 80 x 80 cm 80 x 80 cm

74 75 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Copper painting with ‘Phi and two 2 2010 Gold saturation painting with ‘three integrals’ 2010 Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas 80 x 80 cm 80 x 80 cm

76 77 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Gold saturation with a big 3 2011 Copper painting with ‘Sum W 2’ 2010 Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas 80 x 80 cm 80 x 80 cm

78 79 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Copper painting with four ‘sums’ 2010 Gold saturation painting with ‘a probability densi...’ 2010 Acrylic on canvas Acrylic on canvas 80 x 80 cm 80 x 80 cm

80 81 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Red and Gold with member function 2009 Acrylic on canvas 180.5 x 211.5 cm

82 83 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Square Gold with 4 Triangles 2009 Acrylic on canvas 186.5 x 186.5 cm

84 85 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Peintures or en 4 parties avec ‘contient’ en haut à gauche 2009 [Gold Painting in 4 parts with ‘contient’ on the upper left] Acrylic on canvas 213.5 x 333 cm

86 87 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Gold Saturation with ‘we determine finitely’ 2009 Acrylic on canvas Diam.: 247 cm

88 89 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Double Leaning Gold 2010 Acrylic on canvas 214 x 313.5 cm

90 91 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Gold Saturation with 2 on the upper right 2012 Acrylic on canvas 182 x 182 cm

92 93 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Pearl Saturation with NN 2008 Acrylic on canvas 182 x 182 cm

94 95 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Round Saturation (Gold) with 23 on Top 2011 Acrylic on canvas Diam.: 214.5 cm

96 97 1941 Born on April 20 in Château-Arnoux, France. 1958 Studies for one year at the Villa Thiole, the municipal art school of the city of Nice. Curriculum Vitae 1959 Employed as a stage designer for the Nice City Opera. 1964 Participates in the Salon comparaisons at the Museum of Modern Art, Paris. 1966 Creates a ballet, Graduation, to be danced on a vertical plane. Starts making new work based on the use of mathematical diagrams. 1971 Bernar Venet decides, for theoretical reasons, to cease his artistic activities. 1974 Teaches “Art and Art Theory” at the Sorbonne, Paris. A representative for France at the XIIIth São Paulo Biennale, Brazil. 1976 Starts creating artistic work again. 1977 Exhibits at Documenta VI, Kassel, Germany. 1978 Participates in the exhibition “From Nature to Art. From Art to Nature” at the Venice Biennale, Italy. 1979 Awarded a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, Washington, DC. 1984 Starts creating his sculptures at Atelier Marioni, a foundry in the Vosges region of France. 1988 Jean-Louis Martinoty asks Bernar Venet to stage his ballet Graduation (conceived in 1966) at the Paris Opéra. The artist is the author of the music, choreography, set designs and costumes. Received the 1988 Design Award for his sculpture in front of the World Trade Center in Norfolk, Virginia. 1989 Awarded the Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris. 1991 Creates several musical compositions including Sound and Resonance at the Studio Miraval, Var, France. Release of two compact discs on the Circé-Paris label, Gravier/Goudron, 1963, and Acier roulé E 24-2, 1990. 1993 Invited to participate in the artists’ film festival in Montreal, Canada for his film Rolled Steel XC-10. 1994 Mr. Jacques Chirac, then the Mayor of Paris, invites Venet to present twelve sculptures from his Indeterminate Line series on the Champ de Mars. This exhibition kicks off a world tour of Venet’s sculptures. 1996 Awarded the honor of “Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et Lettres” by the Minister of Culture in France. Presentation of the film Lines, directed by Thierry Spitzer, which covers the artist’s com- plete œuvre. 1997 Moves to a studio in Chelsea, New York City. Begins a new series of sculptures entitled Arcs x 4 and Arcs x 5. Becomes a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, based in Salzburg, Austria. 1998 Travels to China. Invited by the Mayor of Shanghai to participate in the Shanghai International Sculp- ture Symposium. 1999 Installation of a public sculpture in the city of Cologne, Germany in honor of the G-8 Summit. Releases the third version of the film Tarmacadam (from 1963) with Arkadin Productions. Exhibits at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain in Geneva. Publishes a compilation of his poetry, Apoétiques 1967-1998. 2000 Exhibits a new series of wall paintings, Major Equations, at central art museums in Rio de Janeiro and Saõ Paulo, Brazil; Cajarc, France and at MAMCO in Geneva. A year of important publications: Bernar Venet 1961-1970, a monograph about the young artist by

99 The Paradox of Coherence 2000 Robert Morgan; Sursaturation, an original work about reflections on the possibilities of literature; 2009 L’Espace de l’Art Concret in Mouans-Sartoux stages the first public exhibition of artwork from the Art Selection Bernar Venet: Sculptures & Reliefs, written by Arnauld Pierre; La Conversion du regard, with texts Venet Family Collection. The Arsenale Novissimo grants him 1,200 m2 of space in the 53rd Ven- Curriculum Vitae and interviews from 1975-2000; Global Diagonals. ice Biennale to exhibit four new monumental sculptures. A survey of paintings and sculptures is Acknowledgements 2001 Éditions Assouline publishes Furniture, with a text by Claude Lorent in conjunction with exhibitions mounted at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt in Germany, then moves to the Palais des Beaux Arts (BO- at the Galerie Rabouan Moussion and at SM’ART (Salon du mobilier et de l’objet design), both in ZAR) in Brussels, supplemented by an exhibition of new “Shaped Canvases” at the Galerie Guy Paris. Pieters in Knokke-Heist, Belgium. Poetry reading at White Box in New York with Robert Morgan. 2010 Valencia’s IVAM mounts a retrospective of Venet’s conceptual work as well as a full survey of his Inauguration of the Chapelle Saint-Jean in Château-Arnoux. The stained glass windows and all the paintings under the curatorship of Barbara Rose. The Texan-French Alliance of the Arts and Mc- furniture are designed by Bernar Venet. Clain Gallery lead the charge of bringing Public Art to Houston, in the form of 10 large-scale sculp- Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris exhibits new series of Equation paintings. tures by Venet installed in Hermann Park. The Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur organizes for a group 2002 A performance-evening incorporating the artist’s poetry, film and music at the Centre Georges Pom- of sculptures in Salzburg, Austria. President Nicolas Sarkozy inaugurates a monumental sculpture pidou, Paris, France. on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice in honor of the 150th anniversary of the city’s reunification Exhibits Indeterminate Line sculptures at the Galerie Academia in Salzburg, Austria, and at Robert with France. Two commissions in Seoul, Korea for Dongkuk Steel Mill and Hannam The Hill. Miller Gallery in New York. 2011 Mounts a painting retrospective at the Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea, and the Hôtel des Arts, Monograph by Thomas McEvilley on the artist’s complete body of work published in French and Toulon. Exhibits seven monumental sculptures on the grounds of the Château de Versailles, and German, and a year later in English. the Château de Marly in France, including Arcs of 22 meters framing the statue of Louis XIV at the Exhibits Equation and new Saturation paintings at Anthony Grant, Inc., New York. palace entrance. A film, “Venet / Sculptures” is produced by Thierry Spitzer on the occasion of Traveling sculpture show arrives in the United States. The Fields at Art Omi International Sculpture Venet à Versailles. Park in New York State inaugurates a program of personal exhibitions presenting twelve of the Exhibits sculptures at the Salinger Foundation in Le Thor and in the city of Valenciennes, France, as artist’s sculptures, covering all variations on the theme of the line. The show moves to the Atlantic well as in Frankfurt, Germany, and sees the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz present his drawings on Center for the Arts in Florida in November. the occasion of the acquisition of a sculpture for their permanent collection. Develops his work on 2003 Seventeen solo exhibitions this year, including a retrospective of his early work from 1961-1963 at steel wall reliefs (“GRIBS”), which he inaugurates at the Von Bartha Garage in Basel, Switzerland. the Hotel des Arts, Toulon, France, and Autoportrait at the Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contem- 2012 Stages a retrospective at the Müscarnok Museum in Budapest, Hungary. March sees the inaugura- porain (MAMAC) in Nice, France. tion of 88.5° Arc x 8, a 27-meter tall sculpture on Gibbs Farm near Auckland, New Zealand, and Exhibits Saturation paintings in France, California and at the Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. the announcement by Valencia’s IVAM that Venet will be the 2013 recipient of the International Julio L’Yeuse, Paris publishes first book on Equation paintings, written by Donald Kuspit. González Sculpture Prize. A biographical note on Bernar Venet is included in the 2012 Edition of Traveling sculpture show makes its way through Europe: in Nice, France; the city of Luxembourg; the Dictionnaire Larousse, which will be available to the public starting June 2012. Bad Homburg, Germany; Schloss Herberstein, Austria; and in the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris. 2004 Three simultaneous solo exhibitions at locations in New York City, notably the Robert Miller Gallery as well as three large-scale sculptures on the Park Avenue Malls. Publication of Art: A Matter of Context, a book of the artist’s writings and interviews spanning 1975- Selected Solo Exhibitions 2003. Traveling sculpture show makes its way to: the city of Liège, Belgium; Miami, Florida; and Denver, 1964 Galerie Ursula Girardon, Paris, France Colorado. 1966 Galerie Jacques Matarasso, Nice, France A year of important commissions for: Bosch Collection in Stuttgart, Germany; AGF, Paris, France; 1968 Judson Church Theater, Relativity’s Track (performance), New York and the Colorado Convention Center, in Denver. 1969 Newark College of Engineering, Newark, New Jersey Retrospective of the artist’s Arcs exhibited at the Musée Sainte-Croix of Poitiers, France. Related 1970 Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany survey, L’hypothèse de l’arc, is published a year later. Kunsthaus, Hamburg, Germany 2005 On January 1, the artist is named “Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur”, France’s highest decoration. 1971 Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris, France His sculptures continue to tour Europe and North America, with exhibitions in Boulogne-Billancourt New York Cultural Center (Retrospective), New York and Cergy-Pontoise in France; at the Galerie Guy Pieters Knokke-le Zoute, Belgium; the Evo Gal- 1974 Galerie Daniel Templon, Milan, Italy lery in New Mexico; and the Carrie Secrist in Chicago, Illinois. 1975 XIIIth Biennale, São Paulo, Brazil 2006 Receives the Robert Jacobsen prize for sculpture from the Würth Stiftung in Germany. Chosen by Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil the jury at the Ministry of Culture in Paris to paint the ceiling of the Palais Cambon of the Cour des Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Great Britain Comptes in Paris, in celebration of the establishment’s bicentennial in 2007. 1976 La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California 2007 Inauguration of Saturation on the ceiling of the Cour des Comptes in Paris by President Jacques 1977 Bruno Bischofberger Gallery, Zürich, Switzerland Chirac. Three retrospective exhibitions: at the National Museum of Contemporary Art near Seoul, Musée d’Art et d’industie, Saint-Étienne, France South Korea; the Busan Museum of Modern Art in Busan, South Korea; and the Museum Küp- Sonja Hennie - Niels Onstad Foundation, Hovikodden, Norway persmühle für Moderne Kunst in Duisburg, Germany. Traveling sculpture show moves to the French 1979 ARCO Center for Visual Arts, Los Angeles, California cities of Bordeaux and Metz. June sees the inauguration of 25 meter Arcs commissioned for the 1984 Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers, France Toulouse Métro. Musée d’Art Moderne, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France 2008 Sotheby’s for the first time invites a single artist – Bernar Venet – to present his work on the grounds 1985 Musée Départemental des Vosges, Épinal, France of the Isleworth Country Club. From January through April 2008, approximately twenty-five monu- 1986 Leo Castelli Gallery Uptown, New York mental sculptures showcase the artist’s work of the last two decades, highlighting some of his 1987 Galerie Pierre Huber, Geneva, Switzerland most distinctive themes. In the fall, the city of San Diego hosts a dozen of the artist’s sculptures in Quadrat Museum - Moderna Gallery, Bottrop, Germany California.

100 101 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Shaped Canvases, 2009-2011, acrylic on canvas Exhibition: Seoul Museum of Art (SOMA), Seoul, South Korea, 2011

102 103 The Paradox of Coherence 1989 Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany 2005 Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence antiques, Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France Art Selection Ronald Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Curriculum Vitae 1990 Galerie Daniel Templon, La ligne à vif (performance), Paris, France Sculptures in the Loop, Chicago, Illinois Acknowledgements Leo Castelli Gallery Uptown, New York 2006 Gary Langsford Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand Galerie Pierre Huber, Geneva, Switzerland Museum / Kunsthalle Würth, Künzelsau, Germany 1991 Fred Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles, California William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri Galeria Theo, Barcelona, Spain 2007 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwangmyeong-gil (Seoul), South Korea 1992 Person’s Weekend Museum, Tokyo, Japan Bernar Venet in Bordeaux, France 1993 Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France Bernar Venet in Metz, France Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, Germany André Emmerich Gallery, New York Busan Museum of Art, Busan, South Korea 1994 Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Bogotá, Colombia 2008 Bernar Venet: Sotheby’s at Isleworth, Windermere, Florida Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea Galerie von Bartha, S-Chanf, Switzerland Hyundai Gallery, Seoul, South Korea 2009 Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida Le Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR), Brussels, Belgium 1995 Hong Kong Museum of Art, Kowloon, Hong Kong Arsenale Novissimo, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy Shanghai Museum of Art, Shanghai, China 2010 Bernar Venet in Hermann Park, Houston, Texas Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris FIAC, France Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia, Spain, curated by Barbara Rose 1996 Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France Le monde de Bernar Venet, Venet in Context, Musée Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany 2011 Seoul Museum of Art (SOMA), Seoul, South Korea 1997 Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France Ludwig Museum im Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz, Germany Le Nouveau Musée / Institut de Villeurbanne, Lyon, France Venet à Versailles, Château de Versailles, Château de Marly, France Musée du Québec, Québec, Canada Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, France Hyundai Gallery, Seoul, South Korea Bernar Venet in Frankfurt, Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany 1998 Musée d’Art Moderne de St. Étienne, St. Étienne, France Hôtel des Arts, Toulon, France Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy Von Bartha Garage, Basel, Switzerland Galleria Karsten Greve, Milan, Italy 2012 Mücsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary 1999 Centro Cultural de Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand Museum of Modern Art Mücsarnok, Budapest, Hungary Bernar Venet: Monumental Sculptures, Le French May, Hong Kong Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva, Switzerland de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong 2000 Eaton Fine Art, West Palm Beach, Florida Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janiero, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Centre d’Art Contemporain Georges Pompidou, Cajarc, France Teatro Nacional de Brasília, Brazil Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, São Paulo, Brazil Public Collections Galerie Kaj Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland 2001 Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, France Akron Art Institute, Akron, Ohio, USA Furniture, Galerie Rabouan Moussion, Paris, France Atlantic Richfield Corporation, Los Angeles, California Galerie Haas & Fuchs, Berlin, Germany Bank Audi, Beirut, Lebanon Galerie Hans Mayer, Berlin, Germany Busan Museum of Art, Busan, South Korea 2002 Galerie Academia, Salzburg, Austria Citibank Corporation, New York, New York, USA Conjugaisons et divorces de la voix, de l’image et de l’écriture, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France City of Metz, France Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, Germany City of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Robert Miller Gallery, New York Colonnade III Plaza, MEPC & Equity Properties, Dallas, Texas, USA Grant, Selwyn Fine Art, New York Contemporary Art Center, San Diego, California, USA 2003 Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain (MAMAC), Nice, France DaimlerChrysler Collection, Stuttgart, Germany Equation/Saturation, MAMAC / Galerie des Ponchettes, Nice, France Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, USA 1961-1963, Hôtel des Arts, Toulon, France Espace de l’Art Concret, Mouans-Sartoux, France Bernar Venet aux Tuileries, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France Esplanade de Uni Mail, Geneva, Switzerland Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg, Allemagne Esquire Company, Seoul, Korea 2004 Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, France First National Bank, Seattle, Washington Galerie Haas & Fuchs, Berlin, Germany Fonds d’Art Contemporain des Musées de Nice, Nice, France Sculptures on Park Avenue, New York Fondation Clément, Le François, Martinique Robert Miller Gallery, New York Fondation Looser, Zürich, Switzerland Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers, France Fondation Mourtala, Dakar, Senegal Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland Foundation Domnick, Nürtingen, Germany

104 105 The Paradox of Coherence Art Selection Curriculum Vitae Acknowledgements

Three Indeterminate Lines 1994 Rolled steel 273 x 300 x 430 cm Exhibition: Champs de Mars, Paris, France, 1994

106 107 The Paradox of Coherence Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA Art Selection Gateway Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri, USA The New York University Art Collection, New York, New York, USA Curriculum Vitae Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia, USA The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York, USA Acknowledgements He Xiangning Art Gallery, Shenzhen, China Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., USA Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA Ho-Am Art Museum, Seoul, Korea Von der Heydt Museum, Wüppertal, Germany Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut, USA Ilshin Spinning Company, Seoul, Korea Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany Ilwoo Foundation, Jeju Island, Korea Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia, Spain Yuanta Financial Holdings, Taipei, Taiwan Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg, Germany Jumex Foundation, Mexico City, Mexico Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France Commissions Ludwig Museum im Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz, Germany Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris, France Archon Company, Austin, Texas, USA McCrory Corporation Collection, New York, New York, USA Bank Al Maghrib, Agadir, Morocco Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA Beijing Silver Tower Real Estate Development Company, Beijing, China MIT Permanent Collection, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Centre Hospitalier de Cannes, Cannes, France Musée d’Art contemporain de Dunkerque, Dunkirk, France City of Adachi, Tokyo, Japan Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland City of Belley, France Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland City of Bergen, Norway Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain, Nice, France City of Cologne, Germany Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain, Saint Étienne, France City of Denver (Colorado Convention Center), Denver, Colorado, USA Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture, Grenoble, France City of Epinal, France Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, France City of Lille, France Musée du Québec, Québec, Canada City of Shenzhen, China Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Collège & École de Commerce Emilie-Gourd, Geneva, Switzerland Musée national d’art moderne de Liège, Liège, Belgium Dongkuk Steel Mill Company, Seoul, South Korea Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers, France Espace Fortant de France, Sète, France Musées Royaux de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium Gallery Hannam The Hill, Seoul, South Korea Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg, Germany Goodman Segar Hogan, The World Trade Center, Norfolk, Virginia Museum of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA Groupe AGF, Paris, France Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, USA Hansol Company, Seoul, Korea Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, USA Jardin Albert 1er, Nice, France Museum Sztuky W. Lodzi, Lodz, Poland Kurpark, Bad Hamburg, Germany Museum / Kunsthalle Würth, Künzelsau, Germany La Chapelle Saint Jean, Chateaux-Arnoux, France National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (Gwangmyeong-gil), South Korea La Cour des Comptes, Paris, France National Museum of Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia La Défense, Paris, France Neue Galerie im Alten Kurhaus, Aachen, Germany Miyagi Prefectural Library, Sendai, Japan North Fork Bank Collection, Melville, New York, USA Place de Bordeaux, Strasbourg, France Parc de la Boverie, Liège, Belgium Place Sulzer, Nice, France Person’s Weekend Museum, Tokyo, Japan Quai des Etats-Unis, Nice, France Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida, USA Rocher de Roquebrune, Roquebrune sur Argens, France Quadrat Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany Runnymeade Sculpture Farm, San Francisco, California, USA Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea Société du Métro de l’Agglomération Toulousaine, Toulouse, France Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, USA TCLM Mansons Development, Auckland, New Zealand Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tampere, Finland Urania Platz, Berlin, Germany Seoul Museum of Art (SOMA), Seoul, South Korea Seoul Olympic Museum, Seoul, South Korea Smalley Sculpture Garden, University of Judaism, Los Angeles, California, USA Sonja Henie - Niels Onstad Foundations, Hovikodden, Norway Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyongbuk, Korea The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, USA The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, USA The Fields Sculpture Park, Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, New York, USA The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, USA

108 109 Author Barbara Rose

Conception and Coordination Jacki Mansfield Carole de Senarclens Frédéric de Senarclens Vijaya Krishnan Acknowledgements Sophie Hirabayashi Chanez Baali Audrey Collins Laszlo Szalai Olivier Philibert Maxime Bruyelle

Graphic Design mostra-design.com

Photo Credits Philippe Bompuis, Nice - p. 8 Jérôme Cavalière, Marseille / Archives Bernar Venet, New York - p. 26, 102-103 Philippe Chancel, Paris - pp. 34-35 Courtesy of Capella, Singapore - pp. 30-31 Alexandre Devals, Paris / Archives Bernar Venet, New York - Front Cover, p. 8-11, 40-41, 52-53, 58-59, 64-65 Werner Hannapel, Essen - p. 39 Craig Johnston, New York - pp. 18-19 Gauls, Koblenz - pp. 20-21 Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland - pp. 48, 50, 54-55 Jean-Christophe Lett, Marseille - pp. 72-73, 82-83, 85-87, 90-91 LuxProductions, Paris - p. 23 Jean-Marie del Moral, Paris - p. 107 De Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong - p.89 Archives Bernar Venet, New York - Back Cover, pp. 9, 12-13, 15-16, 25, 36-37, 43, 45-47, 49, 51, 56-57, 60-63, 67, 69, 71, 74-81, 93, 95, 97 Andreas Zimmermann, Basel - p. 5

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