Simon Hantaï

Galerie Fournier, Paris
Collection particulière, Paris (acquis circa 1971)

Paris, Centre Pompidou, Simon Hantaï, 22 mai - 9 septembre 2013; catalogue, no. 40, p. 73, illustré en couleurs (en honneur à Jean Fournier et Dominique Bozo)

The colours are fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration although the overall tonality is warmer in the original work. The work is executed on its original canvas and is not relined. There are scattered networks of thin cracks throughout the surface, mainly consistent with the vertical stretcher. Few small paint losses seem to have been consolidated. Under Ultra Violet light inspection, there are dots of restoration that fluoresce along the rim of the four edges. Two larger spots of restoration fluoresce, one located by the left edge and the center, and the other by the right edge, at the bottom.
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Moment prodigieux de la carrière de Simon Hantaï, l’année 1958 marque le rejet de l’artiste des pratiques de son temps allant du surréalisme à l’abstraction lyrique en passant par le tachisme et l’art informel. Hantaï rompt avec son passé immédiat, abandonne la couleur vive et s’extraie du genre de peinture qu’il pratiquait jusqu’ici pour épouser une esthétique qui n’appartiendra plus qu’à lui.

L’ampleur du geste est de moins en moins nécessaire et de moins en moins justifiée. Fini le verbiage. Hantaï se réinvente et nous livre plusieurs chefs d’œuvre, maillons essentiels à la compréhension de l’ensemble de son œuvre. Il laisse place à ces petites touches reconnaissables entre toutes et « qui ont rendu possible son retrait et son renouveau – disons sa naissance », comme l’explique Dominique Fourcade dans le catalogue de la grande rétrospective consacrée à Simon Hantaï par le Musée national d’art moderne français en 2013. Avec ce tableau majeur, accompli et complet, il accède à un état plus vrai, plus spirituel, plus secret. En se couvrant lentement et intégralement de petites touches, la toile s’inscrit aussi dans un temps plus long. Selon les propres mots du grand critique d’art américain Clément Greenberg, Hantaï « dématérialise ainsi la réalité immédiate en en invoquant une transcendante. » Et donne vie à « une nouvelle espèce de tableau moderniste. »

The year of 1958 was a prodigious moment in Simon Hantaï’s career as it marked the artist’s rejection of the practices of his time from Surrealism to lyrical abstraction as well as Tachisme and “art informel”. Hantaï broke with his immediate past, abandoned bright colours and extricated himself from the genre of painting that he had practiced up till then in order to embrace an aesthetic that belonged to him alone.

The ample gesture is less and less necessary and less and less justified.  Verbosity was over and done with. Hantaï reinvented himself and produced several masterpieces that proved to be essential links for an understanding of his work in its entirety. He made way for a style of small recognizable patches “which made possible his retreat and his renewal – that is to say his rebirth”, as Dominique Fourcade explains in the catalogue of the important exhibition dedicated to Simon Hantaï by the Musée national d’art moderne in France in 2013. With this major, accomplished and complete painting, he reaches a level of verity that is more spiritual, more secret. By covering the entire canvas slowly with small patches, the painting unfolds across a lengthy period of time. According to the words of the great art critic Clement Greenberg, Hantaï “dematerialises thus the immediate reality by invoking its transcendent” and gives life to “a new kind of modernist painting."