François Morellet

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in Cholet, France, in 1986

Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou; Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Morellet [Paris, 1986], 1986

S. Lemoine, François Morellet, Zurich 1986, p. 204. ill.
Bottrop, François Morellet Werke/Works 1976-1983, Ludwigshafen 1983/84, p. 33 ill. of another version

Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are minor cracks to the painted surface due to the construction of the corners on the upper- and undersides of the panel (non disturbing). No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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"In 1976-77 a catalogue was edited (for the exhibition in the National Gallery in Berlin & travelling). In this catalogue I wanted to put some order into my works of the last twenty-five years. I had written: In this catalogue, I have classified my works since 1952 into five chapters. These five chapters: juxtaposition, superposition, hazard, interference and fragmentation, represent the five large families of systems which I have been using for twenty-five years.
Thus my works began to break away from a comfortable chronological classification in order to regroup in new territories with undefined frontiers. This was not too bad at all except for certain canvasses of the last years like the painting of 1976: Trame horizontally turned by 5º. I classed this work among the juxtapositions because it is indeed converted with juxtaposed parallel horizontal lines.

For my classifications I might have focussed my interest on the characteristics of a more ancient nature in my painting (the juxtaposition) just as the naturalists do who in the case of the bat, first of all consider the breasts as being the signs of a shameful past instead of the wings to be the fruit of a more recent and marvellous evolution which places them above the cows.

I have never been able to accept this type of classifications based on what has been left behind. As far as I am concerned, a classification should in the first place take account of what has just happened or even of what is about to happen.

Besides, this method has, among other advantabes, the faculty of rendering unclassifiable all that is new. As indeed the inclining pictures which appeared around 1973 were unclassifiable for me in 1976 and as my really new works should be.

According to my system those unclassifiable works were the exception. They have now become the rule. Therefore, I need only declare this nomenclature, which is no longer of any use to me, as closed and will give it the title: Chapter One. It is exactly what happens with reference to recent history where events of a period are seen as opposing alternatives and are called the 'Fifth Republic' as soon as they are overtaken by the Sixth, or are called "the republic" as soon as another type of government takes over.

My revised and enlarged classifications would not, therefore, consist of more than two chapters: before and now. Either, more formally, the works with something within (and a neutral surround) and the works within (a neutral within), or the works which obey the constraints of geometry and those which utilise the geometry of constraints, or, finally, the works which are cut off from the world secure on top of their ideal support – stable, intemporal and immaterial – and the works which are broken up, driven beyond a support which reveals itself eventually for what it is – clumsy, unstable, capricious and ever ready to play the main roles.

Why write all this? Why reassert this weak and classificatory rationalism which is definitely old-fashioned?

Well, it's surely because I am definitely old-fashioned."

François Morellet
Cholet, December 1982

(Parts of the artist's preface in: Bottrop, François Morellet werke/Works 1976-1983, Ludwigshafen 1983/84)