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Gérard Garouste, painting madly

Gérard Garouste, "Pinocchio and the game of dice".

© Adagp, Paris, 2022

Text by: Sébastien Jédor Follow

5 mins

He is one of the greatest contemporary French painters.

Gérard Garouste is the subject of a major retrospective at the Center Pompidou in Paris, with no less than 120 large format paintings, installations and sculptures.

Marked by a difficult childhood and bipolar disorders, the painter defines himself as “

”.

His works are in any case unclassifiable, whether they are inspired by tales, legends or the Jewish religion, to which Gérard Garouste, 76, converted. 

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RFI: Do you remember the moment when you said to yourself “painting, is that what I want to do?

“Because you started out in theater decoration, then at some point something clicked?

You remember ? 

Gerard Garouste: 

No, in fact, it never clicked.

Because when I was a child, everything was bad around me, I was a very bad student.

And the only thing that was natural for me, intuitive, was to draw.

It was my only way to seduce my boyfriends and the school teacher.

At least I existed for that and not for my dictations.

So there you go, I never forgot that.

Later, I studied applied arts.

I missed them all.

But it's not big deal.

And then there you go, that's how I ended up in fine arts school because I couldn't go anywhere else.

Finally, the reason I was in fine arts was for the university restaurant.

We ate for 2.50 francs like any student.

And then also, the reprieve.

We were on probation like medical students for 6, 8 years.

For the rest, I learned absolutely nothing.

But otherwise, everything sucked.

At the School of Fine Arts: the students think they're brilliant and the teachers are old idiots.

In short, it sucked.

We did not learn to paint.

Me, I learned to paint by looking at paintings quite closely in museums.

And above all, I was lucky, at one point, to have two excellent teachers despite themselves who were the restorers of the Louvre.

They entrusted me with one of their students who was doing a chemistry degree to be a restorer and because, to be a restorer, you have to be a chemist and so I had this chemist as an assistant, so there really in terms of professional training, vs' 

You said that you were formed by looking at the works of other painters.

From this point of view, painters like Tintoretto and Le Greco played a major role, didn't they? 

Yes, that is to say an extremely classical formation.

But first I liked it!

El Greco, Tintoretto then more, and then also French painters like Manet, influenced by the same Spanish painting, Goya, I love.

And Goya, this Spanish painting seen by the French as Manet, was a great base for me.

Is it Goya's influence that makes you like deforming the human figure, twisting it, decomposing it, sometimes decomposing bodies?

Given the times now, anything is possible.

We are free.

So indeed, there is a Goya side that opens up this possibility.

But there are also, quite simply, I have seen very beautiful little initials, for example at the Marmottan museum on calligraphy, pages torn from religious books.

I drew a lot of inspiration from it to make Les Indiennes, nine meters high, inspired, therefore, by a small painting 5 cm high. 

I was wondering if you work the same way when you work on sacred texts, like the Esther scrolls, as when you do a painting?

Yes, there is in any case, the same state of mind.

I enjoy not going beyond two-dimensional painting.

An oil painting is a painting on a canvas, stretched on a frame.

I don't want to go over that.

Everything was done in the invention, in the iconoclastic side.

So how, in an oil painting, can you invent when it's a process that you know by heart.

Well, in my opinion, it is at the level of the subject.

The form is classic, but the subject is very new.

Well, that's what I'm trying to do.

Hence my inspiration from the Talmudic, biblical side. 

Looking back, do you think the disease had an influence on your painting?

Has this been able to bring anything, despite all the hardships that entails?

You know, when you're sick, everything stops.

We are totally KO standing.

Afterwards, we are treated, we are a vegetable.

And then there are the drugs.

You know, they're kind of chemical straightjackets and over time things fall back into place, little by little.

But I do think that if I hadn't experienced all these deliriums, maybe my painting wouldn't have become what it is.

There is a kind of freedom, that's the advantage of painting!

Because if I were, for example, a banker, I think it would be better for me to change jobs.

No one would dare entrust me with money! 

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