"The smell, the disgust and the terror": Noël Pasquier, witness of September 11, remembers the attacks

Marion Gauthier edited by Solène Delinger 9:04 p.m., September 11, 2021, modified at 9:08 p.m., September 11, 2021

TESTIMONY

He is one of those who have lived the unimaginable.

Noël Pasquier, a French painter now in his eighties, was in New York on September 11, 2001. His life changed at the same time as those of thousands of other people who witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers.

He remembers that terrible day at the microphone of Marion Gauthier for Europe 1. 

"A total nightmare"

Twenty years after September 11, the nightmare still lives in the eyes of Noël Pasquier. The octogenarian was walking the streets of New York City when the World Trade Center Twin Towers collapsed. An apocalyptic vision that the painter will never be able to forget. "I see a blue sky, totally clear. Then, the pleasant walk turned into a total nightmare," he says, his throat tight with emotion. "I feel an earthquake," he continues. "And there, I saw the plane, the collapse. I could already see the cloud coming. Every time I think about it, I have this image that comes back to me. And then the living dead, running zombies. , completely haggard, stumbling. " Noël Pasquier also remembers as if it were yesterday "thesmell of burning ", of" disgust "and" horror "which overwhelmed the city." Me, the end of time, I saw it for hours, on September 11 ", he breathes trembling voice.

Painting as the only response to barbarism 

Traumatized by the attacks, Noël Pasquier no longer has a taste for anything, nor even to paint.

For months, he no longer raises his brush.

Until the day when the click occurs, art appears as a therapy.

He then ends up painting the gray shadows of the World Trade Center, in the azure or in the ash, pierced with red or exploded.

Dozens of twin towers surround him today in his workshop.

"I keep painting them because they keep falling! It's in my head all the time… My weapon is my colors," he explains. "So I kept testifying. I really thought that was our only way to respond to barbarism." An "indispensable" and even "vital" work of memory, insists the artist. He continues to raise the towers on his canvases. Some are on display until September 12 at the ephemeral Grand Palais, in commemoration of the disaster.