“JI come from a place where the word “Art” didn’t exist.”. When we rewind the career of Bernar Venet, he pulls the thread back to his first memories, in the heart of the 1940s and 1950s, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and his village of Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban .
If he confesses that he was “perhaps a little more gifted than the others at school at drawing and painting”it was only around the age of 11 that he discovered that it was possible to paint on canvas, working alongside a village artist.
He then moved from colored pencil to oil paint and while he went to Digne to stock up on materials, an encounter turned his life upside down.
“In a shop window, I came across a book with a word on the cover that I didn’t know: “Renoir”.” The doors of the impressionists then opened before him.
“I discovered this wonderful universe and I understood that one could be an artist. I began to dream that one day there would perhaps be books about me. This triggered in me the desire to to be an artist, but above all to create.”
This is where Venet's genius lies. Drawing well, painting well, it remains accessible to everyone – or almost -, but the difference is in the ability to create. “There, we’re talking about something else,” insists the artist.
His quest then pushes him towards Nice. “It’s my luck!”he recognizes today at 83 years old, a few steps from his foundation established in Le Muy since 2014.
He arrived at the Bay of Angels at the age of 17, and despite being refused the decorative arts competition, he entered the Villa Thiole and met artists like Ben and Arman. “I understood that I was setting foot in a serious context. There, we were talking about art.”
The “busy” school of Nice
Between the ages of 18 and 24, he laid the foundations of what would constitute his entire body of work. “I then begin to realize that we must go into pure creation, I make very radical gestures”.
During this period, he thus offers paintings entirely covered in tar and especially his “Heap of Coal” which marks the history of contemporary art.
He asserts himself, but does not want to stop there. “Art is long-term research. The artist is like a scientist. The true researcher is the one who makes his field evolve. It is not by just painting or that we achieve this through sculpture. We work to evolve a thought, we do it in the service of humanity ultimately. Take Cézanne, Picasso, Malevitch… they changed the way of thinking about art.he decides.
In this, he finally emancipated himself quite quickly from the Nice school. “When people ask me what I think of the Nice school, I say that I was the one who skipped school, since very quickly I left for New York. It was not for me.”
At 24, he joined “La Grande pomme” in Arman’s suitcases, “mon pygmalion”with only $150 in his pocket and not a word of English.
For a month and a half, he slept on a deck chair in the Nice artist's studio. “There wasn't much, not even water, it was hard. But I knew why I was doing it.”
Complete and total artist
Arman opens his address book and very quickly Venet meets the whole “Pop art” scene including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein… After this first two-month stay, he understands that this world “was made for me.”
He returned to France a few weeks before returning to New York to make a life there: “I stayed there for 57 years.” After two years there, he exhibited in the biggest galleries and after four years he was offered his first retrospective.
Despite this success, he keeps his feet on the ground, convinced “for not having done anything yet. And that still applies today, there is so much left to do, you have to be humble. I just try to be an artist, from what I call a conceptual matrix, a concept that is mine, which corresponds to my taste, to my time, to what I love and what I respect. I have developed a work in sculpture, in painting, in photography, in poetry,. in music, in all kinds of disciplines, but also and above all in performance.“
With the leitmotif of going further. Always. This is evidenced by the two paintings exhibited in the hall of his house in Le Muy. “At the moment, I am making works that are the most exciting that I have ever done. They are paintings, with angles, collapses. I actually had an exhibition in Paris and I have never seeing the works, I especially don't want to see them. I give instructions to the coders on the angles, the proportions, the colors. Once it's done they send the works to be printed. I'm talking about art, not painting. My goal is to renew artistic thinking”concludes Bernar Venet.
The “one” dissected
Giving Bernar Venet carte blanche for this January 1 cover story also means entering his world.
For this first day of the year, he offers us a photomontage of a sculpture “quite spectacular”he admits. “I always work on the theme of line, of arc. It is a work which belongs to the same family as the one that was bought from me for Paris 2024 which is today in Saint-Denis and which is 18 meters high. These are new works and I will try to develop this.
The montage he offers us today comes from a work presented in Beijing, where the artist has an exhibition dedicated to him, as part of the 60 years of friendship between China and France.
A creation that he wanted to share. “I thought it was good to put it on the front page of the newspaper. I added color effects, I took some liberties with reality.”
The work was conceived and thought out in Le Muy, where he set up his foundation. He then traveled to China “to feel out the space” and set up the entire installation.
