VICTOR BRAUNER, BY SARANE ALEXANDRIAN

Book Review par Marc Kober

This book is the reflection of a surrealist friendship between a painter and a writer, both partisans of "passionate knowledge," and it is with methodical fervor that Sarane Alexandrian presents here the ambitious exegesis of a still secret work, Victor Brauner the illuminator, fragments and various studies that have the advantage of presenting in simple terms what is demonstrated elsewhere by following the least frequented detours of a new "ontological aesthetics." In fact, the magisterial analysis that is resumed here is understood in relation to Brauner's return to Paris in the post-war period, covered with praise by Breton or Char, and admired by the "young," but poor, and desirous of showing his clandestine and magical work of the war years. The author thus recalls how the charm of this personality resided in a spirit enamored with occultism and inventor of words, like "crichant" or "véritom," without equivalent then. Describing in passing the international surrealist exhibition of 1947 as well as the first Brauner retrospective, it is to the importance of this book - the first ever written on the painter - that the author attaches himself not to establish its merit, but insofar as it accompanied and even stimulated Brauner between 1949 and its completion, in spring 1954. One can easily imagine that the painter's overexcitement met his critic's exaltation. This is to say that reading this finally available work plunges us into the heart of one of the most singular workshops, and into the alchemical forge of modern art.

Here then is a rare and initiatory study even in the specialized refinement of its terms that interrogates the very art of painting, in its relations to the individual or to the civilization of which it would be the index. The author has taken up the challenge of presenting a subtle painter whose special merit is to ignore a public that was then far from being won over. Indeed, the work has the reputation of being hermetic, allusive or complex, a reputation that is not usurped. But it is to its qualities and its exceptional intelligence that the analysis pays homage, insisting on the freedom and richness of invention that manifests itself at first glance, with an art of formulas and a true poetic inspiration, which rises in intensity by several degrees on a Richter scale that remains to be conceived for critical writing. This text, in its inspired character, is revealing of a verbal and intellectual exchange of great intensity, whose vivid flames still illuminate incandescent words that have not had, in exactly fifty years, the time to cool.

The human body becomes in Brauner "the theater of fabulous anatomical resolutions." Through genre scenes, or studies, it is a "total content" that must immediately strike the spectator with force, because this painting "must burst like a cry, and vibrate forever like the visible heart of a drama." The painter, according to his own formula, passes "to the other side of everything," and proceeds to his "experimental autobiographies," that is, "hyperbolic detours" to arrive at self-consciousness. For this, he proceeds from a dialectical method, from expression-creation toward production, from a mythology, and from a therapeutics, by the projection in images of conflicts of intimacy. Essential term, the painter considers painting as a method to combat Evil, and the terrifying character of objects and others. In this regard, his paintings serve for withdrawal and liquidation of anguish. This painting would finally be an ontology, using various elements to personify interiority. Remarkable intuition, the small formats, which have the painter's predilection, are adequate to the formulation of the secret being and interiority. Thus, the ideality of artistic Beauty is secondary before this art of unveiling human totality.

Brauner's work still strikes by its diversity, following experimentations, or "successive illuminations," and the author remarks how much this painter endowed with the "genius of metamorphoses" is mobile in his creation. His beginnings in painting are marked by avant-garde eclecticism, while surrealism will give him a framework conducive to the elaboration of methodical rules. From 1948, he would have surpassed surrealism, from which he had moreover left.

He then attaches himself to recreating the anatomy of man and his desire, with satirical paintings (The Strange Case of Mr. K), or premonitory ones, like those that prefigure the ocular mutilation he was to undergo, unfortunate accident, but also strange case of the divinatory power of his painting. The "period of chimeras" (1938), the most surrealist of his work, seems to respond term for term to the theories developed by Breton, and form a transition toward paintings of occultist inspiration that ally with a meditation on esoteric tradition.

This last aspect will give him the reputation of being "a sort of shaman of modern painting." Wax painting, coated paintings, then scratched, will produce unprecedented effects. In fact, the attraction to esotericism is combined in him with psychoanalytic knowledge that will be useful in the following period, called "solipsist." The painter then persuades himself of the unique and absolute reality of his self, leading to characters, like the Infinite Emperor, or to "onomatomania," a series of paintings conceived as a genealogy of the self, or again the "metaphysical meditations." His first name frequently doubles, and by principle of compensation before his difficulties, the painter sees himself as "master of the universe." He then passes to consciousness of being through the group of "retracted," that is, the process of retraction of personality, a contemplative withdrawal into self in a desperate quest.

His art of painting undergoes a radical transformation as if he plunged in apnea under the well-known surface of appearances, transforming himself into object, animal or fluid as well. He perceives art as a language in competition with speech and no longer as formerly with nature: "the artist is a proclaimer" he then affirms, concerned with producing with each work a truth that the words of titles or long commentaries sometimes directly inscribed on the painted surface emphasize. He will say by showing, notably with the help of symbol, following analogical thought, and with "passionate outbidding." Thus, the serpent symbolizes the poet (ally of the painter) and the essence of the poetic project. Other animals form an alphabet of personal symbols. He aspires to "make his vision peremptory by making the painting a dictum." Haunted by a calligrapher's concern, Brauner has developed a singular graphics in its relation to colors and lines that the author analyzes with precision not without yielding to savory critical swerves to arrive at the essential idea: Brauner is a painter of non-premeditation, at least in the execution of the painting, which proceeds from "spasm," and from "excessive emotion."

His painting constitutes - and this is a common trait with other surrealist painters - an attack on habit. Opposite to genre painting, he intends to rival literature or philosophy with the means of description, narration and song. The painter constructs fictions, and the painting is governed by a theme that must be well told. Reality merges with History, which is that of Evil. The painted work will then consist in creating a Counter-History, taking the defense of the person by evocation of a hero, ideal representative of being in the world, with legendary aspects. Two types of men will meet: the poet, or Homo divinans, opposed to the Oppressor, full of self-satisfaction and arrogance. Two types of women appear symmetrically, who are the Seer and the Mother. The first indicates a feminine sovereignty close to the feline or night bird, which owes much to a childhood memory. The narration, constructed with the painter's means, will be impregnated with a "pathetic tragic."

Description for its part issues from a contemplative attitude, but it leads to unusual forms following the principle of attack on habit, giving for example the Wolf-Table, which caused a sensation at the 1947 Surrealist Exhibition. Many other variants exist in the mode of existence of described objects. The author then analyzes the "cycle of the retracted," which deepens the problem of being. Here, a strong Heideggerian influence is felt even in the way of posing the question of the subject as "being" and "entity." It is in sum the rupture with the world, that is retraction, which leads to an isolation of figures, and to the invention of a "mythology of solitude." Thus, the retracted can enter into a dog, or into any other form, and the process of retraction subdivides and sometimes deepens over several works. We must express a regret here: the frequent absence of paintings that correspond to fine analyses, which sometimes appear a bit abstract without their visual referent.

The last part of this study recalls the stakes of this work that "violates plastic writing" to lead to the true. "Philosophical painting," or quest of metaphysical order, Brauner's work illuminates the essence of subjectivity, and aims to establish "the ontological proof of the existence of interior man." It is curious to note how much there exists a common spirit to an epoch, and how Georges Henein joins Henri Michaux, Victor Brauner and some others (no doubt we must include here his friend Jacques Hérold) in a common fervor for the exploration of interior being. Understanding these coincidences would be part of a history of the spirit in the 20th century that remains to be written, and which would necessarily pass through an analysis of History perceived as Evil, and of artistic work as Counter-History, or "exorcism."

Let us admit that Brauner's painting perfectly succeeds in fulfilling its intentions thanks to autobiographical work of great scope, and without equal, with the exception of Rembrandt's self-portraits. This work could be summarized by the formula given by the author: "the tribulations of a self-consciousness," or again "a hermeneutics of subjective reality." Perhaps the last term proposed, that of "psychic realism," is the most enlightening. In any case, this beautiful study by Sarane Alexandrian reduces the gap that could exist between the meaning, the painter's intentions and his finished works, and gives the desire to rediscover one of the very great painters of the last century.