History of a space : Cave and the Winter Garden of Dubuffet

Picture View of grotte Chauvet (France) - AFP Photo/Jeff Pachoud

Serial MTAL 1 : Text written in May 2012, first published April 7, 2014, then edited (french only) in the collection Mes Traces au Loing in April 2019 by Denis Editions.

Shortly before starting to draw, I had a dream. I was stuck in a large beige cave, a little dirty, not scary but rather tasteless and unsurprising and I was trying to get out of it. I found a staircase that had all the promise of an exit. Of course it went upstairs. At the top of the steps, however, a closed door. The passage existed, there was still its track, besides I remembered having taking this path now condemned. I knew what was behind that door, a big terrace to look into the distance, the sun, the wind, a blue sky and space, many space. I had been there before, but I knew it was not really an exit. A lure at most.

I came back down. The atmosphere was full of boredom, so bland, I had no desire to stay in the cave. The walls were rounded inshell, as in the house of the Barbapapa [1]. There were colorfull curls, scattered around, mounted on wooden rods, I don't know how these toys turning with the wind are called (or if they have a name). There was no wind, but the toys were spining. I didn't even look at these colors, or realize that I saw them, thaht they existed spite of my indifference. These toys were the only living part, the only thing that could catch my eye in this no man's land. However it was not what I was scrutinizing, but the available space, the form and essence of the place, the meaning I could give to it..

They was no way out, I had to deal with what was there. I had condemned the door to the staircase myself, long ago, in another space-time, because it led to a place I no longer wanted to go. The terrace is another space, another possibility, from which it is also impossible to escape. This is a final step that leads nowhere, just to a little contemplation. One can only leave by turning back, or by stepping over the parapet you can jump into the void. But it has never been imaginable that my story would be sucked into the nothingness, not even in dream .....

I started to draw, momentarily forgetting my cave dream. A tenacious family legend tells that my greatest pleasure, as a child, was tiding up in order my colored pencils and schoolgirl’s felts by shades and lining them up in front of me like a treasure. Sometimes it is believed that the stream dries up, but sometimes it reappears a few distance away after a forgotten passage under the earth. The use and contemplation of colors became at this time the source of my drawings.

A few years later, I discovered Dubuffet's Winter Garden [2], during a visit to the Musée d'Art Moderne of the City of Paris. It is a kind of white cave, mottled with big black lines, all dented. One enter through a heavy door wich, when left open, illuminates the whole. The base is lightweight, the footsteps resonate, you have the feeling of walking on a hollow. Everything is bumpy, floor and walls, uneven. Irresistibly I sit on a ledge, there are several arranged here and there. I look at the ceiling of the cave, more random than the roof terrace of the Casa Mila in Barcelona[3]. Everything is white, milky, there isn't any noise. I am unable to leave. And why would I? Why not stay there as long as possible? The appeasement felt, resting me in this sculpted architecture, has never been match elsewhere. If I could have stayed there, I would still be there.

On returning in my small apartment, I watched the wardrobe, only room capable of being transformed. For starter I thought to myself, it will be fine, albeit a bit cramped, but I will soon find a home where my cave accommodate.Three moves later, my reproduction project (plagiarism, yes! I admit it) is still pending. Sometimes it is more difficult than one think to carry out your dreams.

From dreams of caves to another, as Robinson in her immaculate gut[4], I finally end up by drawing what I called of course "Cave". This title is probably not very original, but it is not here about a singularity witch would set me apart from my peers, rather to stage a necessary regression , to feel deep at the bottom of me an inseparable atavistic origin of my humanity. To start to draw, what could be able, more than a cave, to go back to the beginnings ? One will say: "What a pretentious girl ! "especially since the human in question here is a woman, but after all there is no evidence that Lascaux has been painted by a man (a boy I mean!). It will be said: "What Pride" , to claim find back the embryonic artistic gesture, why not the demiurgic creative gesture !!! I don't have that many intentions. I throw some curves as is my habit, detect a feminine shape on the left part of the paper, develop it, and not knowing how to finish the drawing, I stick colors at the end of her arms, at her fingertips, because I don't know to do something else.

Performing the drawing I told myself again about my cave dream, I mentioned the sacred serenity felt in the garden Dubuffet, and without realizing it, invented legend to my drawing, all personal and secret then. The story only exists if I tell, and I can't imagine something else looking at this drawing. The urge to build, spread the colors in my shelter, the need to stay there and not abandon my refuge anymore, even if it means caulking leaks, anyway there are no other ways out.

The story is now part of my brain, indelible, like the color of my markers, supposed to be "permanent", as black lines sculptures by Dubuffet, we reassure ourselves as we can. All this could be pathetic, but it isn't, because I keep dreaming about the cave on whose walls I would draw one day.

May 14,2012

Grotte, 2009, myriam eyann

Drawing markers on bristol board, 70x50cm, private collection

[1] Barbapapa, series of children's books created in 1970 by a Franco-American couple, Annette Tison (French architect born in 1942) and Talus Taylor (author of American children's literature 1933 - 2015). Barbapapas are pear-shaped figures of various colors who have the ability to change shape at will. Annette Tison creates the Barbapapas houses in reference to the Bblob architecture, architectural trend in which buildings have soft, rounded organic shape, like large amoebae. About this, see the achievements of the Hungarian architect Antti Lovag (1920 – 2014) and domobiles, evolutionary plastic houses of the architect Pascal Häusermann (1936 – 2011). For more contemporary designs see Kerterre and the Sustainable natural buildings with cobs of Brice Mathey. Too many references! I will soon do a FoAr&Cu post one of these Sundays on this subject!

[2]Jardin d'hiver monument painting (epoxy painted with polyurethane, dimension 5 x 10 x 6 m, produced in 1969-70) by Jean Dubuffet (1901 – 1985) kept at Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'Art moderne.

[3]The Casa Milà also named La Pedrera, built in Barcelona by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852 - 1926) and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

[4] French novel Robinson ou les limbes du pacifique. In this story, Michel Tournier the author, imagines Robinson's intellectual journey lost on his island and the adaptations he goes through for his psychic survival. Sometimes Robinson goes down to resource himself in a trench underground where he regresses for long periods.