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Faire
Face (To
Confront )- March 1997-Number 541
By Francis Seuret
A
Painter in movement
" Nothing is ever static. Neither are Jean-Noël Libert's
paintings (this painter, master in the art to depict movement)
nor is our static society; flaws of which he has endeavoured to
highlight."
Jean-Noël Libert has carried his paintbrushes throughout
the world. Is this why he enjoys depicting movement?
His characters are never frozen. On his paintings, they continue
to live. Drapes vibrate, the smile stretches, the hand slides.
The painter decomposes the image, convinced that the moment is
imperceptible.
" I am not the man of landscapes or dead natures, he says.
My pictures are first of all the fruit of a meeting, the recollection
of ephemeral moments."
But for Jean-Noël Libert, painting is also a media in its
own right. A means of information in the same way as television
or press. The painter is indeed the witness of his time. He denounces
the danger of standardisation of cultures, the occidental steamroller,
which flattens differences between civilisations and the simplification
of machine and concrete. "Our civilisation goes too fast.
We do not take the time to listen to what other people have to
tell us." regrets this citizen of the world.
The paintings are marked by the North/South confrontation, the
shock between tradition and modernity... JNL mocks also in his
own way the course of progress. " A long grey line thus
deforms one of his paintings on the bullfight. It is an electric
cord of the amphitheatre of Nîmes " ,he says with
irony. " The other painters would have certainly removed
it. But I preferred to leave it. I show everything I see. "
And for the last fifty years, JNL has seen a lot of things. From
Innsbruck in Austria where he was born in 1946, to Montpellier
where he lives now, the painter has never stopped travelling and
meeting other people. After graduating from the School of Fine
Arts of Rennes, he leaves for Cracow (Poland), he then obtains
a teaching position in Morocco. He stays there for ten years.
It is a time of great journeys to the Sahara, the Ivory Coast,
Egypt and Mexico. It is also the time of engraving in black and
white.
" I looked for sobriety and the power of monochromatic
images. ", he explains. However, due to a motorcycle
accident; JNL ends up with a finger immobilised in a splint for
two months. It’s during that period that he starts paint
brushing and discovers colour. He will never leave it.
After a brief stay in Algeria, he moved to Reunion in 1983. Four
years later, a car accident nails him in an wheelchair. Painting
helps him face and overcome the shock. A year after the accident,
he feels again the urge to paint... His paintings become more
impulsive, less studied. " I always carry out a lot of
markings before beginning a painting. Now as I am less mobile,
it is not possible do so anymore. But my work won in spontaneity.
"...
... From Morocco to Montpellier, by way of Algeria and Reunion
island, the artist also teaches the art of drawing and takes up
projects with his pupils. One of his most beautiful ventures:
he creates a fresco of 120 meters length in one single day, thus
celebrating the anniversary of the inception of the UNESCO. Two
thousand stencils later, the project comes to life. In Reunion,
Saint Paul's mur-pain is still there to be seen. "One
can say it is I who introduced the tags on the island. "
says the painter with a wide smile.
It isn’t after all these years that he ceases to communicate
his passion. JNL still has projects to set up. One of them will
be to create a workshop for young handicapped persons helping
them to discover the art of painting.
There is still a lot to be done: find premises, materials and
so forth – but the most important is to set the movement
into motion.
Diplomas
and rewards :
1969 - National Diploma of the Fine Art of Rennes.
1970 - Price Deglane of the Academy of Architecture, Paris.
1976 - Prizewinner of 4th Biennial of Saint – Brieuc.
1978 - Member of the jury of the 5th Biennal of Saint – Brieuc.
1979 - Selected for the retrospective Exhibition " Five years
of engraving, 1973-1978 ", National Library of Paris.
1984 - Selected in 20th Biennial International of Engraving Cracow
(Poland).
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