Jean-Claude Gaugy
Jean-Claude Gaugy never envisioned an exhibition entitled, "Hero, Myth and the Natural World." Not so calculating or pre-meditated, he simply wakes every morning and puts hand to hammer to chisel and brush and creates. Like the artists who were his peers and who are now his predecessors, Dali, Chagall, Picasso, Miró, he is prolific. Artwork alights from his soul. Describing this in workingman's terms, Gaugy says: "My father and grandfather were artists. Had they been doctors, I'd be a doctor, had they been bricklayers, I'd be a bricklayer." In more metaphysical terms, "I pray to God to get me out of the way." God or a laborer's work ethic or both, Gaugy creates every day.
In the creations for "Hero, Myth and the Natural World," there is something more mature, more finely integrated than much of the artist's previous works. Within his pictorial narratives we witness the hero, self, or ego and the communal, society and family coexisting in a realm dominated by the beauty of the natural world.
Years ago Gaugy had completed preparations for a gallery exhibition of his works on the upper east side of Manhattan. As the artist had a few hours on his hands and his hotel was one block from Central Park, the gallery director suggested a walk in the park. To the director's astonishment Gaugy asked "Why?" The director answered, "It's a beautiful summer's day, and people come from all over the world to take a walk in Central Park." Gaugy explained that nothing there was more beautiful than the images in his head, then returned to the hotel to rest before the opening.
That Jean-Claude Gaugy, the artist who saw no greater beauty than what he himself could imagine, is little evident here. Observe the landscapes shown in this exhibition and you will see that the reality of his current home in New Mexico is palpable and acts as a guide to the artist. These landscapes and still lifes are obviously Gaugy; yet beyond reflective of the beauty in the artist's head, their inspiration is in the land, its rivers, trees, and storms.
In many of the works such as Nos âmes étendus and L'arbre nature itself acts as a springboard to conjure the mythmaking pantomime of Gaugy's characters. What manner of ceremonies, theatre, or rituals take place upon the artist's carved wood? This writer wouldn't even hazard a guess, except to suggest that they are both ancient and present, as firmly rooted in the past as they are alive today.
And who is the hero? As I write I can almost hear Gaugy's voice saying, "You are. I am." Each of us is the star in a film playing inside our heads. And yet, Jean-Claude Gaugy's heroic journey has been more poignant than most.
He was born during World War II in the Jura Mountains of France to a family of artisans, specifically wood carvers. A gifted child, he was a favorite of his grandfather, a point of contention between the young boy and his father. The rift between the two became so severe that Gaugy left home for Paris on his fourteenth birthday. Surviving as best he could on the streets of that city, his talent afforded him a job as a portraitist. That opportunity led to his discovery by Salvador Dali and a one artist exhibition sponsored by Dali when Gaugy was only fifteen. Art exhibitions and intense schooling became his new life until, like all Frenchmen, he was drafted and went to war. Upon his return to France the sensitive artist checked into a monastery. He later married an American and in 1966 moved to the United States where he created art in mainly a vagabond fashion, moving himself and his young family to wherever he could find work: a street fair, a commission to carve a mural in a church, any potential project would find Gaugy packing for the next destination. Peter Gaugy, Jean-Claude's son, once told me that he attended fifteen schools in twelve years, such was his father's desire to go where his art took them.
In 1986, at the encouraging of Jean-Claude's second wife Michelle, Gaugy allowed his work to be shown in galleries. The artist had found his mature voice, a blending of the imaginative, colorful, and abstract elements of twentieth century art with the formal compositions and figurative beauty of previous centuries. Gaugy called what he brought forth Linear Expressionism and while many other artists followed this marriage of styles, in 1986 his work was like a breath of fresh air in the vacuous world of Pop, Op and as Robert Kipniss has called it, "an endless variety of impersonal isms." Within his first five years of gallery representation Gaugy had sell-out shows in Chicago and New York, was commissioned by Senator Orrin Hatch and then first lady Barbara Bush to create "The Opening Door," and joined two other Americans for an exhibition in Paris at Musée de Luxembourg.
The subsequent years have been a triumph of artistic and commercial success, including his greatest achievement thus far: an eleven thousand square foot mixed media on hand carved wood entitled, "The Awakening." That monumental work was initially created over a thirteen year period in West Virginia and then moved, panel by panel, and reworked in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is Gaugy's interpretation of the Bible; being inside the work is a celebration of God and an exploration of the complex nature of man. In his faithful rendition of popular stories from the Bible, as well as obscure passages from Revelations, he depicts God in an abstracted way, with no human form. I find it very telling that Gaugy, who has the genius to conceive such a work and the strength, tenacity and talent to actually bring it into being, also carries the humility of a man who understands he will never know the true form of God. The work speaks to both an immediacy and a distancing.
This duality of approach is evident in many of the pieces in "Hero, Myth and the Natural World." The ceremonial dance of Une histoire bleue has so much vitality; yet, in carving or extending the image only within a frame he himself imposes, it communicates a distance- a sense that the artist is observing as opposed to acting in this particular play. This device of framing is also used to great effect in the still life Les fleurs luxuriantes and Nature-morte dans une salle bleue. In none of the landscapes is this device of framing used as Gaugy puts us all on each mountaintop or hillside that he hikes; these works, carved to the edge, suggest infinite vistas. In addition to the voyeuristic pleasure of seeing through the artist's eyes, there exists an additional level of contemplation: one of the classical form executed in Gaugy's wild carving and inspired palette. Always a great carver, Gaugy has become so enthralled with the physicality of painting that in recent years he added flinging the paint, a method of painting Gordon Onslow Ford called "coulage," to at times foregoing the brush entirely for the pleasure of applying paint directly to the wood with his hands. This intimacy of technique is reflected in the greater sensuality of his current nudes such as Innocence and Femme terrestre. Not just limited to the human form, this sensuality is also evidenced by the still life Un peu de jardinage and the landscape Colline jaune.
With a maturity of voice and a steady hand, Jean-Claude Gaugy has created "Hero, Myth and the Natural World," his greatest effort to date to communicate with us our most basic and deepest desires-to understand ourselves, to become part of our community, and to find joy in the world around us.
Philip Allen
San Francisco, 2004
