Une table au Tholonet - Catalogue Raisonné Léo Marchutz

Une table au Tholonet

Les enregistrements Marchutz — Réflexions sur l'art

— Repas au Tholonet (1936), extrait de l’album Château-Noir 1933-1937, Ed. Atelier 48 BIS

Par une chaude soirée d’été, au début du mois de juillet 2019, un groupe d’une vingtaine de personnes s’est réuni pour dîner autour d’une grande table en plein air au Tholonet. Rassemblés par leur engagement envers l’héritage de Léo Marchutz, ils représentaient près de quatre générations d’histoire de l’école Marchutz, y compris les étudiants actuels et anciens, les professeurs et les sympathisants.

La conversation fut vivante et variée, passant de la philosophie de l’art aux défis du maintien d’une pratique en atelier, des finesses de la théorie de l’éducation à la question de la place de Léo Marchutz dans l’histoire de l’art moderne. En d’autres termes, elle n’était pas si différente des conversations que nous aurions pu avoir il y a près de 50 ans, lorsque l’artiste d’origine allemande était encore en vie.

Nous avons créé ce blog pour faire connaître aux lecteurs la transcription récente d’une série d’entretiens enregistrés sur cassette entre Léo Marchutz et ses étudiants entre 1974 et 1976. Chaque article contient un bref extrait de ces transcriptions, sélectionné par une personne ayant un intérêt marqué pour Marchutz et ses théories sur l’art.

Les différents articles de ce blog ont été écrits par des personnes de langue anglaise.
Pour rester fidèles à leur propos, nous avons choisi de ne pas traduire leurs textes et de vous les proposer dans leur langue originale.

Through Faults and Errors

Leo Marchutz underlines the practice of learning through vision and how visually studying works of art by the great masters is an essential lesson students use to navigate through the art world.

Art Teaches Transcendence

A number of Leo Marchutz’s works portray biblical passages that speak of the pain of rejection, injustices among men, and imminent death.

The Marchutz Tapes

« We came with a tape recorder with the dual intention of documenting Leo’s voice and his art-related wisdom and at the same time trying to lift his spirits, if only for an hour or two.

To remember Leo as he was then is to remember the wisdom he so unselfishly imparted. It is to remember not only what he said, but how he said it. »
—

Extract from Leo & I and the Ghost of Cézanne: A Memory of Art and Provence, by William M. Weyman (Daedalus Gallery)

Sam Bjorklund and William Weyman (1978)
Co-founders of the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing and originators of The Marchutz Tapes.

Man I Can Hear It

In this excerpt, Leo Marchutz speaks to a question that seems particularly relevant in our present world — what's the purpose and value of art-making in the face of dire social, political and environmental crisis.

“Prendre par le milieu” – From the inside out

“Art is communication”- Leo Marchutz says – “and if the art is unable to communicate, well, then something is wrong…”

A Table in Tuebingen

Leo Marchutz's characters or mountains or architecture are fluid, moving open volumes, totally connected with the outside, interwoven with the space they breath. In Leo Marchutz's work, inside and outside are One.

I Copy The Masters to Find My Place

Copywork is more than a way to practice the techniques of master painters of the past. At the Marchutz School, it is how students find their place in the tradition of art and begin to assert themselves as artists.

What We Need is a School of Vision

"You must realize there are very few people who really see with their eyes, or who open their eyes, or who live by their eyes..."

Newness and Tradition

The study of past artists was of great importance to Leo Marchutz and his students, and many of their conversations centered around the ways in which their own work could be bettered by contact with great works of the past.

Form and The Imagination of the Artist: Hands

I have always been astonished by the hands in the work of Leo Marchutz. How did he conceive of such abstractions that are so pertinent to the form of the whole painting or drawing?

Unity and Volume

Unity and volume are both elemental in the work of Leo Marchutz. But how would he define these words and ideas?

The Light That Penetrates from Within

Discussions with Leo Marchutz about art usually covered a wide range of topics such as light, mass (gravity), volume, and most importantly unity.

On Light and Shadows

When Leo Marchutz was in his early 20's, he spent eight months in Italy, between November 1924 and June 1925. Verona, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Naples… The trip ended with a stay in Capri, where Marchutz made a series of heads.

One of the most beautiful portraits in all history of painting

Leo Marchutz touches the heart of what painting is about. In Madame Cézanne dans la serre, Cézanne managed to beautifully achieve unity, bringing the foreground and the background on the same plane, le plan de l’art, as he calls it.

Sacrifice, So Dear to Delacroix

"The art of the painter consists in drawing attention only to what is essential...", Eugene Delacroix

The Question of Sacrifice

In the following excerpt from “The Marchutz Tapes”, Leo Marchutz describes his experience of drawing in the streets of Aix-en-Provence. It is intriguing to discover how Leo Marchutz began his drawings of Aix. As a student, I have taken inspiration from Marchutz’s thoughts on drawing, of what is important, and how to make sacrifices along the way.

What is Important

Leo Marchutz created, over time, drawings and lithographs of streets... as he said “the street ones are all along the way”. First in Aix and then later on in Venice he drew and made lithographs of the streets.

Prendre par le milieu

"...there is no work of art which is defined from outside in."

By Commerce with Works of Art

Leo Marchutz often pointed out the importance of the dialogue between works of art and artists, a stream of visual thinking that is handed down from one generation to the next going back to the first painters and sculptors.