« For me, showing a pile of coal was the same as showing a sculpture that, for the first time, had no specific shape. »
From tar to formula
Bernar Venet grew up in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, studied for a year at the Villa Thiole in Nice, and worked as a decorator at the Opéra de Nice. In 1961, during military service, he lay down among the waste: art no longer needs a « beautiful form ». Followed by the tar canvases, the pile of coal, and the sprayed cardboard. In 1966, he moved to New York, at the heart of the conceptual avant-garde. He then taught art theory at the Sorbonne, even interrupted his production for theoretical reasons, then returned to the work in 1976.
The line as subject
From 1979, angles, arcs, straight lines and indeterminate lines became his vocabulary. Monumental Corten steel invades Versailles, Berlin, Tokyo, the Champ-de-Mars, highways and parks. A title like 216.5° Arc × 13 or Arcs in disorder, Arc × 14 (2006) is already the protocol of the work: an angle, a number, sometimes the disorder. The Undetermined Line drawing is not a secondary sketch; it is the origin of the gesture before the factory.
A global work still in progress
Venet lives between Le Muy and the United States. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center. Painting, sound, ballet, poetry accompany the sculpture. His art refuses the easy symbol: beauty, if there is any, must come about as an effect of an equation embodied in metal.
