It looks like a miracle. The feat, in any case, commands admiration. At 100 years old, Françoise Sullivan has just inaugurated an exhibition of her new works (and other older ones) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. This total artist, emblematic figure of Overall refusal in 1948, painted every day, or almost. And his paintings are as relevant as when he started, 80 years ago.
Both frail and lively, with an elegance and aplomb that command respect, we wrote last October, this pioneer of contemporary art quite simply feels the imperative need to create.
Françoise Sullivan is not the only “old age” Quebec artist to keep the flame of creation alive — unless it is this burning fire that keeps her alert. Janette Bertrand is on all the stands at 98 years old. A large-scale show featuring Yvon Deschamps, 88, is scheduled to be staged next fall. Fernand Dansereau, 95, is working on a film, a novel and an exhibition of his recent paintings. Louise Latraverse is preparing a Quebec tour of her show Love screams at 83 years old. In recent months, Claude Gauthier has launched a 21e album. He is 84 years old.
Denys Arcand, Gilles Vigneault, Armand Vaillancourt and many others are literally “on fire”, long after the usual retirement age – 95 years for the poet from Natashquan and 94 years in the case of the painter and sculptor at eternal silver mop of hair.
A myth more than a century old
Old artists have been considered for centuries as icons, visionaries, treasures or giants, recalls Johanne Lamoureux, professor in the Department of Art History and Cinematographic Studies at the University of Montreal.
“There is something impressive and touching about seeing an artist who ages and continues to develop his work,” she agrees. There is still a mythology of the old artist. Art history is a myth-making machine. »
The latest works of artists, whether they died young or old, give rise to all kinds of sometimes far-fetched interpretations. Exegetes seek to give meaning to these paintings, these sculptures or these musical pieces. As if the master “had to know that he was going to die”, underlines Johanne Lamoureux.
The transfiguration, the last painting by Raphael, who died in 1520 at the age of 37, has been described as the work of a quasi-prophet. The reality is more banal: the painting, unfinished, was finished by his workshop in Rome, underlines the professor.
Closer to us, an aura of mystery surrounds Borduas’ last painting, Composition 69discovered on an easel, in his studio in Paris, four days after his death in February 1960. Shock and dismay: the paint of this work, which looked like a “mortuary card”, was still damp.
“I have news for you, it will never dry out!” I saw paintings by Borduas 20 years after his death and they were not yet dry,” laughs Johanne Lamoureux.
Creative frenzy
It is not uncommon for artists in the twilight of their existence to be seized by a frenzy of creation, observe art historians, doctors and other scholars, particularly in psychology. “The limits of the body open up new fields of creativity. […] The more the body weakens, the more creative processes are activated,” writes French psychoanalyst Simone Korff-Sausse in an article published in 2008 in the journal Psychosomatic field.
Professor Johanne Lamoureux recalls a classic of this indestructible vitality. Disabled by arthritis, Renoir continued to paint with brushes strapped to his hands at the end of his life. He is said to have asked for paintbrushes on his deathbed before passing away on the night of December 3, 1919, at the age of 78.
His weakened vision forced the artist to invent a new style. His characters had vague features and distorted colors. It was still Renoir, but in a new style.
The “old age style” interests art historians. “Caught by urgency, pressed for time, the artist must go straight to the essential. Faced with motor disorders, visual or hearing disorders, memory failures, a decline in intellectual abilities, a slowdown, we must invent other ways of creating,” indicates Simone Korff-Sausse in her article The creativity of aging painters. The late work of Picasso, Klee, De Kooning.
The way of the old
The psychoanalyst cites a series of artists who produced innovative works at the end of their lives: “Michelangelo, Titian, the cutouts of Matisse, Zao Wou-Ki, Rembrandt, Renoir, Matta, Poussin, the Black works of Goya, the Water lilies by Monet. At the end of his life, Cézanne opened the way to cubism, and Monet, that of abstraction. In other artistic areas there are the final scenes of Faust of Goethe, theThe art of running away by Bach, the last quartets of Beethoven. »
Even at over 80, Picasso claimed to turn his back on the past, adding that only the future interested him. This mad genius became interested in engraving at the age of 82, which requires less time than canvases. As feverish as at his peak, he produced 347 engravings at the age of 87.
The German painter Paul Klee embodied this burst of energy which animates certain artists at the end of their lives. Disabled by scleroderma, an incurable disease that affects the skin and internal organs, he begins a final creative stage “which expresses the shock of the illness”.
“Confronted with the idea of death and the end of his artistic production, refusing the enslavement of the body by illness, in a movement of splitting between the person and the artist, the painter renounces his Self in favor of his creation, which always seems to him to come from somewhere else that precedes and surpasses him. There is no sign of weakening of the work until the end,” writes psychoanalyst Simone Korff-Sausse.
Activity keeps you alive
She considers the painter Willem de Kooning, who lived to be 92, as another artist who benefited from a weakening state of health. Suffering from Alzheimer’s, he had stopped creating. One day, at the age of 76, a surge of inspiration launched him on a new path.
“He changes his technique, applying the colors directly from the tube, scraping the canvas with knives to remove the excess, using an increasingly liquid and fluid color, which seems to be lost by dissolving, as if he were trying to depict the process of psychic dissolution that affects him,” says Simone Korff-Sausse.
The painter’s wife notices that his mental health deteriorates as soon as he is forced to rest due to illness. He gets better when he can start painting again. And this is probably not a coincidence, believes the Dr David Lussier, from the University Institute of Geriatrics of Montreal.
“The best thing that can happen to my patients is to stay active as much as possible, physically and mentally,” he says.
The geriatrician recommends that older people take music, cooking or language classes, for example. Learning something new boosts memory and can make life more enjoyable. Or less painful.
Without forgetting that these old men in great shape can undoubtedly serve two or three lessons to the world. Perhaps we should listen to them, as Serge Fiori sang, a young man now barely 71 years old.