Armand Vaillancourt will celebrate his 94th birthday at the end of the summer, but he remains the rebellious teenager he has always been, with his elusive temperament and his flamboyant style. The eccentric painter-sculptor, who displays a resplendent shape for his age, still has his head full of projects. Too much, no doubt, attests to those who know only too well that time will eventually run out.
This indefatigable creator has the feeling of still having so much to do: so many projects to carry out, but which will never see the light of day because the financial backers put obstacles in his way; so many works that must be restored, because they have been badly maintained.
“My head, it does not stop. I still work like a young person who wants to express something new each time. But I’m sick of not doing what I have to do. I feel like I haven’t done anything with my life yet”, thunders theatrically Armand Vaillancourt, who is probably exaggerating.
Because rare are the Quebec artists who, like him, can boast of having known such recognition during their lifetime. From Chicoutimi to Val-des-Sources via Plessisville, Quebec is dotted with sculptures by Armand Vaillancourt.
I still work like a young person who wants to express something new each time. But I’m sick of not doing what I have to do.
But the best known of all, the Vaillancourt Fountain, is located in San Francisco. A huge structure made up of intersecting pieces of concrete, the latter was inaugurated in the early 1970s and is also called Free Quebec, a name in perfect harmony with the concerns of the time.
The independence of Quebec, Armand Vaillancourt has never stopped believing in it, but he has come to terms today with the idea that he would not see it in his lifetime. “You have to stand up, you have to know how to fight. […] The fight for independence was the fight of my life. It will still be on the day of my death. On that day, it will be a great disappointment that it has not happened. The greatest of all my life. I put everything for this country. Everything I did, I did it for that, ”sums up the nonagenarian, who proudly wears the fleur-de-lis crest.
Restored work
Armand Vaillancourt will be made Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec at the National Assembly on Wednesday.
Two days earlier, he unveiled the restoration of one of his many untitled works at the Palais des Congrès. When the place opened in 1983, it served as the wooden doors to one of the rooms. Stored away during the expansion of the Palace in 2002, it now hangs on the wall near the entrance which opens onto Avenue Viger.
On the strung wooden planks that make up this creation, Armand Vaillancourt had transcribed a letter he had written in 1963, when he was a young graduate of the now defunct École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. To his correspondent, he told of living very poorly. San Francisco was then only a distant project. Armand Vaillancourt confided to his friend struggling to find scholarships.
One might be tempted to believe that things have changed a lot since then, when his sculptures and paintings sell for a few tens of thousands of dollars. But Armand Vaillancourt assures us not. “I have always been poor. Every time I do something in public, I crucify myself. Money, it’s like it doesn’t affect me. I got screwed by everyone, but I never went bankrupt. Nobody managed to stop me”, drops the artist with the outspokenness that we know him.
The greed that gnaws the world
In interview at Duty, Armand Vaillancourt then launched into a long diatribe against money and big capital. This anti-globalizationist from the start fulminates against the big companies that pollute the planet. He resents leaders for their inaction, when the effects of climate change are already being felt.
“If after this slap on the face, we don’t wake up, it’s because we’ll never wake up. The human race would not be the first to disappear. The dinosaurs lived for millions of years before disappearing,” he points out, with both arms in the air because the subject fascinates him.
Out of conviction, he confides that he went into debt of a million dollars to create the monument in homage to the trade unionist Michel Chartrand. The structure was completed in 2016 in Longueuil.
Nothing too good for the working class. Armand Vaillancourt is proud to come from there, he, the sixteenth of a family of 17 children from Black Lake, in the asbestos region. This modesty will have inspired the rest of his commitments. When it is mentioned to him that he is an icon, he is annoyed. ” An icon ? What the fuck, serious ? he replies prosaically.
No doubt, Armand Vaillancourt is still and always a teenager.