A close observation of the transformation of the landscapes in the fall allows us to contemplate the scattered leaves, carried by the wind, which end up entangling with each other until they recompose a whole as well arranged as when they abounded in the tree branches. The result is a large, multi-colored canvas worthy of great painters. “It takes a great deal of humility to look at a blade of grass,” said Hubert Reeves. The trajectory of a first autumn leaf which breaks away and falls towards the ground brings to life an image already present in the mind: that of the painters’ contribution to architecture.
Hans Selye, Montreal researcher, discoverer of stress (this “stress”, so well known to everyone!), supported the idea that there are still major discoveries to be made with simple means. Painters use simple means. Architects are inspired by them and go so far as to carry these “discoveries” into their constructions.
Modernity
Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter, inspired by the straight lines and colors of his country’s tulip fields, significantly influenced modern architecture in the last century. The great outdoors of America gave us Jackson Pollock and, closer to us, Jean Paul Riopelle, both of whom are connected to nature.
Riopelle did not explain his works and preferred to leave room for interpretation. We have access to several interviews that are sufficiently comprehensive to give food for thought, to a certain extent, on our relationship with the landscape and cities, “à la Mondrian – Riopelle version”.
Visits to the workshop
Genius never comes alone. Ozias Leduc (1864-1955), landscape painter from Mont-Saint-Hilaire, aroused the admiration of Riopelle: “Leduc was the key,” he said (interview: 1990). The other “key”, perhaps, is an impromptu visit to the master painter. Riopelle recounts (interview: 1994): “One day, I arrived with Borduas… he (Leduc) showed us his paintings all the time. Him, making a painting took six months. “I’m going to show you the last thing… you’ll see what you think.” He takes out a large sheet of white paper on which there is a charcoal line, just one. He looks at us and says: “Say, you who know this, is it really abstract art?” » and Riopelle adds with a laugh: “It was the most beautiful charcoal line I had ever seen! » Riopelle and Borduas were unable to respond. This “charcoal line” will remain imprinted in Riopelle’s mind. Reflection of landscape, if there ever was one.
Ozias Leduc painted “variations on the same canvas”, by seasonal alternations. The landscape varied, but the canvas remained. Riopelle (interview: 1968): “He started a painting with the seasons, it had a somewhat strange aspect, even very blurred. The leaves were growing, they were putting on leaves. Summer came, autumn came, the leaves fell… It put snow and finally, in the space of a sunset… it was the sunset that was the thing and it was wonderful. »
Collect the landscape
What can we learn from the variations in the ground, during a continuous five-hour flight, towards the horizon, “chasing a sunset”, without a camera, without charcoal, without anything? Riopelle (interview: 1990): “I looked at the ground, it was the ground that varied. THE [pilote] from the plane didn’t understand anything… “You don’t even have a camera?” No, it’s okay, you go up with the sun, always keep it on the horizon… he didn’t understand anything. I was looking at the ground… I don’t know if it was to do something with it, I think it remains imprinted in the image. » Riopelle (interview: 1968) following his plane trips speaks of a “fairly immediate influence” on the paintings which followed his flights, a very simple reason: he collected landscape, carried into the “image”.
We integrate the landscape, we soak it up, we don’t analyze it. Pursuing the horizon, “along a sunset”, with our eyes fixed on the ground, we fill up on colors. We experience the “hundred seasons” in one flight, just as the architect explores the “hundred cities” through his travels. Then, the “acquired image” is reversed, in art and in cities, as “reflections of landscapes”.
Wide open spaces and cities
Riopelle gives the right to free interpretation. We can put forward the idea that by opening up to the wide open spaces of America, far from the cities, by plane or otherwise, Riopelle has sufficiently “immersed” himself in the landscape to form an “image” of it. a “second nature”, a true substrate, never fixed, which has become the basis of “new territories of the imagination”. Jackson Pollock, more clearly, asserted: “I am nature! »
The current search for “densification of cities” does not exclude acting “creatively and integrating nature”. Densifying cities can be done by projecting further forward, in quality, and not only for political, economic, functional or ecological considerations. Defining the “image” of a city in the making, grasping its variable but stable contours, ensuring that it responds to the aspirations of the people who inhabit it, in concert with nature, is part of a shared project called “city”.
What if cities “garnered landscape”?…