For two decades, Laurence Paix-Rusterholtz and Chris Lavaquerie-Klein have been writing together. In “Les Duos dans l’art”, they are interested in those who work or have worked like them, with four hands, in cinema, literature, music or even the visual arts. Interview.
The idea for the book obviously came from their own duo. They have known each other for more than twenty years. Laurence Paix-Rusterholtz and Chris Lavaquerie-Klein created the cultural action agency “L’ibis et L’allégorie”, 24 years ago, but they started writing together as a duo two decades ago. realizing that they had “always so much fun doing it”, they wondered about “the mechanism” who made the artistic duos work. We met them for the release of their latest book precisely on Duos in art, children’s book published by Palette which is an excellent digest on artistic pairs.
Franceinfo Culture: What criteria prevailed in the choice of the 20 duos that we discover in your book?
Laurence Peace-Rusterholtz: One of the tracks was that of duration because in music, for example, you can form a duo for a song. In our book, the duo that lasted the least is that formed by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. It lasted ten years.
Chris Lavaquerie-Klein: Then, we had to have a panel of artistic themes in order to show the public the duo in different states, with the constraints that this implies in the creation. We don’t create music or for the theater in the same way.
Laurence Peace-Rusterholtz: There are also favorites. We let ourselves be guided by the duos we met. The variety in the composition of the duets was also a criterion: brothers and sisters, homosexual and heterosexual couples, partners such as Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand. Each time, it’s a different way of working. Finally, as the book is aimed at teenagers, we wanted there to be personalities they know a bit like Bigflo and Oli or Daft Punk. And at the same time, they discover Marcel Carné (director) and Jacques Prévert (screenwriter), a duo that is essential. One of our criteria has also been to evoke duets in which each of the members is well known. Besides, Salvador Dalí and the photographer Philippe Halsmann were very well known but we do not necessarily know that they formed a duo.
Franceinfo Culture: You were talking about love, it seems that it is one of the secrets of the artistic duos that hold…
Chris Lavaquerie-Klein: There are champions of duration like director Alfred Hitchcock and his companion Alma Reville, a great editor and screenwriter. It’s a duo and a couple who loved each other like Gilbert & George who adore each other or Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler – their love at first sight lasted thirty years –, while others lost their love like the sculptors. Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely.
If we take, for example, the British artists Gilbert and George, they made a very young couple, both in terms of feeling and in creation. They also say that they are no longer just one big brain called Gilbert & George and no longer two brains. They have become a kind of entity while each having its own artistic expression. They managed to keep their individuality but the creation is only as a couple. It’s completely fusion.
Laurence Peace-Rusterholtz: There is also the couple formed by the sculptors Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, the Lalannes who are very original. There is a creative and loving crush here. But everyone works on their works. Besides, do they have their place in the book? The answer is yes insofar as their works are those of the Lalannes and not of Claude or François-Xavier, although THE Rhinocretor II either the creation of François-Xavier and the Giant Choupatte, Claudius’s. Their meeting allowed everyone to express themselves while creating together. The Lalannes also say: ‘We make common room and workshop apart’. They were really inseparable and are part of fascinating duos because they have a sense of humor, they are sparkling… They are extras. We realize in the book that there is not just one recipe. Each duet illustrates an example of creation in pairs.
Franceinfo Culture: You are a duo of writers. And you absolutely don’t have the same way of writing together as the Groult sisters or the pair formed by Pierre Bottero, who died in 2009, and Erik Lhomme…
Laurence Peace-Rusterholtz: Indeed, Bottero and Lhomme each work on their text, alternately, while being together. While we, even if we write each on our own, we develop our texts together and we read them together. The Groult sisters, Benoîte and Flora, each wrote a chapter but when you read their book, it is difficult to know who started writing what. They are great, so modern in their time.
And then, a duo can come undone. For what ?
Chris Lavaquerie-Klein: Between Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, there was a misunderstanding at some point. Morricone got tired of being associated with westerns and Leone all the time when he was so much more and had collaborated with others. The composer didn’t just want to make film music. He wanted to be recognized for his craft but the recognition essentially came with Sergio Leone’s westerns. Which he got a little annoyed about. For his part, Sergio Leone had a hard time imagining Morricone doing other collaborations. It will almost prevent it sometimes. It’s not very clear the story ofClockwork Orange (by Stanley Kubrik) because there is a feeling of possession of Leone vis-à-vis Morricone.
With Warhol and Basquiat, something also went off the rails. Their great joint exhibition was fatal to them. The critics, not the public, were very severe, which Basquiat, who was very young, certainly more scratched and more sensitive, could not bear. Wharol had the build to support it. For Basquiat, this association had become a mistake.
Which duos are the most unique?
Chris Lavaquerie-Klein: They are all very endearing. Daft Punk, who are now separated, have both chosen anonymity to be able to be free in their personal lives. Which none of the other duos we chose did. Lilly and Lana Wachowski also form a very interesting duo because there is also a social phenomenon, apart from Matrix and their cinematographic works. They defend the right to be different, the right to choose one’s sexual identity [nées avec un sexe masculin, elles ont fait leur transition de genre]. In their productions, they defend differences of all kinds. They work a lot for the opening of society. It’s a hell of a duo.
Laurence Peace-Rusterholtz: This militant side is also found in the founders of the Botter clothing brand, Rushemi Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, who are involved in ecology. Their fashion is committed.
You are a duo and you have written about twenty of them. What would be the secret of an artistic duo that works?
Chris Lavaquerie-Klein: There is no recipe, again, but two things are important. First, you have to be enthusiastic about the other. It is fundamental. You need enthusiasm and then listening.
Laurence Peace-Rusterholtz: You should not have an oversized ego because then you are more attentive to the other. The common denominator to all these duos is that the art of one enriches that of the other. There is a mutual emulation. In this book, which is intended for the young people we often meet, the idea is to make them understand that they can do things without being alone. We find that working together is a great wealth.
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Duos in artby Laurence Paix-Rusterholtz and Chris Lavaquerie-Klein (Palette, 64 p., 17.95).
Extract
“Our collaboration was forged thanks to a clever mix of listening, often lively exchanges, openness to the universe of the other. Would this winning cocktail have had the same flavor without our memorable laughter? So, the desire came to us to probe in others this field of creation carried out by two.” (Duos in art, p.4)