HORVATLAND - THE THIRD MILLENIUM - SCULPTURE - ROBERT COUTURIERGO TO HOME

From my introduction to Horvat photographs Couturier, Éditions Gallimard, Paris 2005

When I photographed the sculptures by Robert Couturier, he was nearly 100 years old. But the work that I found most amazing was his latest. As if the very essence of his art was in its progress, and as if Providence had felt the obligation to give him the time he needed. Of course Couturier likes to make us smile. Of course he knows how to convey a maximum of significance with a minimum of means. Of course clothes' pegs can be found anywhere and they all look alike. But possibly it took the whole experience of a long and well-filled life, to pick up that particular one and recognize the traits of an equine grimace, or to see the kimono of a Buddhist monk in the remains of a rubber ball, or to make out, in a fragment of plastic found in a dustbin, the miraculous curve of the Back of a blond girl! Some similarities are more visible in the viewfinder than they are to the naked eye – possibly because when an object is isolated and placed in front of a black background, it tends to create its own imaginary universe. Take the Saint-Sebastian: it’s not as if Couturier, by placing this piece of wood on a pedestal and hammering in four nails at the right spots, had made it into the famous martyr pierced with arrows. No, the tragedy had taken place long before and had been recorded in the fibres of that tree, waiting only for someone to perceive it and reveal it. Which is precisely what Couturier did, giving us the pedestal and the four nails as a bonus, or simply so as to allow for our lack of imagination. The same applies to the Penitent. It’s contrition is already half spent, like the tube of paint that it is, the cap worn out by the changes of mind and the stopping and starting of the painter to whom it belonged. But Couturier didn’t just pick it up and place it on this black slab: he may have recognised it long ago and accompanied it through every station of his way to the cross! And, of course, his Self Portrait as a brush! I couldn’t look at it in my viewfinder without wishing to return its wink: why should I not make my own self-portrait as an old Kodak, with rolls of film spilling from my guts?