4. Movement


As we saw with the construction of the labyrinth image, the movement of the knot is at the origin off its final image. This image corresponds to a specific reading of a movement . With this movement, the symbol of the labyrinth also includes the concept of cyclical time: the role of this movement requires examination .
With the theory of relativity, movement itself has openly become the subject of art. With cubism, the movement of the observer permits changing and interlocking points of view. With futurism, the motion of the object modifies its appearance which then resembles a trace; the object is partially replaced by its wake. Exploiting the possible consequences of these modifications, Duchamp and Picabia pursued this movement to suggest a mutation of the object. Early on, I also questioned the role of movement in perception, asking myself what I was painting and if it was really what I was seeing, and how was I seeing it. What path does the eye follow to gather and unite a flock of sensations? What image was produced when this flock scattered or when some of its elements escaped? What image of a tree captures a bee gleaning around and through it ? Supposing that perception slowed down indefinitely, what worldview do you get when walking or living in the world ? The more I tried to directly observe and analyze my vivid perception, the more it seemed impossible. All I was able to do was to dream up images, which could integrate themselves during the course of perception by combining incomplete or ambiguous surveys or glances. This suggested, how the attention to the movement could both produce nonsense as well as lend meaning to perception. What is true and invisible can often reveal itself only through wild hypotheses and lucky lies. « Everything comes to pass as if my power to reach the world and my power to entrench myself in phantasms only came one with the other. »1.

 

A) For example, in the series called “Jacob’s stepladder”, by assembling kaleidoscopically different views of the stepladder, I tried to suggest how Jacob, following on the ladder the angel who has visited him, might have discovered numerous unknown worlds. The methodic destruction of the object suggests the possible meaning of the symbol and the poetry attached to it. In relation to this, the series also evokes the subtle question of the difference between Jacob’s ladder and the Tower of Babel; two opposites approach attaining knowledge. » It is the title of one of the paintings”.

          

 


n°38 Jacob's stepladder serie

 

 

 


                                                                               

                   n°42 Siège de l'oubli n°13                                    n°43 Echelle n°3                            n°44 Echelle n°5

n°39 Siège de l'oubli n°1

 

n°40 Siège de l'oubli n°2

 

n°41 Siège de l'oubli n°8

Finally with the movement, it is where it leads and the path it follows, which becomes of primordial importance. With the construction of the labyrinth’s path, there is a combination and synchronization of three different motions: the motion of the knot; the motion of the observer around the knot; and the motion of the eye following the thread that composes the knot. It is only with this combination that a probing result is obtained, indicating how the movement, inseparable from perception, overtly creates or reveals a meaning connected to the realm of ideas.

Not only is there an almost inexhaustible group of myths more or less linked to the labyrinth, but there also exists a vast group of primitive art designs showing related movements. Each drawing borrows meaning from other complementary or supplementary drawings, but at the origin, the meaning comes from both myths and a manifest or implicit topology (see 6 Topology). When these designs become symbols, they reveal a language and a knowledge familiar among oral traditions. With modern topology, contemporary art could explore in a new way this language and thus perhaps rediscover the substance of ancient knowledge.


1 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible

C) Conversely, one can model the line of the knot line to suggest in part what the knot, as a symbol of the whole. might contain.

                                                         

                n°45                             n°46                                    n°47                                  n°48                                                           n°49

               Otto dans le labyrinthe                                                                                      Une femme dans la tête

B) By contrast, one can try to control and bridle the eye’s wandering and thus to bring some order in perception. One can consider perception as binding together the different parts of the object. By imagining the eye’s movement forming a knot, while it observes something such as a chair or a stepladder, and by tumbling this knot, we discover an unexpected image of the object’s motion yielding itself to the strange behavior of objects in certain myths and legends .