Editor S Note: Here Are Two Interviews, Back to Back, of Paul Reynard by Jacob Needleman

Editor’s note: Here are two interviews, back to back, of Paul Reynard by Jacob Needleman. Originally published in Material for Thought, issues #15 and #16, they both also appear in Paul Reynard: Works in America, published by Dancing Camel Editions, 2010.

I remember the first time I saw Paul Reynard’s art. It was sometime in the late 1970s and I had not known that side of him in any direct way. Our personal friendship had developed mainly around our interest in the ideas of the spiritual teacher, G. I. Gurdjieff, and around our beginning efforts to offer public workshops dealing with art, philosophy and everyday life. Certainly it did strike me as unusual that he spoke so little and in such abstract terms about his own actual work as a painter.

My own experience with serious artists—and I had met a few of America’s most innovative painters—was quite different. Through a close friend, I had been directly exposed to the main currents of Abstract Expressionism and other related movements in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, a process that included hours and hours spent in the smoke of the Cedar Bar in lower Manhattan. These artists talked about their work. It was philosophical talk, symbolic talk, it was paradox masquerading as nonsense (or was it nonsense masquerading as paradox?); or was it Zen; or genius? Whatever it was, it was talk—with the broad silences that called attention to themselves instead of being simply invisible as is a certain kind of deep silence about one’s own inner life and work. Paul Reynard’s silence about his work was the invisible kind.

What I came to see in my friend’s life and work was the extraordinary consistency and coherence of a man seeking, yearning with the whole of himself, in the whole of his life—or, to be more precise and perhaps truer to how he would have expressed it: sensing in so much of his life the lack of wholeness and struggling inwardly, and often visibly, to be open to the question of man’s being as it lives hidden in all the parts of every human being.

I propose, then, that most, if not all, of these paintings and drawings are questions being asked not in words, but in color, line and form. We are speaking of a quality of questioning that draws down toward oneself the force of a new attention as a humanizing energy that can relate man to what ancient tradition calls the Self. —JN.

or, to be more precise and perhaps truer to how he would have expressed it: sensing in so much of his life the lack of wholeness and struggling inwardly, and often visibly, to be open to the question of man’s being as it lives hidden in all the parts of every human being.

Jacob Needleman: What is it that is new in art? Isn’t it somewhat paradoxical that many of the world’s great works of freely creative art in fact conform to very rigorous laws governing their execution? So on the one hand there is form, order, pattern and tradition in art—yet with some art that comes into being strictly within that tradition you can often find something mysteriously new. And at the same time you have spoken about how the test of art is its power to endure through centuries and millennia. How can art that is very old, even ancient, also be felt as “new”?

Paul Reynard: I think when a sculptor, a painter, an architect finds something new, it’s not really new, in fact, but it is something that has been renewed, much like a tradition that is renewed. For instance, in the Zen tradition, you have a line of masters, one after the other. It’s the same tradition, but each one brought something of his own. The koan was not part of the original Buddhist teaching; neither was the tea ceremony. The tradition passed though one or another man and was expressed in a new way. It didn’t come out of a vacuum. It came out of a man steeped in his tradition, expressed through his essence.

JN: How do you see the place of art in the society we live in now? We more or less know there is a place for philosophy, for ideas. And religion, for example, helps to preserve values in contemporary life. But what is the place of art—now and here? How could the artist be serving contemporary people who have a search?

PR: Actually, as I see it, what we call the “the artist” no longer exists. He no longer has the place he had even in the previous century. And I think nobody believes anymore, not even the artist himself, that he really has a place. There is a dichotomy.

JN: A dichotomy where?

PR: Between art and society. People buy art, but it is just to decorate their walls or to invest for the future. But there is no longer a relation of meaning between the artist and the society.

JN: Are you saying that art no longer really makes a mark on people’s lives?

PR: I can answer that by telling you of my own experience coming to America from France. All that happened in the ‘60s with pop art was very interesting for me because it brought us to the end of a cycle. Everything was done. So for me coming to the States was very rich because it was a kind of liberation. Anything could be done, so you had to find your own way. You no longer had to worry about what people would think. And I was astonished how you could touch people by being more true to yourself. To bring a question, to help people to encounter a question—for me that is true for all real art. Take, for instance, Mayan art, whose origins nobody knows, or Egyptian art, or some of the art of Leonardo da Vinci. There are moments when they open you, and it seems to me their action is to bring, to carry a question. When I was in art school, for example, we made jokes about the Mona Lisa. I knew the reproductions but had never seen the painting itself. One day I decided to see it at the Louvre. I was stunned. I stayed looking at it for a long time. There was a question for me there which was independent of the aesthetics of the painting, something having to do with humanity.

JN: What do you mean when you use this word “question”?

PR: The artist doesn’t provide an answer, but on the contrary, he brings a question. That is one of the reasons why some works of art last through the centuries: because, instead of giving you answers, they keep you in question. It’s a little like listening to a piece of music. You listen to some pieces once, twice, three times, and they’re finished. Another piece you listen to again and again, and each time you discover something new. You can hear this piece of music ten times, but the question remains, and you still have the desire to hear it again. Really, it has something to do with the question of creation—that which is behind everything. It’s not only the creation of the thing, the object, but creation in a larger sense, the moment where something in you, in me, is created.

JN: Many people might say that a great work of art embodies an idea, a greater truth. But you’re speaking about something else.

PR: I’m speaking about something very specific. I was struck by something André Malraux said. I don’t remember the exact words, but he said that what makes a piece of art a masterpiece is that it is manifested in the present. For instance, Mona Lisa was painted four centuries ago and yet something is still present. You meet her, you meet Mona Lisa, and you meet not an old thing; you meet something which is present now, at that moment, at the moment you meet it. And for me, what makes a piece of art is that at the moment you see it you are not taken into the past; there is something which responds to a moment, here and now.

JN: How does working on art affect you, affect the artist, himself?

PR: In former times, people understood time as a cycle throughout the year. At the end of the yearly cycle everything became chaotic. In some traditions everything was turned upside-down, reaching a moment of chaos before the next cycle of creation was to begin—as in “the beginning,” at the very first creation. And when I’m working on a painting, it’s very similar; I come to a place where my work seems very disordered, a real mess, and I don’t know what to keep and what to get rid of, and sometimes—not always—a kind of order comes out of this. There are moments when my idea about the piece I’m working on and the feeling I have of it come together—then something new begins to be expressed. A moment may come, like a big jolt, a tremendous tremor, where I suddenly have the feeling that I am a channel. I begin to become conformed to my own work. At that moment I begin to have meaning as an artist—there are certain laws which are manifested in me. I don’t know how. It’s just that I know something is passing through that has never passed through me before; and afterwards, once again, I will be shut off from that experience. For me, the possibility for an artist begins when he starts to understand that it is through art that he may find a way to himself. I believe a real artist must arrive at the question, “Why am I doing this?” And certainly, I don’t know the answer. But there is a partial answer I have found. In a way, when I am able to come back again and again to this passion, to this pain in front of my canvas, it is because afterwards, when I leave the studio and the painting, there may be just a little piece of something left behind through which I know more of myself. But also, I think that the drama of great artists is that, despite themselves, they bring a new language that was not spoken before. I’m sure all artists wish to be understood, but the great one will bring a new language which even he may be unable to translate. And if he did try to translate it, he would bring it down—down to the old language spoken in the streets. So he brings something new, and sometimes it takes years before he is understood. Maybe nobody understands the artist when he is alive, and only the next generation or so begins to be fed by what he did.

JN: I’d like to return to this issue, what you call “a question,” which is I think a new way of putting the idea of art. A leaf on this plant—would you call that a work of art? What is the difference between the leaf and a masterpiece of art? This is a piece of creation, a great work of creation. Where does nature differ from art? What does the artist do? Is he a little version of God, or is there something particularly human in art which contributes to this?

PR: Well, you are speaking about God. I think real art is precisely a link between man and God, man and earth and the sky, if you wish. Perhaps you have seen this extraordinary Chinese painting, the Six Persimmons, by Mu Qi. It’s just six persimmons, it’s nothing really, yet it’s a masterpiece. You are not interested in the aesthetics of it; you are not interested in its beauty. There is something else in front of you; it’s something which has no age. It’s on a vertical line, not on a horizontal one.

JN: So, in a way, the whole question of beauty is sort of a secondary one.

PR: Absolutely. The notion of aesthetics is only a residue of the Greeks.

JN: G. I. Gurdjieff has said that real art must relate to mathematics.

PR: I very much agree with that.

JN: How does art deal with mathematics? Because you draw a circle, a triangle—it’s mathematics. It can’t be something so simple.

PR: It’s the relation between the different things Like a plant grows in conformity to certain laws of mathematics. No matter what kind of plant, the way it grows, it reveals a relation of proportion between the leaves. In a canvas, it is a relation between the spaces. And it can be disharmonious or it can be harmonious.

JN: Well, I’ve seen painters who were very geometric in their approach, at least underneath. But in being mathematical it can come out sterile. Now, I ask you, what distinguishes a sterile, dead mathematics from a living mathematics of life?

PR: I found an example of this when I was in Mexico. The new museum of anthropology was just finished, but all the rooms were a mess because the exhibitions were not all installed. In one room there was a life-size rendition of an Aztec relief made by an architect. On the other side of the room there was a mold taken from the original work. From far away, the two gave the same impression, but up close the architect’s rendition, in which all the right angles were perfect, was dead, and the mold, taken from the original work, in which the angles were not perfect, was alive. There was movement in the structure. So here was an example of an art alive and an art dead. As a man, you cannot be like God. You cannot be perfect. Schwaller de Lubicz talks about this in his book, The Temple of Man. The ancient Egyptians, when planning their temples, would push a column out of alignment: because as a man, you cannot be as God.

JN: Yes, imperfection. We are talking about art as being incomplete.

PR: But it is voluntary imperfection.

JN: Voluntary imperfection. Mathematics is there. But what we call mathematics is not what you are speaking of as mathematics. It includes ordinary mathematics. But there is another kind of mathematics. In sterile mathematics you get the feeling there’s no “I” in the painting. In another great painting, you get the feeling of “I” that is somehow behind all this moving, living, unity—God, if you want.

PR: It’s what you find in a cathedral, for instance. It’s very interesting to try to understand the mathematics involved. You can see that the elevation corresponds to the diagram of the plan. It’s really related; there’s a relation, an extraordinary relation. When you enter a cathedral, something is touched. You can be touched also by the beauty of mathematics. I’m sure there is something that corresponds to what you say about the “I” when you come into certain cathedrals. There is something immediate, but at the same time something continues on afterwards, building up. And I think great art is just the same. It calls you and it leaves you with a certain longing. It leaves you with your own question, with your own mystery.

JN: In traditional societies art often serves as part of a spiritual path. But people in this country and this civilization have been separated from that aspect of art. Sacred art, let’s say the art of a Zen Buddhist, may transmit something. But we are talking about art in this society, that is going to be seen by people who are not monks or people who are not even religious in any serious sense. And yet you are saying art still has a service, a very important function—to transmit this question, evoke this question in people.

PR: In all great art something remains open; it’s never accomplished, it seems to me. Do you know a cathedral that was ever finished? I don’t think there is one. Or consider, for example, the painter Pierre Bonnard who used to go to the museum where his paintings were hung, and touch them up. But for me, when I see that the painting I’m working on is not going to go any further, there is a separation. What I have done no longer belongs to me; it is no longer my child. It becomes like a message sealed in a bottle thrown into the sea. Perhaps someday someone will find it and will read the message. For me it already belongs to the past. A kind of death has taken place, which frees me from identification with my own work.

JN: Can there be a recognition of the distinction between the subjective and the less subjective?

PR: Yes, one can recognize the difference between personal images of individual fantasy and the trace left by an experience received from a different level of reality. Our museums display the full spectrum—pieces hanging on the walls like corpses that were dead long before they were signed, to small bits of stone of unknown origin which are nevertheless still charged with energy, and able to reach us and to open our hearts. Even though we may not understand their hidden content, we feel the invitation to stand in front of their mystery. It is like another creation within the creation, revealing, in a way, our own immediacy and the real significance of a true representation.

Part Two

JN: The question that keeps coming up is whether art really has a necessary function in our culture, and in human life.

PR: It’s true today that art seems just a luxury, unlike in past centuries, when art was at the service of the church. That is gone. So perhaps we need to ask why there still are so many painters, sculptors, writers and poets.

JN: The word “culture” means to nourish, to help something grow. We are speaking about culture, which is not the same as “society.” Culture implies that there are aspects of our common life which nourish something in human beings. What kind of nourishment can be hoped for from art?