“La Lumière Inépuisable”

“Lumière Inépuisable” could be translated into “Never-ending Light,” which would recall that Sci-fi fantasy movie from the 1980’s.  Or perhaps, “Unending Light,” though this does not give the sense of a bottomless reservoir, a limitless resource, of energy, so perhaps, like so many other instances of untranslatable moments, it is better to leave it as it is, literally speaking,“a light that can not be used up.”

Roy Forget, “La Lumière Inépuisable,” 2018, Oil on linen, 89 x 116 cm

I have been listening to old radio programs while painting, and reflecting on what I would say about the first of my two upcoming solo shows opening in less than a week.  I have been listening to a hodgepodge of emissions from France Culture on Heidegger, on Hannah Arendt, on Rimbaud, on Kierkegaard . . . A studio suddenly full of thoughts and ideas, all encased in words.  But the profusion of words that I have been listening to seem to fall away each time I try to come up with a way to find a description for the paintings in this show. 

So I have decided to simply state the obvious source, the most basic elements.  “Lumière Inépuisable,” the title of the show itself, comes from the last words at the end of a poem by the Swiss poet, Philippe Jaccottet , called “Que la fin nous illumine” (literally, that the end illuminate us):

Sombre ennemi qui nous combats et nous resserres,

laisse-moi, dans le peu de jours que je détiens,

vouer ma faiblesse et ma force à la lumière :

et que je sois changé en éclair à la fin.

Moins il y a d’avidité et de faconde

en nos propos, mieux on les néglige pour voir

jusque dans leur hésitation briller le monde

entre le matin ivre et la légèreté du soir.

Moins nos larmes apparaîtront brouillant nos yeux

et nos personnes par la crainte garrottées,

plus les regards iront s’éclaircissant et mieux

les égarés verront les portes enterrées.

L’effacement soit ma façon de resplendir,

la pauvreté surcharge de fruits notre table,

la mort, prochaine ou vague selon son désir,

soit l’aliment de la lumière inépuisable.

(Philippe Jaccottet, L’ignorant, 1952-56)

There may be a translation of this poem somewhere.  I will refrain from making a bad translation out of respect as well as weariness, but suffice it to say, in the poem, the end, or death, is seen as light, a source of illumination.

Contingencies would have it that I found this poem by haphazardly opening a small collection of Jaccottet’s work when I was coming  around the final bend, finishing the painting that would be the “cover” of the show.  The poem, in words, was the unknown compendium of the painting’s trajectory.

Come to the show’s opening, on Thursday, January 3, and I will tell you in person where the painting itself finds its beginnings.

La nécessité stricte du Hasard. . . et l’absolue contingence de la fiction.