François Morellet (amateur painter) 1945–1968 (1997)

The slight provocation in the title here is not meant to conceal its deeper truth. Yes, at least until 1968, I was an “amateur painter.” A real amateur, who, in the domain of art, had successively (and more or less voluntarily) avoided professors, professorship, and professionalism.

First of all, professors. I have always had difficult relations with what my teachers have taught me. My studies in grade school, then in high school, all the way until my degree in Russian, were nonetheless for the most part banal, and I had no undue antipathy toward my instructors. No, my tragedy, my affliction, was that I could never take pleasure in the material I was being taught. My teachers in religious education or classical literature or judo, for example, have stripped from me to this day any taste for their respective disciplines.

On the other hand, luckily enough, I never had any teachers in sex education, oenology, spearfishing, or, of course… somewhat modern art.

And so I entered the field of contemporary art with curiosity, making my way without a map, going from whim to whim, happening upon works in museums, galleries, reviews, or art books. These discoveries were not always particularly new, nor my affections especially well-advised. It is hard to expect credit today for having liked, among others, Chapelain-Midy, André Marchand, Souverbie, Laprade, Gromaire, etc. But it may be interesting to know, for instance, that it was in the same way that I was able to discover, very early on, a work by Mondrian (in a book by Skira, published in 1947) while, some years prior, professor Fernand Léger “had said rather vaguely that there were plenty of movements that came from the East, from the North, from far away, but that above all one should not hear them, nor listen to them, nor see them, that they were extremely dangerous, that they spelled the death of painting and could even drive one to the point of suicide.” ¹

Between Gromaire and Mondrian came a brief “Musée de l’Homme” period, where I would regularly go to the middle of those empty halls to convene with my two loves: aboriginal Australian bark paintings and those marvelous Oceanic tapa cloths. But I believe that, apart from Mondrian, the three greatest shocks that played a major role in determining my body of work to this day were the discovery, in 1950, of Max Bill in Rio de Janeiro; that, in 1952, of the Alhambra in Granada; and then, around 1956, that of the “duo-collages” that Sophie Taeuber and Jean Arp had made in 1918 “according to the laws of chance.”

By the third of these infatuations, I was thirty years old and it was time that I took refuge from new discoveries.² This did not stop me from continuing my amateurism, a group amateurism, this time with GRAV,³ whose ludic, utopian, and nonprofit program was a fine example of a conscious, organized nonprofessionalism.

Finally, not to say that these were truly infatuations, I think I was also aware of Surrealism, Dada, Art Brut, and so on. Well before they were “taught.” Yes, I believe that it was my great fortune, in my time, to have learned art as an amateur and to have steered clear of schools whose instruction killed pleasure and paid no mind to modernity.

Given this background and this mentality, it should be easy to understand why professorship was denied me, as much by professors themselves as by myself.

So I will move directly to professionalism, which, I must admit, passed me by without my ever really wanting it to. Was it my position as a provincial amateur painter or the radical nature of my pieces (from 1952 on) that kept French galleries and collectors from taking an interest in my work? I do not know, but I am certain that this continuous absence of interest, by liberating me from any commercial constraints, allowed me to devote myself unreservedly to my extremisms of the fifties and sixties. 

In any case, this noncommercialization of my work (I sold no more than twenty pieces in twenty years) bestowed on me another distinctive sign of amateurism: the necessary, intrusive presence of a “primary occupation.”

Professional artists, for their part, may have another occupation, but if they do, it is a “second vocation,” unobtrusive and often gratifying (such as professor of art).

The “primary job” of the amateur, if it generally permits him to make a living without too much struggle, excludes him almost entirely from the “artistic community.” Thus, especially if he is provincial, he cannot attend those openings and those artists’ meetings of which he dreams, and which he idealizes all the more for not being acquainted with their downsides. 

And if later, by some chance, the amateur becomes a full professional (as happened to me at the age of fifty), he can still be spotted among the real professionals (blasé, rebellious, tormented, etc.) by his indecent air of incorrigible amateurishness.