Questions from Hans Ulrich Obrist to François Morellet (2015)

HUO: You studied painting with Jean-Denis Maillart, however you are an autodidact. How did you come to art?

FM: I was influenced by my father who loved artists (even more than art itself as his collection was not brilliant) and I took some lessons at Jean-Denis Maillart’s studio, a fashionable painter, friend of my father, in 1941, when I was 15 years old.

HUO: What is the first entry of your catalogue raisonné?

FM: I don’t have a catalogue raisonné, but the first entry recorded in my archives is no. 41001 and I only painted 7 works in the year 1941.

HUO: Who were your professors?

FM: I did not have any professors; I never went to a Fine Arts School. I only took a few engraving lessons in Stanley-William Hayter’s studio around 1944.

HUO: Who were your heroes?

FM: I think I never had “heroes”; I have always been allergic to the idea of “genius”.

HUO: You were a member of the “Groupe de l’échelle” [the Ladder Group]; can you talk about this group and their style?

FM: I’ve never been a member of this group. I knew its members through Philippe Condroyer (who became a film-maker) and his friend Dany (artist and son of Jacques-Henri Lartigue) in St Tropez. There were friendly relations but a bit superficial.

HUO: How did you come to abstraction in your painting?

FM: My very first abstract drawings date from 1948. In 1949, influenced by the Tribal Arts at the Musée de l’Homme, I made paintings close to abstraction but it was only in 1950 that I started abstract geometrical paintings.

HUO: You were friends with painters Pierre Dmitrienko and Serge Charchoune, how did you meet them?

FM: Through Dany, I met Pierre Dmitrienko who was very interesting, and then Francois Arnal. They both worked in Dany’s studio. We met quite often even though I was working at my family’s factory in Cholet, 350 km from Paris.

I met Serge Charchoune at Galerie Raymond Creuse where I had an exhibition in 1950, but he was not a friend, he was older. I was very perceptive to his work, which was very subtle with its light colours and I am still an admirer of his work, which should be better known than what it still is.

HUO: How did they influence you?

FM: For my first abstract works in 1950, Dmitri advised me to be “larger” and Charchoune advised me to use lighter shades.

HUO : In 1948-49, you read La Psychologie de l’art by André Malraux? How did it influence you?

FM: It was a very strong influence which pushed me to particularly admire the Oceanic tapas, abstract geometrical, repetitive, made by women, without pretence. The opposite of the magic artworks from Africa which influenced Picasso, Braque, etc…and later on, looking at an old photo of Matisse’s studio, I was pleased to see a number of these tapas on his walls.

HUO: Have you been influenced by movies?

FM: No

HUO: Have you been influenced by literature?

FM: When I was 17, I read in its entirety In search of lost time by Marcel Proust and, in 1948, The roads to freedom by Jean-Paul Sartre. Then, later, I read books including James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Ionesco, and Cioran. But, for me it is difficult to say if the books I read had any influence on my work as a painter.

HUO: You had a large influence and friendship from Max Bill. How did it happen?

FM: I discovered Max Bill’s work through the intermediary of Brazilian artists, and particularly Almir Mavignier, in Rio de Janeiro in 1950, when I contemplated moving there with my wife. These enthusiastic artists showed me reproductions of Max Bill’s work in a journal of São Paulo of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Arts there, a few weeks earlier. When Almir Mavignier came to Europe in 1951 with his friend Geraldo de Barros, the photographer of São Paulo, reaching Paris first, then Ulm in Germany in 1953, where he was a student at the Hoschule für Gestalltung directed by Max Bill, I was lucky, that through Mavignier, I came to meet him and I started a friendship right away.

HUO: What was his influence on you and why? What about Piet Mondrian?

FM: Through his work, I learnt the rules of Concrete Art, dictated in 1932 in Van Doesburg’s manifesto, which converted me.

Regarding Mondrian, I had read the publication of Maurice Raynal Paintings of the 20th Century (Skira, 1947) where I saw a reproduction of Mondrian’s work of 1921, which belonged to the Museum of Basel. This irritated me, shocked me, but puzzled me to the point of looking at it again and again, many days before being convinced, overthrown, amazed by its simplicity, its vertical-horizontal lines, black, white, and its colours, called primary; blue, yellow, red.

HUO: In 1952, there was the exhibition Abstractions with Almir Mavignier, Jack Youngerman and Alain Naudé, at the Galerie Bourlaouen in Nantes. Can you talk about this exhibition and what you remember from it?

FM: Still in Paris in 1952, thanks to Almir Mavignier, I had the opportunity to meet Jack Youngerman, Alain Naudé (friend of Ellsworth Kelly) with whom I immediately sympathised with. Almir was the curator of this surprising exhibition Abstractions at the Galerie Bourlaouen, managed by this charming if unconventional woman, excited by these young and new international artists. It was Almir who assembled these 9 artists: Arnal, de Barros, Condroyer, Dmitrienko, Kelly, Mavignier, Morellet, Richetin and Youngerman.

HUO: What was the connection with Ellsworth Kelly?

FM: I met him in his studio in November 1953 through Jack Youngerman and Almir Mavignier; his work was already famous and he was successful. The rigour of our works was close but their starting points were different.

HUO: Did you see the exhibition Mouvement in 1955?

FM: No, I don’t think so, unfortunately!

HUO: What role did kinetic art play for you?

FM: It was like a joyful “LunaPark” [a kind of Blackpool Pleasure Beach], which brought the public into museums and gave attention to my works.

HUO: What role had Victor Vasarely played then?

FM: I met Vasarely and his wife, Claire through the Molnars. I admired his work, his sense of humour, his intelligence, and we were friends, but I was not influenced by his work. His kindness and interest toward my work were very helpful at this period.

HUO: I read this sentence about the changing attitude of the artist “from the artist as creator of meanings to the artist as a witness of phenomenon.” How did you become interested in the mathematical or systematic aesthetic?

FM: There is nothing aesthetical in my interest for systems or mathematics. The use of systems allows me to develop series of works which compositions are dictated by the “rules of the game”, independently from my taste, and without final choice from my side. My systems fix the rules of the game and mathematics execute the composition and give the final visual form.

In fact, I always try to do the least possible!

HUO: Can you talk about the foundation of G.R.A.V.?

FM: The three Argentinian artists, Horacio Garcia Rossi, Julio le Parc and Francisco Sobrino, first visited Vasarely, who pointed them to Francois and Vera Molnar, then to me and to Vasarely’s son Yvaral. I contacted Joel Stein – an old friend and accomplice since 1949 – that he could be interested by the project of creating of a group.

HUO: What were your motivations?

FM: My industrial activity made me live far from Paris and the art world. G.R.A.V. was an opportunity:

– To share and develop our ideas about questioning the status of the artist and the role of the spectator.

– To have a permanent audience for my works.

– To “wow” friends seeking to outdo each other thus stimulate creation.

– To be more often invited to exhibit in a group rather than remaining alone.

HUO: How was the reputation of the institution at this time?

FM: Beginning

HUO: Were you aware of the other European groups such as ZERO for example?

FM: Of course we were; we had met the artists from the ZERO group, Gruppo N and T. I was personally invited to participate in an exhibition with the ZERO group in Germany. All these groups have played an important part during the great meetings of the movement “New Tendencies” in Zagreb (ex-Yugoslavia), then in Holland, Italy, France and Germany.

HUO: In the 3rd Biennale of Paris, G.R.A.V. had installed a labyrinth. Can you talk about your works on the labyrinth? There was a Sphere-trames installation and a mural?

FM: In this labyrinth the first room was entirely recovered with wallpaper reproducing a work of mine from 1960, Répartition aléatoire de 40.000 carrés suivant les chiffres pairs et impairs d’un annuaire de téléphone, 50 % rouge, 50% bleu. In room 3, there was a 100 x 100 cm work made of 64 white bulbs with 4 lighting rhythms. In the last room, there was my first neon work called Néon 0°-45°-90 °-135°avec 4 rythmes interférents made of 4 80 x 80 cm panels, with 4 white neon facing each other on the 4 walls of the room for which the alternated lighting was very bright, quite unbearable for the visitors. Finally, a large 240 cm diameter sphere was placed outside the labyrinth, in the great stairs of the Musée de la Ville de Paris where this biennale took place. There were also murals by Le Parc and Yvaral.

HUO: Can you discuss the transition of composition to structure/frame? Does it mean that these works could be potentially continual?

FM: In 1952, I discovered the Muslim linear art on the walls of the Alhambra in Granada, with its ingenious engraved interlacing “all over”. It came to me as a shock, which overturned my reflection on art and would influence my work on the line and my love for the “all-over” to that day. From 1953, the repetitive patterns or the networks of superimposed trames on my works incited the eye to imagine the continuation of the lines and shapes beyond the edge of the painting. I had also stopped framing my works from 1952.

HUO: Your first work with neon was made in 1963 (4 panels with 4 rhythms of lights interfering). Why neon? How did it develop in your work?

FM: With my friends from G.R.A.V. we wanted to give an end to the conventional artistic practice of canvases, paintbrushes and easels.

In my quest of new non-artistic materials, the neon had all the qualities I liked:

It was perfectly linear.

– The instant lighting allowed rhythms of brutal flashing

– It was from an industrial origin

– Its use for public advertising was very vulgar at the time, which I liked

– There was a neon producer in Cholet, very efficient and enthusiastic

HUO: Did you know Dan Flavin at the time?

FM: No, we met Dan Flavin at the opening of the exhibition Kunst Licht Kunst on 25th September 1966, at the Stedelijk van Abbemuseurn in Eindhoven, Holland. His long work with green fluorescent tubes was fabulous. 

HUO: Then, in 1967, there was Néons avec programmation aléatoire-poétique-géometrique. Why have you chosen the use of these words: NON, NUL, CON, CUL [No, Nul, Cont, Ass]?

FM: This work is composed of 3 squares crossed by diagonals. Each square has 4 neon tubes for all 4 sides, plus 2 tubes for the diagonals. All these tubes are assembled into groups whose on / off rhythms are shifted. Among the wide variety of possible geometric shapes, some of them may form the CLNOUXZ letters. As I like swearwords and provocation, this was an opportunity to associate my rough poetry to my rigorous geometry to make people smile.

HUO: Can you talk about your systems: Juxtaposition Superposition, Hasard [Chance], Interférence and Fragmentation? What is the significance of these systems?

FM: I like to demystify the artist’s work and to rationalise my own work. This led me to publish in 1974 this classification based on my conception’s processes to trivialise my works. This was a complicated exercise, which, if I had pursued it, would have resembled the animal classification by J.L. Borges!

HUO: Why do you want to make systems to make art?

FM: Because I always wanted to distance myself from my works. Since the 1950s I’ve always tried to eliminate all trace of sensibility in the making and reduce as much as possible the number of subjective decisions in the conception of my works. My systems, associated to chance, are the producers of my works, and if one finds them brilliant or ugly, I am not responsible.

HUO: What role does chance play?

FM: The systems give the rules of the game then chance comes in eventually from a series of numbers or letters to decide for me the different results.

You can compare my systems to the rules of the “Battleships” game where the draws of numbers and letters determine the ships’ positions on the grid.

HUO: There are some works for which the numbers in the telephone directory determined the conceptual parameter. Why did you use this directory?

FM: In 1958 I produced several works whose compositions were entirely determined by series of odd and even numbers randomly. Five of the 1958 works needed only a few digits to be composed randomly and I took the decimals of π. But when the work composed with chance needed several hundred digits, my documentation on the number π could not provide them to me at this time. That’s why I chose my local telephone directory, which could offer a much larger set of numbers. The reason for my choice of a telephone directory as a source of random digits is simple: I did not want to be accused of cheating with chance and I often provided copies of the telephone book pages with the work to prove my good faith. This would not have been possible if I had played the dice.

HUO: Can you tell me something on the comic and ironic aspects of your works, particularly in the context of chance?

FM: Without humour, everything can become indigestible, that is to say in my work and in my life in general. If I had to speak seriously about humour, this could impair my own health.

HUO : You wrote in Du spectateur au spectateur ou l’art de déballer son pique-nique [From spectator to spectator or the art of setting up a picnic] “The plastic arts must allow the spectator to find what he wants, in other words, bring himself to it. The artworks are picnic corners.”

Is this similar to what Duchamp said: “it is the viewer who makes the artwork.”

FM: Yes, I published this text in 1971, and many years later, someone informed me that Duchamp had made this declaration in a radio interview long before my text. At the time, I was very upset not to have been the first one who formulated such a fundamental idea, but I was also flattered to have this common vision with Duchamp, who was an artist with whom I feel the closest with in spirit.

HUO: Your work has existed since 70 years, the neon works since 1963. What did the neons represent at the time and what do they represent today?

FM: In 1963 my neon works were provocative, vulgar, unsaleable (l had to wait 20 years to sell my first one!). Today, they are stylish, expensive and very trendy.

HUO: Dan Graham said “to understand an artist you must find out which music he/she listens to”.

FM: I was passionate about jazz (Black American), since the 1940s including free jazz. I was thrilled by the repetitive music of Steve Reich and Phil Glass in the 1970s. I always loved Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven (last quartets), Ravel and Stravinsky.

HUO: What music do you listen to?

FM: From the radio, such as France Musique, Radio Classique and Jazz Radio.

HUO: Can you tell me about your un-realised projects, or projects too big to be realised or too utopic?

FM: My work is based on a game with constraints, which is why I love so much the ephemeral installations, “site-specific”, and public and private commissions for architecture. When there are no constraints, I invent them with my systems and chance. The need of being feasible is one of my basic constraints before imagining a project. Furthermore, I was never impressed by huge things. As a child, I annoyed my parents with my interest in the gravels at the foot of the Eiffel Tower rather than looking at the tower itself.

HUO: Are there any public commissions projects realised or unrealised?

FM: Since 1941, around 140 monumental projects have been integrated in architecture (since the publication in 2012 of the catalogue raisonné of my 133 integrations, I have realised 6 more and 3 others are on going for 2016). I don’t have the figures for all the un-realised projects, I don’t care about them, nor for the numerous works which have been removed, as, I rather prefer their disappearance than their decrepitude.