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Jacqueline Monnier: Stars
To grasp the unattainable, to sift it through feeling, emotion and memory, to play in this manner with what is perceived and thought, although not understood, and to shape something that can only be poetically unique in its genre. This is what constitutes the artistic epic of human nature as well as what gives meaning and beauty to the inscrutable relationship between the artificial and the natural. Despite the fact that a work is always a vehicle of dimensional transference for both its creator and its perceiver, we would discover examples of creators throughout the history of art who opt for works that are self-explanatory, while in other cases artists prefer the non-existence of limits. Nevertheless, although openness is paramount, it is uncommon for artists to dialogue and intervene with and in the elements, since they are both powerful and virtual entities that are much more accessible when treated as passive supports of reference.
Colour, line, space, time, movement and chance set the framework of Jacqueline Monnier’s work. When, in her own words, she sculpts water or air with pure lines and colours, she shows us to what extent attending to chance and playing with space without blushing are inherent acts of art, and how art itself is a game of freedom in which the real is enlivened through the path of the imaginary. In her exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1981, she articulated with great clarity in a text her concerns about the intuitions of the historical masters of contemporary art. She was referring to the liberation of the consciousness of colour alluded to by Kazimir Malevich, to the demand for full possession of space vehemently expressed by Henri Matisse, and to the uncharted levitation of man into the air towards everywhere and nowhere desired by Yves Klein. Few people will have experienced the personalities and works of the great artists of this century as closely and intimately as Jacqueline Monnier. Perhaps this is the reason for her seemingly excessive modesty, combined with her extraordinary capacity for poetic perception of the intimate, the ephemeral and what is decoded by cultural discourses. It is therefore no coincidence that the compositions of John Cage or David Tudor are easily integrated into her works. These imply a scale of values that is indispensable if our civilisation is to maintain the dignity of its successes and if the future is to be possible.
Gloria Moure
