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Who is Raquel?
by Marcelin Pleynet
Special to Fashionlines
Raquel's paintings are not easy to see, not only because the artist does not
exhibit them easily, but because they partake of a metaphsyical ambition
that our new century is not really ready to welcome. If we explain to
someone who has not seen the books on which she has worked for the "Orange
Export Ltd" that Raquels paintings are huge paintings that are 4 meters long
by 3 meters high, I do not think however that it would give an idea of the
very peculiar place that Raquel's painting takes up, but we will emphasize
the importance - and it will surely make sense - that we ought to give to
the double adequacy between paintings/books and books/paintings in her work.
Raquel's pictorial work is like no other and more difficult than no other if
I may so. The huge colourful fields that she puts forward confound the
screen of painting in the sense that, even abstract, painting is always, in
one way or another, a representation. Raquel mainly applies herself to
defeating this representation even abstract and to that end it is also
necessary to confound all manifestations of colour that would be too
expressive. That is how most of her works suggest vast fields of colours
that are enigmatic, that at first are enigmatic in the sense that the
prominence of colour goes through the referential charge of its birth and
its burying. This effect by substraction finds itself intensified due to
the size of the painting, the huge dimensions of the painting that most of
the time extend beyond the field of vision, to the right, to the left,
higthwise and lengthwise, thus doing away with all possible confusion
between the works and the painting and consequently all possible
representation.
Clement Greenberg, the American art critic claims that all limited surface
is a painting. Raquel seems to apply herself to delimiting the surface that
extends beyond the field of vision from all sides , all the way to this
whispered depth of colour, in order to signify that the connection of the
artist, of the painter, is not with the painting itself (since it can only
be a representation) nor with the measure of the painting but with an
excessiveness that belongs only to the artist and that colour magnifies.
Raquel seems to prefer a more abstract order, a more abstract and less
immediately measurable reference, to tradition and to the referential order
of the painting.
With her work, the order of the painting seems to free itself from the lists
and collections of objects and of figures organized in scenes, to escape the
limits of nomenclatures, in order to identify itself with the coloured
breath of the voice and with the coloratura as tessitura of a nomination,
the reference of which is not books but The Book (it is in this manner that
the English designate the Bible, "The Book"). This explains no doubt that
the work that Raquel achieved with Edmond Jabès is among the most successful
of all. But let us be clear : the reference to to The Book (which was, let
us not forget, the source of almost all iconography of western painting) can
only be an abstract reference in the creation of these paintings and as it
inevitably encompasses all other books, it manifests the excessiveness, the
immoderation of the The Book.
Thus the artist moves from this astonishing collection of books, in so far
as we can refer to them as books, to the space with no beginning nor end in
the coloratura of words, as one who thinks thoughts, as one who interprets
and thinks thoughts and lives on the coloured breath where the letters of
interpretation shine.
The Origin of the Work
Raquel's evolution
Raquel's work is spontaneous. It obeys no dogma but each stage of her
work
is preceded by a period of silence corresponding to a moment of intense
reflection.
The first period of her work, that of monochrome paintings using dark
colors, stretched over 1970 to1983.
The originality of this ascetic practice was due to : large formats (3
meters X 6 meters), the paintings were grouped in diptychs or triptychs
opposing 2-3 close colors the jonction of which, marked by a limit,
created
a work on difference.
Main exhibits :
1976 - Galerie Arnaud - Paris
1982 - ARC Modern art museum of the city of Paris
1983- 1984 Twenty years of painting in France
* Berlin National Museum
* Mayence Museum
* Tubingen Museum
Very slowly, Raquel, modulated monochrome but not in a manner that would
allow one to variations assimilate her style with impressionism or
nuagisme.
Indeed, the expressed and achieved vibration stemmed from
interiority.
Main exhibits :
1984 - Galerie Breteau - Paris
1990 - Astride Parades Foundation, Caracas
Raquel made this modulation evolve towards polychromy, but her search for
unity, her passion for "oneness" took over and Raquel's
universe remained static.
Main exhibits :
2000 - Galerie de L'ADP (Air Ports of Paris)
As of 2000 and thereafter Raquel's universe was truely the cosmos in prey
to evolution.
The irruption of colors materialises a diagonal axis that moves through
space going from the upper top right portion of the painting on the right
and all the way down
towards the left.
This scriptural surge associated first blue with its green declension,
then
both colors with red the outpouring of which marks her recent
work
with rawness.
It is possible that in works to come the tension created by the
diagonal movement
lines will tend to become more nuanced.
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