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Conversation Piece
LEON KOSSOVITCH: The release of your thesis in book form is an auspicious sign to the discussion about printmaking in Brazil. Differently from Europe, Brazil is a place in which people still dedicate themselves to printmaking - which doesn't mean it is widely accepted. One of the issues raised in printmaking is reflected in the general artistic debate, because, lately, we have been following in a scarcely interesting direction, one that leads to a conceptless art: because this art that proclaims itself conceptual is in fact an art devoid of concepts, without incurring in any kind of paradox. Akin to this conceptual art, we have another less than relevant artistic movement, the minimalism and the many minimalistic trends. In printmaking, especially in engraving, this minimalism prizes the incision for its own sake, as an end in itself. Your prints, Jacqueline, are sparing in the use of resources, but at no time this sparingness suggests conceptualism or minimalism, for they evoke a lyrical dimension of their own. Consider the prints in your doctorate - compared to the ones in your master's thesis, where the resources were channeled towards certain preferred objects - such as the heart, or the stars -, in this album there exists a much ampler circulation; they open up into landscapes. Here, the many elements are treated with grace, evoking that lyrical dimension so undervalued in today's art. Our contemporary times virtually hollowed the, at once, delicate and incisive lyricism of figuration.
JACQUELINE ARONIS: Printmaking is quintessential to me, as it presents innumerous opportunities for the development of my imagery. I conceive the studio as a meeting place, where the print suggests something much more complex than only artistry. It is from this confluence into complexity that reflection arises. Therefore, I see the print as a reflection and not as reproduction - which, in other respects, can also be quite interesting. I see that many Brazilian artists dedicate themselves to printmaking, which evidences an aspect that perhaps cannot be found in Europe or in the United States anymore. It has dwindled there, being confined now only to technicity. Regarding history, I think there were great printmakers in Brazil, that our tradition in the visual arts produced excellent printmakers, and this brings consistency to printmaking. Exemplary of what I say is Evandro Carlos Jardim, my professor at the University, who is a printmaker and disseminates printmaking in a very provocative manner, always aggregating people around him.
LEON: You provided an important point, as it draws attention to the contribution of those who preceded us in the twentieth century. They have contributed so decisively, that they've set out a territory for the work of printmakers. But at the same time, I find that some of the more recent teachers, descendants of Friedlaender and Hayter, insisted too much on technique, on the craft of printmaking. In you, the imaginative process prevails: this dream dimension that you bring, and that I find irreplaceable, is your unparalleled contribution. And this surely shouldn't be concealed, because maybe we have lost part of our imagination with such emphasis on technique. It is true that artists should teach the techniques, but without ever neglecting the other dimensions in art. In your case, this dreamlike drift is what keeps me attentive to your work. I know it's hard to talk about such issues, but maybe you could say something on this, because it goes beyond the mere discussion of the craft.
JACQUELINE: Technical knowledge is important, but we should never lose sight of what we mean to say. To me, dreams act as a source of imagery; when I am involved in what I'm producing or when I'm creating images, even if not printmaking, dreams bring to me fully developed enquiries that have the clarity of plastic procedures. My dreams are quite colorful and they invoke panoramas, landscapes, objects. This has happened since my childhood: I learned to be intimate with my dreams and, to me, they are akin to conversations that I keep with myself. Many times, when conceiving a print or a drawing, I go to sleep and I carry on working inside the dream, and then I wake up. Or, conversely, sometimes I dream something, and this may lead me to seek an encounter with this dream in reality. What remains from the dream isn't just the image, but the feeling that accompanies it.
LEON: And could you think of the opposite effect, the imagery from a print, a drawing, interfering in your dreams?
JACQUELINE: Yes, this happens time and again. I had a dream in which I was making a print - for instance, the one on Rio de Janeiro. In this dream, Cheng, my recently deceased Chinese I Ching teacher from Rio, appeared. Surprised, I asked him: "What are you doing there if you're dead?", to which he answered: "I came to see you, and I see this line, I see how it is consistent, because I can keep my balance over it without falling". Saying that, he slided over the line towards the horizon and there he disappeared.
LEON: Your work is, primarily, a work of lines. What lines have to do with dreams? The privilege given to lines is so pronounced, that we see that they have had such a remarkable role even as far as in the prints of your master's thesis.
JACQUELINE: Lines can exist in any dimension; in dreams, they are even more pre-eminent, in their association to the ones of the I Ching. In my mind, the line bears a connection with writing, which in turn is also a kind of drawing - an elastic medium. Many cannot comprehend this, but lines, in prints, are graphically tridimensional.
LEON: So it could be said that you write dreams, and that you are also writing when you depict landscapes. These trees, I do not see them as signs, but as interwoven lines. I visualize them as pure drawing, without their reduction to signs. This demure employment of the line, which transmutes into reality everything that has to be done. isn't a glyphic register, but something with a graphical reality. You agree that it is possible to make a distinction among scriptural and non-scriptural lines?
JACQUELINE: I do believe so, yes. There are several steps in the conception of a work of art. I think lines have at least these two potentialities.
LEON: Two potentialities of the line, this is something interesting, because neither can be dismissed.
JACQUELINE: Neither one nor the other. Because the potential between them is dynamic. In my work, the line's potentiality arises from the sharpness of the engraving. From early on, in my engravings, I was against the complete saturation of the plate, with aquatint, with an excess of matter or an excess of cooking. Back in the Seventies, frottage was very in vogue, the attempt to capture the texture of things. I wasn't at all attracted to any of that, as it's noticeable in my artistic trajectory. The possibility of working with the properties of the lines is something I was always quite interested on: When conceiving an image, I prefer sharpness than overstatement. I enjoy watching the figure come into existence in the plate and then in the imprint, in a constant dialogue.
LEON: You do not flaunt the use of your instruments: when I look upon your work, first of all I see what you depicted, and only then that it is an etching, a copperplate, or a dry-point. This puts in evidence your singularity compared to many other artists I know of, as you do not presuppose from the beholder a previous knowledge of the techniques.
JACQUELINE: Maybe this is because, to me, prints are also drawings ? A manner of drawing.
LEON: This is almost anathema: engraving like drawing. Why not? But there are others who do not think like this.
JACQUELINE: The technical procedures inspire me and support me, allowing me to ponder while I'm executing the print. My imagination requires me to go through every procedure - understood here as instruments, sources of rhythms and tones, for they offer different resistance and limitations, and carry different feelings and perceptions. The timing of the procedures is, simultaneously, that of the conception of the image.
LEON: When carving the lines, which procedure you favor the most: the etching?
JACQUELINE: There was a time when I used only to employ the dry-point. Now, looking back, as my daughter was just a baby then, I think the dry-point was a form of defense against exposing her to acids, grounds and varnishes. At that moment, I was very prolific with dry-points, but also with the burin, the roulette and the rocker, After concluding my master's, I turned myself to etchings, because, unlike the burin, which is closely related to carving, the etching bears a closer relation to drawing. In my work, through the etching I could achieve greater fluidness than with the burin; furthermore, it enables to achieve a greater depth, as it makes possible to resize the grooves. I prepared myself, thus, in every way, to follow the path of etching. And so, in the end I delved deeply into etching.
LEON: Delving into etching: you have harbored yourself so much that in the end you ended digging deeper into it
JACQUELINE: It was unavoidable. Etching grants more freedom to the motions of the incision than the burin. Maybe this is what attracted artists to the intaglio: time is what is entrancing about etchings. I'm thinking of Seghers, Piranesi, Méryon, of invented landscapes. The etching is quite unrestrictive, and in this sense, it is unparalleled.
LEON: You intended to obtain a larger number of impressions of your works, then?
JACQUELINE: Not only that, but to be able to employ more features as well, due to the possibilities of diversity of lines. I realized my potentialities through the etching. Of course, the burin has a language of its own, as does the dry-point. In the dream, it isn't just the image that appears, but also everything that concerns its implementation. In the book, there's a dream I've registered into manuscript where I was sharpening a burin. Then I start working with him, later applying the acid. Then all the lines coalesce, forming the image of a heart that grows and extends to the whole plate, the paper, the entire studio. Suddenly, I pause to gaze at the image and it begins to gaze at me. And it isn't only the image of the heart that is staring at me, but every print I ever done is doing so. And so I wake up after that.
LEON: Goodness! The engraving, the universal - staring at you!
JACQUELINE: The heart encompasses all the space - the heart is also a metaphor.
LEON: You suggest an experience that exposes the mark of technicity, of the abandonment that currently besets art, particularly printmaking. It leaves no breach to anything else, being metaphorical, as you put it. This most intense heart doesn't have an outline, it is pure pulsation. And it stares: this face-to-face gaze captures. It is pure capture, it ceases to be an image to become an absolute gaze. You suggest a rare experience of transmutation of vision into a gaze. The heart that you etched in the dream intensified itself to the point of becoming another experience. I can't recall an experience quite like this. I think this heart that grows in every direction of space can be reduced to a pulse that, staring at us, returns us to the question of the current state of printmaking. I wonder if, starting from this borderline experience, from the border of what is surmountable, of what goes beyond depicting, beyond being seen, it can actually become a gaze that depicts us: this border, thus, couldn't be a privileged position where to ponder on contemporaneity, a position in which the experience of estrangement wouldn't be suitable anymore? I think this defamiliarization is a possibility suggested in your prints, Jacqueline, one that goes against this homogeneous, boring universe of the so-called "contemporary" art.
JACQUELINE: I believe this is the experience that guides my work, as it resulted in a feeling of presence and connection.
LEON: Your work questions exactly the ascetic dimension of the Pop Art, of the advertisement slogan, of the easy pun that is always acceptable; the dream you have described allows one to imagine another experience, one belonging to the margins. In the abandonment of the current days, the space of the Biennial is just like a supermarket, it is continued boredom, an experience of death, for nothing challenges and confronts people.
JACQUELINE: I find that the issue that most concerns contemporary art isn't quite the dimension of poetic arts, but, instead, the appeasement, the fear of failure, as if it would present itself otherwise as a threat to the established order. In the present agenda, what really matters isn't the experience, but what is agreeable, what is correct. In my opinion, the experience of poetic art must be an experience of total risk.
LEON: And risk is the last thing anybody wants, as everything seems to be framed in cotton candy walls.
JACQUELINE: Indeed.
LEON: What do you make of the lightness in your work, not in any way related to asceticism?
JACQUELINE: I believe that lyricism translates well this lightness, this fleetness that is neither superficial nor summarized, the absolute maximum or the very least possible: the unspeakable, this is the limit of my art.
LEON: It is in this sense that you can manage to bring into your work the ordinary, without, however, it bringing its previous load.
JACQUELINE: There is an interest in what lies around us. The landscape is interesting because it is passing. I've been very much connected to the elements of the landscape, not only of the landscape as a whole, but with the elements that provide its outline, mapping, transition through space, and also with the connections in time and space. The color that enters the print creates an atmosphere, almost as a season, because it is an atmosphere of spring or joy, or of sadness or fall.
LEON: Then your line isn't aseptic, undifferentiated, nor it has a peak-like intensity. Instead, it has a diverse sort of intensity, one that is modulated..
JACQUELINE: It pleases me to think that work can be concentrated, and thus be set apart from the ongoing distractions that we are so immersed into, as well as from boredom, which is stagnant. The lyrical time is a subtle one: and therein resides an expectation to the cleansing of perception.
LEON KOSSOVITCH
JACQUELINE ARONIS
São Paulo, April 2010
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