I am thrilled to announce a new, very special feature, Paris ArtsSeen. Every month guest editor/writer Jennifer K. Dick will visit an artist’s studio and write an in depth profile about the artist and their work. Jennifer is a poet, writer and lecturer, and has had a long time association with artists, frequently collaborating with them. I would love to hear your feedback, so please let me know in the comment section.
For American visual artist Kate Van Houten, Paris was a just pit-stop on her way home in 1965. En route to New York after finishing her studies in Italy, Van Houten got caught up in the "tremendous autonomy an artist can have here (in France)", and so stayed on. "I went to the Louvre every Sunday. It was free and there were about twenty people in it and sixteen lightbulbs. I still go back (now), and having access to those things—it's an émerveillement!—and that's what art's about, for me, the human imagination—like Wallace Stevens' The Blue Guitar"—a title Van Houten used for one of her paintings from her more gestural work of the 1980s.
As she stayed on, Van Houten realized that, although France can be a hard place, in NY she'd have felt pressure from her peers to be certain things, or to work in particular ways. She also knew New York was a commercially competitive city, whereas Paris allowed her to grow her own way as an artist, giving her the space to explore a wide variety of mediums. "I've always been an experimenter. That's why I've got this interdisciplinary work. It's one thing I've always defended." Working as a painter and printmaker first, her large oils echoed the New York School she admired, and in particular works by Joan Mitchell, who later grew into a friend. Van Houten then came to etching, silkscreening, and most recently sculpture, working primarily on alabaster. But for her, "it's all the same thing. The idea dictates which medium I'll execute in."
Paris also brought Van Houten closer to artworks she admired, such as those by Rembrandt, whose palette excited her. The city then introduced her to the theater of Peter Brooks, whose work taught her to question: "His quest for dynamics, what he did on stage, taking it out of an old order, crashing so many things" all led to Van Houten's own constant quest for change within her own artistic process. When her minimalist paintings "had come to a point where they were going to vanish", she was open to the option of trying her hand at cutting stone. It emerged as "an unexpected discipline I was offered at a time when I was really looking for change. When a friend from Sweden suggested I come try my hand at sculpture," she said, her trip to the quarries of Gotland, Sweden, then Volterra, Italy, sparked "a love affair with stone. The stone was the answer because it gave me form. Stone is so mysterious because it's a natural element and you have to find what you can out of it. (This said,) I think of myself as a painter who cuts in stone. I'm not a sculptor, but a painter, even in the physicality of it. I'll paint again, probably". In fact, in 2007 Van Houten showed a series of new watercolors alongside sculptures in Japan.
One sees clearly how, "the forms in etching come from the stones… which have become part of my visual repertory." A repertory which maintains its ties to Van Houten's initial interests: passing through her emotions to stay close to natural phenomenon. Getting into this invisible meaning, this felt resonance of the natural world, may look on the surface like a simple meditation easily taking form. Yet Van Houten admits she still struggles very hard to get to that precise selection of lines and shadows which make up, for example, new work like those on display this weekend at ART KANAL 10.
As we chatted in the studio on rue Temple that she shares with 5 other artists, including Daphne Gamble (in picture), Van Houten pulled and printed from some of the copper plates she has been working on for a series. She called Daphne over to confer about one she was not happy with, explaining, "I want the complexity (to be like) a trapeze act, like I just flew, but I'm (still) looking for a way to do that, to get at that". Nonstop pressing forward in her work, Van Houten is not one to merely copy or imitate what has come before, or which surrounds her. This said, she enjoys going to gallery shows in Paris at places such as Galerie États d'Art-Guislain, Galerie Bernard Jourdan or Jean Fournier's Gallery, stopping in to see whatever the Fondation Dapper has on display, or catching a show by friends, especially when work by Richard Long, Richard Serra or Hamilton Fulton are in town. For Van Houten, the work of others serves as a backboard for things she then can explore within herself.
43 years later, Van Houten is still plumbing her own depths in Paris, continuing to press closer to what she feels is true to herself. She explains that it takes time when younger to find your way, but in the end you realize that as an artist "you have to be extremely honest with yourself", and though, as she adds, "French culture you can get anywhere, France allowed me to grow, allowed me the autonomy (I needed to work)."
Recent/future opportunities to see Van Houten's work:
Oct. 9-12 Open Atelier visit, show & sale: VERNISSAGE 9 Oct : 18h-21h. + show from 14h-20h daily. Daphne Gamble, Kate Van Houten, Noriko Fuse & Joele Cauchoix : portes ouvertes ART KANAL 10 AT: 50 rue du Faubourg du Temple 75011 Paris, m° République or Goncourt. For full program of many ateliers : http://artkanal10.free.fr/
November: London Book Fair, where she will be showing Estepa Editions titles.
By appointment in studio: [email protected]
Jennifer K Dick is an author (of Fluorescence, Retina, & Enclosures) and teacher (currently at EHESS and Ecole Polytechnique). She co-organizes the bilingual IVY reading series with Michelle Noteboom in Paris which began in a gallery thanks to curator Susie Hollands. Jennifer is now completing her PhD at Paris III on visual uses of the page in poetry: text and image in works by Anne marie Albiach, Myung Mi Kim and Susan Howe.
http://ivywritersparis.blogspot.com
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