WEBVTT
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An Interview with Jacques Caumont (JC) by Jean-Baptiste Joly (JBJ)
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18th October 2016
Akademie Schloss Solitude
translated by Dr. Katherine Vanovitch
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JC: Having the little sculpture on the table doesn't bother you?
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JBJ: On the contrary, the little sculpture looks very well on the table.
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JC: Is it the right way round, would you say?
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These are a bit like the colors of the German Empire, I'm not that keen.
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JC: No. You can choose…
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JBJ: This way, I think that's fine.
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JBJ: It is 11am, today is Tuesday 18th October and we have just raised the white flag
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on the roof of the Akademie Schloss Solitude as recommended by Johannes Cladders.
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We are in conversation with Jacques Caumont
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and for the first part of the interview we will speak about your relationship with Cladders.
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We’ll talk about how you met him,
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and about the Secret Corner, but we will stop at the closed door of the Secret Corner,
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which we will open this afternoon with your commentary
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and responses to people's questions.
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The first part of the interview is in French.
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At the moment, it is a little
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stilted and lacking in authenticity but I should think that after a few minutes
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the conversation will start to flow so that we’ll have forgotten
that we are surrounded by three lights, three cameras and some microphones.
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So we'll start here, how did you meet Johannes Cladders and what were the circumstances?
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JC: It's pretty simple,
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we both had a stable of artists at documenta 5.
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In particular, Johannes looked after George Brecht and Robert Filliou,
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the one with the famous box: “The Cedilla That Smiles”.
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And he also took care of other artists,
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said to be difficult, the ones that Szeemann
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found it hard to look after himself.
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Personally, I worked at Kassel for three months.
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First with the catalogue of French artists and,
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obviously, for George Brecht and Robert Filliou.
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I had “The Cedilla That Smiles” and
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I was in charge of looking after
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everything to do with “Individual Mythologies”
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by Mario Merz, Marcel Broodthaers, Boltanski, etc.
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So that is how we met,
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each of us with our stable of artists that we helped.
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We were like exhibitor helpers, in a way,
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and assistants to Harald Szeemann.
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Also, as he knew that I had been collecting postcards
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about painters for about six or seven years with
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palettes, greetings cards, easels, artists painting outdoors, studio love affairs etc.
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It was that section on the ground floor of the Fredericianum
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that Johannes loved
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and that was how we had our first discussions.
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JBJ: And you already knew he was an artist at that point?
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JC: No, not then.
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He had worked with Paul Wember
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and had contributed to the major Yves Klein exhibition
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and the Yves Klein catalogue raisonné.
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Following that, he had a little gallery where he had hoardings by Raymond Hains at the time.
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To get hold of Raymond Hains hoardings!
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There weren’t any in any of the French galleries but
there they were in the old museum at Mönchengladbach!
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JBJ: And were you there when he used to come to Paris with Paul Wember and…
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JC: No, not at all.
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I met Cladders for the first time in ’72, in Kassel.
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JBJ: You said just now, before we started the interview, that you had carried on
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the madness of documenta 5 after the Cladders documenta 5 period.
What did you mean by that?
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JC: At one point,
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Pontus Hulten had arrived in Paris.
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He'd landed the Duchamp exhibition.
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I built a Norman market hall on the 5th floor of the Beaubourg centre but
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actually, as well, the first link between Hulten and Cladders,
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was when the documenta postcards were shown,
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two years later at the Mönchengladbach gallery.
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There was a box marked: “Postcards”, which was a matching game,
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and when I showed it to
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Hulten he wanted to convert the show into a traveling exhibition
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to go round cultural centres in France.
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That was about thirty different sites.
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I had the various décors done
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for the traveling exhibition by a theatre decorator from my father's village.
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The curiosity cabinet, the gallery of the grand masters, etc.
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And it was when that was done that Johannes came
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to see the installations and he came to talk
to the painter and it was very funny.
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Back then I wasn't living here yet,
and he stayed the night at my father's place.
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There is that famous photo of Johannes playing dominoes
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with my father in the pose of the “Card Players” by Cézanne.
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JBJ: And you still didn't know that he was an artist?
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JC: No, no,
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I found out that he was an artist only in …
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because we did exchanges.
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We would go to Krefeld, he came to Warelwast.
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And so when I went to Krefeld, to his home,
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he showed me what he was doing.
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And it is because he showed me
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what he was doing that in spring 1984,
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when there was this 16th-century building at the Académie
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which was more or less in ruins,
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we started to restore it and we had an idea of doing something under a staircase.
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I asked Johannes and he was delighted.
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There were drawings that he showed me, of artist palettes etc.,
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of making incisions in the plaster and then, well, I realised…
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I wouldn't have asked him for the Secret Corner
if I hadn't known that he was an artist.
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JBJ: And then, because you knew him over such a long period,
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do you think that his activities as an artist
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were kept hidden from the public that knew him as a museum director?
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JC: Yes, his activities were hidden.
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I did something indiscreet when Johannes retired.
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There was a commemorative publication,
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and in this “Festschrift”,
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I invented a four-way conversation about
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art with Johannes, under another first name.
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Raymond Hains, with a different first name, was one of the others.
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So, to illustrate the article,
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I had asked Wilhelma
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if she couldn't get her hands on etc…
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So in Prosopopées, the review edited at the time
by the Académie de Muséologie Evocatoire,
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there was this minor indiscretion with me saying
here are these four drawings with one at the top,
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it's a standard, with Johannes’ handwriting.
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It was the first indiscretion and
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Johannes didn't know and he saw it when he got the publication
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and he did say to me that it was, after all, perhaps a little bit too…
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personal.
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But what was done was done
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and then one thing led to another.
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JBJ: So the thing with the flag,
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how do you interpret it?
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Because in everything that we see of Cladders' works, the standard is there.
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Half an hour ago, we went to raise a white flag.
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For you, what is this standard in symbolic terms?
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And then we can discuss the other symbols that appear in the work of Cladders.
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JC: It isn't a symbol. It is the illustration of a play on words,
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I mean “being art” in French (étant d’art) sounds like “standard” (étandard).
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It is also, possibly, Marcel Duchamp’s “Given” (which is “étant donné” in French)
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and perhaps Art Lake (étang d’art in French).
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The duck pond, the lake where Johannes
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practiced sending a bottle out to sea
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and then the standard, the flag, the banner.
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You mustn't forget that almost all the things that are in the Secret Corner, it's like in war.
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Tomorrow we are going to go and see the exhibition “The Brawl at Austerlitz”,
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which is in the Stuttgart Gallery,
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and which Marcel Duchamp made large-scale
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to mark the centenary of the Napoleon's death.
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That is another story.
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But what is in the Secret Corner?
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Flags, medals, medals, trophies.
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JBJ: Coming back to the flags: in one of Cladders' writings,
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he explains that the flag is at the same time itself in its materiality,
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and that it has a meaning,
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and that this link between materiality and meaning is the
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definition of art.
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JC: First of all, I have to say that the double meaning
that I was talking about just now for the standard,
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it's in the flag, because if you look
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at a flag it is a symbolic weather-vane,
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it is double-sided.
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Double meanings are one of the major keys to
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the Secret Corner.
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JBJ: And the white flag?
Did you already know Cladders when he raised it in Jerusalem for the first time?
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JC: Oh yes, of course,
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because Johannes had met Iona Fisher,
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they were both members of the Académie.
They were obviously going to meet one day.
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Afterwards, Iona wanted straightaway to
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invite Johannes and Wilhelma to Jerusalem.
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You have to say that there is the white flag, the flag of peace,
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but we all had our own flag too.
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There was Marcel Duchamp's flag,
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Daniel Buren's flag…
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JBJ: What were those flags like?
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JC: You will see them in the Secret Corner!
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JBJ: Mind you, he doesn't say that the white flag is a symbol of peace.
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He says it is a symbol of freedom.
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JC: Yes, that is true,
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but we only have freedom if we have peace.
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JBJ: Freedom if we have peace?
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I thought that we only had peace if we have security?
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JC: As you wish…
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JBJ: And what about the flags of different colours?
(indicating the Cladders flag object on the table)
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JC: Johannes had his three colours,
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the equivalent of the complementary colours for other artists.
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In the barn that he had created in his son's house in Northern Germany,
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where his son, an organ builder,
had made the cabinet for the Secret Corner,
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there was this colour scheme everywhere.
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JBJ: The colours were…
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JC: Yellow, blue,
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JBJ: The primary colours.
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JC: Yes, the primary colours, plus the red that you have there.
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JBJ: Plus black and white.
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JC: Black and white, that’s something else.
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JBJ: What is that?
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JC: White, you know what that is. Black, I don't know.
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JBJ: I didn’t say black on one side and white on the other.
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I said black-and-white, as in photography, as in…
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JC: Well, black-and-white is drawing.
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Before he made things in colour,
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almost everything by Johannes was black-and-white: his labyrinth drawings,
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everything is in black-and-white,
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since it all still exists,
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I was going to say “was” − it was a slip.
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JBJ: The flag as the symbol of peace on the one hand
and a piece of art by Cladders on the other:
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it is perhaps typical of the work of Cladders,
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for whom the boundary between
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life and art is not as clear as all that.
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You mentioned the “difficult” artists,
the ones he looked after for documenta 5:
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Filliou and Brecht,
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for whom this notion of the passage from art to daily life,
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or from life to art,
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was not marked by a clear boundary.
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How did you experience that with Cladders
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– what was private activity, leisure, artistic reflection, exchange, a game for artists?
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JC: Everything was mixed up at every stage in the day.
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In the evening, we grilled food or we smoked a little cigar.
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There were evenings when he used the same grill
where we barbecued the fish or meat to cook his first medals.
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They got a bit burnt
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but afterwards he had them made in Germany, by an artisan.
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But the first medals were made like that.
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As far as Robert Filliou was concerned, coming back to the double meaning,
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because we were talking just now about trophies.
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But do the trophies actually have anything to do with Robert Filliou?
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Are they well made, badly made,
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not made at all?
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Well made, badly made, not made,
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it is all a mix,
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not of artistic influences but of references!
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For example, we see another drawing,
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Daniel Buren’s stripes that Johannes made with impeccable precision,
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then, underneath, stripes cross over other stripes,
crossing over other stripes,
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it becomes a chessboard.
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Then there is a tribute to Malevitch,
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because it is not only Marcel Duchamp's chessboard,
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but these are black squares, white squares.
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Then, from time to time, we went to play dominoes or to feed the goats.
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There are some great photos, incidentally, of Johannes with the goats.
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In fact, once he came
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and the mummy goat had just given birth to two kids,
Nestor and Agamemnon,
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and what did he do, Johannes, as he happened to be there?
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He made two medals,
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one medal for Nestor and one medal for Agamemnon
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to celebrate their birth,
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just as he did later when he gave one to each guest at the dinner
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for the Marcel Duchamp centenary.
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So, the trophies, the medals,
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it was just as much for people as for…
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Once he came and he won three chickens in the village fête raffle.
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One of those chickens he called Thusnelda.
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That rings a bell for you, Thusnelda, in Germany, doesn't it?
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JBJ: And when you founded a collection for the “Académie de Muséologie Evocatoire”,
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did you ask artists to contribute or
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did they bring along their own contributions?
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JC: It has always been the artists who have wanted to give something
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or make something for what I called the academic enclave.
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For example, Jean Le Gac:
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as we had a garden that Jennifer Gough-Cooper had designed around the house,
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in this garden there were these magnificent lupins.
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Jean Le Gac wanted to pay tribute to Maurice Leblanc,
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with this little plaque.
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Once, also, at Warelwast,
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Harald Szeemann and Markus Raetz met
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and they concocted something together,
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because Markus wanted to have an anamorphosis in the courtyard of the academy.
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For Marcel Duchamp’s centenary,
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Christian Boltanski arrived with a little Milky Way cut out of corrugated iron
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and a candle ready to do a projection in one of the windowless barns.
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No, we didn't order anything.
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JBJ: You got to know all those artists via the documenta in ’72?
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JC: I knew some of them before,
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because, before the documenta,
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I worked at the Fluxus Happening at Cologne with Harald Szeemann at the turn of ’69/’70.
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Then I was a director at Gaumont News for six or seven years,
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where I made news magazines for a number of artists,
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for example Etienne-Martin, Miro, Calder, Dali.
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So I was immersed in the world of artists.
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JBJ: And you were able to invite them privately?
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JC: Yes,
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many of the artists wanted to come to the country,
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because for one thing
Bernadette was a remarkable cook.
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There was the famous “trou normand”,
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because we made cider and then “calva”, calvados.
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That was a real mix of art and life.
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There was no separation.
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JBJ: The idea of the Secret Corner, was it Cladders who brought it
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or you who asked him?
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JC: I didn't ask for a Secret Corner,
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I asked Cladders
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if he wanted to do something in this big old building that we were restoring,
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and there was a staircase
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that needed to be built
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and he went for the underside of the staircase.
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Later, for architectural reasons,
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we built the staircase elsewhere in the end.
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So there was no secret any more.
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He took down these panels, just like that.
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And these panels,
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really the archaeology of Johannes's first collaboration at Warelwast,
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they are in the bottom drawer.
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So there are these panels in the bottom drawer that had been taken off the wall
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and which show the archaeology of that first space.
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JBJ: Once he could no longer go underneath the stairs and having taken out the pieces…
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JC: In the same room there was
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an electric meter for all the buildings on the premises.
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And Johannes liked having that electricity meter so close,
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he liked it as a “readymade”.
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So we closed off a room,
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and in this closed room there was the electricity meter,
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right opposite, when you opened the door,
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and on the left, there was the Secret Corner.
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So what I would say, coming back to the flag,
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I think that
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the flag was also:
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“Look it's me! Johannes, I'm here!”
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And on the weathervane
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that we'll talk about later, he wrote "TSC"
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“The Secret Corner”,
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it was at the same time a standard made of zinc
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that was the sign of the Académie and of The Secret Corner.
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There are two things for Johannes:
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there's the flag,
There are two things for Johannes:
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there's the flag,
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and the copyright.
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As you know, signature,
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C in a circle,
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like copyright.
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Always the ambiguity, always the double meaning.
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JBJ: And César.
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JC: Pardon?
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JBJ: César, it was his name.
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JC: Yes,
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still C.
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Since he signed Cladders with a C in a circle,
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it was normal, when he took a pseudonym that he had to stay with the C
321
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otherwise it would ruin everything.
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JBJ: But the C, for César,
323
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it’s how the alphabet is spelled out in different languages.
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In German one says “C for Caesar”.
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It’s the first proper noun used
In German one says “C for Caesar”.
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It’s the first proper noun used
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as a word to help recognise the letter.
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JC: But that was after the Secret Corner.
329
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:55.220
César didn’t exist at the time of the Secret Corner.
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JBJ: The Secret Corner is a strange shaped box, it's not a parallelepiped…
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JC: It is a cube,
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a perfect cube,
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00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:05.180
almost,
334
00:24:05.180 --> 00:24:10.940
with the back a bit pushed out because
335
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that went with the architecture of the space.
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So creating that little corner like that,
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00:24:16.880 --> 00:24:21.540
he could have an oblong drawer
338
00:24:21.540 --> 00:24:24.880
in which he could put more things
339
00:24:24.880 --> 00:24:27.480
than if the cube had been perfect.
340
00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:30.660
So, its a cube with a kind of extension.
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00:24:30.660 --> 00:24:30.680
JBJ: And the relation between the extension and the cube
So, its a cube with a kind of extension.
342
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JBJ: And the relation between the extension and the cube
343
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creates the real Secret Corner?
344
00:24:36.160 --> 00:24:38.160
That's the Secret Corner!
345
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JC: The actual Secret Corner is the wooden framework.
346
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Before he got there, we had made a brick base
347
00:24:55.340 --> 00:24:59.840
to be able to have the Secret Corner at the height of the opening.
348
00:25:00.660 --> 00:25:04.780
JBJ: And what is this idea about hiding it?
349
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The object is hidden, the fact that one is an artist is hidden?
350
00:25:10.740 --> 00:25:12.440
Hidden from whom?
351
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JC: At that time, he hid the fact that he was an artist.
352
00:25:18.280 --> 00:25:24.480
Because, well, he was Professor Doctor Johannes Cladders,
353
00:25:24.600 --> 00:25:26.480
Director of the Mönchengladbach Museum.
354
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He wasn’t César.
355
00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:38.300
JC: At that time, he hid the fact that he was an artist.
Now it is known, more or less, in the world of German art,
356
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for those who are familiar with the story,
that Cladders was an artist and probably first and foremost an artist.
357
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The Secret Corner is hiding something rather than someone.
358
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JC: It is hiding the way his brain works.
359
00:25:54.600 --> 00:25:58.600
JBJ: But it is as if you are taking away from the Secret Corner
360
00:25:58.860 --> 00:26:06.160
the fact of its being an object which contains art,
361
00:26:06.320 --> 00:26:07.860
independently of its maker.
362
00:26:08.080 --> 00:26:10.700
JC: Yes, but at the time,
363
00:26:11.100 --> 00:26:13.160
he was still an exhibitor of artists,
364
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there was a boundary
365
00:26:17.240 --> 00:26:19.400
that we couldn't cross
366
00:26:19.400 --> 00:26:22.220
and so it was normal that he hid his activity as an artist,
367
00:26:22.720 --> 00:26:25.440
which was in conflict,
368
00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:29.040
or almost, with his job.
369
00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:33.060
It wasn't me who invented the Secret,
370
00:26:33.560 --> 00:26:37.240
it was Johannes who one day said “The Secret Corner”.
371
00:26:37.460 --> 00:26:39.240
So we were in agreement, and, actually, we liked it.
372
00:26:39.660 --> 00:26:41.900
Because it was in this corner,
373
00:26:41.900 --> 00:26:41.920
you can come to Warelwast,
Because it was in this corner,
374
00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:44.460
you can come to Warelwast,
375
00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:46.460
if no-one told you where it was,
376
00:26:46.640 --> 00:26:48.820
if no-one said that the weather-vane controlled it,
377
00:26:49.460 --> 00:26:50.520
you would have known nothing.
378
00:26:50.600 --> 00:26:52.520
JBJ: That is what we need to come back to:
379
00:26:52.520 --> 00:26:55.680
there is a weather-vane on top, easy to see from far away.
380
00:26:55.820 --> 00:26:58.360
It’s the standard of the Académie,
381
00:26:58.840 --> 00:27:01.440
and then there is something hidden underneath.
382
00:27:01.840 --> 00:27:04.300
What is the relationship between the two?
383
00:27:05.440 --> 00:27:10.700
JC: The relationship is a relationship of opening.
384
00:27:13.800 --> 00:27:18.000
Johannes gave me
385
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:21.000
one of his artworks from ’64, for example.
386
00:27:21.320 --> 00:27:23.000
It is a box, just so,
387
00:27:23.500 --> 00:27:27.100
for cigars or cigarettes, I don't remember.
388
00:27:27.380 --> 00:27:29.100
He wrote on it “Here”.
389
00:27:29.420 --> 00:27:34.540
There is an arrow, you open it and there is the end of the sentence:
“Here is the story”.
390
00:27:34.860 --> 00:27:44.500
He was happy to show me that he had been an artist forever, as you might say.
391
00:27:46.440 --> 00:27:52.640
So he told me that he had had an idea for an artwork that
392
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.860
would be controlled by wind.
393
00:27:56.780 --> 00:27:59.900
When we had a chance to discuss it,
394
00:28:01.900 --> 00:28:03.900
I reminded him about that idea
395
00:28:03.900 --> 00:28:09.880
and I said maybe we could put it together and that was the start of it all…
396
00:28:10.300 --> 00:28:15.240
Because, from being able to realise a thought from twenty
397
00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:20.160
or thirty years previously, where the elements would make
398
00:28:20.280 --> 00:28:23.560
an artwork visible,
399
00:28:23.560 --> 00:28:28.860
to where I offered him a space and a technician to take care of it,
400
00:28:28.860 --> 00:28:35.600
from that moment on, there was a
401
00:28:35.600 --> 00:28:39.260
real two-way exchange between Johannes and me about the Secret Corner.
402
00:28:39.260 --> 00:28:41.260
JBJ: And how did it work, technically?
403
00:28:42.620 --> 00:28:47.960
JC: Technically it's pretty involved,
404
00:28:47.960 --> 00:28:56.660
because the weather-vane was made of cardboard originally.
405
00:28:56.660 --> 00:29:02.820
There is this famous photo where Wilhelma is carrying the cardboard weather-vane.
406
00:29:03.020 --> 00:29:07.740
So we took this cardboard weathervane to a zinc specialist and
407
00:29:07.740 --> 00:29:11.400
he made it in zinc at Fécamp.
408
00:29:11.400 --> 00:29:15.660
He remade the cardboard model in zinc.
409
00:29:15.860 --> 00:29:21.580
You mustn’t forget that there was a kind of ring
410
00:29:22.100 --> 00:29:24.620
which also has a double meaning.
411
00:29:24.920 --> 00:29:28.000
Because if you look at it like this you might think that it is
412
00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:31.780
two palettes that are doing the waltz together.
413
00:29:31.780 --> 00:29:34.620
Then there is also the Chinese Ying and Yang.
414
00:29:34.620 --> 00:29:37.760
So the double meaning was already there,
415
00:29:38.140 --> 00:29:39.760
when we get to the academic enclave.
416
00:29:40.280 --> 00:29:42.980
And so, this weather-vane,
417
00:29:43.400 --> 00:29:46.800
which had a ball bearing action,
418
00:29:47.280 --> 00:29:54.340
had a handle, like this, that turned
419
00:29:54.640 --> 00:30:01.160
and there was a band with a copper foot.
420
00:30:01.660 --> 00:30:06.940
When there was a wind from the south-east,
421
00:30:07.220 --> 00:30:09.880
which was extremely rare at Vert à Val
422
00:30:09.940 --> 00:30:13.600
– because, as I was saying,
423
00:30:14.680 --> 00:30:17.600
300 days a year it is the “Norois” wind from the West
424
00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:21.300
– at that moment, the contact was made,
425
00:30:21.600 --> 00:30:28.880
and between the contact made and the Secret Corner,
426
00:30:28.880 --> 00:30:30.900
which was two buildings further on,
427
00:30:30.900 --> 00:30:37.060
there was an electric cable which powered a low voltage motor.
428
00:30:37.700 --> 00:30:40.420
This low voltage motor controlled,
429
00:30:41.240 --> 00:30:50.540
by means of a belt, a door with a vertical shutter.
430
00:30:50.720 --> 00:30:54.020
And the shutter was simply a wooden frame
431
00:30:54.280 --> 00:30:56.020
and a chicken wire grill.
432
00:30:56.320 --> 00:31:01.300
So what happened was that, if the wind wasn't favorable,
433
00:31:01.300 --> 00:31:06.380
well, you could pull the handle and see the door of the Secret Corner
but you couldn't open it.
434
00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:08.620
And so, when the wind was favorable,
435
00:31:08.780 --> 00:31:10.620
the shutter was raised
436
00:31:10.620 --> 00:31:14.060
and you could unhook the door to see the Secret Corner,
437
00:31:14.180 --> 00:31:17.080
and when the wind changed
438
00:31:17.740 --> 00:31:20.080
the shutter came down and the Secret Corner
439
00:31:20.380 --> 00:31:23.420
would go back to sleep for I don’t know how long, weeks or months.
440
00:31:23.600 --> 00:31:24.840
JBJ: And have you seen it open
441
00:31:24.940 --> 00:31:27.140
and have you been able to open the door?
442
00:31:27.200 --> 00:31:29.820
JC: Yes, absolutely.
443
00:31:32.560 --> 00:31:35.460
It was really simple, I just had to go out,
444
00:31:35.940 --> 00:31:37.460
look at the weather-vane,
445
00:31:38.380 --> 00:31:42.600
and the weather-vane told me whether to go and look or not.
446
00:31:43.380 --> 00:31:45.780
JBJ: And how often did it happen per year?
447
00:31:46.740 --> 00:31:48.080
JC: Two or three times, maybe.
448
00:31:49.580 --> 00:31:54.900
JBJ: And what does this inaccessibility of an artistic project mean?
449
00:31:55.160 --> 00:31:59.820
What does it mean, this waiting for the wind?
450
00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:01.820
How do you understand it?
451
00:32:03.820 --> 00:32:05.740
JC: I think it's really pure Cladders.
452
00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:12.560
JBJ: Yes, but take it further.
453
00:32:12.560 --> 00:32:17.360
Is it the response of Cladders the artist to Cladders the museum director?
454
00:32:18.560 --> 00:32:20.400
JC: No, I think
455
00:32:20.800 --> 00:32:23.600
it is to tease art lovers by saying to them:
456
00:32:26.260 --> 00:32:30.340
“Yes, you could have seen it but, sorry, you can't see it because, not my fault,
457
00:32:31.940 --> 00:32:33.720
but it's the fault of the wind,
458
00:32:34.120 --> 00:32:35.720
Eolo, the god of the winds, is not favorable.”
459
00:32:35.900 --> 00:32:38.020
JBJ: I remember a conversation with Cladders
460
00:32:38.380 --> 00:32:45.460
when he contrasted the way Picasso saw art and the way Duchamp saw art.
461
00:32:45.460 --> 00:32:55.000
Duchamp believed that looking at art was a constituent part of the art itself
462
00:32:55.560 --> 00:33:03.800
and Picasso said that if his artworks were buried for years and no-one saw them they were still works of art.
463
00:33:04.580 --> 00:33:09.780
He distinguished between the act of looking at art as constituent or not of the art work.
464
00:33:10.160 --> 00:33:14.180
Something that is not accessible, like his Secret Corner,
465
00:33:14.700 --> 00:33:18.640
is not art when it isn’t seen, for Duchamp,
466
00:33:18.860 --> 00:33:22.440
or else it is waiting to be discovered, if you see it the way Picasso did.
467
00:33:23.380 --> 00:33:24.880
JC: I'm not going to even go there!
468
00:33:24.980 --> 00:33:28.080
JBJ: But I would like you to go there!
469
00:33:28.360 --> 00:33:32.140
JC: I’m going to put out in my own drakkar.
470
00:33:33.080 --> 00:33:39.240
You’ll see, in the Secret Corner,
471
00:33:39.240 --> 00:33:42.220
there are signatures, signatures, signatures,
472
00:33:42.340 --> 00:33:44.220
it’s a bit like Duchamp, who signed anything and everything.
473
00:33:44.420 --> 00:33:46.020
He signs, he signs,
474
00:33:46.020 --> 00:33:48.740
he puts the little C for Cladders,
475
00:33:50.380 --> 00:33:51.200
he puts the date,
476
00:33:52.080 --> 00:33:53.640
and from time to time
477
00:33:54.440 --> 00:33:55.920
he puts a little rider
478
00:33:57.180 --> 00:34:01.240
that he has cut out of a packet of cigars.
479
00:34:02.020 --> 00:34:05.840
And these little cigars, each time he came to Vert à Val,
480
00:34:06.140 --> 00:34:10.600
he brought some, and in the evenings we used to smoke those little cigars,
481
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:14.680
talking about this and that.
482
00:34:15.400 --> 00:34:19.900
Anyway, what was the brand of the little Dutch cigars?
483
00:34:19.900 --> 00:34:21.900
Caballero
484
00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:25.000
And maybe, in fact,
485
00:34:25.760 --> 00:34:30.400
because he had a certain number of artists that he was representing,
486
00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:37.340
these artists had actually heard the message from Duchamp –
487
00:34:37.340 --> 00:34:39.340
the others hadn't heard it –
488
00:34:39.700 --> 00:34:43.140
perhaps he saw himself – I don't know, it's a thought –
489
00:34:43.520 --> 00:34:49.020
as a hero of this cabale against the traditionalists?
490
00:34:50.120 --> 00:34:52.920
JBJ: Yes, it's a nice answer.
491
00:34:54.880 --> 00:34:56.400
For me,
492
00:34:56.400 --> 00:34:59.420
when he told me about that and I saw the box
493
00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:04.120
I thought rather about the relationship between art and ritual,
494
00:35:05.100 --> 00:35:08.900
and about the fact that in ritual there is magic,
495
00:35:09.640 --> 00:35:14.060
the divine event happens or doesn't happen,
496
00:35:14.680 --> 00:35:16.060
we see it or we don't see it,
497
00:35:16.860 --> 00:35:19.880
if we wait and finally nothing happens that day,
498
00:35:20.340 --> 00:35:24.180
or something happens but we had been looking away at that moment.
499
00:35:24.540 --> 00:35:30.540
I see the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Poland like that, or …
500
00:35:30.720 --> 00:35:32.160
JC: I’m going to stop you there,
501
00:35:32.340 --> 00:35:37.780
because on the door of the Secret Corner
502
00:35:37.780 --> 00:35:42.580
there was going to be a shield which we were to have made in bronze,
503
00:35:42.760 --> 00:35:44.260
we had the idea, just like that.
504
00:35:44.260 --> 00:35:49.880
There had been a multitude of drawings of this shield that didn't happen,
505
00:35:50.380 --> 00:35:54.280
and what was it about mainly?
506
00:35:54.600 --> 00:36:00.660
There was an allusion to an apparition,
507
00:36:01.200 --> 00:36:04.500
because we went to Kevelaer together,
508
00:36:05.340 --> 00:36:06.880
I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly,
509
00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:14.660
which is one of the places famous for apparitions in Germany.
510
00:36:15.020 --> 00:36:18.280
And still the double meaning,
511
00:36:18.280 --> 00:36:20.080
and again the double meaning,
512
00:36:20.220 --> 00:36:23.620
when he writes on the door of the Secret Corner:
513
00:36:23.820 --> 00:36:29.540
Kevelaer, in quotes he adds OQ, just like that,
514
00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:32.020
so it becomes “qu’evOQue l’art?”
515
00:36:32.380 --> 00:36:34.640
And “What does art evoke” was
516
00:36:34.780 --> 00:36:39.220
one of the principal mottos of the Académie de Muséologie Evocatoire.
517
00:36:41.700 --> 00:36:42.920
JBJ: Perhaps to conclude…
518
00:36:42.920 --> 00:36:44.480
JC: No, I don't want to conclude.
519
00:36:44.480 --> 00:36:47.020
I want to say one more thing:
520
00:36:47.220 --> 00:36:51.600
I attach a lot of importance to the double meaning,
521
00:36:51.600 --> 00:36:57.720
because at Warelwast, Raymond Roussel was important.
522
00:36:58.100 --> 00:37:01.220
Not only Raymond Roussel,
523
00:37:01.220 --> 00:37:07.220
I was talking earlier about Raymond Hains, and Raymond Hains was the living portrait of the Marquis of Bièvre.
524
00:37:07.220 --> 00:37:10.560
As it happened, the Marquis of Bièvre,
525
00:37:10.760 --> 00:37:15.200
it was him that wrote the entry for the word for pun in Diderot's encyclopaedia, “calembour”.
526
00:37:15.460 --> 00:37:20.260
You mustn't forget that I went to Ornbau with Johannes
527
00:37:21.020 --> 00:37:23.840
to the tomb of the Marquis of Bièvre,
528
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:26.800
where there was an obelisk
529
00:37:27.560 --> 00:37:36.140
because it was the Marquis of Bièvre who wrote the famous letter to Madame the Contesse Tation (contestation),
530
00:37:36.700 --> 00:37:38.940
as the dissenter that he never was,
531
00:37:39.300 --> 00:37:42.720
since in 1789,
532
00:37:43.240 --> 00:37:47.500
instead of being on the list of those “to be guillotined”,
533
00:37:47.720 --> 00:37:51.000
he went off and died of small pox, over there in Bavaria.
534
00:37:52.780 --> 00:37:59.100
So I think that one of the greatest things we had in common,
535
00:37:59.100 --> 00:38:01.240
Johannes and me,
536
00:38:01.240 --> 00:38:03.960
was indeed this double meaning,
537
00:38:03.960 --> 00:38:08.860
the double meaning of the Secret Corner,
538
00:38:09.220 --> 00:38:10.920
to show and to hide.
539
00:38:11.740 --> 00:38:16.320
JBJ: And how could you communicate about the notion of double meaning
540
00:38:16.460 --> 00:38:21.080
and puns, if you only spoke English when you were together?
541
00:38:21.680 --> 00:38:28.640
JC: Johannes had some gift from a guardian angel …,
542
00:38:28.640 --> 00:38:31.380
from some divinity…,
543
00:38:31.380 --> 00:38:34.620
that allowed him to make puns in French.
544
00:38:40.460 --> 00:38:44.080
JBJ: We’ll stop there, thank you. Great! We really are about to get cut off.