Écriture No. 71-78

An avant-garde work at odds with itself. The vertical rhythmic lines build stability, the horizontal pattern they form almost hypnotises, and the gestural strokes carry a chaotic weight. Both heavy and wispy.

Structurally, unlike the Western abstraction that first inspired him, this carries a discipline that keeps it simple to read: nothing complex to decode, nothing to pull your head away from the image. On a medium-scale canvas (91 × 116.5 cm), the work rests on a warm parchment ground, neither clinical white nor dull beige. Delicate lines are drawn directly into the oil paint, almost like an embed, leaving fine grooves with the faintest edges of displaced paint at their sides. Light catches those edges and drops the grooves into delicate shadow, so the surface seems to shift as the viewer moves in front of it.

Perseverance, both ways. The moment one bends to take a closer look into this work, the viewer makes an extra effort and does not just walk by, and the artist didn't give up after the first set of pencil lines. Neither is promised a reward. But in the effort, viewer and artist meet: both gave this surface more time than they had to.

My calligraphy workbook pages look close to this. Repetitive strokes. Meditative image. I read this as I would read his diary. Except these were the chapters where he sought "pure emptiness", trying to quiet his mind completely so that he became a passive conduit for material and time. But the quietest place could be the catalyst for the loudest noise. The title agrees: "Écriture" is French for writing, or scripture. Some horror he knew he wanted out of his system: in writing, kept as an archive, but with traces left behind, and strokes not scars.

Was it the guilt of waking up to a bright summer, watching a bloom while people around him were not gifted with the same? Theoretically normalcy was brought back. But was it all?

I resonate with this work, not because of its rhythm but because of its inertia. The nation was steadfast, moving into industrialisation, and people with great perseverance were working hard to rebuild it. The stability they worked for was taking shape. The change was quick, followed by the amendments of a post-war country. Against that speed, the work stays put, stroke after stroke. Yearning for just another normal day is inevitable.

Écriture talks to me as a work of literature, moves me like a voice narrating while swallowing tears and wails. I feel the grandeur of a country getting back on its feet with tenacity, and the internally fragile grit behind the courageous mask, which he does not want to rip off, but implicitly does in order to wake up again, get back to stability again, and for one more day, forget the chaos.