SENILE LINES?

Thanks to my advanced age, I can allow myself to pose this profound question (in English), all the more so as my last lines are apparently no longer in line with my usual logic.

Yet another justification for this title is the fact that it is a palindrome, a rare and perfect construction which as a consequence of its essence alone deserves to serve as the introduction to a chapter.

Back to my lines, which have supposedly become senile in the not too distant past, or which perhaps have always been senile, whereby the meaning of a palindrome refers to both the past and the future due to its ambivalent reading. It is therefore indispensable to take a look back at the history of my lines.

It was the year 1952 when these lines, which can certainly be described as ‘geometric’, suddenly appeared; over the course of the years, they have gradually spread out to invade virtually all of my works. They were the basis for my four most important systems: Juxtaposition and Superposition (Side by Side and Superimposition) in 1952, Interférence (Interferences) in 1953, Fragmentation (Fragmentation) in 1954 and Hasard (random distribution) in 1958, the latter in combination with squares and triangles.

For the last 54 years, I have used these lines in lieu of the other indecisive, spontaneous, tortured lines which I loved so naively in the 1940s. No, the lines which replaced them did not spring from the senility of my hand. They are only fragments of straight lines or circles which are drawn using a ruler or compass.

The selection of the materials which I have used to concretize these geometric and by definition intangible lines has taken the place of the moods of my hands. On two-dimensional surfaces, I have used pencil, drawing pens or brush, adhesive tape strips, lattice-work-fences, twigs, neon lights, etc.,...; in three-dimensional spaces, I have used all kinds of rods, pipes, flat bars or metal cable, wood or metal beams, branches and tree trunks, and of course neon lights as well.

Most recently I have experienced a perverse and perhaps senile pleasure in provoking the contrast of two implacable opponents, the line and the stripe, the light pencil line and the conglomeration of broad bands painted with black acrylic, on the same segment of a straight line. By applying this method, I have distorted works from the 1970s with 10, 20 or 40 random lines as well as the π–paths of the last few years. The general title of these works is Strip-teasing which implies both the removal of clothing and the bantering of a stripe (‘stripe’ in place of ‘strip’ would be more figurative, but not so ambiguous). In Striptyque, the lines of mine move into a third and ultimate stage in which they become virtual borderlines between two colours.

by François Morellet