Arts... of Drawing Carving and Building...

I have been asked to speak about my profession which is stone-cutting. This has been my trade for the past forty years. However speaking about me will not explain enough about this profession.

So instead, I have chosen to give a presentation about the long history of this trade.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, stone cutting was considered to be in the forefront of the building trades.

Please be generous and understanding. I haven’t spoken in public for almost 30 years and the last time I did- it was in French, my native language. For that reason, please forgive my accent and also my broken voice, which is the result of inhaling thousands of pounds of dust from the stones and... (few packs of cigarettes)...

So let’s begin our long journey:

We all have some sort of “spiritual fathers” or “gods” that we carry with us every day of our life. It is common knowledge that the existence of these (Godfathers...) helps us to walk the long road of life.

As apprentices of a trade we had to make sure that we had connections or links with all which had preceded us.

(If I had been a doctor of medicine I would have chosen Hippocrates. And as a lawyer in our democracy I would have chosen Plato or even better Socrates)

However there are some other sorts of “half gods” who are a part of our long history. These people can guide us on that long journey of the working life we have chosen. These spiritual fathers are perhaps the ones who will give us answers to some if not all the questions we ask.

Long ago I had personally chosen some of the artisans of the Twelve and thirteen century (the Romanesque period and the early Gothic) to lead and guide me in my trade. For this reason I feel as if I am still standing before the front doors of buildings which are living edifices or (evidence) of the old world: in England, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and various other places in Europe.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villard_de_Honnecourt

One of these buildings is in the city of Arles in France. It is called the “Saint Trophime.”

Seven years ago I pushed open its front doors. When I did so I asked the same question as I had so many times before. The question was not “why” because the why seemed obvious to me, but rather WHO, WHAT, and HOW? Who had built the “Saint Trophime”? What had been their trades? What tools had they used (intellectual as well as physical)?

To the present, not all of these questions have been answered. However, over the years we have gained some knowledge about that time period. Today I will try to answer these questions in words and in pictures. These explanations will not be (comprehensive?), but I hope they will give you the desire to pursue your own research on the subject.

Most architects and builders of the twenty-first century in the western world have standardized tools, materials and preconceived abstractions of measurements and geometric figures. What was it like for the men and women in the thirteenth century in Western Europe?

Now, let’s go back in time and put ourselves in a different world where nothing could be taken for granted. In the past, women and men in power had the same desires as they do today. In both the past and present these desires were and are brought to fruition by others.

Building with stones… a simple process!?! Not that simple!...

Building begins with someone’s desire. Ideas have to become visual concepts.

A sketch can be the visualization of an idea.





 

  From here, how are we to proceed? From what begins as just a verbal desire which tools and techniques are we going to use to go farther?

Let us put ourselves at the end of the age of darkness 400-800 A.D.. What enabled these men and women to surpass themselves with the building of a shelter, for the defense of hers or his community, for God.or whatever communal structures one had in mind.

Here we have to ask ourselves: How did our spiritual fathers view and proceed in the making of a final drawing?

05/07/11

By nature and in general stone-cutting and sculptures are premeditated  objects, with them ​the symbolic forms not exist, but shows a formal and independent reality which calls for your interpretation. Whatever shapes they may take conventional or "avant-garde"...Only your personal reading  is going to add symbolism.

Concept and building of a sculpture or stone-cutting for any kind of structure  demands  physical labor which can only be considered as the work of an Artisan.

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To survive, make sense of and understand this world I have put forth forty years of intense labor. The trade of stone-work is very demanding.

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I have reflected upon this trade and would like to share with you something about this long learning process which has become my link to mankind.  I understand why I have refused to be in the ivory tower of the Artist workshops or studios with all their intellectual or verbal speculations on the subject of forms.

These forty years of learning, have often been made up of abstract realities, but also of figuration in the fields of:..

  / Restoration

  / Copies

  /Utilitarianism

  / Everything which is a part of reality is often shrouded in dreams like... (To be or not to become an artist) (Sculptor or other worker of the visual arts)...

The deliberate silence of daily life has put a distance between me and the haughty pretensions of my contemporaries. I have always wanted to be a stonemason.

This work has opened the doors upon the shadows of our common past.  We now stand in front of the apparent light of our present.

What captures my attention today is the achievements of these men of our past. Their simplicity cannot be called "naïve". The simplicity of the tools they used is the subject of our present speculations...

 

"By its nature, sculpture is a premeditated object. By premeditated object I mean: the making of an object which is the result of conscious intent.

 So! Begins this text, it is... I assert my present condition and this exceeds that of the simple stonemason… consequently I will begin to meditate upon a different gesture or a different action directed towards our uncertain future.

However we know, this uncertainty of the future and therefore we must accept it

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Sculptors, stone-masons and other practitioners of volume which is known or unknown, past or present, at some periods of their lives have touched this material which refuses faults: Stones.

Stone and all of its applications begin with patience, somehow becoming brutal and to finish with some (caresses)...

This masculine behavior can also turn into the common brutality of humanity. This humanity has become the squatters of our historic cities.

Carved stones are an integral part of our urban habitat.

Stone becomes the story of human brutalities as well as patience. Man as a sculptor like the stone-cutter is the brute who decides one day to attack the natural block, to shape it by his will.

This has been the will order by and for the princes or one of the Bourgeois, this merchant, who is now the master of our cities.

We will not return to the words above, but each of us in this city, our home... has... had the desire to mark or to show his or her historical presence.

Stone requires a premeditated, dynamic, violent and even brutal touch, but somehow finishes with gentleness and patience. These direct experiences stimulate the minds of the practitioners: the masters of our dynamic materials.

Knowledge comes from experiences and practices of this aggressive and violent behavior. It is somehow the birth of our requested forms by the masters of our cities.

 

Drawing, (sketching), the said "outline" of our form is a natural gesture of the hand. The sketch is also the spontaneity of the mind, here nothing violent, nothing premeditated it lets the mind and the hand flow freely...

This gesture made on sand, paper, wooden boards, walls, can survive and be identified as an " art " object. It can live an independent life in some of our collections, but it is an embryo, the fetus of an aborted birth or a premature life.

Drafting or the making of a model necessitates another gesture, a different dynamic with different mediums.  It demands of man “the practitioner” a premeditated act, a calculation, and/or... a gestation.

It reveals to us the ingenuity of our craftsman.

There was a need to develop volumes which builders had envisioned and realized with sketches.  This presented the first economic challenge for our builders. They needed to produce a design at a lower cost. The paper which was imported in the 1300’s had been obtained at prohibitive prices.

 ... and therefore there is also the fact that this support features the black line on a white unbleached surface. However in its phase of gestation our work in progress could not be drawn using a black line.

Black is related to shadows, the night, and darkness.  We know that work must be planned using a white line. A black line appears to be the contrary of the clarity sought by our craftsmen of the past.

There is also a need to draw a continuous fine line from the beginning to the end. The quill pen or charcoal (of our time period) are not suitable for doing this.  However, the stylus or the iron tip are perfect tools for tracing which requires a continuous line with no obliteration.

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Some remarks on the white line.

  It exists in the form of an etching.

  One can scratch a white line upon a plaster board which has been covered with charcoal.

  Wood engravings were printed on paper, and several copies could be distributed to the different trades..

  In this form, it is what is it… the white line has resisted time with the drawing on light-sensitive paper. This method of drawing has resisted until the seventies.

The white line has continued its life on Auto-CAD.  Auto-CAD has given us the means by which to configure our pages, and its lines...

  Using the color white on black shows us the light of the work ahead; light in the dreams of the night.

  .In the year 2010 I worked on the site: OZARK Medieval Fortress, which is located in Harrison, Arkansas.  I was the “maitre tailleur de pierres” or master stone-cutter.for this medieval fortress. While working on this site the line continually returned to haunt me.

  The finished sketches are white on a black background and resemble independent, living bodies.

The line...

  An endless horizon, a meeting between two elements: heaven and earth for example.

  It is a total abstraction for our eyes.

  The line wants to identify an object. In fact these objects (volumes in the space they occupy) exist without it.

  The line is an abstract tool of our mind.

  Horizontal lines assist us in making a distinction between the top and bottom, and between the sky and the earth. But in reality, visible ranges of colors have no need of its presence.

Two relevant questions exist concerning the negative or positive …

  The product of the pen on the media, paper, parchment, wood and plaster etc...

The product of the stylus on plaster covered in black charcoal.

  Is the line a symbol of the negative or the positive?...

  Symbol of the distance of measures not yet defined.

  Sides of the geometric figures currently undefined.

Lines and their supports are the custodians of our visual memory. They are also the visual tools of a debate between us and the object which is to come. Here it becomes imperative for our Artisans to control their vocabulary or lexicon. Even more so today where machines want us to believe that they can replace our hands ... We must achieve the control of our line. In order to do this one must have a strong will and a firm desire to master this visual technique.
 

This line will try and only try to materialize and to identify the contours of the object which is sought.

There is so much more that can be said about the line. In time it is possible that we will come back to it. Let’s approach the subject of form. We must first discuss the measurements and the basic geometrical shapes of the thirteen century.  We will look at the ways in which they were seen and used.

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