Bullfighting

JUNE 1986 – CHAPELLE DU CHATEAU DE CAMBOUS

LUCAS AND THE BULLFIGHTERS

This year, I would produce between fifteen and twenty large-format paintings with the Bull and the Matador as the central theme. On each painting I would leave a blank space – a triangle or a rectangle or another geometrical shape – which would become the essential, living part of the painting.

In my chapel, I would ask each Matador to paint this blank part of the painting with ‘bull’s blood’ and to write his name beside mine. This red geometrical part painted by the bullfighter would be the only colour on the painting.

For the first time, the Matadors would leave a tangible imprint. They would play as important a part in the design as the artist, adding that final touch without which the painting would remain imperfect.

Matadors are accomplished artists whose ephemeral artwork only leaves its stamp on the memories of the people who admire them in the plaza de toros or on camera, but they are never physically involved in this representation of themselves.

I believe it is essential for the present and the future that they add this final touch, a kind of decisive blow without which the painting would remain incomplete, in the same way that the death blow during the bullfight brings the confrontation between man and the bull to an end.

This part of blank canvas will be as important as the rest of the painting because the painting only comes to life and takes on its true meaning through this blank space, giving it its true identity and breathing life into it.

I would like other men to see you with the heart of the first men on earth. You must help me release the image I have of you and your new role amongst men.

In the same way that you look through the negative of a photo to try and distinguish the whole picture, this is how bullfighting should be viewed. It is a negative – there is darkness, this is the performance, but not light, the bullfighter is the light.

The essence remains invisible to the human eye. The paintings share the same feature, the invisible link with the fiesta. They too are negatives because the essence is not apparent and yet, it is there, in the centre of the canvas calling out to us.

When men look at this red mark inscribed by the bullfighter, they must feel that the important part is just behind what they can see with their eyes and that to begin to get a glimpse of the canvas, they must find the way back to their hearts and their primeval sensitivities.

This red part is the heart of the painting. Through his gesture, the bullfighter brings it to life because he inscribes his entire life – past, present and future – on the painting. The visual representation is abstract, the essence can only be viewed from the heart.

What enthrals and excites me about this idea is that for the first time, a man other than the artist will breathe life into the painting and in my mind, this man has now become absolutely essential to me.

I believe that in Art, the idea and the philosophical discourse behind this idea is at least as important as the artwork itself.

The crux of the matter is about conquering new territory, placing my feet on ground where no one before has ever stood.

Bullfighter, is this not part of your secret dream? Is this not part of the dream that has driven you since childhood? Is this not the key you and I have been looking for forever?

The people who admire you or shout their hatred at you in the bullring dwell only on what they see, on what they consider to be good or bad, according to their own criteria. They do not know that what they see in the bullring is trivial compared to what you really represent.

Why do they cut you off from the dream you represent? When will men give you back your true dimension? When will they know that you are the last representative, the last survivor of a race of men to which we all belong? When will they realise that you continue to live in the same way that the first men on this earth did? When will they know that you are the last symbol of a forgotten age when man needed fear to be able to transcend it in order to survive, not to know his physical limitations but to try and find something essential deep inside, something he had always sensed? In these moments of fear, he feels close to universal truth, to his creator and therefore close to God.

I believe the bullfighter is someone looking for his deep-rooted identity. He is a man who lives with other men, but follows a parallel path. If he happens to die or be brutally injured in the bullring, what does he see or what does he get out of this sacrifice?

Men will only give you back your true identity if you die in the bullring because in that split second, you return to what unites and reconciles men. Like them, you are mortal and they can then demonstrate their love for you with no restraints. You were both their ideal on earth and also their wound.

Bullfighting can be likened to Art for the performance offered by the bullring. It is Ephemeral Art, which makes it one of the finest and the purest because it leaves no trace, except in the memories of men.

But what underpins the performance is much more than Art or it is Art with a capital A, the only Art, the most flamboyant and the most profound.

In these moments, these magical timeless seconds when the bullfighter reaches out to finally find this ‘key’ locked deep within us – time stops for a moment… then resumes its course again. The bullfighter starts over and over again in different bullrings, different countries. His life is guided by these few stolen seconds when time stops and when he feels in communion with his primeval instinct, with his deepest roots and with God whom he feels close by, who watches him and guides his steps. God is within every one of us, but in these moments of sublimation, only the bullfighter takes the lone path that leads to God.

The bullfighter is the warrior monk of our ancient epics. He is the last man to look for the secret of a forgotten age and his life is guided by this perpetual, sometimes subconscious search for a key, the missing piece of his life’s puzzle.

For the bullfighter, the ring is the enclosed space where he often stands to fight – but his conscious or subconscious quest for the absolute is not restricted to the boundaries of the ring. It is inscribed in his most profound inner self. What transports me is the image of infinity you carry within you. I need to identify with your subconscious to try and comprehend the essence which few people suspect, perhaps not even you.

When the Matador takes the paintbrush and puts his stamp on the canvas, he will go beyond the realms of the canvas and the gesture itself, in some ways adding initials that encapsulate all those years of trying to surpass himself, alone with himself, the bull and the public. He can be likened to a tightrope walker, or a warrior from a lost age in our world of appearances where we need the public to exist. For these exceptional men, whose life only becomes meaningful when the battle begins – those moments of truth which transport them to another world, a universe made of their dreams, courage and fears – these are futile, exasperating habits. Their continuing childhood dreams, their innocence and desire for the absolute, their arrogant dance, the challenge to the beast, which is perhaps a subconscious defiance to Man. The bull becomes the living incarnation of the public in the bullring, and the Matador, the solitary man.

Bold, proud Matador, your childhood continues, clad in sunshine and light.

What do you feel when, as you come out of the bullring, the cheering has stopped?

Do you feel a calming sensation or a big void? Do you feel happy or lost, like a child when the party is over?

All these feelings will be expressed when, in your bullfighter’s costume, you paint this blank space because this will epitomise your life, your wildest hopes, your haunting fears, your past and future dreams. Like a child, you will fill in this box with red paint but as you do so, you and others will know that these few square centimetres encapsulate your entire life. When the men who love and resemble you look at this painting, they will love you more for everything they know about you and what they can sense. Every man with the ability to observe this red triangle or square will keep, deep down, a lasting impression of a forgotten dream.

Without you, my painting remains lifeless, but you need me too because I keep a space for you that will allow you to exist forever.

I would like you to fill this empty box with bull’s blood but perhaps, in that split second, you will feel compelled to mix it with your own because all too often, your blood has stained the sand in the bullring.

At this particular moment, the enlightened man is not the only one to express himself – he is joined by the more secretive man, the one who experienced years of misfortune, all those hours when nobody watched him but when he still had to hold his head high, the weariness and the dust, the suffering and the secret fears, the solitude and the woes that we know through our kin who shared the same dream.

This abstract red shape depicted by a square, a triangle or any other geometrical shape, is the crux of the painting.

Every bullfighter who has religiously portrayed his life in this way will reveal any man capable of deciphering this message.

As you paint this blank shape red, you will write the story of your life that you alone know well. Of course, it will remain secret but men of heart and spirit who understand your gesture will comprehend your life better, with all its tunnels of darkness and hours of light.

This is why I am asking you, Matador, to fulfil my desire which must also become yours. You and I will write the story of our lives in this secret language. Only God and the race of men who resemble us, will be able to decipher it.

Lucas