Pierre Restany
Art as material evidence
“ There is a kind of permanency of this original, fundamental relationship between man and beast in the continuity of art, its knowledge and history.
The geometrical shape painted by the bullfighter is the soul of each painting by Lucas. This same soul can be found on the walls of the caves, thereby bringing the magic of expression full circle. Lucas has sensed the profound murmur of this age-old magic. He has felt like the contemporary of the Magdalenian artist, the original painter of earth and blood.
So, alluding to the symbolism of the colour scarlet became inadequate to encapsulate the magic of this extreme moment and Lucas too – he, the contemporary artist – sought to demonstrate his awareness of this privileged moment by using the original signs. And he too, quite naturally, used blood and the earth to welcome in the clearest, most direct way, the joy of the formidable truth that had been revealed to him. The red mark is the material evidence and the crime became art from the moment it was felt, perceived and understood by the awareness of being. “
Pierre Restany
Paris, April 1992
Pierre Restany
«Lucas, la communication des esprits»
“… The red mark becomes the core of the painting. It encapsulates a surge in activity and a sublime moment of sharing. It epitomises a split second in the bullfighter’s memory which for the artist is a privileged meeting point allowing communication between spirits. It is where a series of causes materialise and connect with one another to create some form of trace. A trace that is primarily immaterial but nevertheless a tangible sign of the presence of the bullfighter on the canvas, a presence born of and directed at emotion…
The fragmented writing is part of the secret, in the same way the abstract red shape is. Something is written on the canvas but if I don’t provide the key, it remains enigmatic, indecipherable and yet…”
“ The red mark is the material evidence and the crime became art from the moment it was felt, perceived and understood by the awareness of being…”
By spiritually defining this geometrical shape, man delineates the space he takes ownership of and writes of his life in a secret language, because an entire life fits within the confines of a geometric shape closed on all sides. The fundamentals, man and man’s spirit, are reduced to their simplest expression and hence, their most elaborate because it is boundless. The message is universal and unfathomable and because God resounds within each being, here more than anywhere, it features implicitly within each square, each rectangle. It is infinity reined in, captured, and the inaccessible dream of humanity.
Pierre Restany
Paris, 1992
