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BETWEEN NECESSITY AND DESPAIR Philippe Vandenberg in conversation with Bernard Dewulf 1

Bernard Dewulf: Your approach to the artist and his calling is as deferential as it is serious. You’re also acutely aware of history. What, in your opinion, is the place of the artist in our present time?

Philippe Vandenberg: You can consider this from two points of view. Firstly, from that of the artist, who doesn’t really have a choice. Personally, I feel this very strongly.

When I was younger, I had two options: to either become a dog trainer or an artist. I grew up around dog-breeders and was fascinated by their world. Had I gone down this route, I would have come to a halt. Becoming an artist meant breaking away from my family, and resisting this path. It was a battle that needed to be fought. Afterwards, I realised how beneficial it had been: it was a first test.

As a child, I was strongly thwarted by the social, familial and religious system. My first act of resistance was my first drawing. And that opposition has remained with me ever since. My hope is that I can use it to touch somebody. When that happens, I feel as though the resistance has been fruitful.

As far as the system is concerned, it is harder to give a clear answer. Perhaps the artist is, above all, the creator of icons,

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a supplier of symbols that might be of use to people. As far as I’m concerned, art forces you to accept that life can be mysterious. However, we’ve been educated to believe that everything should be solvable and clear. It’s wrong, and I believe that many of our sorrows and problems, as well as suicides, are due to this belief.

Yet, I do feel that I must give something to society as an artist. I offer my work and what I want in return is, above all, communication. My wish and my hope is for people to look at my work. Unless it’s viewed, it doesn’t exist. That ‘third eye’ is very important to the creative process. I always try to involve it in my work.

BD: How large should that eye be?

PV: The moment that the ‘third eye’ comes into being, however modest, marks the start of a long road paved with pitfalls. For that’s the moment when the ‘career’ begins.

Which raises an interesting question: as an artist, how many ‘third eyes’ do you actually want? How many is enough?

Just like anyone else, the artist is a bottomless pit. With the following consequence: the more we get, the more we want.

In this respect, I’ve travelled a varied road. Between repulsion and attraction. I have a love-hate relationship with the art world. But I’ve always been fortunate enough to have had people around me acting as that ‘third eye’, also in difficult times.

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As to your question of how large that eye should be: in principle, anybody qualifies; but in practice, not so many. […]

BD: Speaking of difficult times… in your texts on art and being an artist, the concept of ‘despair’ is a recurrent theme.

PV: I believe it’s very hard to be a thinking human being without regularly facing up to despair. Despair is part of thinking. I associate it with a lucid state of mind. When you’re acutely aware of the situation we’re in, it’s ridiculous to ignore despair.

You can cope with it in two ways. Either you let it destroy you, as happened to some of my friends and acquaintances, or you use it as a kind of fuel. Despair feeds resistance. As it does in politics, or religion. Political parties and religions all find their origins in despair.

I know that despair is an unreliable companion, in the sense that it’s always looking for your weakest spot. But, so long as I’m able, in a manner of speaking, to humour it, and to express it, I can live with it.

Just look at art history in general: there is no happy art. Art is always about the blues and life’s cruelty. All great art is tragic, from Rembrandt’s brushwork to the subjects chosen

by Goya and Velasquez.

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As I see it, man has used his despair to create something akin to a state of grace. And however tragic the themes may be, the creator always experiences some degree of joy as well. I’m almost certain that when Bosch intensified the cruelty in his painting, he did so with his tongue hanging out. For me, the state of grace is an awareness of having seen something that transcends us, no matter what the horror. For me, the search for that state of grace is the driving force behind what I do. […]

BD: Despair is omnipresent.

PV: Despair has many guises. Despair guides me to my studio, where another despair is waiting for me. That’s how it is.

This is linked to the idea that nothing is definitive. I don’t think that we appreciate this enough. We are fascinated and obsessed by the definitive. But it doesn’t exist, despite what all those well-intentioned institutions and people – parents, teachers – would have us believe. We are nomads, we are drifters. We must learn to accept this. I believe in the nomadic, and in nomadic thinking.

The artist’s despair also resides in his inexorable attempt to create the definitive image. But he never makes it, fortunately. And those who assume they’ve made it – what happens to them? Think […] of Francis Bacon. At a certain

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moment, he touched the tip of God’s toe. But what did he do? He kept on repeating himself. My belief is that the artist should be lucid enough to avoid this trap. But it’s easier said than done. I just hope it doesn’t happen to me, or at least, it hasn’t happened yet.

I believe in continuing the attempt. Picasso said: ‘Je ne cherche pas, je trouve’. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s the other way around: I don’t find, I search.

1 This text is an edited excerpt of a conversation that took place between the artist Philippe Vandenberg and the writer and poet Bernard Dewulf in February 2008. The occasion was the exhibition Artist in Residence.

Philippe Vandenberg: Visite, in which the artist’s work forged a dialogue with the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) in Ghent (12 April – 17 August 2008). The full text is published in the exhibition catalogue Philippe Vandenberg: Visite, (Ghent: Museum of Fine Arts, 2008), pp. 37-48.

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