jay rechsteiner

home       artworks       statement &  cv          contact
...............................................................................................................................................................................................

 

Le Sentier des Peintres (The Path of the Painters) A picture of an apple and a stone from the village of Proveysieux, France projected onto a wall.
Background Le Sentier des Peintres investigates the discrepancy between the established romantic, over-stylized idea and the reality of the lives of artists. Artists and their lives have been romanticized since the Renaissance (Giorgio Vasari) and hence people seem to have developed a distorted idea of what the life of an artist is like. The media, various enterprises and the art world itself exploit this misconception, using it for their financial gain, very often over-stylizing and hence trivializing art. As a seriously working artist I find this offensive and rather precarious as to me art reveals truth as opposed to superficial values such as 'coolness', fashion and mass culture. As an example to demonstrate this misconception & misuse of artists I am projecting the photograph of an apple and a stone I found by the entrance of the Path of the Peinters, le Sentier des Peintres in the lovely village of Proveyzieux, France. This is the village where at the end of the 19th century the French landscape painter and headmaster of the School of Painting in Grenoble Thédore Ravant moved to and set up L’école de peinture de Proveyzieux together with his painter friends Jean Achart, Diodore Rahoult and Henri Blanc Fontaine. In the first decade of the 21st century the Communauté de Communes du Balcon Sud de Chartreuse took action and set up a lovely path that follows Ravant's atelier des champs through a magnificent landscape. They called it Le Sentier des Peintres.	Work developed during The Red Van residency in France & Italy, August 2015
As with many true facts Ravant's story is heavily romanticized and adds to the false idea of the lives of artists. The apple (the true life of artists) represents truth, decay and transformation of and in life whereas the stone (created image of the life of artists) represents still-stand, death, the opposite of the apple. (I am very well aware that a stone also goes through a transformation but compared to an apple its transformation is not as strikingly visible in relation to time and change.) Another symbolic aspect of this work is the location, the beginning/the entrance of the path wher I found the two items. The path represents life through which the carrier of truth (apple) and lie (stone) wanders, it is a constant battle between what is real and what is unreal, fictitious. It is about making decisions in life. It is about following the path of truth or of lies.

 

Copyright © 2015, Jay Rechsteiner. All Rights Reserved.