PUBLished in LES CAHIERS DE PSYCHOLOGIE DE L'ART ET DE LA CULTURE N°11, ÉCOLE NATIONALE SUPÉRIEURE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS
Light is a body made of corpuscular photons. The body is also particle, atom, molecule, cell. Celestial body: sun, planet, supernova, galaxy, interstellar dust. Then, the sexed body, animal, human, male, female…
Body: the most perfect instrument and the most tragic obstacle. For 15 billion years. Agglomeration, fusion, separation, attraction, repelling, growth, diminution, transformation, mutation, explosion, implosion, dissolution… Desire, suffering, death, renewal.
Countless tattooed, painted bodies, from prehistory to the infinity of bodies photographed and filmed. Charlie Chaplin. Fellini’s fat women. Pasolini’s Ragazzi… Countless bodies of painting and sculpture: the dying buffalo of Lascaux, Buddha, scribe, Gudea, the Venus of Willendorf, Titian's Venus, Cézanne’s bathers, Giorgione’s nude, Dubuffet’s Corps de Dames, Courbet’s Origine du monde. Kourê, ephebe. So many bodies! Standing still, moving, falling, meditating, in space, in time-and-space. Dislocated body: Picasso; crucified, resurrected body: Grünewald; super muscled: Michelangelo; innocent: Giotto; hieratic body: Piero Della Francesca; worn down: Rembrandt; humble: Van Gogh; radiant body of flesh: Rubens. Transfiguration. Ascension. Assumption. Damned body. Ecstatic body: Greco. Mad: Goya. Winged body of Assyrian spirits…. Immaterial bodies of angels and seraphim. Dog-headed human body: Anubis. Corpse. Carrion. Fertile body in labour, tortured, threatened, starving, dying. This is my body.
My body plays the game
Ruled by “I”.
The rule of I, I of Reigl;
Determined. Determinant.
A particle of the Universe…
A particle of the Universe
Is the Universe.