Page 36 - Studio International - February 1969

Yves Gaucher

David Silcox

I think of Yves Gaucher primarily as a print- gradually opens, and texture is given less promi- they are in five colours : black and four tones of
maker. This is because I happen to like and to nence while greater tension is created between grey. They are 22 by 30 in. The composition
collect prints and because Gaucher was at first the various elements. In two final prints in this is made of a few in. squares and a few short
known only as a printmaker. In fact his repu- romantic vein only two or three stone-like thin lines from 1 in. to 2 in. long set either verti-
tation in Europe and America until 1965 forms are set against a background composed cally or horizontally. A few longer lines in
rested entirely on his prints and on a total pro- of overlays of different coloured and textured colourless relief appear, sometimes twice in the
duction up to that point of not much above a papers which are cut to produce rectangles and same plane. There is no symmetry, but rather
dozen works. Although now Gaucher's output borders not unlike the patterns we associate a 'scatter' effect that reminds one a little of
as a painter far exceeds his graphic work and with Mondrian, and are laminated in the some of Earle Brown's music scores. The
although it is by his paintings that he will be printing process. These were the last of the complexities of the patterns, the rhythms, the
better known in the next few years, it is his arbitrary shapes, and from that point forward interlocking areas and the spatial tensions and
prints which convey his aesthetic principles Gaucher has used only straight lines and rect- contradictions do not reveal themselves easily.
more succinctly. Turning points in the evolu- angles. The shapes were distracting from his Mostly they emerge as one looks and then dis-
tion of Gaucher's thought and style are almost chief purpose which was to emphasize the appear as another aspect takes one's attention.
always heralded by a print. activities between the different elements rather After three more works in the same manner
One of Gaucher's beliefs about life is that a than their appearance. and format but in colour, Gaucher moved to
person never really changes, but that one can, What pushed Gaucher a crucial step further in painting. The works of this period were square
through exploration of thought and expression, his development was a moving concert of work paintings hung on the diagonal. The squares
become more fully and more profoundly one- by Anton Webern, which he already knew (in colour) and lines of the Webern series, now
self. His own work seems to verify this, for from from records but had not fully grasped. 'The worked out in modular intervals and in perfect
the earliest work to the latest certain principles music seemed to send little cells of sound out symmetry, were used to activate a field of solid,
and characteristics are constant. The work of into space, where they expanded and took on pulsating colour. The little squares bounced
today is a deeper imprint of yesterday's; though a whole new quality and dimension of their across the canvases creating echoes and after-
for Gaucher, just 35, yesterday is not long ago. own.' In response to this experience, Gaucher images. The interaction of the lines and the
Through 1961 and 1962 Gaucher produced a produced three prints called Homage a Webern. field created what Gaucher called chromatic
number of copper etchings in very deep relief. These and the set of prints called Transitions, antagonisms or energetic events. Certain col-
These look a little like arrangements of rough 1968, are to my mind Gaucher's most important ours and lines would have certain speeds or
but rounded stones in a Japanese garden, and works up to the recent grey paintings. quantities of movement. Against these would
they occupy the paper without reference to the The Webern prints are complex works as be balanced colour intensities or confining pat-
background which is white or the edge of the prints. They are printed on white laminated terns. As the viewer watched the painting
paper (there is no plate mark). The cluster paper between a male and a female plate, thus would shift to one side of the equation and then
pattern, which is very tight in the first works, producing relief in positive and negative, and to the other. These works were exhibited in
Buffalo's 'Art Today' exhibition and in the
New York exhibition 'Vibrations Eleven'.
In 1966, Gaucher returned to the rectangle
and began to use only thin horizontal lines as
compositional elements. He called these
Signals and he again arranged them in perfect
symmetry with the intervals calculated on a
modular system. The background was a one-
colour field, still in very strong colour. To
accent the rhythms of the signals and to create
a conflict or dynamism between the rhythms
and the occupied space, Gaucher painted bor-
ders on the two sides (to create vertical ex-
pansion and horizontal compression) or on the
top and bottom (which does the opposite).
In some instances a border colour would give
the appearance of being an entirely different
colour when isolated in the middle of the field,
a pair of lines would produce a different
colour than a single line and different again
depending on its position in the field. Again,
Gaucher would sometimes marry the actual
colour with the seeming colour to create a
double illusion. The same alternation between
dominant and recessive rhythms and patterns
persisted, however. Gaucher referred to it as
the 'visual expression of emotional states at
once variable and invariable, fixed and