10 may 2021, Manuela Klerkx
Gauthier Hubert | Starry, Starry Night
In 1999 he won the prestigious "Young Belgian Art Prize". Since then, the work of Gauthier Hubert (° 1967, Brussels) has been shown at home and abroad, particularly in the United Kingdom, Germany and Iceland. His painting is not only notable for meticulous pictorial technique, but also for a wide colour palette, which can be both subtle and extremely vivid, and countless visual puns and references to art history.
Hubert himself describes his painting process as a 'performative act' since the subject corresponds to the technical realization process. For example, holding his breath to paint certain details created a series of portraits of a man who held his breath for 3 minutes. And a 2003 portrait of Michael Jackson entitled The Grey Man is about the difficulty of making the colour grey from black; a clear reference to the process of depigmentation of the singer's skin. So when Gauthier Hubert speaks of painting he is talking about the act of painting itself.
Hubert's paintings do not exactly aim to convince or please the viewer. On the contrary, his portraits and characters excel in the seeming impossibility of identifying with them: they confront you with feelings of discomfort and alienation and the mostly introverted characters do not look particularly sympathetic. Instead of depicting a recognizable person with whom we can identify or who may attract us, his portraits are often an imaginary representation of faces that evoke a feeling of rejection and doubt: the empty look or the white eyes, the special posture and the slightly different shape of the face, the pale complexion and the transparent eyelids, the somewhat false smile and the grey, far too large teeth ... the ideal of beauty is hard to find and is overshadowed by the beauty of the pictorial touch itself and that transfigures the image. For example, in 2010 he painted the Portrait of an Ugly Woman (Portrait d'une femme laide), in which all classical criteria of beauty are violated. The Portrait of the Son of the Ugly Woman (Portrait du fils de la femme laide) followed in 2017, which continued this tactic and thus revealed the already existing genealogy in his painting process. This process of transfiguration supports Hubert's view that ‘painting can something ugly into something beautiful’ by the fact that painting itself - its finesse, texture and precision - takes us away from the image.
He spends a lot of time and attention preparing the background of his compositions before adding a character. Layer after layer, a monochrome surface or a surface consisting of various subtle colour nuances is created, which is then finely brushed. These abstract backgrounds would make for fascinating painting even without any figurative additions.
But what exactly is Gauthier Hubert's painting about? The answer must be sought in language. To be precise, in the titles he gives to his paintings. "The titles exist before the paintings," he explains, "Sometimes several years separate a title from the painting." Yet, however long this period may be, "words always lead to a visual image that is the starting signal for a new painting." That is why he gives his paintings titles that appeal to the imagination, such as Accidental encounter with a Martian (Portrait d’un Martien rencontré par hasard), Portrait of a man who takes himself for Jesus Christ (Portrait d'un homme qui s’est pris pour Jésus, le Christ), or Bust of a young girl with bulging eyes (Buste d'une jeune fille aux yeux globuleux). His paintings are, as it were, visual stories stacked with references to portraits of known and unknown people, mostly fictional, already painted by himself or by other artists. By way of free association the artist creates a true genealogy in which one painting leads to another.
Gauthier Hubert, "Portrait d'un homme ayant un beau fond", 2017, Irène Laub Gallery.
Some works are closely related to art history, such as the Infinite Paintings series, inspired by a letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, in which he wonders how he could technically reproduce the glare of a starry night. Linking this question to the recurring difficulty many painters encounter in completing a composition, Gauthier Hubert creates paintings of starry night that will never be finished, as he allows himself to modify them by adding stars from time to time, even after the work has been sold. For example, the works in this series - to which the artist has unlimited access in accordance with an agreement signed by the buyer - refer to the concept of 'infinity' both in the subject (infinite starry nights) and in their technical process (infinite additions to the paintings).
Another example is the painting Anna Meyer is 502 years old (Anna Meyer à 502 ans), which he painted in 2009, about five centuries after the creation of Holbein's original. This work illustrates the importance of language, the fascination with visual idiosyncrasies and a transversal view of art history. In both Holbein's and Van Gogh's paintings, Anna Meyer sits in the same way and looks with the same rigid gaze. We see a similar position with Gauthier Hubert, but the passing of the years has left its mark on her physical face. We can say something similar about the painting Portrait of a man who is allergic to whites (Portrait d'un homme allergique aux blancs). This portrait of Kazimir Malevich, painted in relief with various white pigments, is a reference to his painting White square on a white background (Carré blanc sur fond blanc).
Painting a portrait based on a description takes courage. After all, the painter is at the service of his visual imagination. As is the case with a writer who imagines a character and brings it to life through words and descriptive text. Painting is stimulated by language, just like a text.
But the true secret of Hubert's painting does not lie in the painting process itself or in the language, but in the details: not in the whole, but in every separate part and in every nook and cranny of the image.
