INTERVIEW J-P SERGENT BY THIERRY SAVATIER | 5/5 | 7|29|2019: BEAUTY & QUOTATIONS

Описание: 5/5 | 7|29|2019: BEAUTY & QUOTATIONS

PART 5 : BEAUTY & QUOTATIONS
Interview between Jean-Pierre Sergent and art historian Thierry Savatier (world-famous specialist of Gustave Courbet). Filmed at the studio on July 29th 2019. Camera: Christine Chatelet.

TS: So, Jean-Pierre, there is a question one might ask today, we also asked it in the past, but I think that today, even more so, both for artists and the public, it's the question of beauty! It's a question you've addressed, especially in one of your text: De la beauté etc., and in this text you call upon a certain number of authors, writers, especially 19th century writers, and Huysmans in particular. The question I was asking myself is: what are for you, on the subject of beauty, the founding texts?

JPS: Oh yes! That's a big question! I'm going to quote a few examples, it's my sentence, about what I think about beauty: "Beauty is a necessity of life: it's the quintessence of life itself!" That is to say, one has the impression, that in nature, everything is beautiful, in quotation marks! That is to say that it is a functionality! In order to survive, you need beauty! So it's beyond philosophy, it's beyond the aesthetic debate, yes, it's the sine qua non prerequisite for life. But I wanted to come back to the writer friends of the nineteenth century, who, more for me than the painters, were able to feel where this beauty hide. Because Huysmans talks about it very well but I have in front of me an extract from the Temptation of Saint Anthony of Flaubert and so this monk Saint Anthony stays in his cave and everybody comes to him and explains to him: "Look at the beauty of life and enjoy it!" Even the Queen of Sheba comes up to him and says: "Oh... Enjoy the life and fuck me!" But he refuses every single desire, he wants to remain in his ascetic dimension, between quotation marks, spiritual, monotheistic, where access to God requires the self-denial of the world! So Flaubert shows that it's the opposite: it's the acceptance of the whole world, of every desires, that gives access to God! So I thought of this: One must not miss one's life by accident or intellectual or spiritual misunderstanding. And I think that today, many people are missing their lives, perhaps I will quote a few excerpts from Saint Anthony, for example from Manes, the Bard:
"He makes his globe turn; and adjusting his words to a lyre from which crystalline sounds escape: Souls who come out of this world emigrate to the stars, which are animated beings."
That is to say, beauty is a cosmic thought; it's a connected thought. That's what we have to understand. Beauty is not on the outside, it's on the inside. It is within the body, when we see how the body functions, everything is marvellous everywhere!

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