Fabienne Verdier- Retables, Waddington Custot, London - Flipbook - Page 27
Hugo van der Goes
The Portinari Triptych:
The Adoration of the Shepherds
c. 1477
Hans Memling
The Moreel Triptych
1484
Andrea Mantegna
The Uffizi Triptych
1460–65
of her native culture. It would soon be followed by the decoration of a
chapel in Florence. This evolution is completely logical. The artist, who
at the outset of her career felt the need to distance herself from Western
painting, has gradually arrived back at Christian art. On her return from
China, her reintegration into Greco-Roman civilisation was not a straightforward process. The Far Eastern influence, which was fresh at the time,
was a barrier to the possibilities that her situation would come to offer. As
Chinese philosophy teaches, there is a force of stability within the force of
change, and a force of change in the force of stability. The more Fabienne
Verdier immersed herself in her work, the deeper her approach became and
the more doors opened between the two traditions. Adherence to any particular school had never been her driving force. Instead, she drew deeply from
her extensive practice of calligraphy, a discipline to which she had devoted
herself for years, intuitively sensing that within it lay the path to a universal form. Moving from one innovation to the next, she forged a distinctly
contemporary approach to painting, one that, while remaining faithful
to the core of her Chinese apprenticeship, returned to the origins of her
birthplace. By adopting the “genre” of the altarpiece, she has made a gesture
as powerful as Caspar David Friedrich’s in the early 19th century. Where
he integrated the landscape into the realm of the sacred, Fabienne Verdier
has ventured further: she sanctifies the active forces concealed behind the
visible elements of nature. In merging Christian liturgy with the philosophy
of Asian art, she achieves a syncretism that has always resonated within her
creations. Here, the essence of Tao and the faith of the Gospels converge,
transcending any inclination towards polarisation.
Once again, I laid the reproductions of her paintings out on the floor. Large
and small formats, some created with the brush, others using the funnel
of the Walking Paintings. Monochromes and bichromes. The arms of the
invisible have created a world whose many variations we have not yet
exhausted. Fabienne Verdier tirelessly endeavours to internalise cosmic
movements and translate them through her gestural expression. On her
Instagram account, she shares photos of the Corsican coast where distinct
lines demarcating solid, liquid and aerial elements stand out. Mountains,
sea, sky and tree silhouettes have inspired a series of meticulously rendered drawings, revealing her profound desire to connect intimately with
the living world and its underlying unity. Coherence underlies the infinite diversity; the line illuminates the essence of what comes into view.
While the genesis of her altarpieces draws from her diligent study of works
by Mantegna, Memling and Van der Goes, and resonates with certain
Christian themes through their abstraction, what initially strikes us
about them is their ascent or descent toward the ineffable core of the
subject. If we believe we discern signs that resonate with us, their multiple
meanings always transcend our conscious understanding. If there is a religious dimension to Fabienne Verdier’s work, it lies in its mystical content:
her work ventures to the limits of the explicable, where the line yields
to the cloud, where it blends with the void. There is constant communication between physics and metaphysics. If, as Lao Tzu said, “the great
image has no form”, the question is: how do we approach it? The sight of
waves in an altarpiece [Et le ressac et les courants (And the surf and the
currents), Depuis le lointain (From the distance)] inevitably conjures up the
story of Jonah swallowed by the whale or that of Noah being saved from
the Flood. The marine element replaces biblical iconography, and its fluid
recital contains all the legends that the sea has inspired. The same can
be said of all the great themes that become diluted here in the expression of their founding energy. The forms do not suggest a single interpretation but rather a conjunction of possibilities: everything unfolds beyond
intelligibility in this reservoir where everything is in constant evolution.
So I was rather disconcerted when Fabienne Verdier told me that Ce jour
où la vie a des ailes (This day when life has wings) was derived from her
study of the Death of the Virgin by Hugo Van der Goes, combined with her
wonder at the ecstatic pallor of the Dead Christ by Holbein and by JeanJacques Henner. Rather than a Dormition, I saw the simple configuration
of an Annunciation in this altarpiece. The upward inflection of the line on
the left side conveyed the celestial dimension of Gabriel, who stood facing
27
