Jean-Claude Wouters, Artist

Belgian artist Jean-Claude Wouters explains his mysterious and often difficult-to-see art. Interview from around 2010.

Liddell: So the first thing that you notice, of course. is how faint the images are. Now, a lot of people would would find that a difficult thing, y'know, because it's maybe too low-key for a lot of people. Why did  you "turn the contrast down" so much?

Wouters: It has nothing to do with "turning the contrast down" or whatever. It's a long process. I take photography then I re-photography re-photography and when I re-photography, because it's kind of macro photography, I use lenses, I do it close to a window,  and I have a reflection of the sky and the lenses, and this is what in a way erase the appearance of the images.  

Liddell: So the most important thing is the process not the end product? 

Wouters: For me the process is important because it's my life. It takes like nearly two months to make it. Of course in two months, I can make 10 pieces or 15 pieces, but the processing itself is quite long. Also because when I have what I think a good negative I go to my... I don't print them myself, and everything is organic. There is no computer whatever and this is really black and white paper like 19th century with... They are selenium tones also which is the best quality for preservation of all what exists in the world for photography. 

Liddell: How long will that last then? 

Wouters: But the oldest one we have treated with selenium are still 100% the same, so this this is the best...

Liddell: Because if it faded anymore it would be a problem, yeah? 

Wouters: Not for me, no. No because there always would remain a trace, and what interests me is the trace, the ideal, but basically it's up... Maybe you should see what there is in the other room because it starts...

This is really a [___] work. This is a portrait, and the work on the Buddha, this is something different that Mr Hoshi from the Marunouchi Gallery asked me to do, but normally this is the most relevant thing I do, when I do portraits on commission, and so, again, it's not a question of fading or not fading, it's just what I wanted to do is to give to the people an image that provoke a kind of human warmness when you discover the image, and a feeling of spirituality on one hand, second hand I want it to be very discreet because when you have a flashy painting on the wall, after two days your subconscious erase it and you don't see it anymore, so this is like the wall, and if you want... I mean, I don't know if you don't feel well or whatever but you just sit in front of your portrait, and it's like a long corridor, tunnel. You go inside of yourself. It's something like that, and third, as I said before, I wanted it to be low technology and very simple, so that's all, and in a way it's the opposite to what is photography now because, as the Japanese say, they say "shashin," which is copy of reality. In English or French we say "photography," which means to design with light or to draw with light. What I do is drawing with light, but most of the people what they do is they copy, they try to copy the reality. 

Liddell: So you see this as, in a way, more real than... 

Wouters: Closer to the reality. Also because, like, for example, no it's okay because you film me. If you take just a picture it will be one piece of one 60th of a second of me, and I will be like that or like that, and there is no reality in there. I did the portrait of that  young woman, I think, two years ago. If I make a portrait in five years it will look quite the same, in a way, and on the other hand it works also like, if you think of someone you know... We always visualize in our brain and... But, for example, you will remember me, like, tomorrow or in one week, you will mix maybe five or ten impressions of image you had of me here in the gallery. If you think about your mother, you mix instantly maybe one hundred thousand times you met her, and even it will be all mixed, even when you are three or five years old, and which also...

Liddell: It's atemporal.

Wouters: It's an impression that, for you, your mother will always look younger than for for me that would discover her today, you know what I mean. In a way... 

Liddell: The older you get, the more you become yourself in other people's minds too because there's an accumulation of different things seen at different times, and the person in the moment is not the total person.

Wouters: Yeah, of course. 

Liddell: So you're going for a more the essence of the person. This style of photography gets at the essence of the person more than a more direct form of photography, yeah? 

Wouters: Yeah.

Liddell: Now, yeah, it's kind of there but not there as well, and in a way that makes it more real to the mind, because you're sort of constantly switching between seeing it and not seeing it, and this process of constantly switching makes it feel more there. Y'know, once you see a picture very clearly, you tend to, like, put it in a box and... 

Wouters: Exactly.

Liddell: Y'know, so that's why I thought this would be a very interesting exhibition. But, of course, a lot of people will see this, and they'll think, "What the hell is this?" and, y'know, "This is a painting I can hardly see," and "Why would people buy this?" and this kind of thing, so there's going to be, of course, a kind of reaction against it.

Wouters: Yeah. It's not easy to sell, but the people when they have it at home, they send me emails that really, even after two or three years, they still enjoy it because it's like, what I give is a slight trace and you, having the piece at home, it's the image  built in your head, and day after day or week after weeks, and so it's still alive. It's like here you  have only 30% of the image and 70% is in your head in reality.

Liddell: Yeah.

Wouters: You do the work, I don't. I just propose...

Liddell: It's a collaboration between the viewer and the artist and the subject, and... It's sort of like the picture exists in a sort of middle point between  the artist, the subject, and the viewer, whoever that viewer may be. Now you're asked to apply this very interesting technique to Buddhist sculptures and statues and... So, can you tell me a little bit more about that? Whose idea was that originally? 

Wouters: Of Mr Hoshi because in reality... Well, I have another part of my work, is I work on old images from book[s] that I scratch and repaint and re-photography. And, at the time, I was living in Brussels and working with a lot of black... And I had found a Italian book of Chinese antiques... And in there there were some Buddhas, and so I did work on those. Also, the thing is, since I'm twelve, I've been always very interested by Zen. It's something quite natural for me. It's not exotic in itself, and... 

Liddell: How would you define Zen, though? Because... 

Wouters: I won't do it.I have an easy answer. I would not... But I live with this kind of philosophy, let's say, and Shinto also...

Liddell: Some people  would say that Zen is a kind of lack of focusing, not to focus on things too much, to keep a kind of open-ended attitude to everything at the same time. 

Wouters: Yeah I think there are many ways to describe Zen, and this is very...

Liddell: I mentioned that particular [____] because... yeh, obviously, because you're going for a very soft, fuzzy...

Wouters: People talk about "wabi sabi" when they see my work, which is quite true, yes, it's quite "wabi" and "sabi." So, about the Buddha you mentioned, so I was doing those Buddhas that are bit, a mix  between photography and the painting, and when Mr Hoshi saw that, well he was not interested to exhibit it, but he said "I would like, if you accept, to go to Nara and Kyoto with you, for you  to photography the real pieces, real Buddhas, and to apply the technique you use for  your portraits. In the beginning I was quite reluctant, because what [I do] is not just a trick that I will photography everything with, but... And, well, it's just pieces of wood. For me the real name of those Buddhas it's "Burnt Buddha Floating in the Water," and it refers to a Zen story, but maybe I will tell that later, and so, in a way, it works well because those Buddhas are from the 9th or 10th centuries. Some that have pieces missing... But there is a head, if you go... If you come here you can see it.  Or from here you can see even better. 

Liddell: Just from the side the head  starts to appear.  Yeah.  That also suggests... That also suggests a kind of light around the  head, a kind of halo effect, so that maybe works to the advantage... 

Wouters: So, the ideal of, well, of course the Buddha is not this piece of wood, is not any kind of subject.  It's not like flowers or a chair, and for ten centuries people did pray in front of it, or something like that, and you can imagine that, with this kind of image, you feel all that spirit, you know what I mean. They are charged, that, if you see a old Buddha like that, and in a shrine, and you go, and maybe there is something special  about it. I don't know. I'm not a believer. But, in a way, it reveals that being treated that way. 

Liddell: So, the way that people have touched it emotionally, is that what you mean?

Wouters: Yeah, it's like people praying in front of an object, then this object is 'charged' with something from all those people. 

Liddell: It's like old religious statues, people touch them for good luck...

Wouters: Yeah, this kind of thing... 

Liddell: And that, kind of, creates a patina, so, in a way, you're trying to photograph the patina of devotion? 

Wouters: What you say is really too precise. Maybe it has to do with it, but it's too precise. I would not put things in words like that. 

Liddell: That's the job of art journalists to do that. Yes, to exaggerate and clarify and simplify. Yeah, they're very interesting works, and they do have a kind of strange atmosphere that normal paintings don't have, and I guess that's because it's forcing the brain to maybe work more than it's used to.  

Wouters: I would say, no, it's the opposite. It's forced you to to relax. If you want to see, you really have to let go and relax. If you have to concentrate. In fact, sometimes because... I'm referring to the portraits or the things in general, and I... Well.... Also, I mean... It's not a question to see or not to see. It's just I know that I have... What do you call that? I know with a print, the less readable it can be and the more readable it can be. For example, this is the more, this is the less, and in that range, for me, it's all fine, and I don't control it, because, as I said, I work close to the window, so, in the winter time, in the summertime, if it's sunny, rainy,  all that changes, and I don't control at 100%, and that's of course what I like, and  I think that's what makes the work better, because I think if you control everything, the result would be quite poor, because life and nature is so much stronger than we  are. Just... You know what I mean?

Now with a computer, where you can control everything, and then you end up with quite a poor image, because you did not take advantage of accidents and what people would call fate or God, whatever...  Like, so, when you work with a[n] advertising company, and then, you know, before they make a layout of what they want, the client has his idea, the agency has the idea, and especially now, with the digital, they see directly the results, and for sure they are losing a lot, because when they see what they have in mind, that's it; and all what will not look like that, they will say "No, we don't want." But before, when we were working with the traditional photography, the photographer was shooting, shooting, shooting, and then like one week later or three days later we were going to the agency, and the agency choose the photography that looks like what they had in mind, and then they see another: "Oh but this is interesting too! Maybe we can propose that to the client also."  And all this doesn't exist anymore. And it's like scientists. They say, they complain that  before... If you are going, I don't know, to the place where all those scientists were working, you had [a] couch, and they were taking a nap quite often, and they say now, because of the computer, it's impossible. You spend all your time in front of your computer. And they say during the nap they often had the right ideas. 

Liddell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's when the brain does a lot of its  work and that's no longer available, but just to clarify, you say you work next to the window a lot, so that means you're developing the film not in a dark room, but with... 

Wouters: No, no, no, I said  when I re-photography, and because I don't want... Again, I don't want to use artificial light because I want to take them, to take advantage the most of the existing light, which is the light  of the sky. It's like when I do the portrait, the first image I do, like, I place the person in front of the window and me I'm back [behind] the window, so you don't have too much shadows and it's always daylight.

Liddell: So how does the picture become, well, in a way, brighter and also less contrasted?

Wouters: Because, as I said, when I re-photography I use... so that I have my image like that, and I use lenses and the reflection of the sky. You have the reflection of the sky...   

Liddell: On the glass?  

Wouters: On the glass, and so, in a way, the kind of light grey you see, it's like a super[im]position of the image of the face and the sky, but I do it two or three times. 

Liddell: I see, so that evens it out. You don't get clouds or other things from the sky? 

Wouters: Yeah. 

Liddell: By doing it many times it evens out the background texture... 

Wouters: And also because I'm kind [of] in the macro photography, you know,  so it's so far it's out of focus. 

Liddell: Okay, yeah, yeah. And so you're allowing the natural light to do the work, and you're not interfering too directly. I'm just curious about maybe how your  dancing background informs your visual art, because maybe we can make an analogy between  how a dancer responds to gravity and how you are allowing the light to work, not going  against the light. 

Wouters: Oh, maybe, yes yes, yes, also it's a bit like to be in a river, and to follow the flow of the river, of course, I mean, yes, of course. 

Liddell: What can we say about your dancing  background? How does that... Does that have any influence on how you work as an artist?  

Wouters: It gives me some humility, I would say, and, because you work with your body, it's painful. And then you interpret. Someone gives you a choreography and you play the choreography like a piano player will play a piece of Bach, and some will take more freedom and some less. Yeah, yeah, as you said, to take... Not to think that you can control everything. In a way the opposite to be a film director, to be an interpreter, a dancer, or a classical viol[inist], or a musician. It's just you have to take... To do the most with what you have, to be realistic. A film director is the opposite. He say[s], "Oh I have a vision" and next thing, everything['s] in green, and then, especially in the commercial, in advertising, and all that, and the customers, they like it, and then he says "Oh no, and then I want it orange now," and the people say, "Oh, he's a genius," you know, and it's just fake and all that. 

Liddell: So, it's the opposite of being a control  freak?

Wouters: Yeah. 

Liddell: Yeah, okay, right, I think that should provide plenty of material. That's probably more than enough, thank you very much.