Lucile Gauvain On Foregrounding the Modern With the Medieval

Even as courtly love emblazons the curtains and fantastical beasts of benediction crawl the walls, reality closes in on the central figure of French artist Lucile Gauvain’s haut les cœurs!. She lies awake in a four-poster bed, her plaid blanket pulled to her chin, her gaze anchored in some unnamable abyss. Her bedside table is arrayed with a column of meticulously dated journals that suggest a compulsion to keep a record of the day and, perhaps, the day’s emotional events as well. Enclosed in her bed of romance and legend, the woman’s melancholy and cynicism is not only framed by, but engulfed by archetypes of medieval happiness and prosperity. In “HAUT LES CŒURS!”, Gauvain’s recently closed exhibition at Taipei’s PALM Gallery, the artist flattens the space between the medieval past and the contemporary present through vivid mise-en-scènes. She conjures surreal visions of medieval tapestry where the boundary between reality and imagination is not just permeable, but constantly renegotiated.

Represented by The House of Fine Arts gallery in London, Gauvain has frequently used scenes of surreal interconnectivity as subject matter in her colored pencil tableaus. Her work challenges the symbols and signs that comprise a social reality, making them mutable by way of intertextuality. In Le Mot Juste, yellow and white road signs suffuse nearly every open space in a reticulated void. Workers in uniforms of blue jeans and green baseball caps take paintbrushes to the signs, not to redesign them nor paint over them, but to garnish them. The scene feels less like an act of defacement than one of embellishment, as though meaning itself cannot be erased but rather layered upon.

When we commonly think about the medieval past—and the art that so defined it—we are most obliged to call on some form of simulation. Death dancing a carole with fair maidens. Troubadours singing ballads of a lady love. The boy king pulling the sword from the stone. The noblewoman cursed to see the world from a mirror. These stories are, of course, historically fanciful. If they ever did happen, they lacked the narrative and moral symmetry we now insist upon. Yet they are the hyperrealities we prefer, the ones we constantly, intractably return to. Gauvain pushes her artistic practice into this realm of memory construction with “HAUT LES CŒURS!” such that reality and representation become two halves of one whole.

“HAUT LES CŒURS!” explores themes of memory, melancholy and the pressures of daily life. What initially drew you to these ideas, and in what ways do you see them manifesting in the works you presented there? Are there any other ideas you sought to explore through this exhibition?

No, those are probably the main ones. I think fear and fascination have led to ideas since… forever? Losing memories is something I fear a lot, because I can already see how much my brain has forgotten certain events in my life for no meaningful reason, and how frustrating it is. I don’t want to end up with fragments of memories that are difficult to piece together. That’s where the melancholy comes from too. The passing moment, which we will never relive in the same way or in the same context, and the impossibility of going back. I find it very difficult to accept that the things I love, the situations in which I feel good, come to an end. To compensate for the brutality of the end, I tend to romanticize my feelings towards these past periods, making them even more beautiful or poetic than they were—as a compensation, a way to make them last longer with me.

As for the daily pressures, they reflect an emotional overload a few months before I started drawing. It was a difficult period and I really saw it as a transition between before and after. I spent my whole “youth” being optimistic, but I’ve lost some of that carefree attitude today, and I see it reflected in my work for this exhibition in the form of slightly bolder colors, representations of monsters and skeletons and pensive faces, characters “on pause.” What’s new about this exhibition is that I’ve tried to represent my version of the generalized anxiety I was experiencing at the time.

You’ve cited film sets as inspiration in the visual language of your work. Are there any particular film set designs that stand out more than others and why?

Any movie set that has a fantastical, very distinctive, sometimes kitschy, artificiality, but in any case not naturalistic universe. Spaces with a lot of texture, patina, loaded with furniture, with lighting directed at very specific areas, sets that feel lively when you enter them in the studio. Or complete opposite, as long as the intention is clear and serves a purpose in an original way. I also have a huge soft spot for the gothic film aesthetic. Show me an old haunted Victorian house? With lace curtains?? On top of a mountain AT DUSK?? Do I even need a script?!

You implement elements of medieval and early Renaissance art forms within many of the pieces, but then define them in the context of the piece as a fantasy that does not dictate the narrative of the painting. What was your intention in creating such strict boundaries between reality and fantasy? Between the past and the present?

I don’t see them as a fantasy. On the contrary, I find that they add a layer of understanding to the whole narrative. I don’t consider these images to be part of the “past” and the contemporary characters in my paintings to be part of the “present.” I’d even say medieval imagery in my opinion seems very relevant, and it’s no coincidence that it has been so popular in recent years. It usually depicts scenes from everyday life, often in an absurd or facetious way, mixed with monstrous and violent scenes, which seems to me to be consistent with the direct violence shown in today’s ecological, political, economic and humanitarian crises. There is grandiloquence and bravery in this aesthetic that I feel adds depth to the theme of the exhibition, centered on fragile characters overwhelmed by the notion of resilience required in everything they undertake.

What initially drew you to medieval imagery? In what ways have you integrated such imagery into your practice of depicting contemporary life?

A few years ago, I did some research on medieval tapestries because I am fascinated by different forms of craftsmanship. I find medieval imagery extremely stimulating in that it perfectly represents the subjects that are close to my heart, namely scenes that oscillate between the everyday and the fantastic. I love how characters enjoy casual activities like a cute bath, a good sleep in bed, a pious book reading… while being surrounded by DEMONS and COSMIC CHAOS approaching. The representation of death, demonic animals, amidst humans going about their daily routines, all depicted in a surreal, even grotesque way at times… I really wonder why I didn’t make the connection much earlier.

In many of the memento mori pieces as well as within de fleurs et de ronces, Death—as personified by a jubilant skeleton—is both a central and omnipresent figure. How do you conceptualize death in your artwork? Do you intend for Death to be a figure or a force? In executing Death, did you intend for there to be a consonance to medieval ideas on the subject such as memento mori?

I see it as both. Death has always been an omnipresent subject for me. It is the biggest question, the main source of any anxieties I have. I believe that rather than finding answers in the concepts of death at the time, I saw it as an opportunity to appropriate the ease and abundance with which it is represented in medieval imagery. I find that there is a form of reassurance in integrating it in my artworks and representing it openly, especially when it is depicted so casually, with the buffoonery characteristic of the art of the period.

You’ve spoken before about the “state of the world” impacting your art, inspiring you to create works that are introspective or stage scenes of community. Do your feelings on the “state of the world” manifest in the works presented in “HAUT LES CŒURS!”? If so, how so? If not, why not?

I don’t consider my work to be very political, but I think it’s unlikely for artists not to be influenced by it. The trivialization of wars, genocides, famines, ecological and economic crises, growing social inequalities… I can’t see how this influence is avoidable for anyone, although this may manifest itself in different ways. In my case it was despondency. This feeling is represented in the exhibition as a figurative weight, the reason for the inertia that emanates from the characters in the various paintings. It is the feeling that followed me during the months of preparation for the exhibition, and which, paradoxically, was “cured” in part thanks to their conception. The exhibition’s title says it too. “Chin up” is this saying used to help people process whatever they need to—the ambient moroseness and acute anxieties in my case—and get back on track after a fall.

In works such as après nous, le déluge, you shorten the foreground, thus inviting the viewer into both the medieval imagery and the contemporary tableau. Do you view this as dissolving the boundaries between the audience and the subject?

That’s, in any case, what I really tried to do with this one and ces éternelles émotions. I wanted some of the paintings to show the overwhelming or crushing nature of medieval tales by having them occupy most of the space and “drown” the character in them, blending them into the image as a somewhat absurd, jarring narrative element. Creating a dissonance between the characters’ behavior and the worlds around them. I’m not sure I fully managed to dissolve those boundaries between audience and subject, but if putting medieval imagery as the center of the scene helped, so much the better.

Are there historical art movements or periods that you feel aligned with, or that inform your work in meaningful ways?

A LOT! Medieval and Renaissance art first and foremost, obviously, but also Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelites, some parts of American Realism, Surrealism. I’m also very inspired by the treatment of space in trompe l’oeil frescoes from antiquity, any type of optical illusion.

You work primarily in colored pencil. What stories or sensations can this medium communicate that another cannot?

It automatically reminds me of childhood and a kind of naivety. Their smell is a madeleine de Proust. I find a sense of control and calm in the process of coloring with pencils, and I like the idea of combining a “simple” medium that is accessible to everyone with uncommon scales like large formats. I know paint is considered more noble, but some brands are really doing some crazy quality products nowadays and hey, look how cute they are with their fragile little leads inside.

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