ALBERT BITRAN OR THE AMBIGUOUS EFFECTIVENESS OF BLACKS
Albert Bitran, after a brief but fruitful period of experimentation in the sphere of
geometrical abstraction, he turned to a different kind of abstraction.
abstraction of a different kind. If a historical exhibition such as “L'Envolée lyrique
such as “L'Envolée lyrique” presented at the Musée du Luxembourg in 2006, it was possible to observe that Bitran had already asserted his singularity.
Bitran had already asserted his singularity.
The first surprising thing about him, in this very particular context, is that he has never quite given up on his art.
that he has never completely renounced curious references to the figure or perspective.
Architecture haunted him for many years. And his nervous and impulsive gestures
led him to build geometric figures, but sometimes also barely perceptible ones.
perceptible. Undoubtedly, these forms are difficult to discern and indecisive. But they
nevertheless exist, so that the dilettante (in the original sense of the word) does not limit himself
contemplating a play of lines and colors. He didn't feel bound to the great currents that
French painting (or painting abroad), nor to the informal or so-called tachism of the 1950s. He belongs to that category of artists who
who wanted to take advantage of the great factory of ideas of abstraction in France, Italy or the United States.
like Kline, Atlan, Fautrier or Henri Michaux.
Albert Bitran's art soon took on a restless quality. His paintings have never
melancholy, but melancholy mingles with jubilation.
Harmony and imbalance characterize his compositions: they are perfectly arranged,
but give the impression of being able to topple over from one moment to the next (recent works
recent works confirm this: Bleu instable, Rouge instable...). In short, each time he introduces
the shadow of a doubt. And the risk he takes each time in accomplishing this act that thwarts
pure enjoyment of contemplation to plunge us into a pleasure mingled with
contradictory feelings. His way of painting is of the same nature. She doesn't
shimmer with sublime colors, but rather combines hues that are sometimes corrupted, a white
depending on the lighting, and the mood of the viewer, a light blue, a grey
reveals other tones. There is something in this painting that could be related to
linked to the style of Gianbattista Tiepolo, a unique lover of white, light and fluid colors,
and strange manipulator of a great theater where people hide behind columns.
columns. A painting by Bitran is not an immediate, monolithic moment: it suggests
moments when the eye wanders and takes side paths, only to choose one of them,
temporarily. In this way, the canvas is always other, while at the same time asserting its unmistakable uniqueness.
unmistakable.
An integral part of Albert Bitran's plastic writing are punctuation marks
punctuations, often tiny but always prominent, of a more intense color, a red or a green for example.
red or green, for example. These marks do not serve to highlight the muted connivances
between muted or darkened hues. Rather, they insinuate another dimension
to better appreciate what, at first glance, is a blur.
But the most striking aspect of Bitran's approach is his relationship with black. I'd better say
better say: to blacks and add: and consequently to whites and greys. Black is
omnipresent, one day invading almost the entire surface, the next only present
the next only present in a few criss-crossing strokes in a secret order. This black has a very
complex role. It is the frontier of the artist's pictorial thought, yet it remains a color like all the others, an elite color.
like all the others, a color chosen above all others. Secondly, it is there to create zones
zones of intensity, like the shadow in Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio. The shadow
exists in itself and for itself, and at the same time serves to highlight even more what is
which is supposed to be the theoretical center of the work. With him, there is no
There is no center, only colored patches covered with lines that are assembled, or a single patch, but with several “vanishing points”.
a single area, but with several “vanishing points”. Bitran's “subject” can be a
topos where an almost illegible form crystallizes (but which is nonetheless a character and even
even, at times, a painting within a painting), which has brought together colors and signs that bring to mind
reminiscent of a gigantic pictogram. When black is used, this character is even more
even more powerful. It illuminates (paradoxically) the rest of the canvas, where details do not accumulate,
by subsequent parts of the plastic discourse. And it can expand as if to absorb all those colours
all these colors, or reduce itself to a mere punctuation mark. When he speaks of
erosion of blacks”, he alludes to the ability of this variegated hue (there are a thousand blacks in his work) to ‘erode’.
(there are a thousand blacks in his work) to redistribute the few colors he uses
according to a device that he governs.
Albert Bitran never ceases to fascinate. It's impossible to confine his works
in a definitive image, fixed and therefore closed forever. It's a line of conduct, a constant
a constant in his aesthetic sense, one that is linked from distance to distance, as the eye gazes upon him, and whose meaning
whose meaning evolves, diverges, reverses and, in so doing, overturns us. He turns the soul upside down
in this relationship full of surprises. He inspires both black moods and white, superb
of the mind. I insist: he intrigues and confuses and disconcerts.
It is undoubtedly these insignificant qualities - as much as his strange and intense sense of
painting with elements that propose themselves as enigmas - that have fascinated those
his creations on canvas and paper. He develops a kind of
conversation between what he has expressed on the surface of the painting and whoever enjoys it.
In Fra Angelico, dissemblance et fiuguration, Georges Didi-Huberman sets out to demonstrate
that ancient painting is not just about figures, and that painting,
when it has a certain grandeur, takes pleasure in surprising the eye. Bitran imposed a
way of painting that did not exist, not even among his most audacious
talented contemporaries. In his skilfully cultivated solitude, he pursued his quest for a space beyond that which he explores relentlessly, even today, with equal boldness.
boldness. Major themes have kept him busy, driving the cryptic machinery of his creations with
creations with many constants, but also a large number of variations. The
and the other confront each other endlessly in his universe, which dispenses with metaphysical
metaphysical legitimacy, and yet offers a wealth of serious questions.
Without ever wearing out the bright golds and scarlet reds, without any Veronese greens, and above all
without the beautiful shimmering combinations of a Courbet or the subtle tonal
of a Monet, closer no doubt to the manner of a Manet who sometimes turns painting into a
painting into a sketch, Albert Bitran has endeavored to make art a melody that goes beyond the conventional one.
conventional melody, a decacophony all his own, with slightly fewer tones than in music
music, but with many more semitones and imperceptible chromatic echoes.
echoes.
This is why he belongs to the history of this post-war period, but also how he belongs to the history of painting.
belongs to the history of history painting, as it used to be called, because without
he is capable of developing a fresco with multiple twists and turns for the eye and the mind.
and the mind. He's a bit like Manet without the Tuileries strollers, the fife or the Folies-Bergères waitress.
waitress at the Folies-Bergères, without poor Maximilien, the deposed emperor of Mexico.
Gérard-Georges Lemaire
