Knowledge of the artist’s biography is not essential to understanding his or her work. Moreover, in the realm of art brut, critical discourses based on biographical facts too often exploit these for mere pathos. But we can contain the risk by listening to the artist him- or herself. In 2019, in an interview with the gallerist Éric Gauthier, Cédric Laplace talked about himself in a succinct yet terribly effective manner: “I was precocious. I was exceptionally gifted. I went to prep class, nearly qualified for Normale-Sup [a selective graduate school]. I didn’t have any problems studying. The shit really hit the fan in the years from 1998 to 2005: I graduated up to a master in philosophy, but I was an alcoholic and drug addict.” This Parisian chapter is now closed, as Laplace was eventually “put back on track” by Dr Lemoine at the clinic in Mézieux, near Lyon, where he now lives—a new beginning, or “origin,” as he puts it.
Other “origins” or “sources of energy” can be identified: his first exhibition at Tigre noir, the shop of the tattoo artist Thierry Greiner aka Saint Molotov, and, before that, in 1991, Oliver Stone’s film The Doors: “Poetry, music, shamanism—everything was revealed to me […] as something that hits your mind and directs it towards new meanings. That’s exactly how it was.” In other words, “The Doors is a source of energy on which I still draw.” For Laplace, “every life is nourished by sources of energy and each of these sources will radiate to the end. The impulses that have innervated my life until now are still there and I can use them for the future.”
Same life, different thread: “It started with a simple heartache.” He continues: “In one way or another, it would have manifested itself. I had bouts of what you call ‘decompensation.’” While everybody knows what a heartache is, few have experienced “decompensation.” So here is a little reminder: “In psychology, the term refers to the inability to maintain defense mechanisms in response to stress, resulting in personality disturbance or psychological imbalance.” As for Laplace, he is well-versed in the psychiatric vocabulary, expertly talking about his symptoms, pathologies—catatonia, hebephrenia, etc.—and schizophrenia diagnosis: “The schizophrenic person has no identity: they refuse to be pinned down…” This patient analyzes himself concisely, and he is reluctant to let others explore his unconscious: “The psychoanalyst goes speech: ‘So, your problem is daddy…’ —Why are you giving me this daddy-mummy bullshit? I’m not into that sort of problem. I’m into aesthetics, I’m into ethics. I’m into constructing myself, I’m into masks….” His analysis is dense and, again, effective, yet pronounced with a smile: he is a simultaneously seductive and intimidating character. A little later in the conversation, he says: “I’m lucky to receive an adult disability allowance for being schizophrenic.” Pragmatic. From the point of view of art, indeed, not having to work leaves time for practice. Laplace has been drawing since 2008, more assiduously since 2015.
In the realm of art brut
Why situate Laplace’s work in the realm of art brut? Firstly, perhaps, in order to avoid his drawings being interpreted as symptoms and himself being labelled as a “schizophrenic artist.” Because when Laplace says things like, “I started to draw to put an end to my anguish” or “now drawing is vital for me—I wouldn’t be sane if I couldn’t draw”, one is tempted to attribute some kind of therapeutic value to his artistic output or to reduce its specificity to the pathological inclination diagnosed by the author himself. The main objective, therefore, is to frame his work safely within the realm of art. And art brut can be the right tool to do that.
His drawings were presented at the Musée de la Création Franche in Bègles and at the Biennale d’art hors-les-normes in Lyon, which was probably partly due to the fact that their author is the epitome of the “brut” artist. He is a self-taught artist, and in our society, his schizophrenia places him outside of “normalcy.” He started making art quite late in the day, following a romantic break-up, if not as a result of a series of traumatic situations. He works on his own, without models or artistic references—in any case he does not seem particularly interested in the history of art and never speaks about other artists (except Henri Michaux and…, Évelyne Postic). He is by no means indifferent to the reception of his work, but hardly comments on it, although he is quite loquacious and makes pertinent remarks on many other topics. To define Laplace as a “brut” artist would be akin to putting yet another “mask” on him. What’s the point?
As a matter of fact, art brut makes it possible to appreciate marginal works—works the traditional art-historical categories are reluctant to legitimize—by reaching also beyond preexisting “marginal” categories, in particular psychopathological art and art therapy. Jean Dubuffet settled the issue once and for all in a deft turn of phrase: “There is no more ‘art des fous’ [art of the insane] than there is art of dyspeptics or of those with bad knees.” This means that there is no style characteristic of “insanity” and the works in question do not derive their value from their authors’ presumed pathology. In other words, art brut shifts these creations from the realm of medicine into that of art, where they can be properly appreciated as works of art. When Laplace talks about “constructing himself,” about “aesthetics” and “ethics,” it is precisely this shift that we observe. If his output enters the realm of art brut, it is legitimized as a work of art, while at the same time its author gains recognition as the subject of this work. He simultaneously occupies the realm of aesthetics—he becomes an artist—and the realm of ethics—his singularity, interpreted as marginality, becomes a value in itself. Dubuffet considered this specific singularity of the work of art as an essential aesthetic criterion. For the inventor of art brut, the main quality of a work of art was invention. As for Laplace, he half-seriously, half-bemusedly offers: “My conception of art? Why I’m making art? Because it hasn’t been done before. Someone needs to start.”
A sculptural and sonorous writing
“I like to write right into my paintings. I just love it. When I write, I tend to draw; and when I draw, I tend to write,” explains Laplace. Both practices complement each other and can work together. “The writing comes into the picture after the drawing,” he clarifies. This explains why it is not purely graphic or a mere scribble. And it obviously contains no message as it reaches beyond any communicative function: “Even I can’t reread what I’ve written,” he jokes.
The realm of art brut teems with works that merge writing and figuration, presumably because these so-called “raw” artists hardly care about the very cultural distinction between writing and drawing. In our Western societies, most children stop drawing when they learn to write, thereby responding to a tacit educational injunction. The interest of marginalization is that it may be instrumental in eluding these norms. Interestingly, when writing (again) becomes an artistic material, its functions increase tenfold, questioning the status to which it is being reduced in the realm of “normalcy.”
Again, Laplace puts the issue in a nutshell: “I understood that I liked writing because it was an artistic activity. That’s how I started making strokes….” His drawing practice gives substance to writing again. When I discovered Laplace’s drawings, I was reminded of a work by the Japanese artist Koji Nishioka, a drawing in black ink on paper of a series of concentric lines that seem to project from a fragmented musical score drawn with a vibrating hand. It prompts viewers to ask themselves what produces more sound—the lines full of élan or the notes drawn on the staff. Beyond the formal resemblance between two ways of drawing that combine writing and figuration, I thought about this work of Nishioka because sound also emanates from Laplace’s drawings—sound vibrations, deafness, stridency, staccato, legato, crescendo, diminuendo, and countless other effects from the wide array of musical terms.
Laplace himself speaks of “vibrations” that emanate from him and translate graphically through what he calls “small increments,” or “stairs”: “I was going very fast, so I tried to slow down and I connected the vibrations. And that produced these little stairs.” But he also speaks of music: looking at one of his drawings, he evokes “a beautiful piece by Miles Davis where he gives off little trumpet blows….” Laplace has found a way to draw that restores writing in its artistic dimension, while re-instilling it with the power of sound. To some extent, you could say that his unique way of drawing reinvents writing.
Céline Delavaux
English translation by Patrick Kremer